In Brief
New Evidence Links Pinochet to Human Rights Abuses SANTIAGO--As hearings began on April 26 into the request to lift former dictator Augusto Pinochet's parliamentary immunity, a new document...
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...With more social unrest looming, the Banzer government suddenly announced on April 10 that it was terminating the contract with Aguas del Tunari and that it would adopt the changes to the water law demanded by rural communities...
...Huge crowds descended on the city's plaza the following day, including thousands of campesinos from the countryside who were protesting a new water law that threatens to take away local control over rural water systems...
...Weekly News Update on the Americas SOURCES Latin America Weekly Report is published weekly by Latin American Newsletters...
...The Supreme Court again voided the arrest warrants two months later...
...Army Colonel James Hiett, who commanded the U.S...
...The UAT is considered responsible for the killing of journalist Jos6 Carrasco in 1986 and of 12 Communist youths in 1987, two of the cases currently before the courts...
...The governing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which was in power at the time of the Jesuits' murders, called the university's demands "political...
...President Flores has so far refused to move on the case...
...Police broke into the homes of the protest leaders and more than a dozen were arrested and sent to a remote prison in the Bolivian jungle...
...Within two days, the press reported that six people had been killed and dozens injured in confrontations across Bolivia...
...Many are afraid of the past and want to build the future on pardons and forgetting...
...Thousands of MST families have occupied these estates, claiming that land titles to them are fraudulent and that this makes the properties eligible for expropriation and land reform...
...I then knew that the cash my wife had previously given me came from drug trafficking...
...Guillermo Benavides and Lt...
...John L. Hammond is author of Fightinq to Learn: Popular Education and Guerrilla War in El Salvador (Rutgers University Press, 1998...
...Public outrage against the rate increases swept Cochabamba in early February, then spread to other parts of the country, as people began protesting not just water rate hikes, but coca eradication, low wages and unemployment...
...The 24-year Army veteran remains on active duty at Fort Monroe, in Hampton, Virginia, where he was transferred after his wife was charged...
...The report concluded that members of the army's high command ordered the Jesuit murders, and that they were organized by officers of the military academy and carried out by elements of the army's Atlacatl battalion...
...In response to the growing protests, President Hugo Banzerwho seized power in a coup in 1971 and ruled with an iron fist until 1978 and was elected to power in 1997--declared a state of siege on April 8. Rather than quell protest, however, civic unrest spread throughout the country, with a police strike in La Paz and highway blockages over local issues in Oruru and Potosi...
...New Evidence Links Pinochet to Human Rights Abuses SANTIAGO--As hearings began on April 26 into the request to lift former dictator Augusto Pinochet's parliamentary immunity, a new document surfaced which appears to personally implicate him in crimes committed by his subordinates...
...Despite the testimony in his favor, Rainha was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison at his first trial in Pedro Candrio in 1997...
...He teaches sociology at Hunter Collee and the Graduate Center, City University of New York and is a member of NACLA's editorial board...
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...Jim Shultz is the executive director of The Democracy Center (www.democra- cyctr.org...
...N1CIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Similar charges were brought against Rainha and four other MST leaders a year later...
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...During another occupation in the Pontal on February 23, 1997, some 2,500 squatters were shot at from within the ranch and eight were wounded...
...diplomatic mail to smuggle heroin into the United States...
...Despite having the ninth-largest industrial economy in the world, Brazil still has one of the greatest concentrations of land ownership, and large landowners exercise a disproportionate amount of political power...
...Weekly News Update on the Americas is a publication of the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of New York...
...State governor Mario Covas complained that the judge's action hindered ongoing negotiations with the MST to resolve the occupation crisis in the Pontal, and after several months the Supreme Court ordered the detainees released on bail...
...That reconciliation produced a new country in El Salvador...
...The possibility of Pinochet being brought to justice is making the military increasingly restless...
...Antidrug Warrior Pleads Guilty in Drug Smuggling Case NEW YORK-U.S...
...Attorney Lee G. Dunst said Hiett has filed for retirement from the Army...
...Prior to that time I did not know my wife was involved in narcotics trafficking," he said...
...candidate in political science at the New School University...
...During the trial, more than 3,000 members of the MST held a vigil in the streets near the courthouse to show their support for Rainha and to press for justice...
...Several witnesses supported him, including a state legislator...
...In 1991, Col...
...He lives in Cochabamba, Bolivia and is currently working on a comprehensive guidebook for citizen activists...
...Victory in hand, protest leader Oscar Olivera joined the April 16 protests in Washington, D.C...
...Meanwhile the same judge signed a warrant for the arrest of the five MST leaders, claiming that they had instigated the occupation...
...We were talking with the mayor, the governor and other civic leaders," he said, "when the police came in and arrested us...
...His wife, Laurie Hiett, pleaded guilty last January 27 to drug conspiracy charges, admitting she shipped packages containing $700,000 worth of drugs to New York...
...The police officers had been acquitted of the murder of 19 farmworkers who were killed when the military police fired on a demonstration in 1996...
