Weekly News Update #398, 9/14/97 id BAA29201; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 01:58:49 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #398, SEPTEMBER 14, 1997 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. Thousands Protest Exclusion in Brazil 2. Two Killed in Dominican Protests 3. Cuba Arrests Salvadoran for Bomb Attacks 4. Mexican Rebels Arrive in Capital 5. Mexican Police Caught Running Drugs, Executing Suspects 6. Haiti: Hundreds Killed in Ferry Disaster 7. Argentine Ex-Navy Captain Slashed for Talking to Reporters 8. Chile Marks Last Coup Anniversary Under Pinochet 9. Property Accord Reached in Nicaragua 10. Free Trade Woes, Mexican and Haitian Maquiladora Alerts ISSN#: 1084-922X. The Weekly News Update on the Americas is published weekly by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York. A one-year subscription (52 issues) is $25. 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Feel free to reproduce these updates, or reprint or re-post any information from them, but please credit us as "Weekly News Update on the Americas," and include our full contact information so that people will know how to find us. Send us a copy of any publication where we are cited or reprinted. We also welcome your comments and ideas: send them to us at the street address above or via e-mail to CHECK OUT OUR WEB SITES: http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/nsnhome.html *1. THOUSANDS PROTEST EXCLUSION IN BRAZIL An estimated 250,000 protesters in 800 Brazilian towns and cities demonstrated on Sept. 7 in the third annual "Cry of the Excluded," a national protest against the government's economic policies. Speaking to a crowd of some 150,000 people in the town of Aparecida, in Sao Paulo state, Sao Paulo auxiliary archbishop Angelico Bernardino criticized the administration of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso for saving "the bankers and the currency" at the expense of the poor. The protest was organized by the Brazilian National Bishops Conference, the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) and the Only Workers Federation (CUT). At midday, demonstrators across the country whistled and made noise to protest "hunger, unemployment and everything that promotes exclusion," according to the church-based Indianist Missionary Council (CIMI). The protests took place at the same time as military parades celebrating the 175th anniversary of Brazil's independence. In Curitiba, the protest drew more people than the military parade. In Rio de Janeiro, the protest took place in two different locations because of a split between the organizers: 2,000 Catholics protested in the city of Rio while another 2,000 from the CUT and the MST held their demonstration in the neighboring city of Niteroi. Some 20,000 gathered in Belo Horizonte; the protest in Recife drew 3,000 people, and included a tribute to prominent social leaders who died this year, such as anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro and sociologist Hebert de Souza (known as Betinho). As Cardoso reviewed the troops at the military parade in Brasilia, thousands of landless, unemployed and homeless protesters filled the Esplanade of Ministries in the capital, where they honored Pataxo chief Galdino dos Santos, burned alive last April in Brasilia by a group of upper middle class youths [see Update #378, 394]. [La Jornada (Mexico) 9/8/97 from ANSA, AP, EFE, Reuter; New York Times 9/8/97 from Reuter] Meanwhile, Raimundo Batista Malgahaes, an employee of the Brazilian government's National Indian Foundation (FUNAI), was reportedly killed on Aug. 22 by Corubo indigenous people in the northeastern state of Amazonas. Ten years ago only 400 Corubo people remained; now the population has shrunk to 40. Over the past 20 years the Corubos have allegedly killed several FUNAI members and two employees of the state oil company Petrobras. [LJ 8/24/97 from AP, Reuter, PL, ANSA, EFE, IPS] *2. TWO KILLED IN DOMINICAN PROTESTS One student and one police agent were killed, dozens of people were injured and many others were arrested in three days of protests from Sept. 8 through 10 in the slum neighborhoods of Las Palmas de Herrera and Buenos Aires in western Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. Protesters were demanding that the government lower the cost of living and improve infrastructure and social services. Over recent weeks the country's energy crisis has intensified and the capital has faced daily electricity blackouts lasting from 10 to 15 hours. The protests were organized by the Coordinating Committee of Driver, Union and Grassroots Organizations, which opposes the government's economic plan and demands improvements in basic services. Police fired guns at demonstrators and used tear gas; demonstrators threw rocks at police, burned tires and blocked