Newsbriefs
With this issue, NACLA welcomes Rafael Barajas, "El Fisg6n, " as a regular contributor to our newsbrief section (see page 2). El Fisg6n, whose work is featured in the Mexico City daily La...
...and elimination of the requirement that the president and vice president be Roman Catholic...
...reduction of the presidential term from six to four years...
...The beauty of technical fraud is that it is impossible to tell how much of it is due to sheer incompetence...
...Five of the general's escorts died in the ambush on his entourage...
...800) 472-0888...
...In the past, oil companies were not under pressure to meet environmental standards in the Amazon...
...creation of a new cabinet post that will have powers comparable to those of a prime minister...
...Miguel Angel Colina was imprisoned for the 1988 attack on the Los Queiies police station, some 200 kilometers south of Santiago...
...Gaviria, who defeated Costa Rica's Foreign Minister Bernd Niehaus by a vote of 20 to 14, will replace Joio Baena Soares, whose term ends in June...
...As Eduardo Frei, the president of Chile's second post-dictatorship government, settles into office, only one political prisoner of General Augusto Pinochet's 17year military regime remains incarcerated...
...One observer team in the town of Apopa, just outside the capital, found that 21 of 22 people dropped from the rolls at one table claimed to be FMLN supporters...
...A number of indigenous groups have become extinct or are on the verge of extinction...
...Oil extraction, indigenous leaders claim, devastates the delicate ecological and cultural balance of the rainforest...
...They didn't even show the elemental courtesy to inform the Costa Rican government of their decision to withdraw their support...
...The United Nations' mission in El Salvador seems bent on declaring its own work a success before departing at the end of this year...
...Notisur Sources: Mark Fried is former editor of NACLA Report on the Americas, and a member of NACLA's Board of Directors...
...ARENA took half of the Legislative Assembly and over 200 of the country's 262 mayoralties...
...Both are members of the armed Mapu-Lautaro movement...
...The Organization of Indigenous People of Pastaza (OPIP) has struggled for 12 years to defend its territory against unbridled development...
...The OPIP leaders were hard-pressed to keep people from storming the well, an event that would almost certainly have led to bloodshed...
...The FMLN too accepted the vote as valid, though it wants the races in 37 municipalities nullified...
...Gen...
...El Fisg6n, whose work is featured in the Mexico City daily La Jornada, is one of Latin America's preeminent political cartoonists...
...White House Press Release U.S.-SUPPORTED CANDIDATE TO HEAD OAS WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL, 1994 O n March 27, member nations elected Colombian President C6sar Gaviria to be the new secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS...
...The past administration gave conditional pardons to 161 former prisoners...
...We're only counted when our vital vote is needed to put someone in high office," said Ambassador Kingsley Layne of St...
...The President: You will be more likely to be involved in some of those areas near you, just like the United States has been involved in the last several years in Panama and Grenada near our area....The thing I think that we have to try to do...when there is an involvement beyond the borders of the nation, that it is consistent with international law and, whenever possible, actually supported through other nations either through the United Nations or through some other instrument of international law...
...Sibylla Brodzinsky is a NACLA correspondent...
...The vote capped an acrimonious struggle in which, according to Costa Rica, the U.S...
...Three of the former prisoners-Hector Maturana, Juan Ordenes and Hector Figueroa-had been serving life sentences for the 1986 assassination attempt against Pinochet...
...The entire first edition will be printed on a special champaign-colored paper made from sugar-cane pulp as a means of avoiding the easy reproduction of the book by pirate publishers...
...Oil companies appear to be starting to listen...
...The Broad Front's strong 12.5% gives it 32 delegates...
...Official results gave the Justicialistas 37.7% of the vote, allowing them 139 delegates, less than an absolute majority in the 305member Constituent Assembly...
...OPIP has stated that if an agreement is not reached soon, it will call for a moratorium on oil drilling until safer methods are developed...
...Nearly 80,000 applications were rejected by the TSE due to lack of birth certificates...
...The country faces another five years of foot-dragging on the Peace Accords, even if the Left has a quota of real state power and greater legitimacy in society at large...
...Even after enduring the long and humiliating struggle to register and obtain a voter's card, even after making the great effort to get to the polls and find the proper table, and after waiting in line for hours under a hot sun, thousands of voters discovered that their names had been mysteriously dropped from the registry...
...In the months leading up to the election, Niehaus had assiduously lobbied for support throughout the region, and was thought to have won the backing of most of the smaller countries in Central America and the Caribbean...
...wing, more in tune with the populism of party founder Roberto D'Aubuisson than the neoliberalism of current president Alfredo Cristiani...
...A pact signed in November, 1993 between Menem and UCR leader and former president Ratil Alfonsin assures passage of several proposed changes, including removal of the prohibition against consecutive presidential terms...
...Twenty-six others exchanged their sentences for exile-19 in Belgium, three in Norway, three in Finland, and one in France...
...They had been serving prison terms of 15 and 17 years respectively for participating in two shoot-outs with the police in 1989...
...Another 45% decided to sit it out, driven perhaps by fear-death squads killed 37 opposition party members during the campaign-but also by distrust of the electoral path embraced so enthusiastically by most of the FMLN leadership...
