In Brief
Ecuador: Opposition to wider trade pact grows QUITO-Foreign ministers from 34 countries in the Americas gath- ered here in Ecuador's capital the last week of October for the Seventh Ministerial...
...Machin-whose father died while accompanying Ernesto "Che" Guevara on a 1967 guerrilla campaign in Bolivia-is an experienced and well-regarded liaison between the Cuban government and U.S...
...activist killed In the southern Chilean city of Temuco, a 17-year old Mapuche activist, Edmundo Alex Lemun, died on November 12, five days after being shot in the head during a clash with Carabineros (police) who were trying to forcibly remove a group of Mapuches occupying ancestral indigenous lands claimed by the Mininco lumber company in Angol province, near Ercilla...
...Weekly News Update * As we went to press in midNovember, a secretive World Bank trade court was reportedly preparing to decide whether Bolivia will have to pay Bechtel Corporation $25 million...
...Seven million people in Latin America will sink below the poverty line this year, taking the proportion of the region's population that lives in poverty to 44%, a total of 221.3 million people, according to projections in a recent report by ECLAC, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean...
...Giuliani is famous for his "zero tolerance" policy that reportedly reduced crime by 65% during his administration, but increased complaints of police misconduct by a similar percentage...
...To counter the planners' agenda in Quito, campesino and indigenousled social movements from throughout the Americas organized a week of workshops and protests under the slogan "Another America is Possible...
...The poverty level fell slightly only in Peru and the Dominican Republic...
...Lemun's death was the first to arise from long standing land conflicts in the region...
...Marc Becker El Salvador: Law bars public health system privatization El Salvador's National Assembly voted on November 14 to ratify a decree that prohibits the privatization of the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (ISSS...
...Thousands of medical workers and others had protested the privatization plans with giant marches and a series of strikes at hospitals and clinics...
...A State Department spokesperson said the expulsions were "[i]n response to certain unacceptable activities" by Cubans,specifically the case of former US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst Ana Belen Montes, who was convicted of spying for Cuba and sentenced to 25 years in October...
...An opinion survey unveiled by Gallup Colombia on November 9-the same day Uribe announced a 90day extension of the "state of internal disturbance [conmoci6n]" law that grants him extraordinary emergency powers-showed him with a 74% approval rating...
...The same week Lemun was shot, Mapuche leader Victor Ancalaf Llaupe was arrested in Temuco and charged under the antiterrorism laws for alleged involvement in two earlier arson attacks on trucks belonging to the Spanish power company Endesa...
...Gutierrez is running as the center-left populist candidate of an alliance formed by his January 21 Patriotic Society Party and Pachakutik, the political wing of CONAIE, Ecuador's strongest indigenous organization...
...The leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and some right-wing deputies supported the decree, while the 29 deputies from Flores' right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) opposed it...
...Ecuador: Opposition to wider trade pact grows QUITO-Foreign ministers from 34 countries in the Americas gath- ered here in Ecuador's capital the last week of October for the Seventh Ministerial Summit of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA...
...Bolivian peasant leader and congressman Evo Morales condemned the FTAA as a "reproduction of savage capitalism" that would result in "economicide" for small producers...
...2002 was the most critical year of the "lost half-decade," with the region's economy expected to contract by 0.8...
...Ecuadorian indigenous leader Blanca Chancoso denounced this policy as the extension of colonization that began 500 years ago...
...MSN Mexico News & Analysis 0 Two high-ranking Cuban diplomats from the Cuban interests section in Washington, D.C., Oscar Redondo Toledo and Gustavo Machin G6mez received notice from the U.S...
...The vote for the legislation was 59 out of a total of 84, enough to override objections Flores had made to the decree, which originally passed in October...
...The former mayor is famous for enforcing bans on car window washing, panhandling and other "quality of life crimes...
...Negotiations finally resulted in the ministers agreeing to meet with representatives of the protestors...
...Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who has radically escalated Colombia's internal war in his first 100 days in office, has seen his popularity rating rise to levels far higher than those enjoyed by his two immediate predecessors...
...The representatives presented a letter arguing that "the FTAA can only reinforce social exclusion and deterioration of the environment because it only takes into account the interests of transnational corporations...
...Latin America Weekly Report 0 Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will receive $4.3 million from private sources to advise Mexico City on crime prevention...
...Nine prosecutor and investigators working c human rights cases have been di: missed in the 15 months since Osorio has been in office, and further 15 have had to resign according to the report...
...Machin hits at the epicenter of the Cuban interface with the business community and the US Congress," John Kavulich, president of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, told the media The Council assists companies seeking to trade with Cuba...
...For subscription information: <wnu@igc.org> report, Colombia's attorney-gel eral has seriously undermined td investigation and prosecution ( major human rights cases...
