In Brief
U.S. Deepens Involvement in Colombia's Internal War WASHINGTON, D.C.-On July 23, a U.S. military surveillance plane crashed in Colombia with five U.S. soldiers and two Colombians aboard,...
...officials and denied that Colombia was a regional threat...
...It is a partial victory, however, since the Senate version of the bill contains no such amendment and it remains to be seen whether the cut will survive a conference committee...
...forces built El Aguacate in 1983 for use by the Honduran military, the U.S...
...Gregory Wilpert is business manager of Commonweal magazine...
...Pastrana also repudiated the "narcoguerrilla" thesis promoted by U.S...
...Since then, government repression in the town and surrounding area has been intense and continuous...
...Its methods included hey could such atrocities as dropping prisonstrike...
...Chdvez proposes creating a fourth branch of government responsible for moral issues such as corruption, and renaming the Republic of Venezuela the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela...
...The prosecutor said she suspected that there are more than 48 mass graves in the area...
...House ent of the of Representatives voted in favor a plaque of an amendment cutting about $2 s in which million of SOA funding from its ,f these is foreign aid bill...
...The prisoners would not be allowed to leave a restricted area without permission...
...Pastrana responded emphatically to the proposal, saying, "as long as I am President of Colombia, I will never accept nor permit the intervention of other countries in the internal problems of our nation...
...Weekly News Upd Congress Votes to C Funding for "Schoo Assassins" WASHINGTON, D.C...
...Within two weeks of the Assembly vote, Chivez presented his 90-page proposal for what will become Venezuela's twenty-sixth constitution...
...The remaining four could have their sentences reduced and/or fines dropped in the future...
...personnel are based in Colombia, involved mainly in counternarcotics operations, though military aid for these efforts is increasingly indistinguishable from counterinsurgency assistance...
...a reform of the weighing-in process for trucks...
...better security on highways...
...The new constitution would also enshrine state ownership of Venezuela's oil reserves, broaden current constitutional prohibitions against discrimination to include race, age, language, religion, sexual orientation and health condition, and guarantee the right to health care...
...Intelligence Oversight Board report, to condone "execution of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion, and false imprisonment...
...The breakdown of peace talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government of Andr6s Pastrana scheduled for this past July has led to mounting calls for greater U.S...
...In 1996, SOA instruction manuals used from 1982 to 1991 were declassified and judged, in the words of a U.S...
...personnel, and U.S...
...ut For many years, a broad group of I of activists have been trying to shut down the "School of Assassins...
...Congressional supporters of the SOA made the familiar argument that the School is not responsible for human rights violations committed by its graduates-"a few bad apples," in the words of House Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Gilman (R-NY...
...The school 'ate on the is operated by the U.S...
...The prisoners were members either of the Armed Front for National Liberation (FALN), which was responsible for 130 bombings within the United States from 1974 to 1983, or the Popular Boricua Army (EPB), also known as Los Macheteros...
...Martin's Press, 1997...
...The Buenos Aires daily Clarin reported on July 23 that SOUTHCOM enthusiastically supported the idea of a regional intervention force for Colombia since a U.S...
...Joe Moakley (D-MA), passed by a margin of 230-197...
...On July 28 President Cardoso authorized the use of the military against the strikers...
...Activist Lolita Lebron said Clinton "has submitted our patriots to undignified conditions in order to leave prison...
...national security interest and McCaffrey said that Colombia faced an "internal threat"-language that has often signaled imminent intervention in the past...
...In terms of creating a more participatory democracy, Chavez wants to guarantee the right to plebiscites, referenda, popular "consultations," and the election of judges...
...It was not clear how long these conditions would remain in place...
...They should be put at liberty unconditionally...
...Some strikers extend the strike past th three days, but instead an of leaders agreed to a 30 ing period, after which call an indefinite Association of Owners Vehicles secretary Ernes said the three-day strike toric, because it has no in our sector, and its ext the unity that exists...
...In December 1993, when he was human rights special prosecutor, Human Rights Commissioner Leo Valladares Lanza charged that the Honduran army's Battalion 3-16 was a death squad trained by U.S., Taiwanese and Argentine military personnel...
...She is also a member of NACLA's editorial board...
...Another yet-unanswered question is whether Chavez will use his newly acquired power to turn Venezuela into Fujimori-style authoritarianism, as the middle and upper classes fear, or to promote real social change, as the popular sectors hope...
...gates of the oldest regim Argentine army there is commemorating the wars it has fought...
...and must submit to drug tests on demand...
...In the most recent meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Guatemala in early June, Washington proposed a "defense of democracy" resolution that called for the creation of a "Group of Friends" as a multinational force that could intervene in the region if democracy were threatened...
