La huelga de piernas cruzadas. Long overdue. Maybe it will catch on globally. From the London Times, Sept. 24: A SEX strike organised by the girlfriends of gang members in one of Colombia’s most violent cities to protest against a… Read moreColombian women go on sex strike
The Sept. 22 Daily News carries the front-page headline: “BIG APPLE TO BIG MOUTH: ZIP IT!” It gleefully quotes various New York politicians bashing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for calling Bush a “devil,” including Sen. Chuck Schumer (“despicable and disgusting”),… Read moreUS politicians bash Chavez …but that doesn’t mean he isn’t really getting a little wacky
A textbook case in how Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is viewed differently by the Imperium and the global south. First this, from the Voice of America, Sept. 20, on day two of the annual UN General Assembly debate: Chavez brought his… Read moreChavez calls Bush “Devil”, proposes “Bank of the South”
From Indian Country Today, Sept. 19: NEW YORK – Tribal leaders and the Aymaran president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, held a historic meeting September 18 before Morales’ speech at the United Nations, where they discussed the dangers facing the natural… Read moreEvo Morales meets with Native American leaders
Like his pal Ahmadinejad in Iran, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez now loans credibility to 9-11 conspiracy theory, if this report is to be trusted. From England’s right-wing Daily Mail Sept. 13: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the United States could have… Read moreChavez weighs in on 9-11 conspiracy theory
As populist leaders in Bolivia and Venezuela are determined to nationalize their oil industries, Colombia’s government is insisting on a privatization plan for its state-run oil company. By selling off 20% of Ecopetrol, Colombia hopes to net some $5 billion… Read moreColombia announces 20% privatization of state oil company
Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe took over the country's airwaves Sept. 10 to defend the military against reports soldiers were behind a string of bombings in the capital, Bogota. In a live half-hour speech during prime-time on all the major networks,… Read moreColombian military implicated in Bogotá blasts
Carlos Castaño, patriarch of Colombia’s far-right paramilitary movement, is confirmed dead at the age of 39. Mario Iguaran, Colombia’s chief prosecutor, said a skeleton unearthed from a shallow grave was that of Castaño, the long-missing leader of the feared Self-Defense… Read moreColombia: paramilitary patriarch killed on brother’s orders
And not a moment too soon. This is sure to bring a smile to followers of the Global Anti-Golf Movement (GAGM). Chris Kraul reports for the Los Angeles Times, Aug. 31: In Caracas, the Poor Shall Inherit the Golf Course… Read moreVenezuela: Chavez cracks down on golf
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
On Aug. 16, members of the Shipiba indigenous community of Canaan de Cashiyacu seized nine oil wells operated by the Maple Gas Corporation in Maquia district, Ucayali province, in the Peruvian Amazon region of Loreto. The Shipiba are protesting the failure of Maple Gas to fulfill accords it signed a year ago, and demanding that the company now leave the area.
Robert Guimaraes of the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP) said the company’s unfulfilled promises include payment for the use of the land and programs to monitor the health of the population. The Shipiba say Maple Gas never obtained authorization of any kind from their community to operate in the area, in violation of Peruvian law and Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO).
Maple Gas Corporation general manager Guillermo Ferreyros claims that studies done by the Loreto Regional Health Department showed no signs of environmental or health contamination in Canaan de Cashiyacu. In addition, Ferreyros said the land was valued by the National Appraisal Commission at 58,000 nuevos soles ($17,907), while the Shipiba communities are demanding $20 million. (Adital, Aug. 21; Cadena Peruana de Noticias Radio, Aug. 16)
But a study by the group EarthRights International, cited in an August 2005 report from the Regional AIDESEP Organization of Ucayali (ORAU), concluded that Maple Gas “has caused serious environmental, social and cultural contamination” to the Shipiba community of Canaan de Cashiyacu. According to EarthRights International, the local Cachiyacu River “has rainbow colored reflections and a smell of hydrocarbons,” indicating “it is not appropriate for human consumption.” The company barred the community from planting crops in their own territory, resulting in nutrition problems, and the study also found that Maple Gas employees had treated residents badly and had sexually abused local women, resulting in many cases of sexually transmitted diseases. A high percentage of the population also suffers from pneumonia and diarrhea, and several community members have died while suffering severe abdominal pains. (Report from ORAU, Aug. 1 posted on EarthRights International website)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, Aug. 27
ALAN GARCIA INAUGURATED PRESIDENT
Alan Garcia Perez was inaugurated on July 28 as president of Peru for a five-year term. He narrowly won a runoff election on June 4 against nationalist-populist candidate Ollanta Humala Tasso. It is the second term for Garcia, who served as president from 1985 to 1990. At his inauguration before the new Congress, he announced an “urgent” plan to reduce government spending. Among other things, the plan would cut at least 800 jobs and slash the salaries of the country’s more than 17,000 high-level officials. The president’s monthly salary would be reduced from $13,000 to $5,000, and legislators’ salaries would go from $10,000 to less than $5,000. (AP, July 28)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 30