...Carlos Slim, the wealthiest man in Mexico, heads a group of entrepreneurs who will pick upthe tab...
...Despite the marchers' parade permit, riot police blocked the route...
...businesses and politicians...
...Poverty also increased significantly in Venezuela, Paraguay and Uruguay...
...Ecuadorian presidential candidate Colonel Lucio Guti6rrez-in the white hat-speaks at an election rally in Quininde, 75 miles northwest of Quito...
...Largescale protests occurred in the city after the company raised water rates by up to 200 %. Pacific News Service notes that the World Bank court that will decide the case, the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), "is so secret that Bank officials won't say when the tribunal in the case will meet, won't reveal who testifies before it or what they say, and won't let any members of the media or public in the room...
...Ricardo Alfaro, who heads the ISSS doctors' union, said the current strike would not end until doctors and other ISSS workers fired during the protests were rehired...
...Although the protest failed to disrupt the summit as some had hoped, it did reveal a high degree of popular discontent with neoliberal policies, and drove home the point that they can only be implemented under heavy repressive measures...
...The giant U.S.-based company filed a claim with the court in November 2001 after Bolivia cancelled a Bechtel subsidiary's contract to take over the water system of Cochabamba, Bolivia's third-largest city...
...By the end of this year, GDP per capita is expected to have fallen by an average 2% compared to 1997...
...Opponents said the project was a de facto privatization of the system...
...Salvadoran president Francisco Flores had pushed a plan for letting private providers contract for services in the national health care system...
...As we go to press, polls project Gutierrez to win Ecuador's November 24 run-off pres- idential elections with a comfortable 20-point lead over right-populist banana busi- nessman Alvaro Noboa...
...See <www.nacla.org> for updates...
...The majo ity subsequently fled Colombi under death threats...
...State Department on November 1 of their expulsion from the United States...
...Meanwhile, according to a new HFmun Riohtn Watch (IRW'I Latin America Weekly Report is published by Latin America Newsletters...
...The national government expressed regret for Lemun's death, and announced that a special investigator would be assigned to look into the case...
...If implemented as its planners intend on January 1, 2005, the FTAA would link all of the Americas except Cuba in the world's largest "free trade" zone...
...The expulsion of Mr...
...The United States is also asking for two diplomats at the Cuban mission to the United Nations in New York to leave the country...
...The week's activities culminated in a march by some 15,000 people on the Marriott hotel where the foreign ministers met behind locked doors guarded by a heavy police presence...
...companies will export about $165 million in agricultural and food products to Cuba on a cash basis...
...Three arson attacks occurred that night in Biobio, just north of La Araucania, allegedly in retaliation for Lemun's death...
...Gutibrrez, who will take office on January 15 if he wins as projected, is a retired army colonel who emerged on the national political scene when he helped lead a military coup supported by indige- nous groups against President Jamil Mahuad in January 2000...
...TI report says that since taking offic in July 2001, attorney-general Lu Camilo Osorio has consistent] served to protect military and parn military officers against huma rights accusations by hinderin investigations...
...A November 13 march in Santiago protesting Lemun's shooting ended with some 20 arrests after demonstrators smashed windows of businesses whose activities in southern Chile have sparked Mapuche opposition...
...For free samples and subscription information <WR@latinnews.com> MSN Mexico News & Analysis is published by the Mexico Solidarity Network, <www.mexicosolidarity.org> Weekly News Update on the Americas is published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York...
...A particularly contentious issue both for the protesters and the ministers was U.S...
...The name of Gutibrrez' political party as well as much of his popularity comes from this event, with support- ers declaring his electoral victory as "the second triumph of January 21...
...The gains made between 1990 and 1997, when the number of poor in the region fell, were reversed during what ECLAC is calling the "lost half-decade...
...ICSID is a model for the trade court that would be set up under a provision of the FTAA to decide cases of alleged restrictions on free trade...
...Endesa's hydroelectric project on the Biobio river will flood Mapuche lands and displace communities...
...Argentina's case was particularly dramatic, weighing heavily on the regional averages...
...Weekly News Update Chile: Mapuche rights conflicts grow...
...Kavulich said that in 2002, U.S...
...An attorney for Lemun's family accused authorities of trying to hide ballistics evidence that proved the Carabineros were responsible for Lemun's shooting...
...The Interior Ministry ordered the Concepci6n Appeals Court to apply Chile's antiterrorism laws in investigating the attacks...
...Osorio actions, HRW says, have mac prosecuting human rights violh tions in Colombia even more dai gerous...
...agricultural subsidies which critics charge would undercut local producers as cheap imported agricultural commodities flood the market...
Vol. 36 • November 2002 • No. 3