...Popular expectations are so high that failure to fulfill promises of real social change could turn Venezuela into a powder keg...
...Ponce's office is investigating the 184 disappearances attributed to the Honduran army during the 1980s, including 105 Honduran leftists, 39 Nicaraguans, 28 Salvadorans, five Costa Ricans, four Guatemalans, U.S...
...After protracted legal battles by human rights lawyers, 25 prisoners have been released and absolved of any wrongdoing...
...The truckers' 11 demands included a lowering of highway tolls...
...Even if it does pass Chdvez's constitution, it is unclear how the state will guarantee the many new rights it promises to uphold...
...a reduction of diesel prices...
...foreign policy...
...Some concentrations had as many as 400 trucks...
...On August 13, Ponce reported that experts had found traces of blood in at least one of the cells, which according to local media was used by the Contras...
...In a surprise announcement, however, President Carlos Menem of Argentina said that "if Colombia requested it" Argentina would indeed form part of an intervention force "to brake the advance of subversion...
...The strike kept about 2,000 trucks from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay from crossing through Uruguay, and many of the foreign truckers expressed support for the strike and joined the encampments...
...soldiers and two Colombians aboard, revealing Washington's growing involvement in that country's bitter and long-running civil war...
...Lebron was pardoned in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter after serving 25 years for leading a 1954 attack on the U.S...
...to suspend weighing-in for trucks for 60 days while fees are reviewed...
...Gregory Wilpert Brazil and Uruguay Shaken by Truckers' Strikes SAO PAULO, MONTEVIDEO-Independent truck owners, an historically volatile sector in the Southern Cone, are once again making their strength felt through a series of successful trucking strikes in Brazil and Uruguay, and earlier in Argentina...
...The base was in operation until 1990...
...The number of toll booths has jumped from 31 at the end of 1997 to 77, driving the cost of travel from Sao Paulo to Rio up 117...
...For the past two years, a group of widows known as the Union of Peoples Against the Repression and Militarization of the Loxicha Region have maintained a permanent vigil in the central plaza of the city of Oaxaca...
...Piet van Lier SOURCES J. Patrice McSherry is an associate professor of political science at Long Island University and author of Incomplete Transition: Military Power and Democracy in Argentina (St...
...Email: wnu@igc.apc.org...
...With this new venture, they hope to ensure that the next generation of Argentines does not forget the victims of the "dirty war" Mass Graves and Torture Chambers Found at Contra Base TEGUCIGALPA-Honduran special prosecutor for human rights Sara Ponce reported on August 12 that investigators had found three mass graves and three secret prison cells at the former military base at El Aguacate near the Nicaraguan border in the eastern department of Olancho...
...Just as human rights violators among SOA graduates are not merely a "few bad apples," the School itself is no mere "bad apple" of U.S...
...In violent scenes broadcast over television, militarized police in Sdo Paulo state used tear gas and "anti-riot projectiles" in an attempt to unblock highways, especially the Dutra Road between Sdo Paulo and Rio...
...could not associate with people with criminal records, possibly including family members...
...Rumors of Pentagon plans for a multinational intervention force for Colombia are not new...
...A petition with 75,000 signatures asking for freedom for the political prisoners was recently sent to the White House, part of a long campaign for the prisoners' release...
...and punishment of corrupt inspectors...
...Caciques, or local despots, with connections to Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who were voted out of power by grassroots groups in the 1980s, have since regained power through what many charge was a fraudulent election, and have sought to use their power to decimate the opposition...
...The pardon, however, is actually a form of parole, and is subject to conditions that at least some of the prisoners have already rejected...
...These sources said that according to Montesinos, who has had links to the CIA since the 1970s, Fujimori's order to send troops to the border with Colombia in April was suggested by the CIA...
...Pfiez's sources were military officers familiar with a June briefing given by shadowy Peruvian intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos in a meeting of joint armed forces commanders...
...Also in early August hard-line Republicans in Congress attacked the Clinton Administration in alarmist language for not doing enough to aid the Colombian military...
...Organizers said that about 80% of the country's truckers partially or fully honored the action, causing some shortages in Montevideo and a complete halt to activities in the ports...
...According to Transparency International, Venezuela is the second most corrupt country in Latin America after Colombia, and ranks in the top decile of the most corrupt nations in the world...
...They were finally able to celebrate -At the on June 29, when the U.S...
...Weekly News Update on the Americas BUENOS AIRES-A young man stands outside Buenos Aires' newest landmark, the literary cafe of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo...
...NACLA Report, May/June 1998.] In recent weeks the Argentine press has reported new U.S...
...In the middle of overgrown brush at El Aguacate, we found six sites with tombs and metal cells where we believe the army tortured, killed and buried its victims," Ponce told the Associated Press news service...
