Newsbrief
Abduction of Human Rights Worker Spotlights Labor Violence in Bolivia LA PAZ, FEBRUARY 4, 1997 A simmering labor dispute became a political scandal on January 25, when Bolivian newspapers...
...Meanwhile, Haiti's elite have never had it so good...
...In his speech on New Year's Eve, Frei touted his government's positive economic performance in 1996, then proceeded to urge the country to rally against terrorism...
...In Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) have recently proved -that they remain strong...
...After Albarracin was released, the police claimed it was a case of mistaken identity...
...The presumably escapeproof prison was built three years ago to house leftists accused of participating in violent acts since Chile's return to elected government in 1990...
...The process, which will be carried out by government officials, the CNONH and community governing bodies known as patronatos, will include drawing boundaries, evicting squatters, broadening land limits according to the original deeds and current population, and compensating those who bought Garifuna lands in good faith...
...A few days later, after Congress endorsed Frei's plans to combat terrorism, the President announced that he would draft a series of anti-terrorism bills for congressional approval...
...On January 9, the FARC sent a letter to the government saying that the soldiers would be released only after a bilateral agreement was reached between the government and the rebels...
...Walter Krochmal Sources: Carlos Perez is associate producer of Our Americas, NACLA and Pacifica Radio's weekly report on Latin America and the Caribbean...
...News of the breakout caused President Eduardo Frei to postpone his annual state of the union address, which was to be aired the evening of December 30...
...The collective entitlements program is scheduled to begin in early February...
...In early January, however, the Samper government suggested it might withdraw the army from Remolinos del Caguan if the FARC made a firm commitment to release the soldiers...
...Negotiations stalled, however, when the army refused to withdraw from the area of Remolinos del Caguan within the designated demilitarized zone...
...The lands are being threatened by ladino invaders and transnationals which, in concert with national investors, seek to develop the area for tourism and other projects...
...There were two additional reminders during the holiday period...
...Just days before, Albarracin had publicly accused the government of bribing the families of slain striking miners with $10,000 in "hush money...
...Another 27 soldiers were killed and 20 wounded in the attack...
...For information on the Garifuna Bicentennial, call the New York Bicentennial Committee at (718) 385-6505...
...The miners were trying to gain bargaining leverage in a protracted labor dispute with the new owners of the mine, the Denverbased conglomerate, Vistagold Corporation...
...Critics of the plan, including members of the centerright opposition, say the armed forces have no business poking their noses in internal security matters which are best left to civilians...
...Negotiations between the miners and Vistagold, which purchased the mines in mid-1996, stalled last September over issues of wages and job security...
...International repudiation of the abduction forced President Gonzalo Sinchez de Losada to fire the director of the National Police, saying that Albarracin's abduction was "unacceptable in a democracy...
...Another faction held onto its arms and staged a series of spectacular actions, including the kidnapping of businessman Cristidin Edwards and the assassinations of intelligence agent Roberto Fuentes, Carabineros Colonel Luis Fontaine, and right-wing senator Jaime Guzmin...
...Some sectors were highly critical of Samper for "caving in" to the guerrillas...
...Between 1991 and 1994, the Patricio Aylwin government launched a campaign against the FPMR, and after jailing nearly a hundred members of the group, claimed that "terrorism was over...
...Fifteen police officers were given medals of valor and promoted for their participation in the massacre...
...In response, President Ernesto Samper complied with the guerrillas' demand to withdraw the army from a 5,400 square-mile area in Caquetd...
...In Peru itself, Shining Path has been staging a comeback...
...In early February, just 30 miles outside Bogota, soldiers and rebels clashed in five straight days of combat which claimed 28 lives...
...Vincent, an island in the eastern Caribbean, to Roatdn, an island near the Honduran coastline...
...A week later, the government announced that it would agree to a bilateral dialogue with the FARC to negotiate the release of the soldiers...
...The brunt of the fighting took place the following day, when seven miners and a police officer were killed...
...It may be some time yet before all these groups "catch up with history...
...The march, which was organized by the National Coordinator of Black Organizations of Honduras (CNONH), brought the Honduran government to the negotiating table for the first time in history...
...Two hundred thousand street kids-nearly a tenth of the urban population-roam the capital...
...In Argentina, the shady People's Revolutionary Organization (ORP) -thought to have links with former intelligence operatives--has re-emerged after a frustrated attempt to extort money from a supermarket chain in neighboring Uruguay...
...NotiSur Daring Prison Break in Chile SANTIAGO, JANUARY 30, 1997 1 n a question of minutes, a helicopter spewing rounds from M16s descended over the prison yard of Santiago's Maximum Security Prison and scooped up four jailed members of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR...