roads. A partial passenger transport strike was held throughout the western sector of the city. The protests intensified on Sept. 9 after talks with the government broke down. Student Leonardo Alcantara Reyes was killed on Sept. 8 by a bullet fired from a car by police corporal Tomas Quinones Cordero. Quinones has been fired and is facing criminal charges of voluntary homicide, according to the police chief, Maj. Gen. Jose Anibal Sanz Jiminian. Another protester injured on Sept. 8, Amaury del Orbe, was recovering from a gunshot wound to the chest as of Sept. 10. A police agent injured in the Sept. 8 clashes died in the hospital on Sept. 10. A number of children and elderly people were hospitalized with symptoms of asphyxia from police tear gas. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 9/9/97 from EFE, 9/10/97 from correspondent, 9/11/97 from EFE, AP] *3. CUBA ARRESTS SALVADORAN FOR BOMB ATTACKS On Sept. 10 the Cuban government announced that it had arrested a Salvadoran mercenary responsible for a number of bomb attacks against tourist sites in Havana, including the Sept. 4 Copacabana hotel bombing that left an Italian tourist dead [see Update #397]. According to a Cuban Interior Ministry communique read over television, "The investigation revealed, without the slightest doubt, the mounting and development of an operation meticulously organized from Miami, United States, by a subversive structure coordinated by the Cuban American National Foundation" (CANF). The Salvadoran, Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, was arrested on Sept. 4; he had entered Cuba as a tourist on Aug. 31 aboard a flight from Guatemala. Cruz admitted that he had served as a soldier in the Salvadoran army, where he had received an explosives training course with US instructors. [La Jornada 9/11/97 from Prensa Latina, AFP, EFE, DPA, Reuter] According to the communique, Cruz told Cuban authorities that he was trained in the Salvadoran army as a paratrooper and a sharpshooter; his sharpshooter training, he said, was at US army training courses "at a military school in the state of Georgia." [New York Times 9/12/97; La Tercera (Chile) 9/13/97 from AP] While Cruz' mother denied he had ever been in the US, the Salvadoran immigration offices showed documents to Associated Press demonstrating that Cruz entered El Salvador on July 9 from Costa Rica and that on July 14 he entered again, this time from the US city of Los Angeles. [El Diario-La Prensa 9/12/97 from AP] According to Cruz, his only interest in carrying out the attacks was "monetary," since he was paid $4,500 for each attack. The communique indicated that traces of explosives were found in Cruz' backpack and on his hands and fingernails, and that he was caught with a list of Cuban tourist installations, tools and electrical materials, and a drawing of the kind of explosive device used in these actions. According to the communique, Cruz admitted "having been the material author of the placing of the four explosive devices on Sept. 4, as well as those which exploded in the Capri and Nacional hotels last July 12." [LJ 9/11/97 from PL, AFP, EFE, DPA, Reuter; NYT 9/12/97] The Salvadoran government responded to the news on Sept. 12, claiming that a cadet named Raul Ernesto Leon Cruz studied at the Military School in El Salvador but never graduated. "He is not a soldier, he requested withdrawal," said National Defense Minister Jaime Guzman Morales. [LT 9/13/97 from AP] According to relatives and event promoters, Cruz was known in San Salvador for coordinating security at public events there; recent events he worked on included the Mexican circus Hermanos Suarez and a rock concert by Aterciopelados and Cafe Tacuba. An AP photo shows him next to Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin. [ED-LP 9/13/97 from AFP] The Cuban government announced on Sept. 11 that it has irrefutable evidence that CANF financed the attacks against Cuban tourist sites that have taken place since April. Cuban foreign ministry spokesperson Marianela Ferriol said the evidence could not be revealed "because it would put in danger the investigative process which is still under way, which is very meticulous and serious for us." [La Republica (Peru) 9/12/97 from EFE] Cuban security twice mistakenly detained European tourists in connection with the bombings: a Portugese visitor was held in late August after nitroglycerine was found in his heart medication; and a German tourist was expelled earlier in the summer for setting off firecrackers in a Havana tunnel. [NYT 9/12/97] The Miami Herald has meanwhile published reports indicating that Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban emigre and Salvadoran resident linked to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is the intellectual author of the explosives attacks. The Herald points out that in 1995 