...Peru and Venezuela also condemned any foreign invasion force...
...In mid-July, Drug Czar and former SOUTHCOM commander Barry McCaffrey called for Washington to send $1 billion in emergency counternarcotics assistance to the Andean region, with most going to Colombia...
...efforts to sound out Latin American governments about forming an intervention force, reports denied by U.S...
...government and military establishment...
...to improve security on federal highways...
...Ruben Berrios Martinez, president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), called the conditions "insulting and abusive...
...This is in addition to the $289 million approved last October for counterdrug efforts in Colombia, which tripled the previous year's aid package and made Colombia the largest recipient of U.S...
...Whether or not the Constituent Assembly will adopt Chivez's proposed constitution in its entirety remains to be seen...
...strategy in the region...
...Army, with Americas U.S...
...of Freight Many of those who carried out this to Toledo "Dirty War" were-like so many was "his- others responsible for gross human ,recedents rights violations throughout Latin ent shows America-graduates of the School of the Americas (SOA...
...Despite such efforts to focus national and international attention on repression and violence in the Loxicha region, it is one of the many situations of violence and impunity that remain hidden in Mexico...
...could not "drink alcohol in excess...
...Truckers' leaders met with Transport and Public Works Minister Lucio Cacere hours on July 27, but wit lution...
...The giant PNo de Aqucar supermarket chain reported that 40% of its trucks had not been able to deliver goods to its central distribution depot...
...Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso emphatically rejected the possibility of participating in a military intervention force in Colombia, as did the Argentine Minister of Defense...
...The truckers, who say their costs are as much as ten times higher than in neighboring countries, were demanding a reduction in taxes and in their payments to the social-security fund...
...Twenty-two years ago, the Mothers marched onto Argentina's political scene in their now-famous white kerchiefs demanding to know the fate of their relatives, who were disappeared by the Argentine security forces...
...military aid after Israel and Egypt...
...Among the many changes Chivez proposes is the extension of the president's term in office from one period of five years to two consecutive periods of six years, the creation of the office of vice-president, and the elimination of the obligation to vote...
...Patrice McSherry Vol XXXIII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1999 1 Vol XXXIII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1999 1IN BRIEF Clinton Offers Puerto Rican Prisoners Pardon With Conditions Attached WASHINGTON, D.C.-On August 11, President Bill Clinton announced that he was granting a conditional pardon to 11 of 15 Puerto Ricans serving prison sentences in the United States for alleged offenses related to the struggle for Puerto Rican independence...
...involvement in Colombia from hard-liners within the Colombian military as well as within the U.S...
...Many of the victims are Zapotec Indians, the main ethnic group of the Loxicha region in Oaxaca state, just north of Chiapas...
...In early August, Inter-Press Service reported that a contingent of SOUTHCOM's Special Operations Forces was stationed in Ecuador and Peru, along the border with Colombia...
...Business leaders called for urgent action from the government...
...Also, even with this cut, the School would retain funding through the military budget...
...national Father James Francis Carney, an Ecuadoran and a Venezuelan...
...None of the 15 were charged with crimes leading to fatalities...
...A woman who witnessed her husband's murder two years ago identified VAsquez as one of the killers...
...Critics claim that San Agustin Loxicha's new municipal president, Lucio VAsquez Ramirez, a former state judicial police officer, is directly responsible for many of the killings...
...While the 1998 election of state governor, Jos6 Murat Casab, looked like a promising development, his calls for negotiations with the EPR have been staunchly opposed by his predecessor and now Interior Minister, Di6doro Carrasco Altamirano...
...The U.S...
...There were a number of injuries, and 80 people were arrested...
...Ecuador's Minister of Defense ordered a similar militarization of the border in July, during a visit to Quito by McCaffrey...
...See "Clouds Over Colombia," p. 6.] Today some 240 U.S...
...She has been unable to testify due to bureaucratic maneuvers and death threats which forced her to flee to Mexico City...
...officials...
...Menem said that it would be "inappropriate for the United States to unilaterally assume this responsibility...
...Based in Cleveland, Piet van Lier has worked in Guatemala and Mexico as a freelance journalist and human rights observer...
...The same day that Brazilian truckers went out on strike and less than a month after a massive strike by Argentine truckers, some 25,000 Uruguayan truckers launched a 72-hour strike called by a coordinating group of various truckers' associations...
...Highway tolls have soared since major state and federal highways were sold off as part of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's massive privatization program...
...Congress in which five congresspeople were wounded...
...Weekly News Update on the Americas is a publication of the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of New York...
...It has built radar and electronic surveillance stations in Colombia staffed by U.S...
...The amendment, sponsored by Rep...