...The military also claimed that the guerrillas controlled 30,000 acres of coca fields, and that abandoning the area would allow drug trafficking to flourish in the area...
...In Mexico, the Zapatistas still hold territory, and the recently emerged Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) is awaiting the completion of a year-end "truce" to resume hostilities...
...Maxine Lowy Garifuna Communities Win Concessions from Honduran Government LA CEIBA, JANAUARY 29, 1997 Sver 3,500 black men and women from 53 Garffuna communities along Honduras' Atlantic Coast participated in the "First Great Peaceful March of Black People" in Tegucigalpa last October...
...In Chile, the Manuel Rodrfguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) staged a daring helicopter rescue of their imprisoned leaders from a maximum-security prison...
...Critics say that if the government agrees to a total troop withdrawal from the area, it would be a defacto recognition of FARC sovereignty over that section of the country...
...Haiti's per-capita GNP is still under $250 a year, less than it was in 1960, yet the cost of living continues to rise...
...Lower tariffs, a frozen minimum wage and tax breaks for big business are a boon to the wealthiest 1% of Haitians, who claim 44% of the country's income...
...A La Paz newspaper also quoted Albarracin as saying that the police officer who was killed during an army attack on striking miners last December was shot by one of his own men, though Albarracin denies making such a statement...
...Miners were also questioning the price Vistagold paid for the mines, claiming that it was well below state appraisals, which affected the tax revenue the community was slated to gain from the purchase...
...Two of the escapees had been serving life sentences for the 1991 assassination of Senator Guzmsn, who authored the military regime's 1980 Constitution and the amnesty law that shields human rights offenders from prosecution...
...Five million Haitians live on less than 70 cents a day...
...Attempts to spell this out more precisely were overruled by the ruling party and right-wing legislators...
...Latin America Weekly Report is published weekly by Latin American Newsletters...
...For subcription information: Latin American Data Base, Latin American Institute, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, (800) 472-0888...
...For free samples and subscription information: Latin American Newsletters, Dept 96A11, 61 Old Street, London EC1V 9HX, England, E-mail: WR@latin.ftech.co.uk...
...Haiti's poor-90% of the population-suffer most from the new economic program, which restricts any minimum-wage hikes, cuts social services and eliminates civil-service jobs...
...Abduction of Human Rights Worker Spotlights Labor Violence in Bolivia LA PAZ, FEBRUARY 4, 1997 A simmering labor dispute became a political scandal on January 25, when Bolivian newspapers reported that Waldo Albarracin, president of the nongovernmental Permanent Human Rights Assembly of Bolivia, had been kidnapped and severely beaten by police officers posing as guerrillas of the Peru-based Tdipac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA...
...Maxine Lowy is a freelance writer based in Chile...
...Walter Krochmal, who lives in La Ceiba, Honduras, is a correspondent for WBAI 99.5 FM...
...Catherine Orenstein is a New York-based independent journalist who investigated human rights crimes for the United Nations and for the Government of Haiti in 1995 and 1996...
...The Garffuna, descendants of runaway African slaves and Carib-Arawaks, urged the government to offer legal guarantees for the preservation of their ancestral lands, located on the last and largest stretch of Honduras' virgin Caribbean beach...
...Twelve people were killed and scores more injured in the military siege, which lasted several days...
...After months of deadlock, a breakthrough seemed imminent last December, when the FARC sent the army a video showing that all 60 soldiers were still alive...
...Amid the celebration Journalists of the success of Movemen group cc Guatemala's President February Alvaro Arzd in ending group's pr a civil war which lasted 30 years, a couple of things have been overlooked...
...In 1996, unemployment reached 80...
...Many in Guatemala feel that this lets all those who committed atrocities and grave human rights abuses off the hook-in the country with the worst human rights record in the hemisphere...
...The amnesty law does exclude from its benefits "genocide, torture, forcible disappearances and crimes for which there is no statute of limitation...
...Among the president's requests to beef up the country's anti-terrorist apparatus is a proposal to create a new intelligence system that would involve the military in domestic intelligence and grant the security forces the same kind of sweeping powers now restricted to anti-narcotics operations...
...Carlos Perez Disturbances Rock Free-Market Haiti PORT-AU-PRINCE, JANUARY 30, 1997 Sn January 16, tens of thousands of Haitian workers stayed at home in a nationwide strike, while thousands more blocked the streets with burning tires to demand the government put an end to free-market economic policies...
...Many Haitians would Vol XX)(, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 19971 j R Vol XXX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1997 1NEWSBRIEFS barely survive were it not for the estimated $300 to $500 million a year that Haitians living abroad sent home in remittances...
