In Brief
The Growth of the Uruguayan Left MONTEVIDEO-Hopes that the left-wing alliance between the the Frente Amplio and the Progressive Encounter (FA-EP) would win national elections were dashed this...
...Timerman would later focus his pen on the military dictatorship in neighboring Chile (in Chile: Death in the South), the war waged against Lebanon by his adopted country of Israel (in The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon), and on Cuba and Fidel Castro (in Cuba: A Journey...
...federal grand jury indicted him in 1990, the State Department asked Guatemala to extradite him to Florida to stand trial...
...The results of the election also dealt a blow to the Communist Party, whose candidate Gladys Marin was expected to receive as much as 7% of the vote and only managed 3.19...
...Local farmers filed a petition with the U.S...
...The presiding judge, Epaminondas GonzAlez Dubon, was highly respected for his ruling in 1993 against a "self-coup" by Guatemala's then-President Jorge Serrano...
...The childcare agency, which is dedicated to the care and rehabilitation of street children, helped bring the landmark case before the Court...
...Weekly News Update on the AmeI E Populist Seduction in Latin America The Ecuadorian Experience CARLOS DE LA TORRE "Sheds important new light on populist practice, discourse, and ritual...
...while ignoring the role of rightwing military and paramilitary forces in Latin America, from Colombia to Guatemala, in the same trade...
...Public repudiation of the "law of impunity" was immediate...
...In all his books, conventional political analysis is interrupted by unexpected and often mesmerizing passages of personal narrative...
...Eleven days later, the same court, led by a new presiding judge, voted seven to one against the extradition...
...the murder of four Spanish priests, Faustino Villanueva, Jos6 Maria Gran Cirera, Juan FernAndez and Carlos P6rez Alonzo...
...An out-of-focus version was shown at the second location...
...In a recent meeting with U'wa supporters in Washington, D.C., Colombian Ambassador to the United States Carlos Moreno explained the Colombian government's position: "Colombia risks becoming an oil importer in a few years...
...In eastern Guatemala, three out of four Army officials suspected of cocaine trafficking are also graduates of the SOA...
...On November 8, the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which mobilizes and channels resources to fight desertification, said Latin America must take steps to prevent its fertile land from turning into desert...
...After a U.S...
...The drought in Brazil's impoverished northeast has become a permanent situation turning the region into a desert...
...The current protests come after the Minister of the Environment, Goldman Environmental Prize winner Juan Mayr, granted an environmental license to Occidental in late September, indicating that the social and environmental impacts are acceptable to the government...
...federal court...
...Experts refer to "desertization" as the process resulting from natural causes such as lack of rainfall, while "desertification" is caused by unsustainable human activities, such as overcultivation, overgrazing, deforestation and poor irrigation practices...
...The Guatemalan military gave Ochoa a dishonorable discharge to put distance between his name and the institution, but that did not stop a military tribunal from inexplicably reclaiming jurisdiction over him later to try and dismiss the case against him allegedly for lack of evidence...
...Ley de Herodes-or Herod's Law -almost missed its debut at a film festival in Acapulco in November, when the film institute tried to cancel a showing...
...This may have been due to the repeated calls for feminist unity, affirmed by the emphasis on corporal expression...
...After a series of local and international court battles, in 1998 Occidental agreed to postpone drilling until territorial issues could be resolved...
...The virtual tie in the December 12, 1999 election between the center-left Concertaci6n candidate Ricardo Lagos and the right-wing Alliance for Chile's Joaquin Lavin means that the winner will be decided in a run-off election to be held on January 16--the nation's first-ever presidential run-off following the closest election in Chilean history...
...This sends a terrible message," an administration spokesperson told the Washington Post...
...No doubt, the conviction and senIN BRIEF tencing of a recidivist military trafficker is an important first step for Guatemala toward breaking the wall of impunity that has long protected its officer corps from justice...
...Born in the Ukraine in 1923, Timerman emigrated with his family to Argentina at the age of five...
...It states that "developing countries face obstacles" in executing their national action plans, a reference to the lack of technical and financial resources from wealthier countries...
...He is author of Los arroyos cuando bajan: Los desafios del Zapatismo (Nordan, 1995...
