Newsbriefs
Haitians Debate the U.S. Occupation PORT-AU-PRINCE, OCTOBER 10, 1994 A lthough thousands of Haitians have greeted the occupying U.S. troops by literally dancing in streets, a number of...
...Aldo Horacio Gamboa PRI Wins Yet Again MEXICO CITY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1994 " 4 etter a known evil than "an unknown good" is a common saying in Mexico...
...immigration policy, then the Cuban refugee crisis was resolved by the agreement signed by the two countries in New York on September 9. If, on the other hand, the exodus was the consequence of the island's economic crisis, and if economic hardship isn't quickly eased, then not even the September accord will stop the exodus of Cubans...
...In the months and weeks before the vote, Solidarity stepped up construction of roads, sewage systems, clinics and schools to cement alliances with PRI supporters or to combat political opposition...
...Nor do most Cubans believe that their government would agree to an accord that does nothing to cancel the measures announced by Bill Clinton in August which stiffen travel restrictions and ban remittances sent by Cuban Americans to their relatives on the island...
...Moreover, Washington agreed to sit down and negotiate directly with Cuba, and U.S...
...The Yankees occupied Haiti for 20 years, under the same pretext of reestablishing democracy in Haiti," said the National Popular Assembly (APN), a mass organization with base groups in several regions of the country...
...After a while, the numbers lose all meaning, though not their ability to shock...
...Founded in 1985 by the Communist guerrillas, the FARC, the UP went on to win 14 seats in Congress in 1986...
...troops by literally dancing in streets, a number of organizations in the democratic and popular movement are emerging from hiding to condemn the invasion and occupation...
...Two events brought home this collapse: the electoral disaster of the Acci6n Democritica/M- 19, and the brutal assassination of the only Uni6n Patri6tica (UP) senator, Manuel Cepeda, on August 9. The M-19 once seemed on the verge of breaking the stranglehold of the two traditional parties on electoral politics in Colombia...
...The "other accord" may mean that the key issues will be back on the table after this November's U.S...
...For financial support, President Salinas turned to Mexico's billionaires, whose ranks swelled from one to 24 in the last seven years...
...Some voters had no privacy while voting, while at many booths PRI partisans attempted to sway voters...
...Cardoso's Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) and its allies will control the Senate, but they will have to negotiate with other parties-situated from the center to the right of the Brazilian political spectrum-to obtain the majority in the Chamber of Deputies...
...In the Congressional races this March, the M-19 garnered a mere 2.8% of the vote...
...Professors associated with the C6dras regime, including Yvelie Honorat, wife of the first postcoup prime minister, were literally chased away...
...It may also include some measures to soften the blockade...
...It captured the prevailing philosophy at the voting booths on August 21 when an unprecedented 78% of Mexican voters turned out to elect a new president and legislature...
...For subscription information: Haitian Information Bureau, do Lynx Air, Box 407139, Ft...
...The greatest pork-barrel resource to which the PRI had access was the federal anti-poverty and public-works program, Solidarity, and its rural spin-off Procampo...
...Cuauht6moc Ctrdenas of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) won a paltry 17% of the vote-a surprise given that many believed he had won the fraudridden elections of 1988...
...Cardoso's principal challenge will be to ensure continuing stability and low inflation while enacting widespread social reforms, and maintaining the precarious political alliance that backed him...
...Perhaps the greatest obstacle to democracy in Mexico is the PRI's almost sacred impunity...
...PRI candidate Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Le6n won with just over 50% of the vote, the narrowest but also perhaps the cleanest victory for the PRI in a presidential election...
...Lauderdale, Fl, 33340...
...That accord-with which the United States never compliedalso authorized the issuance of up to 20,000 visas per year...
...The Zedillo campaign slogan, "I vote for peace!," seemed to contain a veiled threat...
...Cardoso's Vice-Presidential running mate, Marco Maciel, affirmed that his rightist Liberal Front Party (PFL) would not obstruct the enactment of social reforms...
...Only a few days before the vote, armed men assaulted the leaders of the Civic Alliance, Mexico's most important electoral observation organization, at a public restaurant...
...To his credit, President Samper did not sidestep the issue, as several of his predecessors had done...
...Alison Gardy Harsh Blow To Colombian Left BOGOTA, OCTOBER 7, 1994 A s Liberal president Ernesto Samper and the new Congress were sworn into office on August 7 in Bogota, hope for the emergence of a left, or even the centerleft, alternative came crashing down...
...Under the tight-money plan, inflation has dropped from near 50% in June to only 1.51% in September...
...By 1994, the UP had been reduced to an inconsequential party, relying mostly on the aging machinery of the Communist Party of Colombia for their political survival...
...In return, Washington authorized a minimum of 20,000 residential immigration visas per year to be issued to Cuban citizens who wish to come to the United States...