...Remarkably, Haiti-which once supplied over half the world's sugar as a French colony in the 1700s-no longer produces enough for its own consumption...
...Meanwhile, another army contingent launched an attack against the mining center of Llallagua, leaving a woman and child dead...
...Latin American Weekly Report Colombian Hostage Seige Continues BOGOTA, FEBRUARY 7, 1997 W hile much of the world's attention has been focused on the Peruvian hostage crisis, rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been holding 60 soldiers hostage since August 30, when the group overran Las Delicias military outpost in the jungle area near the Ecuadoran border between the states of Caqueti and Putumayo...
...The former was widely presented as a "throwback," the latter as representing the "direction of history...
...Grassroots groups and powerless lawmakers were outraged...
...The government issued a decree promising to issue government entitlements for Garffuna land, bilingual education, proportional representation equal to the size of the Garffuna population (now 300,000, with an additional 100,000 migrants in the United States), and health and transportation infrastructure...
...The protest is one of many since September, 1994, when U.S.-led multinational troops ousted Haiti's military goons and restored the country's elected civilian government, on condition that it implement privatization and austerity measures...
...Despite the mediating efforts of the Catholic Church-sponsored National Conciliation Commission (CNC) and the International Red Cross, no end to the crisis is in sight...
...Those involved in the import/export business have done especially well...
...On December 19, the first day of the military operation, two miners were killed...
...Minister of the Interior Carlos Sinchez Berzafn, who reportedly led the operation, defended the army, claiming that operatives of the MRTA were organizing an insurrectionary army among the miners-a charge that most observers, including Congressman Del Granado, have dismissed as "absurd...
...One-largely unremarked outside Guatemala-is that the peace agreement was purchased in exchange for a blanket pardon for all "political" crimes, as well as related "common" crimes, committed during the war...
...The government's willingness to dialogue comes at a time when FARC activity across the country has increased sharply...
...Congressman and Human Rights Delegate Juan Del Granado visited the mine that same day, pleading with military and police commanders to stop the fighting...
...Just prior to the signing, the Guatemalan Congress passed a law "extinguishing penal responsibility" for such crimes, whether they were committed by guerrillas, the military or the police...
...Catherine Orenstein Peace in Guatemala and the Tides of History GUATEMALA CITY, JANUARY 1, 1997 t was almost inevitable that the hostagetaking by the Tdpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) in Lima would be contrasted with the signing on December 29, 1996 of the peace treaty between the Guatemalan government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG...
...As the center of operations for the entire zone, the army said, this base was too important to abandon...
...Foreign aid worth $100 million was also frozen to ensure that Haiti keep its promise...
...Dozens of organizations demanded the resignation of the pro-business prime minister, Rosny Smarth...
...The labor dispute surrounding this incident boiled over this past December when Bolivian security forces stormed the gold mines of Amayapampa and Capacirca, in northern Potosf, in an attempt to dislodge striking miners who had seized mining installations there...
...On April 12, 1997, the Garffuna Bicentennial will commemorate the deportation of more than 5,000 Garffuna from their ancestral homeland of St...
...A sack of rice, which cost $11 in 1991, costs $32 today, and the price of a gallon of oil has nearly tripled...
...Created in the early 1980s as an armed wing of the Chilean Communist Party, the FPMR split in 1990 when one group decided to abandon armed action and support the country's return to elected rule...
...The free-market package has been pushed by the international financial community, and is meant to kick-start Haiti into the global economy...
...Members of the left-wing opposition, human rights organizations and a number of legal experts have all said the text is hopelessly ambiguous...
...NotiSur is available as a closed Peacenet conference: carnet.ladb...
...Others, including the mothers of the hostages, insist that the release of the soldiers should be more important at this moment than the defense of sovereignty...
...Also overlooked in the contrast between Guatemala and Peru is the fact that the MRTA is not the only "throwback" still active in Latin America...
...Congress called five government ministers involved in the affair to appear before Congress, but none were censured...
...The breakout reverberated throughout the Chilean government, as cabinet ministers offered their resignations and prison officials complained they lacked sufficient firepower to fight off the rebel copter...
...In 1995, over $20 million worth of women's lingerie was exported from Haiti's sweatshops to the United States...
...Most Haitians live under a system they call peze souse-"squeeze and suck," the way one eats a mango from the top without peeling it first...
...Importing basic commodities such as rice, oil and sugar for public consumption is also highly profitable...
...While popular opposition to the plan has kept it in slow motion, last September, Congress passed a law enabling the sale of all nine state-run industries, including the highly profitable telephone company...
Vol. 30 • March 1997 • No. 5