...Russia, unfortunately either cannot or does not want to settle the civil strife...
...InterPress Service is an international news service based in Italy...
...Pinochet told the local press that the army as an institution "was hurt" by the government's measure granting his would-be assassins the right to leave the country...
...and 4) an international commission to observe the process...
...A major surprise, however, was the resounding defeat of the opposition Radical Civic Union (Union Civica Radical, UCR), as well as the strong showing by the center-Left coalition Broad Front (Frente Grande), which has now emerged as the third political force in the country...
...government exercised a great deal of pressure in order to assure Gaviria's victory...
...But Gaviria's candidacy, announced not long before the March 27 vote was held, immediately attracted the backing of Washington...
...The Colombian publishing house, Editorial Norma, which has the exclusive publishing rights for the Andean Group countries, sent a first printing of 50,000 copies to distributors in Lima, Caracas, Quito, La Paz and Bogota...
...The remaining 42 delegates will come from a wide array of smaller parties, which run the gamut from left to right on the political spectrum...
...Since oil extraction began in the Ecuadorean Amazon in 1972, billions of gallons of toxic wastes and oil have been dumped into the environment...
...The actual voting procedure required a high degree of literacy in a country where 45% cannot read or write and many more are functionally illiterate...
...2) a resource-management plan for the territory which ARCO and OPIP would jointly organize...
...NAC4A REPORT ON THE AMERICAS ARCO, a U.S.-based multinational oil company, plans to begin drilling for oil in the last virgin tropical rainforest in Ecuador, in the territory of the 20,000 Quichua people of Pastaza province...
...The world-wide distribution of the first edition will run between 200,000 and 400,000 copies...
...Melina Selverston NEW GARCIA MARQUEZ NOVEL BOGOTA, APRIL, 1994 Sf Love and Other Demons, the newly published novel by Gabriel Garcia Mtrquez, is being distributed in the Andean Group countries, thus ending a "strike" Garcia Mirquez announced last May to protest the proliferation of pirate editions of his works in his native Colombia...
...Vincent and the Grenadines, explaining his country's support for Gaviria...
...In December, 250 representatives from every community in the Pastaza territory met at an ARCO oilwell site for three days to discuss the situation...
...Washington was able to take advantage of a feud between Latin America and the Caribbean over the former's insistence on ending the West Indies' preferential access to the European banana market...
...But," he said, "we will keep silent...
...Two other political prisoners-Jorge Escobar Dfaz and Marco Antonio Mardones-left Chile on March 26 bound for Norway, where they had been granted asylum, also as political refugees...
...The FMLN will have 21, the Christian Democrats 18, and Rub6n Zamora's Democratic Convergence one...
...Though the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) was forced into a second round for the presidency, it won big, defeating the Left coalition-the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), Democratic Convergence (CD) and National Revolutionary Party (MNR)-by 49% to 25...
...InterPress Service CHILEAN GOVERNMENT FREES POLITICAL PRISONERS SANTIAGO DE CHILE, APRIL 1, 1994 In his final days in office, Patricio Aylwin granted freedom to six political prisoners in exchange for "extrailamiento," the Aylwin Administration's euphemism for exile...
...Many polling places were not set up in any recognizable order: A's followed by M's followed by J's, etc...
...IGC Networks - Pear-Net * EcoNet 18 De Boom Street San Francisco, CA 94107 415-442-0220 fax 415-546-1794 Already have e-mail...
...Its dispatches can be read on-line in the Peacenet conferences: ips.espanol and ips.english...
...Belgium accepted these four as political refugees, granting each a monthly subsidy of roughly US$650...
...The nationalist Dignity and Independence Movement (Movimiento por la Dignidad y la Independencia, Modin), led by former army rebel Aldo Rico, came in fourth with 9.1%, giving it 18 delegates...
...It required multiple trips to distant towns, and often depended on the good will of incumbent mayors to issue birth certificates...
...Send a note to pwn-info@igc.apc.org to learn about our low cost email delivered news service...
...Supplementary lists of recent registrants were often unavailable...
...The novel, which recreates the dark world of the Spanish Inquisition as it comes to the Caribbean town of Macondo in the eighteenth century, makes use of the author's fantastic literary workmanship to interlace the world of his childhood, his experience as a journalist, and documents of historical scholarship...
...Traditional techniques of ballot-stuffing or vote-buying, though they occurred, were by and large abandoned in favor of more sophisticated methods of technical fraud...
...Public your articles for the online colmnity to read and respond to...
...Access vital information "* Electronic mail to virtually all of Ltin America "* Low cost faxes "* Works with any computer "* Dial lo,, 1 y, , ct globally PeaceNet the &ommunicatioIns system for people Interested in Latin Amea i aad reports from NGO, -- s services and publicati i Lt America and ar d orld Collaborate wt;h your international colleagues...
...The center and Left opposition will hold slightly less than a majority in the Legislative Assembly (40 out of 84 seats...