...I thought it might cause some trouble because lots of people would see themselves reflected in the mirrors we've set up in the movie," said Estrada...
...Frank Smyth is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C...
...And at either end of the long days other activities were held, including exercise and performances...
...The movie had been scheduled for a major opening in Mexico City during the first week of December, but IMCINE decided to quietly release the film at two theaters and then abruptly cancelled the showing at one location...
...The case of the five youths has gone into the legal history books as being the first ever before the Court involving children...
...Desertification in northeastern Brazil, as elsewhere, is closely linked to poverty, which acts as both cause and effect of the growing aridity of the land...
...Their conclusions were shared at two conference-wide plenaries...
...The book brought Timerman international renown, and brought world attention to the human rights disaster of the Argentine military junta's "dirty war...
...groups attended the meeting, hosted by Colombian organizations...
...De la Ria, who took office on December 10, inherits an economy ravaged by ten years of Menem's neoliberal austerity programs, which have resulted in a 17% unemployment rate and a foreign debt of $143 billion...
...Casa Alianza says it will call for an investigation into the judges involved in the original legal case in Guatemala who acquitted the police officers...
...Meanwhile, Ochoa went free, and began once again running cocaine to the United States...
...The FA-EP holds the largest bloc in Congress...
...One is Tabary Vizquez, who has popstar charisma and was highly regarded as mayor of Montevideo...
...Cold War ally who had studied at the School of the Americas (SOA) back in 1969...
...The contractor Chaim Ostreicher failed to provide adequate support for the upper floors of the building under construction and the floors collapsed, plunging at least a dozen workers to the ground in a cascade of cement, brick and metal...
...They also allege that the suspects killed at least nine people-including a mother and her son-in order to accelerate the land clearing...
...In 1990, according to the DEA, Ochoa transshipped half a metric ton of cocaine-worth $7.5 million wholesale-from Western Guatemala to Tampa, Florida, where he remains indicted in a U.S...
...Ann Birch U'wa Indians Fight Back SAMORl--Amidst the scenario of increased violence in Colombia, hundreds of U'wa Indians are occupying the site of an Occidental Petroleum oil well in the Samor6 concession that is operating within their ancestral territory, high in the mountainous cloud forests of the Amazon...
...Ochoa, however, got caught trafficking again-this time with 30 kilograms of cocaine-in Guatemala in 1997, and he was convicted in 1999 by a Guatemalan court and sentenced to 14 years in prison...
...Occidental has indicated that they may begin drilling early next year...
...Kurt Weyland, Vanderbilt University ricas is a publication of the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of New York...
...Guatemala was also found guilty of violating several articles of the Inter-American Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Torture...
...But the State Department's report about the country's recent expansion in cocaine transshipments only shows that this change has come too little too late...
...For subscriptions, visit LADB's Website or call 1800-472-0888...
...A journalist since the 1940s, Timerman founded the daily La Opini6n in 1971, which he later described as "a moderate newspaper," modeled on Le Monde...
...The other factor is the Frente Amplio itself...
...He credited his mother and brother with instilling in him his lifelong passions for Judaism and socialism...
...But this is the second time IMCINE has attempted to interfere with screenings of the movie...
...Started in 1981 at the suggestion of Venezuelan feminists, these meetings are held every few years to take stock of regional trends in feminism and allow often-isolated activists a chance to network...
...We have to consider the future of the Colombian citizens against the survival of a small tribe of 500 people...
...Email: wnu@igc.apc.org...
...While this is not the first time that political corruption has been portrayed in Mexican cinema," wrote columnist Patricia Vega of La Jornada in reference to the film, "there has never before been a direct mention of the PRI...
...The same year the Berlin Wall fell, the Uruguayan left grew rapidly...
...The Frente, along with human rights groups, labor unions, and dissident factions of the National Party, organized a broad movement which sought to put the law to a referendum, and which had a dramatic impact on Uruguay's entire political system...
...He was recently convicted on drug charges by a Guatemalan court...
...Stalemate in Chile BUENOS AIRES / SANTIAGOVoters in Argentina decided against four more years of Menenismo on October 24 when they elected Fernando de la R~ia to the presidency...
