Violence has forced up to 7,000 people in the southern Colombian department of Nariño from their homes over the past two weeks as soldiers battle to retake land from FARC guerillas producing cocaine in the area, officials said. The displacement,… Read moreColombia: 7,000 displaced in Nariño
Interpol issued an international arrest warrant April 3 for three Israelis accused of training illegal paramilitary groups in Colombia. Yair Klein, Melnik Ferri and Tzedaka Abraham are being sought on charges of criminal conspiracy and instruction in terrorism, facing nearly… Read moreColombia seeks Israelis in paramilitary scandal
from Weekly News Update on the Americas:
On March 24, two separate but nearly simultaneous marches were held in Buenos Aires to mark the anniversary of Argentina’s 1976 coup and remember the 30,000 people who were disappeared by the military regime.
The first march—attended by 10,000 people, according to the Buenos Aires daily Clarin—was called by organizations allied with or supportive of the government of President Nestor Kirchner, including the Grandmothers and Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo-Founding Line, the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, the Good Memory Association, Relatives and Siblings of the Disappeared, and the Historical Memory Foundation. The second march was organized by the Memory, Truth and Justice Encounter, a coalition of 185 human rights, community, media and cultural groups not aligned with the government, including the HIJOS group of children of the disappeared and the Association of Former Detained-Disappeared. Both marches ended at the Plaza de Mayo, the second one arriving just after the first rally ended. According to the Buenos Aires daily Cronica, the two marches together drew about 100,000 people.
In addition to marking the coup anniversary, the marchers were commemorating the 30th anniversary of the murder of journalist Rodolfo Walsh, who authored an open letter to the military regime on March 24, 1977, the first anniversary of the coup, and was disappeared hours later. Both marches also coincided in demanding the reappearance—alive—of human rights activist Jorge Julio Lopez, who disappeared last September after testifying against former military officer Miguel Etchecolatz in a trial over dirty war human rights abuses. (Prensa Latina, March 24; Documento del 24 de marzo Memoria, Verdad y Justicia, March 24, posted on Argentina Indymedia; Clarin, March 25; Cronica, March 24; La Jornada, Mexico, March 25)
President Nestor Kirchner headed a separate commemoration earlier on March 24 at the former clandestine detention center of La Perla, in Cordoba province, where an estimated 2,000 political prisoners were held during the dictatorship. (PL, March 24; LJ, March 25)
In Jujuy, protesters held an “escrache”—a noisy human rights protest—at a police station where a detention center operated during the dictatorship. (Clarin, March 25) Protests were also held in Rosario, Salta, La Pampa, Chaco, Santiago del Estero and Entre Rios. (LJ, March 25)
Another protest was scheduled for March 25 at the former detention center of Campo de Mayo, in front of a building where pregnant political detainees gave birth; the regime routinely disappeared the mothers, and illegally gave the infants into adoption with falsified birth papers. (Clarin, March 25)
Santa Fe: Police Attack Water Protest
On the morning of March 22, World Water Day, activists from the Coordinating Committee of Neighborhood Unity-Teresa Rodriguez Movement (CUBa-MTR) in Rosario, Santa Fe province, held a demonstration protesting the government’s failure to provide running water to the city’s Santa Clara neighborhood. Provincial police attacked the protesters, firing metal bullets into the air and rubber bullets into the crowd. Dozens of people were wounded, and nine people—five women and four men—were arrested. An eight-year-old boy was among those hit by rubber bullets. Agents also used clubs to beat demonstrators, including children and pregnant women.