...Sibylla Brodzinsky CENTER-LEFT PARTY EMERGES AS STRONG FORCE IN CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS BUENOS AIRES, APRIL 15, 1994 A s expected, President Carlos Menem's Justicialista Party (Partido Justicialista, PJ-Peronist) comfortably won in the April 10 Constituent Assembly elections, virtually guaranteeing constitutional reforms to allow his reelection bid in 1995...
...ARENA WINS ELECTION MARRED BY FRAUD SAN SALVADOR, APRIL, 1994 E 1 Salvador's March 20 elections were hardly the culmination of the "negotiated revolution" that brought 12 years of war to an end...
...ARCO and OPIP are under pressure to resolve the dispute before it becomes violent...
...In a 12-hour marathon meeting, ARCO executives and Ecuadorean indigenous representatives discussed the four central OPIP proposals: 1) environmental assessment of damage already incurred during ARCO's exploratory phase...
...In the April 24 run-off, the ARENA candidate Armando Calder6n Sol was victorious, garnering about 70% of the vote.] Despite the hoopla about "the elections of the century," these seemed very much like those of the past...
...Undoubtedly ARENA has a solid base of support, built through patronage politics and reinforced by the blatantly partisan media...
...At least 15% of the electorate was denied the vote through trickery or incompetence on the part of the supposedly independent but eminently partisan Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE...
...This meant not only long trips and longer waits, but enormous confusion as crowds of voters struggled to find the proper table at which to cast their ballots...
...We thought that was an unfriendly act that did not take our minuscule (banana) production and the vital nature of that industry into consideration," said Layne...
...The irregularities probably did not affect the lopsided presidential race, but in close municipal contests they could easily have made the difference...
...The UCR, with 19.2% of the vote, will have 74 delegates...
...He charged that Costa Rica, on a panel of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), contested a European move to secure a portion of the banana market for small states...
...Many of the small Caribbean countries] sacrificed their word and their honor," charged Niehaus...
...Notisur is available as a closed Peacenet conference: carnet.ladb...
...What is your feeling...
...It concluded that despite serious anomalies the elections did reflect the "will of the majority...
...documents, is from ARENA's nationalist anti-U.S...
...reneging on a written commitment to vote for Niehaus, and instead casting their ballots in favor of Gaviria...
...The registration process was unusually cumbersome, particularly for poor and illiterate voters...
...The Costa Ricans assert that U.S...
...Voters excluded from the registry due to lack of birth certificates were concentrated in former conflictive zones, particuVol XXVII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 19941 Vol XXVII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1994 1NEWSBRIEFS larly in towns where the 1991 mayoralty races were decided by less than 100 votes...
...Mark Fried CLINTON OUTLINES INTERVENTION RULES Moscow, JANUARY 14, 1994 Russian Correspondent: Mr...
...The centrist Christian Democrats received 16% of the vote...
...In addition to its weak performance at the national level, the UCR was soundly defeated in its traditional stronghold of Buenos Aires, where the Broad Front came in first place with 36% of the vote...
...The colonial stance adopted by the weak is even worse than the imperialist stance demonstrated by the strong...
...Due to the increased organization and militancy of indigenous groups such as those in Pastaza, however, oil companies no longer have such a free hand...
...The Broad Front, led by Carlos Alvarez, successfully based its campaign on criticisms of the social costs of the government's neoliberal policies and the corruption that has plagued Menem's administration...
...The Constituent Assembly will begin deliberations in June, and must conclude its work within 90 days...
...He is also reputed to be bull-headed, vindictive and utterly bereft of the statesman's qualities needed to carry forth the process of national reconciliation...
...ARENA will have 39, the old military-linked PCN four, and the evangelical MU one...
...3) a development fund for the affected indigenous communities...
...Another 74,000 applicants never received the TSE-issued voter cards required to vote...
...NotiSur and InterPress Service INDIGENOUS GROUPS CHALLENGE OIL DRILLING IN ECUADOREAN AMAZON WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 15, 1994 R epresentatives of the indigenous population of the Ecuadorean Amazon met with executive officers of ARCO International in an unprecedented meeting in March in Washington, D.C...
...For subscription information: Latin American Data Base, Latin American Institute, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131...
...Upon conclusion of the vote, a bitter Niehaus addressed the OAS delegates in uncommonly stern terms...
...Friendship is made of sterner stuff...
...President-elect Armando Calder6n Sol, a death-squad funder according to declassified U.S...
...Melina Selverston is a doctoral candidate in political science at Columbia University...
...However, the FMLN's 25% of the vote, despite the irregularities, was certainly a respectable showing for a first venture on the hustings...
...Only one of the 400 political prisoners inherited by the Aylwin government remains in custody...
...President, on the territory of the former Soviet Union, civil wars go on without end...
...And to cap it all, thousands more discovered that someone had already voted in their place...
...All four were members of the Frente Patri6tico Manuel Rodriguez, an armed guerrilla movement active during the dictatorship, which is linked to the Communist Party of Chile...
...Polls were few and far between, and were organized alphabetically by voters' last names...
...pressures culmnated in nine regional countries Contined on page 44 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 PeaceNet Connects Latin America activists...
Vol. 27 • May 1994 • No. 6
