Newsbriefs

...Outside of Lima, Vamos Vecino-the official party organization created especially for the 1998 municipal election and to nominate Fujimori for re-election in the year 2000-was also lackluster...

...Garance Burke Official Candidates Defeated in Peruvian Municipal Elections LIMA-On September 30, a group of workers, students, professors and retirees momentarily took over the central patio in the Government Palace while Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sitting just a few yards away in his office...

...Until now, the official position of the government-led by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) since 1929-has been to avoid the subject whenever possible...

...Yet like Argentina's dirty war, the massacre remains an open wound in the Mexican collective consciousness, and impunity has by no means disappeared from public life as noted by numerous participants at the anniversary march who held signs recalling the unresolved recent massacres of campesinos in Aguas Blancas, Guerrero and in Acteal and El Bosque, Chiapas...

...Little attention, though, has been paid to the implications for Chilean politics, where it could precipitate the end of the "consensus politics" that has prevailed since the restoration of electoral democracy...

...The 1968 massacre was the culmination of months of tensions between the government and student National Strike Committee, whose demands for freedom of expression, demilitarization and democracy smacked of "treason" to then-President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz...

...Though paying lip service to "unity," the Christian Democrat leadership has stuck to this position in the teeth of evidence that the most likely winner for the Concertaci6n would be former public works minister Ricardo Lagos, a Socialist...

...If the PRI loses the upcoming 2000 presidential elections, however, the political wisdom here is that the truth may finally be disclosed...

...He is also a correspondent for the Argentine daily, Clarin...

...Indeed, Cuauhtemoc Cdrdenas, Mexico City's mayor and a likely presidential candidate, ordered flags to be flown at half mast to commemorate the day...

...At least 60,000 people, filled the site of the bloodshed, a pre-Hispanic plaza flanked by high-rise office and apartment buildings...

...The demonstrators were protesting the scuttling of the referendum to overtun a law passed by the ruling majority in Parliament which permits Fujimori to run for a third consecutive term despite a Constitutionally mandated two-term limit...

...96A11, 61 Old Street, London EC1V 9HX, England...

...Demonstrators chanted out their demands for an end to the impunity and government secrecy surrounding the crime...

...Indeed, surveys suggest that if a referendum were held on whether Fujimori should be allowed to run for reelection, his aspirations for a third consecutive term would go up in smoke...

...Three decades later, even the congressional commission investigating the crime has found no proof of who gave the orders to fire on the students...

...Angel Pdcez El Salvador Hosts Alternative Communication Forum SAN SALVADOR-Amidst growing concerns that global media giants were imperiling the right to information and freedom of expression, an international Forum called "Communication and Citizenship," was held in San Salvador in early September...

...The groups stressed the need for the media to transmit the worries, necessities, and projects of everyday life and to promote social change...

...The protest was minimized by the authorities as a "vandalistic attack by an overexcited mob," but the many demonstrations, in fact, were a foreboding of the bad times ahead for the Fujimori regime...

...The two Socialist parties urged President Eduardo Frei to stand back and remain uninvolved in what they described as a "strictly judicial" matter...

...The cornerstone of "consensus politics" is the impunity granted to the military from prosecution for the atrocities they committed while in power from 1973 to 1990...

...Popular speculation places blame on the now-deceased Diaz Ordaz and then-interior minister and subsequent president Luis Echeverria...

...Meanwhile, legal loopholes in the Mexican justice system prevent legislators from trying Echeverria, who has refused to testify...

...Diana Agosta Sources Latin American Weekly Report is published weekly by Latin American Newsletters...

...Forty-three percent responded they would vote for an independent, 21% said they would vote for an opposition candidate, while only 22% said they would vote for Fujimori...

...Only one newspaper reported on the Tlatelolco massacre, and its editor was forced to resign...

...The shaken government had no choice but to open new channels of participation for opposition movements...

...While the Christian Democratic leadership, including President Eduardo Frei, has backed Pinochet's claims of diplomatic immunity, the Socialist leadership called a press conference to declare their "great satisfaction" with the general's arrest and to refute the government's argument that Pinochet enjoyed immunity...

...Furthermore, as the 1968 Olympic host, Mexico was preparing for the international spotlight...

...The Chilean government seemed to glimpse that possibility back in May last year, when it referred to the court proceedings initiated by Spanish judges Baltasar Garz6n and Manuel Garcia Castell6n as "a political trial against Chile's transition to democracy...

...Diaz Ordaz's bejewelled mistress, Irma "the Tigress" Serrano, now a senator from Chiapas, recently felt compelled to assure the press of her lover's innocence...

...Andrade, is an independent who has opposed several measures of the Fujimori regime...

...the newspapers gave their lead article to the weather," wrote poet Rosario Castellanos...

...Much of the three-day conference was taken up by working groups, which exchanged experiences, drafted position papers, and explored possibilities of working together...

...The regime will also be courting this sector in order to secure a third term and mandate for President Fujimori...

...In Lima, Juan Carlos Hurtado Miller, the mayoral candidate for the pro-regime group, Vamos Vecino, lost decisively to Alberto Andrade, the incumbent mayor...

...Anywhere from 30 (the "official number") to 600 people (according to eyewitnesses) were killed, while thousands of participants were hauled off to jail...

...Embassy reports...

...Tlatelolco was a watershed in Mexican political life...

...At daybreak the plaza was swept...

...Last June, the National Intelligence Service (SIN)-directed by Fujimori's top advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, and used widely by the regime to control and spy on the opposition-recommended that the government take "measures" to control further rises in popular discontent...