The protesters regrouped at the police station to demand the release of those arrested. The nine detainees were freed around 6:30 PM but were ordered to appear in court the next day. In a communique, the CUBa-MTR blamed the Santa Fe provincial government for the violence, and warned that its members would not be intimidated. (CUBa-MTR Communique, March 22)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, March 25, 2007
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Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html
See also:
WW4 REPORT #130, February 2007
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From our weblog:
South America protests Bush
WW4 REPORT, March 13, 2007
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution
Venezuela has announced it is working on a number of new oil deals with China, as it aims to reduce its dependence upon crude exports to the US. The China National Petroleum Corporation is expected to sink new investments in… Read moreVenezuela seeks China oil deals
The Los Angeles Times reported March 25 on new CIA intelligence indicating that the Colombia’s army chief, Gen. Mario Montoya, collaborated extensively with right-wing paramilitaries that Washington considers terrorist organizations. The report circulated within the CIA and obtained by the… Read moreColombia rejects CIA report on army-para ties
Early on March 20 in Tirua, in Chile’s Region VIII, police arrested Jose Huenchunao Marinan, a Mapuche community leader (werken) and activist who had been in hiding for nearly three years. Huenchunao, a member of the Arauco-Malleco Mapuche Coordinating Committee,… Read moreChile: another Mapuche leader arrested
The Colombian government says that it will seek the extradition of eight unnamed people affiliated with the US banana giant Chiquita Brands International for their alleged involvement in the company’s payments to illegal right-wing paramilitary groups. The Chicago Tribune reports… Read moreColombia seeks eight in Chiquita terrorist scandal
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) states in its annual report that the “democratic security” policy of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe could have negative implications for human rights in the conflicted South American country. The report said the… Read moreColombia: UN blasts Uribe’s “democratic security” program
Thousands march in Montevideo Thousands of people protested in the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay on the evening of March 9, just before Bush’s arrival in the country. A march called by Uruguay’s only labor federation, the Inter-Union Workers Plenary-National Workers… Read moreSouth America protests Bush
Here we go again. We noted two years ago that the annual State Department human rights report for the Americas displayed a blatant double standard concerning US client Colombia and Axis of Evil junior affiliate Venezuela. The new report goes… Read moreState Department rights report reveals double standard on Venezuela, Colombia —again
Seven Colombian soldiers and 11 guerillas were killed over the March 3-4 weekend in the heaviest combat in recent months. Gen. Alejandro Navas, commander of the military’s Omega joint task force, said engagements began early March 3 with a large… Read moreColombia: new violence on eastern plains
from Weekly News Update on the Americas:
On Jan. 29 residents of Camiri, a city in the southwest of Bolivia’s eastern Santa Cruz department, began a civic strike and blockaded a main highway connecting the country with Argentina and Paraguay. The action, which stranded hundreds of people and some 400 vehicles, was led by the Camiri Civic Committee in an effort to make the government of leftist president Evo Morales intensify the nationalization of gas and petroleum production it had announced last May 1. The committee’s demands included the opening of a local office of Yacimientos Petroliferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), the state-owned energy company, and stepping up plans to nationalize two oil refineries operated by the Brazilian state energy company, Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras).
Camiri residents escalated the protest on Feb. 2 by seizing control of a pumping facility operated by the international Transredes company and forcing the employees there to close a pipeline that supplies La Paz, Santa Cruz and other Bolivian cities. On Feb. 3, 15 hours after the pipeline was closed, with a loss of $500,000 in revenue, soldiers and police agents took control of the facility in a struggle which left 12 people injured, two of them by bullets.
On Feb. 5 residents lifted the blockade and began clearing rocks and logs off the highway after government and Civic Committee negotiators reached an agreement which largely met the committee’s demands. The government also promised to build a gas separation plant in the area and to move towards taking over the Chaco and Andina companies, which belonged to YPFB until the energy industry was privatized in 1996. (El Diario-La Prensa, NY, Feb. 5, 6 from EFE, Upside Down World, Feb. 13; La Jornada, Mexico, Feb. 10; Inter Press Service, Feb. 6; Associated Press, Feb. 4)
President Morales stepped up the pace of nationalization in the metal mining and processing sector on Feb. 9 by signing a decree giving the government control of the Vinto tin smelting complex, operated by Sinchi Wayra, a subsidiary of the Swiss-owned Glencore International AG. Morales sent 200 soldiers to occupy the plant.