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Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html
See also:
WW4 REPORT #124, August 2006
/node/2253
“Peru: Ollanta Humala charged in ‘dirty war’ atrocity,”
WW4 REPORT, Aug. 23
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Sept. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
On July 29, thousands of Venezuelan campesinos and supporters marched in the city of San Felipe, capital of Yaracuy state, to demand land reform and protest attacks on campesino leaders. The March for Dignity, Peace and Against Terrorism was headed by Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel. It was called in response to the July 22 assassination attempt against campesino leader and legislative deputy Braulio Alvarez. (AP, July 29)
The “Joel Sierra” Regional Human Rights Committee Foundation, based in the Colombian department of Arauca, has reported that four of the seven campesino family members murdered on July 20 on the Adi ranch in La Victoria, in the western Venezuelan state of Apure, were Colombians—including a five-year-old boy. The ranch is located close to the border with the Colombian municipality of Arauquita, in Arauca department. The massacre was apparently carried out by a member of the Venezuelan military. (Fundacion Comite Regional de Derechos Humanos “Joel Sierra,” undated, via Adital, July 28)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, July 30
VENEZUELA JOINS MERCOSUR
Venezuela officially became the fifth full member of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade bloc on July 21 at a summit held July 20-21 in Cordoba, Argentina; the new member will have full voting rights by 2010. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay are the other full members; Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are associate members. The presidents of all member nations except Colombia, Ecuador and Peru attended the summit, as did Cuban president Fidel Castro Ruz, who had tended to avoid summits recently.
With the addition of Venezuela, Mercosur has a combined market of 250 million people and a combined output of $1 trillion in goods and services annually, according to Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula advocated bringing more Latin American nations into the bloc as full members. He noted that “no one’s talking anymore” about the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a hemispheric trade bloc the US wanted to have in place by 2005; negotiations towards a meaningful FTAA stalled in late 2003. “Who knows?” Lula said. “We could come to have a Merco-America and not just a Mercosur!”
Other business at the summit included the announcement of an accord for greater exchange of goods between Mercosur nations and Cuba through tariff reductions and a promise that neither side will arbitrarily hike import fees or taxes; the inclusion of Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay in plans for a natural gas pipeline from Argentina to Venezuela; acceptance of an Argentine-Venezuelan proposal for a Mercosur development bank; the announcement that a Mercosur parliament will begin holding sessions in Montevideo by the end of the year; the signing of a trade accord with Pakistan; and a commitment to continue trade talks with Israel, while calling for an immediate halt to Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. The summit also formally supported Venezuela’s bid for one of the two Latin American seats on the United Nations Security Council.
The Mercosur summit brought criticism from pro-US commentators. Venezuela’s entry should be a “wake-up call” for US officials who have been focused on the Middle East rather than Latin America, warned Michael Shifter of the Washington, DC-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank. Mercosur is becoming “an effort to try to build and consolidate an alternative alliance to US-backed free trade policies,” he told Associated Press. “So, have the Mercosur countries all gone bananas?” Peruvian-born commentator Alvaro Vargas Llosa, son of Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, asked in a Washington Post op-ed. “Yes,” he answered. (Inter Press Service, July 21; CBS News, July 21 from AP; Upside Down World, July 24 from OpenDemocracy; WP, July 28)
Unions, non-governmental organizations and grassroots groups held an alternative Summit for the Sovereignty and Integration of the Peoples in Cordoba July 17-20. Its final declaration denounced the FTAA and militarization, demanded a withdrawal of US troops from Paraguay and of United Nations troops from Haiti, and opposed ratification of a Mercosur trade pact with Israel. (Adital, July 18; Campana Continental contra el ALCA, July 20)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, Aug 8
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Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html
See also:
WW4 REPORT #124, August 2006
/node/2256
“Chavez does Damascus,”
WW4 REPORT, Aug. 31
/node/2403
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Sept. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
During the week of Aug. 14, some 500 indigenous Guarani people began an occupation at the Parapeti station of the Yacuiba-Rio Grande gas pipeline (GASYRG) near Charagua, in the eastern Bolivian department of Santa Cruz, to demand that the Transierra company pay the Guarani people $9 million in exchange for allowing the pipeline to operate on their land. Transierra agreed in a 2005 accord to provide that amount to benefit the Guarani people; the company says the funding was to be distributed over a 20-year period, and it has so far provided $255,887.