...In effect, Peruvians voted as if these mayoral elections were the referendum on the re-election law that the ruling party in Congress refused to recognize...

...Pro-Fujimori candidates triumphed in 79 provinces, compared to the 100 provinces won by Andrade's Somos Peri and independent regional candidates...

...Elements of at least eight security forces (including the presidential guard and the federal army) entered the crowd with bayonets and machine guns, according to declassified U.S...

...Less than two weeks later, in municipal elections, voters severely punished proFujimori candidates throughout the country...

...Pinochet's arrest has exacerbated the differences between the Christian Democrats and the PS-PPD...

...Organizers hoped to stimulate exchanges and cooperation among alternative communication and social-movement groups and plan activities in support of right to communicate...

...Garance Burke is a journalist working at the Mexico City daily paper El Financiero...

...Nonetheless, polls give Fujimori an approval rate of less than 30% today...

...Most documents have been expurgated from the Interior Ministry, stolen from Vol XXXII, No 3 Nov/DEc 1998 1 Vol XXXII, No 3 Nov/DEC 1998 1NEWSBRIEFS the President's office, or are in the hands of Diaz Ordaz's heirs, says opposition Deputy Pablo Gomez, a commission member...

...vious round of municipal elections in 1995, Andrade defeated another official candidate, ex-minister Jaime Yoshiyama Tanaka, but the difference was not nearly as wide-Andrade took 52% to Yoshiyama's 48...

...Email: WR@latin.ftech.co.uk...

...The fact remains, however, that the pro-Fujimori Vamos Vecino won slightly more than one-fourth of the votes throughout the country, making it a force to be reckoned with...

...This and other street rallies shook the capital for over a week...

...The working group on indigenous peoples appealed to the media to contribute to cultural revitalization, and pointed to the need for their direct participation in communication projects rather than to leave coverage of indignenous issues to outsiders...

...Pinochet's Arrest Threatens "Consensus Politics" In Chile SANTIAGO DE CHILE-The arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London on October 17 has been hailed as signalling the end of impunity for the perpetrators of state terrorism...

...Somos Perd will not able to defeat Vamos Vecino on its own...

...Just ten days before the Olympics began, tanks were ordered to surround a peaceful student meeting in Tlatelolco...

...Angel Pdez is a journalist who heads the Investigation Unit of the Lima daily La RepOblica...

...Latin American Weekly Report Mexicans Commemorate Tlatelolco Massacre MEXICO CITY-A lone helicopter circled over the march this past October 2 commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the government massacre of as many as 600 students in Mexico City's Tlatelolco Plaza...

...Even before the Pinochet incident, the unity of the Concertaci6n had come under great strain as a result of the reluctance of the leading partners, the Christian Democrats, to accept that the next presidential candidate of the coalition should be any other than a Christian Democrat...

...For free samples and subscription information: Latin American Newsletters, Dept...

...Before it actually means that, Pinochet would have to be brought to trial, a development which is by no means certain...

...The final document produced by the Forum, called the Cuscatldn Charter, included a demand for the participation of civil society in the allocation of locations within the radioelectric spectrum...

...Rather, it will have to ally itself with the independent regional leaders who were the big winners in the elections...

...It joined in the call for the UN to convene a Global Communication Conference with broad socialmovement participation to analyze and sustain the right to communication, and contribute to the development of a broad civic movement for the democratization of communication...

...According to Interior Minister Francisco Labastida, a PRI presidential hopeful for 2000, the Defense Ministry's, archives will also remain "confidential...

...In the preCHIAPAS-Demanding the release of five of their coreligionists imprisoned for murder "Traditional Catholics" of San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, a town which normally casts 100% of its votes for Mexico's ruling PRI, block the setting up of municipal polling stations on October 4. The murders were connected with the forcible eviction of all evangelical Protestants from the town...

...A diplomatic passport is not a sort of stain remover that erases history and suppresses the crimes and human rights' violations that took place in Chile," said Camilo Escalona, secretarygeneral of the PS...

...Organized by several organizations including the Latin American Information Association (ALAI), the World Association of Community Radios (AMARC), and the Association of Participatory Radios and Programs of El Salvador (ARPAS), the event drew over 175 people from 40 countries in the Americas and Europe...

...Popular dismay over the government has grown apace this year-despite its success in reigning in inflation, "defeating" terrorist groups and rescuing hostages in the Japanese ambassador's residence in April last year...

...The group on local power and communication noted the importance of democratic communication to ignite and sustain citizen participation and to act as a critical oversight of local power...

...Despite the spectacular developments in communication technologies, said the organizers, "these technologies are concentrated in the same groups that control economic and political power and hegemonize media globally...

...The fact that the official candidate lost by such a wide margin is telling of the Fujimori regime's waning popularity...

...In 1968, the press was so tightly controlled that history was virtually erased as soon as it happened...

...Though with clear differences in nuance, "consensus politics" has been practiced by all members of the ruling Concertaci6n coalition, even the left-of-center Socialist PartyParty for Democracy (PS-PPD) grouping...

...On the day of the municipal elections, APOYO S.A., a polling firm, asked voters whether, in presidental elections, they would vote for Fujimori, an independent candidate, or an opposition candidate...

...Hurtado Miller, Fujimori's first finance minister-remembered for implementing the severe economic-adjustment program known as the "Fujishock" in 1990-won 36% of the vote compared to Andrade's 59...

...Diana Agosta is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the City University of New York, doing research on community radios in El Salvador...