...On March 27, UCA rector Josd Maria Tojeira formally asked the attorney general's office to charge six military officers for intellectual authorship of the murders and former President Cristiani for acts of omission that allowed the murders to take place...
...In statements published by El Mostrador on May 6, Salazar called Izurieta "unfit" to continue in his charge as commander-in-chief because he had transgressed the Constitution...
...In small states like Espfirito Santo, they dominate rural society through their control of electoral machines and the local justice system, and by financing paramilitary violence...
...The amnesty law prevents charges from being brought for these crimes, he said, and warned that a new investigation could create "new conflict...
...The commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Ricardo Izurieta, has been outspoken in his support of Pinochet, stating to the press that he would not be satisfied in the event that Pinochet is stripped of his immunity...
...The acquittal reversed his conviction in a previous trial and is seen as a political victory for the MST...
...Before a crowd of more than 10,000 gathered behind the White House, he said: "Our victory over Bechtel and the World Bank sends the message that the people can win, and that there is an alternative to accepting corporate control...
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...Faced with a massive civic uprising, the governor of Cochabamba announced that he would try to persuade the national government to cancel the contract with Aguas del Tunari...
...Attorney General Belisario Artiga did not reject outright the university's demand for new trials, but said he could not act until the Supreme Court ruled on two suits of unconstitutionality filed against the amnesty law in 1998...
...In early June 1999, he said he was told by Army investigators that his wife had been sending narcotics from Colombia to New York...
...Hiett admitted that in June and July, after he knew of his wife's drug activities, he tried to get rid of the money...
...In 1993, the Truth Commission, mandated by the peace accords ending El Salvador's 12-year armed conflict, issued its report on atrocities committed by both the government and the guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN...
...Colonel Hiett is due to be sentenced on June 23 and faces a maximum of three years in prison and $250,000 in fines, but federal sentencing guidelines indicate a prison sentence of one year to 18 months is more likely...
...With Cochabamba ground to a halt due to the ongoing protests, the municipal government agreed to sit down with representatives of the protesters in early April...
...The Pontal region is a vast area in western Slo Paulo state only recently opened to agriculture and where large landowners had laid claim to huge estates...
...Jim Shultz/ NotiSur U.S...
...John L. Hammond Bolivians Win Anti-privatization Battle COCHABAMBA-Following a week of massive popular protests against the privatization of Cochabamba's water system, the Bolivian government announced on April 10 that it would break the contract it signed last year that sold the water system to Aguas del Tunari, a consortium led by London-based International Water Limited that includes Edison of Italy and the Bechtel Corporation in the United States...
...I then took the steps to dissipate this cash by paying as many bills as possible in cash and depositing the rest of the cash in our bank accounts...
...against the IMF and the World Bank...
...In 1997 the French Parliament awarded Rainha its International Human Rights Prize in recognition of the ordeal to which he had been subjected...
...Rainha has been the victim of apparent legal harassment elsewhere in Brazil as well...
...She was sentenced on May 5 to five years in prison for using U.S...
...In 1989, landowner Jos6 Machado Neto and military policeman Sdrgio Narciso da Silva were killed during a confrontation with occupying farmworkers near the town of Pedro Candirio...
...According to Colonel Hiett, his wife traveled from BogotA to New York City twice, in April and May 1999, and returned home with more than $25,000 in cash...
...Released after two weeks and then arrested again, she became an instant national celebrity when local authorities made clear that they were holding her and the other three detainees as hostages, offering to release them if Rainha and the second fugitive turned themselves in...
...On April 25, the online publication El Mostrador (www.elmostrador.cl) revealed the existence of a secret decree from August 1980 that stipulated that the army's Antiterrorist Unit (UAT) could only act with the approval of the president-Pinochet...
...We are a country that signed the peace but is not reconciled in truth and justice," he said in early March...
...ARENA wishes to express its public support and recognition to the former president [Cristiani] and to the distinguished generals who were members of the high command of our armed forces," said the party in a public statement...
...The August 1980 secret decree and Espinoza's statement now provide the "smoking gun" that corroborates what many have long surmised and Pinochet had all but admitted when he boasted that "not a leaf fell" in Chile without his knowledge...
...Only one witness placed Rainha at the scene of the crime, and had given conflicting descriptions of the person he claimed was Rainha...
...troops in Colombia who train security forces for counter-drug operations and protect three large radar bases used primarily to track aircraft carrying drugs...
...Earlier, the Army Criminal Investigation Division in Panama had cleared Hiett, saying he had "no prior knowledge" of his wife's crimes...
...Notisur is a weekly publication of the Latin America Data Base, an on-line news service available at http:/ladb.unm.edu...
...In another legal victory for the MST, the verdict in last fall's trial of three military police officers in the Eldorado do Carajds massacre was annulled by the Pard state court of appeals on April 11...
...military's antidrug operations in Colombia until his wife was arrested for drug smuggling last summer, pleaded guilty on April 17 to the federal charge of "misprision of a felony," failing to report a felony that he knew took place...