...Additional visas will be allotted for Cuban relatives of U.S...
...For subscription information: ALAI, Casilla 17-12-877, Quito, Ecuador...
...Although over a decade of crises has weakened the PRI's grip on the country, the party proved once again that it thrives in uncertain times...
...2NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 2 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASNEWSBRIEFS The former trade unionist said that he intends to become "a kind of prosecuting attorney for the people," demanding that Cardoso fulfill the promises he made during the electoral campaign...
...Any analysis of the negotiations between Washington and Havana over the thorny issue of Cuban migration rests on which of those perspectives one accepts...
...He beat the socialist Workers' Party candidate, Luis Indcio "Lula" da Silva, who received only 26...
...The September 9 agreement focused on the prevention of risky departures from the island...
...Conservative National Action Party (PAN) candidate, Diego FernAndez de Cevallos, made a strong showing with 26%, but the PAN lost its three governorships in the states of Baja California, Chihuahua and Guanajuato...
...Senator Cepeda had widely denounced the existence of a campaign to exterminate the UP, but he was largely ignored...
...Despite having quickly established themselves as a viable political movement, the M-19 failed to distinguish themselves from the politicians who came before them, both ideologically and in practice...
...The party also stepped up its usual nationwide distribution of "gifts" such as aprons, jackets, T-shirts, baseball caps, plates, buckets, notebooks, pens, bumper stickers and matchbooks stamped with the PRI logo...
...The Colombian voters responded harshly...
...His murder forced President Samper-only two days after taking office-to confront directly the question of official involvement in human rights violations, including the assassination of elected officials...
...HIB Cardoso Wins Brazilian Elections RIo DE JANEIRO, OCTOBER 11, 1994 In the first presidential elections in Brazil since Fernando Collor de Mello resigned in disgrace in 1992, Fernando Henrique Cardoso was elected president on October 3 with 54% of the vote in first-round balloting...
...No longer defiant, as in the earlier marches for the M-19's slain presidential candidate, Carlos Pizarro, or the two slain UP presidential candidates, Bernardo Jarramillo Ossa and Jaime Pardo Leal, the marchers could only hope that Samper would live up to his promise to end the dirty war...
...The Haitian people," said the group, "have to be really clear that if they want to end the coup and bury the Tonton Macoute system forever, they will have to count first on their own forces and on their own arms...
...immigration policy was reformulated...
...From clues dropped in statements made by officials on both sides, many Cuban political analysts have inferred the existence of "the other accord," not made public...
...Many student, peasant, neighborhood and church-based organizations from the decimated-but not destroyed-popular movement are issuing press releases and position papers arguing that Haiti has been saddled with an insideous U.S...
...But the assault on the lives of UP members was unceasing...
...Cirdenas threatened massive civil disobedience if the PRI won by fraud, and many Mexicans feared a possible civil war...
...In the presidential balloting last May, Navarro Wolff, once thought to be a serious contender for the presidency, received a punishing 3.8...
...In special elections held later that year, this time for a Constitutional Convention, the M19 slate, headed by Navarro Wolff, garnered over 26% of the ballots cast...
...The Mexican army made sweeps through "problematic" areas of the country, while Mexican newspapers plastered their front pages with photos of U.S...
...Thousands of citizens could not vote because of a lack of ballots at "special needs" voting stations (which made up 6% of the total stations), partially erased voters' lists, or difficulty in getting the new photo-ID voter registration card...
...Brazil is not an underdeveloped country...
...The PRI flaunted its bottomless resources and sophisticated infrastructure by flooding the streets and air waves with a deluge of propaganda which far outstripped that of any other party...
...elections...
...Heading an alliance of social democrats and conservatives, Cardoso-who will take office on January 1, 1995-presented the country with a program of government based on the success of the "Real Plan," which he crafted during his ten months as economy minister in the Itamar Franco Administration...
...Many Cubans, however, believe that the "real agreement" between the two governments was not contained in the document signed in New York...
...military presence sent to protect the Haitian army and elite, and that the country will soon be facing a harsh neoliberal "structuraladjustment" program...
...The PRI also won easy majorities in both the expanded 128-seat Senate and 500-seat Chamber of Deputies...
...citizens, and the family-reunification category has been expanded...
...In the end the two country's official positions remained frozen...
...soldiers, paramilitary bands still roam the streets at night, threatening to persecute members they find...
...At the same time, Cardoso's statement sowed seeds of doubt among his conservative allies about how the power-sharing arrangement would work in practice...
...Instead of voting in the sweeping change that many had either hoped for or feared, Mexicans granted another six years to the "known evil" of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which has held power since 1929...
...Perhaps no legal party of the Left has ever faced such a systematic campaign of physical extermination...
...Talks NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 20, 1994 If last summer's exodus of Cubans to Miami was the consequence of a shortsighted U.S...
...blockade was left hanging, the immediate crisis was overcome...