...The U'wa arrived at the drilling site, tore out the boundary marker flags, and put up a peace flag...
...While the European Union (EU) member states have ratified the Convention, the United States has not, thus providing funds to the UNCCD is primarily up to the European nations...
...Their refusal to meet the financial demands of the developing countries resulted in an uneasy compromise...
...Frank Smyth PRI Accused of Censoring Critical Film MEXICO CITY-The government-affiliated Mexican Institute of Cinematography (IMCINE) canceled at least one screening of the new feature film, La Ley de Herodes in Mexico City...
...Ochoa, who is still wanted for trial in a U.S...
...A political decision to censor a film goes against six years of the President's position on the media and freedom of expression...
...The conference itself ended with a march against violence against women through the center of Santo Domingo, culminating in a concert showcasing female artists...
...Are state women's agencies salvations or "hospitals of the patriarchy...
...Carlos Pozuelos Villavicencio, who retired in 1993 as Guatemala's Air Force commander...
...While hailing the decision against "a lunatic, paranoid assassin," he supported laws setting a time horizon for human rights cases...
...Elisabeth J. Friedman Brazil Hosts UN Conference on Desertification RECIFE-The third UN Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Combatting Desertification (UNCCD) took place in Recife, Brazil, November 15-26...
...This is more than a rhetorical statement...
...The Colombian government then renegotiated the Occidental concession to lie just on the edge of the official U'wa reservation...
...Though the United States had pressed the case for four years, the Clinton Administration remained shamefully silent about both the judge's murder and the new court's subsequent decision...
...The government considers it very dangerous to release this movie at this moment," Estrada told La Jornada...
...The scheduled plenary presentations raised a broad spectrum of issues, from reproductive rights to poverty...
...Winning a share of the Communist vote may mean the difference for Lagos, given the closeness of the race...
...Socialist Lagos edged Lavin, of the right-wing Independent Democratic Union (UDI), by less than one-half of one percent, receiving 47.9% of the vote to Lavin's 47.5...
...at him to the officers who focused their interrogations on his "Zionism...
...This was largely linked to its steadfast opposition to the 1986 amnesty law granted by the Colorado Party, with the support of most of the National Party, to military personnel responsible for human rights violations...
...As early as 1990, DEA special agents began calling Guatemala "la bodega "-"the warehouse...
...President de la Ria will have to contend with a Congress in which his Alliance does not have a majority...
...A coalition of various progressive and leftist groups founded in 1971, it is increasingly seen as an alternative to the neoliberal policies steadfastly supported by the Colorado and National Parties...
...The tribe first achieved international attention when they threatened to commit mass suicide if Occidental continued with their plans to exploit oil in their territory...
...SourceMex Alliance Defeats Menemismo in Argentina...
...Delegates from 159 countries, in addition to the representatives from the UN, financing agencies and other nongovernmental organizations, attended...
...Clinton has yet to address the Guatemalan military's role in drug trafficking, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) first began to detect during the Bush administration...
...Yet the potential for violence in this war-torn region is so great that Royal Dutch Shell withdrew from its share in the project following public pressure...
...He ran in 1994, receiving 30% of the national vote...
...They reflected the diversity of the participants, including significant numbers of Afro-Latin women and U.S.based or "diasporic" Latinas (though there was a marked absence of self-identified indigenous women), as well as young feminists...
...The movie's producer, Luis Estrada, said authorities tried to convince him to delay the release of the film until after 2000...
...Marin has forcefully denied that she will endorse Lagos in the second round...
...The U'wa people are willing to give their lives," U'wa leaders said, "to defend Mother Earth from this project, which would destroy our culture, nature and world balance...
...The enlargement excludes the new Occidental Concession, but U'wa spokespeople claim that territory is part of their ancestral land...
...That put Vizquez, a cancer specialist who served as mayor of Montevideo for two consecutive terms, in competition with Jorge Battle, of the Colorado Party...
...Ramon Camps in the 1986 trial which saw Camps convicted of torture and sentenced to 25 years in prison...
...Vdzquez's succesful administration transformed him into a natural candidate for the presidency...