...For a decade the World Bank has pushed the Bolivian government to sell its public enterprises to international investors...
...Other evidence directly implicating Pinochet in human rights crimes came to light when retired Brigadier Pedro Espinoza, former number two in the DINA, the secret police, ratified before judge Juan GuzmAn the veracity of a notarized statement he made in 1978 revealing that he had been coerced into concealing Pinochet's involvement in the Letelier murder...
...Margot Olavarria is associate editor of NACLA Report on the Americas and is a Ph.D...
...A local judge responded to the occupation movement by charging Rainha and five other leaders of the MST with "forming a criminal band" in October 1995...
...Before the first trial, he had risen to national prominence by leading the MST's campaign to occupy large farms in Pontal do Paranapanema beginning in 1994...
...No new trial date has been set, but the recent legal victories show that the organizational strength of the MST and its growing support among a segment of the Brazilian public now pose a threat to the impunity and political power enjoyed by Brazil's landed elite...
...This comment drew harsh criticism from H6ctor Salazar, one of the human rights attorneys participating in the government's Roundtable for Dialogue, a body which is rejected by Chilean human rights organizations because it is seen as a means to avert the pending trials...
...The Salvadoran church affirms that truth and justice are prerequisites for pardons...
...Rainha and another accused leader went into hiding while four were arrested, including Rainha's 25-year-old wife, Diolinda Alves de Souza...
...NotiCen Legal Victory for MST VITORIA-On April 5, Jos6 Rainha, a prominent leader of the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST), was acquitted of the 1989 murders of a landowner and a military police officer in a trial held in Vit6ria, the state capital of Espirito Santo...
...Submitting to Bank pressure, Bolivian authorities sold off the national airline, electric utilities, the national train service and, last year, Cochabamba's water system...
...The Pontal campaign helped propel the MST to the prominent political position it has held in recent years and put agrarian reform at the center of Brazil's political agenda...
...Assistant U.S...
...NotiCen is a weekly publication of the Latin America Data Base, an on-line news service available at http://ladb.unm.edu...
...Rainha, who was accused of participating in the murders, denied the charge, claiming that he was in the state of CearAi, some 430 miles away, on the day of the crime...
...But the government showed no signs of rescinding the deal, and later that evening the governor announced his resignation...
...While his wife was using the Air Force Postal Service to smuggle drugs into the United States, Colonel Hiett was in charge of the estimated 200 U.S...
...If Pinochet is stripped of his immunity, he faces 102 criminal charges against him involving gross human rights abuses...
...More than 50 people had been detained...
...Leading the defense team in the second trial was Evandro Lins e Silva, a retired Supreme Court justice who is considered the dean of Brazilian criminal lawyers...
...The document says that a military prosecutor forced Espinoza to state that former head of the DINA, Manuel Contreras, had given him the order to kill Letelier and to excise from his deposition the claim that Contreras had done so "on the orders of the President of the Republic...
...Latin American Weekly Report/ Margot Olavarria Government Balks at Reopening 1989 Jesuit Murder Case SAN SALVADOR-The Jesuitrun Central American University (UCA) has begun a new campaign to pressure the government to reopen the investigation of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in San Salvador in November 1989...
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...Amnesty carries with it the concept of forgiveness, Vol XXXIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2000 1 Vol XXXIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2000 1IN BRIEF said Flores, which made national reconciliation possible after the conflict ended...
...So far, the conservative government of President Francisco Flores has refused, stating that new trials would violate the law and would destroy the reconciliation achieved with the 1992 peace accords...
...A retrial is automatic in Brazil when a defendant is sentenced to more than 20 years, and, claiming that the local jury was biased in favor of the victims, Rainha's attorneys successfully argued for a change of venue to the state capital...
...Journalist Patricia Verdugo had revealed the existence of this statement in midMarch...
...But the government had no intentions of resolving the impasse peacefully, says Oscar Olivera, a 45-year-old labor leader and the most visible leader of the protest...
...San Salvador Archbishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez denied that any such reconciliation had taken place in El Salvador...
...Rate hikes of up to 300%, imposed just weeks after the new company took over Cochabamba's water system, sparked months of protest including general strikes and transportation blockades that shut down this city of 600,000 on three different occasions...
...At the very least, the documents put Pinochet unequivocally in the loop, rather than simply in a position of formal overall responsibility, and this will certainly influence the immunity proceedings now under way at the Santiago court of appeals...
...Yusshy Mendoza were convicted of participating in the murders but were freed under an amnesty law passed shortly after the Truth Commission issued its final report...
...In November, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) said the amnesty law was unconstitutional and recommended that the government revoke it and reopen the case...
...The UCA and various human rights organizations have been demanding trials for other high-ranking officers and former President Alfredo Cristiani (1989-1994) ever since...
...The landowner's son and four hired gunmen were accused of the shooting and arrested, but a week later a judge released them on bail...
Vol. 33 • May 2000 • No. 6