...This time, however, the marchers seemed deeply subdued...
...Many nations praised Mexico's elections as cleaner than usual, but they should not be accepted as clean enough...
...e-mail: info@alai.ecx.ec...
...By contrast, the Liberals and Conservatives-in an election where almost 70% of the eligible voters stayed home-received over 92% of the vote...
...Though a new law put caps on campaign donations, it nonetheless allowed for undisclosed donations of up to $6.5 million...
...It may include an agreement to continue discussions at a later date on some of the truly conflictive questions dividing the two governments: communications, family reunification, and drug trafficking...
...For those who believe that, given the difficult conditions in Cuba, the exodus will continue, Washington won at the negotiating table...
...Marc Chernick is the acting director of the Latin American Studies program at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University...
...The Cubans agreed to clamp down on illegal migration...
...If August's elections were cleaner than those of the past, the most praise should go to the conscientious work of the hundreds of thousands of electionbooth officials, selected randomly by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) on the basis of birthdays in November or December...
...Students and pro-democracy professors also regained control of the medical school, the teachers' college, and the science and social sciences colleges...
...Senator Cepeda was the 2444th member of the party to be assassinated since the party was founded in 1985...
...The declaration awakened hope in sectors of the Left that the future president would govern as the progressive sociologist who wrote the 1973 book "Dependency and Development in Latin America," a classic of the Latin American Left...
...Marc Chernick Cuba-U.S...
...The Latin American Information Agency (ALAI) publishes the bi-weekly Servicio Informativo in Quito...
...The M-19's delegation went from nine senators to zero...
...Have we ever gotten that democracy...
...In 1990, M-19 leader Antonio Navarro Wolff, just two months after making the transition from guerrilla leader to presidential candidate, received over 12% of the vote...
...They managed, however, to elect one senator in 1994-one more than the M-19...
...The Clinton Administration didn't accede to Fidel Castro's demands to drastically raise the number of yearly visas, or to discuss the issue of the blockade...
...army equipment rolling across the border...
...Members of the group have been trying to return to their town...
...Despite widespread cynicism about the possibility of fair elections, they attended training classes in the new electoral process, and then sacrificed their Sunday to perform a civic duty for which they were not paid...
...He insisted that bringing those responsible to justice and ending the reigning impunity will be a centerpiece of his government...
...The National Federation of Haitian Students (FENEH) said on September 22 that it totally opposes the occupation "perpetrated against the legitimate aspirations of the Haitian popular masses and their arrival on the political scene...
...Among the murdered were presidential candidates, mayors, councilmen, congressmen and, of course, senators...
...Aldo Horacio Gamboa is a freelance correspondent...
...They joined the Gaviria government and soon became bogged down in patronage games...
...Although GrandGoive is occupied by about a dozen U.S...
...Tensions were high in the weeks leading up to the election...
...The day after Senator Cepeda was murdered, thousands of leftist mourners came together in the Plaza Bolivar to carry his coffin through the streets of Bogoti toward the national cemetery--a now routine ritual for the Left...
...Continued on page 45 The PRI probably did win more votes than any other party, but whether it won the majority or not is uncertain because of the many irregularities that still tainted the voting process...
...The decline of the UP was more protracted and involved more bloodspilling...
...Many are skeptical that Fidel Castro would agree to stop the exodus in exchange for an agreement which is essentially the same as the one signed in 1984...
...The President-elect has already warned that if the forces of the Right-whether his allies or those in the oppositionoppose these reforms, he will appeal directly to the population for its support, using the authority of his electoral mandate of more than 33 million votes...
...Cardoso's election ushers in a phase of political realignment which has economic stability as its principal axis...
...e-mail: hib@igc.apc.org...
...it is an unjust country," Cardoso said in his first public appearance after the release of the election results...
...Kbmbit Komilfo, a popular organization based in Grand-GoAve, a town west of the capital, issued a twopage statement on September 29 saying it is up to the Haitian population, not foreign troops, to create democracy here...
...ALAI Sources The Haitian Information Bureau (HIB) publishes Haiti Info, a bi-weekly news bulletin, in Port-au-Prince...
...And on October 7, after several days of clashes with armed thugs, demonstrating students seized control of the university's school of administration, a bastion of support for the illegal regime...
...Lula and the PT have already announced that they will not engage in "systematic opposition" to the future government...
...It is nearly impossible to make individuals accountable for corruption or outright repression, a particular concern in restless areas like Chiapas where human rights abuses could escalate if international vigilance diminishes...
...Alison Gardy is a regular contributor to NACLA...
...For the proponents of the first proposition, the results of the agreement favored Fidel Castro: while the issue of the U.S...
...It also hosted free rock concerts for young people, sold low-priced produce to homemakers, and gave free haircuts to the general public...
Vol. 28 • November 1994 • No. 3