...So far, only one major military drug suspect in Guatemala has received a serious sentenceOchoa, the same SOA graduate whom the DEA first accused of trafficking back in 1990...
...Latin America Weekly Reports, Margot Olavarria State of Guatemala Condemned in Historic Court Case SAN JOSI--The Inter-American Court on Human Rights, based in San Jos6, Costa Rica, has condemned the State of Guatemala for the brutal murder and torture of five Guatemalan street youth by at least two National Police officers in 1990...
...entry visa explicitly because of his alleged role in cocaine transshipments, Pozuelos, who denies the charge, has never been charged with a crime...
...Gonzilez did exactly that and paid for his decision with his life...
...The events clearly demonstrate a resurgence of support for the U'wa in their long-running struggle for physical and cultural survival...
...In Prisoner Without a Name, he describes the paper's efforts, often constrained by the fear that publicity could endanger, as well as rescue, an imprisoned person, to help the families of people "disappeared" by the military dictatorship which took power in 1976...
...Reprinted from SourceMex by permission of the Latin America Data Base online news service at http://ladb.unm.edu...
...Ostensibly suspected of financial connections to leftist guerrillas, he was held without charge for over two years...
...All too often we forget about the children who are victims of wars and violence created by adults," said Bruce Harris, the Regional Director of Casa Alianza/Covenant House Latin America...
...The Progressive Encounter has been particularly successful in building support in the interior, increasing its vote from 9% in 1989 to 18% in 1994, and to 36% in the November elections...
...Among those named in Menchfi's charges are three generals who headed military governments: Efrain Rios Montt, Oscar Humberto Mejfa Victores and Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia...
...Nearly a million Uruguayans have made clear that they see the Frente Amplio-Progressive Encounter as an antineoliberal alliance capable of leading the country toward social justice and economic well-being for all...
...Indeed, support for the Frente has continued to grow since 1989...
...Administration officials would later say they saw no reason to protest a ruling they could no longer appeal...
...IN BRIEF According to the California-based Rainforest Action Network, Occidental's Caflo-Limon pipeline, which passes through part of the U'wa territory, has been bombed 600 times over the past 13 years, dumping over 1.7 million barrels of oil into the surrounding forest...
...Two days after de la Rfia took office in Argentina, Chileans failed to determine a first-round victor in their own presidential election...
...Guerrilla armies consider oil pipelines an easy target, and increased military presence to protect oil installations has led to human rights abuses in surrounding areas...
...While Arnoldo Vargas Estrada, another suspect named by local farmers, was later convicted in a U.S...
...A 'must' reading for students of populism in general and of Ecuadorian politics in particular...
...The highest-ranking officer accused of trafficking by the DEA is Gen...
...It has maintained a stable electoral presence throughout the 1980s, receiving a third of the votes in Montevideo and a little less than 10% in the more conservative interior...
...The Frente Amplio, also governs the capital-45% of the country's population-and is likely to increase its presence in other municipalities in local elections scheduled for this May...
...One of their first suspects was a Guatemalan Army lieutenant colonel, Carlos Ochoa Ruiz, a U.S...
...Nine days later, Gonzdlez was murdered in Guatemala City...
...At this point in regional feminist organizing, differences and divisions cannot be denied...
...In August the Colombian government united what had been two reservations and enlarged the U'wa reservation almost five-fold...
...The Samor6 concession is considered one of the most important in the region, with up to 2.5 billion barrels of crude oil, and an important source of foreign investment for the troubled country...
...In a unanimous decision, the Court found that Guatemala had violated seven articles of the American Convention on Human Rights, the international legal instrument for the protection of human rights in the Americas, including the right to life and the rights of the child...
...But on December 4 a group of lawyers representing several members of the military filed charges with the Public Ministry against Menchfi for treason, compromising BROOKLYN-Workers hold a candlelight vigil to mourn the death of Daniel Eduardo, an immigrant worker killed at a shoddy construction site in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn...
...During the campaign, neither candidate proposed modifying Chile's neoliberal economic system, though both have promised to improve IN BRIEF healthcare, education and housing for the poor...
...federal court of smuggling several metric tons of cocaine a month from Guatemala to New York, not one of the four Army colonels named by Guatemalan peasants was ever charged with any crime...