Transierra is co-owned by the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras, the Spanish-Argentine oil company Repsol and the French company Total. The protest is organized by the Assembly of the Guarani People (APG). On Aug. 19 the protesters seized a control station at the facility, but so far they are only maintaining a symbolic occupation and have not shut down production.
On Aug. 21, the APG met with Bolivian government authorities and proposed that Transierra pay $4.5 million by Aug. 25, with the rest of the money due in five years. After five hours of meetings, in which a Bolivian government commission met separately with the APG and the company, Transierra manager Marcos Beniccio announced he would discuss the APG’s demands with the firm’s shareholders and the World Bank, which is financing the pipeline.
On Aug. 22, two truckloads of activists arrived to reinforce the occupation, and the APG said it would continue to hold the Parapeti station until at least Aug. 25, when talks with Transierra and the government of leftist indigenous president Evo Morales Ayma were set to resume. (Europa Press, Aug. 22; AP, Reuters, Terra Brasil, Aug. 22)
Weekly News Update on the Americas, Aug. 27
CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY OPENS
On Aug. 6, Bolivian president Evo Morales Ayma presided over a ceremony in the central plaza of the southern city of Sucre, Bolivia’s historic capital, marking the start of sessions for the Constituent Assembly elected on July 2. The Assembly will have the task of rewriting Bolivia’s Constitution over the next year.
“Our natural resources have been looted, they must never again be surrendered to the transnationals,” Morales told a crowd of thousands attending the event. “This assembly must have all the powers, it must even be above Evo Morales, because its mission is not to reform the Constitution but to re-found the country, overcoming centuries of discrimination against the indigenous people,” said Morales. “I will subordinate myself and fulfill what it says.”
A majority of the 255 members of the Constituent Assembly are indigenous, and the body’s president is Silvia Lazarte, a prominent Quechua campesina leader from the Chapare region of Cochabamba department. Addressing the crowd, Lazarte noted the double discrimination faced by indigenous women, even within their own social organizations. (AP, Aug. 6) Lazarte was among some 100 leaders arrested in a police raid on campesino coca growers (cocaleros) on Jan. 19, 2002; she was one of the last two leaders released on bond a month later, on Feb. 20. The case apparently never went to trial. (AP, July 31)
Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera laid out four challenges facing the Assembly: overcome political inequality to build a multicultural state; develop a community-based development model; modify the “economic structure” which has forced Bolivia to rely on exporting raw materials; and preserve the unity of the country while granting greater autonomy to each of its nine regions. (AP, Aug. 6)
Morales’ party, the Movement to Socialism (MAS), has 137 of the 255 seats in the Constituent Assembly; according to the rules laid out in the law convening the Assembly, two thirds—170 votes—are needed to approve changes to the Constitution. The second-largest bloc in the Assembly is the right-wing Social Democratic Power (Podemos) coalition, with 60 seats. Morales has said that the MAS will negotiate with other groups, but not with Podemos. The Constitution the Assembly drafts will have to be approved by voters in a referendum. (El Nuevo Herald, Aug. 5 from EFE)
Among the throngs attending the inaugural event were thousands of representatives of indigenous and campesino organizations from around the country who held their own parallel grassroots assembly in Sucre on Aug. 4, followed by a march on Aug. 5 to hand in their proposal to the Constituent Assembly. The groups included the Only Union Confederation of Bolivian Campesino Workers (CSUTCB), the Chiquitana Indigenous Organization (OICH), the Coordinating Committee of Ethnic Peoples of Santa Cruz (CEPESC), the Bartolina Sisa National Federation of Bolivian Campesina Women (FNMCB-BS), the Landless Movement (MST) and the Assembly of the Guarani People, among others. (Bolivia Indymedia, Aug. 5; La Jornada, Mexico, Aug. 5)
On Aug. 2, Morales handed over 50 tractors from Venezuela and more than 2,000 land titles at a ceremony in the village of Ucurena, in Cochabamba department, where Bolivia’s first agrarian reform decree was signed on Aug. 2, 1953. Thousands of campesinos attended the event marking the start of the Morales government’s “agrarian revolution.” Morales said campesino organizations have suggested shutting down Bolivia’s Congress, which on July 31 failed to accelerate legislation on the confiscation of unproductive privately held agricultural land. “I’m not asking to close Congress, but Congress must respond to the demands of the campesino movement,” Morales warned. (AP, Aug. 2; LJ, Aug. 1) Morales held a similar ceremony on June 3 in the city of Santa Cruz to announce the land reform program.
Weekly News Update on the Americas, Aug. 8
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Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html
See also:
WW4 REPORT #123, July 2006
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“Bolivia: conspiracy against constitutional reform?”
WW4 REPORT, Aug. 14
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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Sept. 1, 2006
Reprinting permissible with attribution