The Vinto facility was privatized in 2001 when the government sold it to Allied Deals, which later sold it to Compania Minera del Sur (COMSUR), a private mining company whose largest stockholder at the time was former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (1993-1997 and 2002-2003). Glencore bought it for $100 million in 2004. Morales is reportedly counting on $10 million from Venezuela to help build infrastructure that the Corporacion Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL), the state-owned mining company, needs to operate plants like Vinto. (Upside Down World, Feb. 13; Taipei Times, Feb. 11 from AP; LJ, Feb. 10)
Meanwhile, tensions continue between unionized COMIBOL employees and the miners in the small cooperatives that sprang up after much of the mining sector was privatized in the 1990s; the cooperatives now employ some 55,000 independent miners. (Upside Down World, Feb. 13) In October a dispute at the Posokoni hill tin mine in Huanuni, in the southwestern department of Oruro, turned violent; 16 people were killed and 61 injured in the fighting between miners.
The Morales government is trying to reestablish control over more of the mining industry with a planned increase in taxes on private mining. On Feb. 6 as many as 20,000 miners from the cooperatives marched through the streets of La Paz, setting off hundreds of sticks of dynamite and paralyzing the city. The government was willing to negotiate the tax increases, but the protesters refused to meet with officials until they released seven protesters that had been arrested near the city of El Alto, 12 kilometers west of La Paz, on Feb. 5 and Feb. 6 with a total of 285 sticks of dynamite in their possession. (ED-LP, Feb. 7 from AP)
The miners continued to occupy streets around La Paz’s San Francisco plaza on Feb. 7, blocking traffic and government buildings and setting off dynamite. When a group of police agents attempted to arrest people with dynamite, the miners beat up two agents and held others briefly as hostages. Despite the violence, during the day talks started with the government, which agreed to exempt the 536 Bolivian mining cooperatives from the tax and to give them a $10 million subsidy and two of the six seats on COMIBOL’s board of directors. The government says that of the $1.044 billion Bolivia made from mineral exports in 2006, only $45 million went to the state through taxes; the government wants to raise this to $80 million a year. (La Capital, La Paz, Feb. 7 from DPA; ED-LP, Feb. 8 from EFE)
Miners from the cooperatives planned new protests at the Posokoni mine starting on Feb. 4; they insisted that these actions would remain peaceful. In the week of Feb. 11, dozens of the miners and their families took the protest to the streets of La Paz, where they carried out a hunger strike, wrote signs in their own blood and symbolically crucified and buried themselves. The government insists that the Posokoni mine, the country’s richest tin mine, will be entirely under COMIBOL’s control but that the cooperatives will have access to other sites. The government is offering to pay about $187 a month to the private miners who have been removed from Posokoni until they can find work at the new sites. (Diario Las Americas, Miami, Feb. 17 from EFE)
A leader from Morales’ Movement to Socialism (MAS) party claims the cooperative miners are being manipulated by political forces. Gustavo Torrico, head of the MAS group in the Chamber of Deputies, told the Cuba news agency Prensa Latina that one of the people behind the recent actions is Jaime Villalobos, who was a mining minister under Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. (PL, Feb. 17)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, Feb. 18, 2007
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Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html
See also:
WW4 REPORT #129, January 2007
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See related story, this issue:
NATIONALIZATION BLUES IN BOLIVIA; ROCK’N’ROLL IN VENEZUELA
The Fractious Struggle for South America’s Resources
by April Howard, Upside Down World
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From our weblog:
Bolivia: deadly unrest over autonomy plan
WW4 REPORT, Jan. 12, 2007
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Feb. 1, 2007 Reprinting permissible with attribution
Continue ReadingBOLIVIA: STREET HEAT FOR NATIONALIZATION