...About 60% of the country's freight is carried by trucks...
...After an uproar ensued in Argentina, Menem claimed he was "misinterpreted...
...government began sharing high-tech intelligence directly with the Colombian armed forces last March...
...In the past two years, government security forces have killed 35 civilians, and 128 have been detained without due process for alleged ties to the EPR...
...Last year a delegation of Mexican human rights activists visiting San Agustin Loxicha decided to leave after municipal president Visquez told them he could not guarantee their safety, which they interpreted as a threat...
...Latin Americans were alarmed when President Clinton said in July that Colombia was a U.S...
...The resolution was resoundingly defeated by wary Latin American delegates...
...On July 29 Clarin published a report from Angel Piez in Lima about a secret CIA plan to intervene in Colombia from staging areas in Ecuador and Peru with assistance from the militaries in those countries...
...The last o s for six the "Struggle Against Subversion h no reso- 1969-1979...
...and to reform the Transit Code...
...His coalition is more diverse than most observers seem to realize, as it includes members from all parts of the political spectrum...
...ers from aircraft into the ocean...
...She charged that the military has removed soil from some parts of the base, probably to destroy evidence...
...and Latin American military officers as instructors and students...
...The rest are still in prison...
...Alejandro Reuss is a member of the Dollars & Sense editorial collective...
...Weekly News Update on the Americas Venezuelans Give Chavez Control of Constituent Assembly CARACAS-In the July 25 election for a Constituent Assembly, Venezuelan voters gave an overwhelming majority to the Patriotic Pole (PP), the coalition of President Hugo Chivez...
...Many of the prisoners and victims are members of the San Agustin Loxicha municipal government...
...Rather than blocking highways, the truckers set up encampments, parking their rigs along the sides of highways...
...The investigation of the former base was ordered after an unregistered grave was found there on August 3. Honduran Defense Minister Edgardo Dumas confirmed on August 10 that "there are a great number of remains" in the region, but suggested that they were the bodies of people who had died in a near-by hospital...
...In Brazil, some 700,000 of that country's 1.5 million truckers virtually shut down the country's industrial southern and southeastern states from July 26 to July 29 when they staged an unexpected strike, blocking highways and closing down routes between Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other major cities...
...The conditions include renouncing all political violence, agreeing not to associate with others involved with the independence movement, and not discussing the political status of Puerto Rico...
...Alejandro Reuss Violence and Impunity in Southern Mexico OAXACA-In August 1996, a rebel soldier from the Revolutionary People's Army (EPR) was wounded in a guerrilla attack in the Mexican state of Oaxaca and later identified as a member of the municipal government of San Agustin Loxicha...
...The strike quickly confirmed the slogan carried on the majority of Brazilian trucks: "Without trucks, Brazil stops...
...The women are calling for prison for those responsible for the murders, the release of political prisoners, and an end to the repression...
...Rather, it is a telling example of the logic which has allied the United States with the butchers of the Western hemisphere-and sometimes put those butchers in power in the first place...
...must have a regular job...
...must notify an official if they move...
...special forces are training a new army counternarcotics battalion of 1,000 elite Colombian soldiers...
...Talks initiated on July 29 finally led to a settlement...
...But their actions are not unconnected with the work of the School...
...The coming weeks are likely to be critical in terms of U.S...
...Ponce said that the base also contains a mass grave, approximately 1,650 feet wide, that was thought to be a Contra cemetery and in fact may hold victims executed by the Contras...
...The strike almost immediately caused shortages of food and fuel in major cities, and many manufacturers, including Volkswagen and Fiat automobile factories, had to suspend production...
...His candidates took 123 out of 131 seats in the new body, charged with drafting a new constitution to replace the 1961 Magna Carta, which Chavez says is necessary in order to weed out endemic corruption...
...Local groups in the area continue to struggle for their rights...
...Violation of the terms would result in reincarceration...
...force was politically untenable...
...Better known as the wanted to "Dirty War," it was fought by the e planned Argentine armed forces not against [assembly a foreign army, but against other -day wait- Argentines...
...Most have already served 19 years of their sentences, some of which are as long as 90 years...
...The government agreed to suspend increases in tolls and fuel prices...
...See, for example, "Multilateral Invasion Force for Colombia...
...Victims' family members say accusations of guerrilla ties are a pretext for repression and that their troubles stem not from involvement in rebel activities but from local power struggles...
...For subscription information: 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499...
...Better a horrible end than a horror with no end," said Sdo Paulo Industry Federation president Horacio Lafer Piva, quoting the German poet Goethe...
...Ponce said the freestanding cells are big enough to hold two or three people each...
...Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras, who were seeking to overthrow the Nicaraguan government led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN...
Vol. 33 • September 1999 • No. 2