...Because of strong public pressure, IMCINE eventually allowed the movie to be shown...
...Even though the 1989 referendum was defeated-the vote against the law received only 43%--the movement changed the face of the country...
...Menchfi, winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, based her charges on three specific cases: the military assault on the Spanish embassy in Guatemala on January 31, 1980, in which 37 people died, including three Spanish nationals and Menchfi's father, Vicente Menchfi...
...European and U.S...
...The left's staunch opposition to neoliberal reforms has also made it increasingly popular among the Uruguayan electorate...
...The battle did not end there, however...
...NotiSur Sources Rail Zibechi is a journalist with the Montevideo-based weekly, Brecha...
...Embassy in Guatemala City in 1992, accusing the Army colonels of driving them off their farmland in order to build clandestine runways...
...VWzquez, who comes from a family of socialists and has a trade union background, is seen as a political outsider, which favors him given the growing disenchantment with the ruling political class...
...On November 26, delegates signed a gradualist "Recife Initiative" rather than a hard-line "mandate" as proposed by Latin American delegates that would have set specific goals and time lines...
...federal court in Tampa, was the first Guatemalan military officer the United States tried to prosecute for trafficking...
...The entire 500,000-acre Occidental concession is located within the ancestral homeland of the 5,000 member U'wa community...
...The U'wa have maintained that oil exploitation would devastate the environment that they depend on for their traditional way of life...
...In the evening, participants led workshops on a host of issues, from lesbian organizing to therapeutic massage...
...The film, set in the 1940s, openly portrays corruption within the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI...
...The Zedillo administration denied any role in the decision...
...Oil and violence are closely linked in Colombia...
...This was illustrated by the debates over strategy: does an emphasis on arts or spiritual practice make for "light" feminism...
...IMCINE director Eduardo Amerena told newspapers the movie showing was suspended because of "technical difficulties," citing, among other things, a broken projector...
...However, it often seemed as though rhetorical support for diversity replaced a true analysis of divisive socioeconomic inequalities...
...His clips are available at FrankSmyth.com...
...Although the Clinton Administration denied him a U.S...
...The alliance holds 12 of 31 Senate seats and 40 of the 99 seats in the lower house...
...For subscription information: 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499...
...The State Department appealed the case three times-all the way to Guatemala's Constitutional Court, the country's highest judicial body...
...Melina Selverston-Scher Latin American Feminists Meet in Dominican Republic JUAN DOLIO-Between November 21 and 26, the VIII Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter was held in the Dominican Republic...
...Along with environmental and spiritual considerations, the U'wa are concerned about the increase in violence that oil development is likely to bring...
...While Timerman described himself as "a man of the left, a socialist," the themes that run through his work are disdain for "extremists" of the left as well as the right, and the search for an accord among "moderates" of all persuasions...
...Simultaneously, an international summit of solidarity with the U'wa took place in BogotA...
...Despite twelve years of harsh military rule (1973-1985), the Frente maintained a steady electoral presence...
...Seven years of legal and political attempts by the U'wa to stop the oil development have failed, despite national and international public support for the community...
...He was exiled to Israel upon his release in 1979...
...In response to the conflicts that dominated the last Encounter in Chile over the acceptability of state-linked or "institutionalized" support and foreign funding for feminist projects, this year's coordinating commission organized a program that "decentralized" the discussions and incorporated nonverbal forms of expression such as dance, theater and art...
...It is no longer possible to govern Uruguay," said Vizquez of the left coalition, "without taking us into account...
...State Department officials were confident that Gonzalez would lead the court to favor their appeal...
...Brazil was chosen to host the UN conference because of the desertification process in that country...
...De la Ria, the Alliance candidate, representing a centerleft coalition of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) and the National Solidarity Front (FREPASO), defeated outgoing President Carlos Menem's Justicialist Party candidate, Eduardo Duhalde, by a margin of 48.5% to 38.1...
...Such a lengthy sentence is unprecedented for a senior Guatemalan military officer, even though hundreds of officers have been implicated in either human rights or drug-trafficking crimes...
...The most critical areas are in Brazil's northeast, northern Venezuela, northemn Argentina, northern Chile, the high plains of Peru and Bolivia, and the dry tropics of Central America, Cuba and Haiti, warned Raquel Pefia-Montenegro, IFAD director for Latin America and the Caribbean...
...Questions quickly arose as to whether Amerena was acting on instructions from the PRI hierarchy...
...A longer version of this article appeared at IntellectualCapital.com...
...Lagos has also stressed the need to rewrite the 1980 Constitution inherited from the Pinochet dictatorship...
...The near absence of women with disabilities underscored this fragile essentialism...
...Returning to Argentina after the 1983 restoration of democracy, Timerman testified against Gen...
...During the day, 15 working groups addressed common themes, such as forms of domination and feminist responses...
...In April 1977, Timerman himself was arrested...
...The left coalition, which won 18% of the vote in 1971, held steady at 21% in the 1984 elections, the first of the democratic transition...
...Because of the upcoming elections, Estrada said he was not surprised that members of the PRI would feel uncomfortable about the film...
...The tragedy highlighted the dangers facing illegal immigrants daily who are often underpaid and forced to work under hazardous conditions...
...The left may have not have won at the ballot box, but its strong showing has broken the right's hegemony of more than a century and a half...
...Raid Zibechi Jacobo Timerman Remembered (1923-1999) BUENOS AIRES-Journalist and author Jacobo Timerman, best known for Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, a harrowing account of his imprisonment and torture by Argentina's military dictatorship during the late 1970s, died on November 11 at the age of 76...
...He spent his later years in Uruguay, returning to Argentina just before his death...
...Alejandro Reuss is a member of the Dollars and Sense editorial collective...
...Vizquez won 40% in the first round of voting, making him the most-voted candidate, but Uruguayan law mandates a second round of voting between the top two candidates if no single candidate wins 50% of the vote plus one...
...The Court voted four to three to extradite Ochoa on March 23, 1994, according to documents later obtained by the Costa Rican daily, La Nacion...
...The Growth of the Uruguayan Left MONTEVIDEO-Hopes that the left-wing alliance between the the Frente Amplio and the Progressive Encounter (FA-EP) would win national elections were dashed this past November 28 when the coalition was defeated in second-round elections by a temporary alliance between Uruguay's traditional conservative parties, the Colorado and the National Parties...
...That year, with Tabar6 Vizquez as its candidate, the Frente won the capital, Montevideo...
...Guatemalan foreign relations minister Eduardo Stein said that Spain could treat Menchtt's case in the same way it had treated charges against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, since Guatemala is signatory to the same international human rights conventions as Chile...
...But I didn't think they would try to sabotage the film...
...Alejandro Reuss Rigoberta Mench(i Files Genocide Charges in Spain MADRID---On December 2, Guatemalan indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchfi appeared before the National Court of Spain in Madrid to file charges of genocide, torture and state terrorism on behalf of 200,000 people killed by the Guatemalan government during the 1980s...
...The left's unprecedented gains are due in part to two factors...
...and the torture and murder of other members of MenchAf's family, including her mother...
...The Court, which is the highest court of appeals in the Americas, is expected to recommend that compensation be paid to the families of the victims...
...The Indians, including women, children, and tribal elders, marched to the site on November 16 in order to block expected drilling by the oil company...
...As author Eduardo Galeano said, "In a sense, this defeat was a victory...
...Vdzquez took 44.1% of the vote to Battle's 51.6...
...The impact of these policies on small businesses and rural farmers led to rising protests in rural Uruguay, contributing to a shift in the balance of political power in areas that had been the traditional electoral reserve of the right...
...But the fact that the left's presidential candidate, Tabar6 Vdzquez, was the frontrunner in the first round of elections reflects the spectacular growth of the Uruguayan left in the past decade...
...The U'wa have witnessed the increased presence of military, paramilitary, and guerrilla forces in the Caflo-Limon area and refuse to invite that level of violence into their peaceful community...
...His ordeal in prison convinced him of the deep anti-Semitic paranoia pervading the Argentine armed forces, from the soldiers who shouted "Jew...
Vol. 33 • January 2000 • No. 4