Posada Carriles was linked in Honduras to a series of bomb attacks designed to "intimidate President Carlos Roberto Reina and make [the government] desist in [its] plans to reduce the army." [Clarin (Buenos Aires) 9/13/97 from AFP, ANSA, Reuter, quote retranslated from Spanish] Posada was also involved in the secret US supply operation in El Salvador for the Nicaraguan contras, just months after escaping in August 1985 from jail in Venezuela, where he was serving time for the October 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane that killed 73 people [see Update #392]. [Washington's War on Nicaragua, 1988, by Holly Sklar] On Sept. 11 US attorney general Janet Reno refused to confirm rumors that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has orders to investigate links between the attacks in Cuba and rightwing emigre groups in Florida. Reno limited herself to stating that "what we have tried to do is, where there has been a bomb and where there are allegations, follow them in an appropriate way." [Reno is unlikely to push the Cuban emigre community in South Florida too hard; she built her political power among rightwing Cuban emigres while working as Dade County Prosecutor and has long been thought to be closely linked to those sectors.] However, Cuban-American groups say the FBI has already begun questioning several organizations about the charges. "The fact that the Clinton administration has ordered the FBI to investigate US citizens based on accusations from the terrorist regime in Havana is very repugnant," complained Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) on Sept. 11. [LJ 9/12/97 by correspondents, quote retranslated from Spanish] On Sept. 12 the Cuban government deported US citizen David Norman Dorn, a unionist arrested on Aug. 15 and accused of providing economic support for counterrevolutionary groups, according to the official daily Granma. Dorn was reportedly carrying out the orders of Frank Calzon, director of the US rightwing organization Freedom House. [Clarin 9/13/97 from AFP, ANSA, Reuter] In other news, Cuban dissident Hector Palacio Ruiz was sentenced to 18 months in prison on a charge of "disrespect for authority" for having criticized Cuban President Fidel Castro in a German television interview broadcast last December. Palacio had been in custody since January; he was convicted in a municipal court in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion district. The state prosecutor had sought a three-year sentence. Palacio was the head of a dissident group called the Democratic Solidarity Party (PSD). In his interview with Germany's ARD television network, Palacio had strongly criticized Castro's rule, called for reforms, and at one point called Castro "crazy." A small group of supporters cheered Palacio as he left the courtroom. [Reuter 9/5/97] *4. MEXICAN REBELS ARRIVE IN CAPITAL Tens of thousands of supporters filled Mexico City's main plaza, the Zocalo, on the evening of Sept. 12 to greet more than a thousand representatives of the rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) as they completed a four-day journey from their base in the southeastern state of Chiapas. The dramatic march on the capital by the rebels--carrying no arms but hiding their faces behind ski masks and scarves--was intended to mark the formal founding of their political group, the Zapatista National Liberation Front (FZLN), and to press demands for the federal government to remove troops from indigenous communities and honor an indigenous rights pact it signed with the EZLN in February 1996. "If [President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon] isn't going to comply, then we're telling him to say so clearly to the people of Mexico," EZLN Political Commission representative "Claribel" told the demonstrators. "If he wants war, then go ahead; we Zapatistas know how to fight with honor and bravery, because we have a very powerful weapon the government doesn't have. This weapon is called dignity." [La Jornada 9/13/97] Representatives of what the EZLN said were 1,111 pro-Zapatista indigenous communities in Chiapas set off from the city of San Cristobal de las Casas on Sept. 9 in some 50 buses for a 750-mile march on the capital. Alternately riding and walking, the rebels passed through indigenous areas in the states of Oaxaca, Puebla and Morelos, cheered by thousands of onlookers and joined by some 5,000 supporters in another 100 buses. The Mexican army has kept the rebels confined to certain areas of Chiapas ever since shortly after the EZLN uprising began in January 1994. The march on Mexico City was the first time a large Zapatista contingent openly defied the government's efforts at containment; the rebels' arrival in Mexico City without incident demonstrated that their political strength could make up for military weakness. The EZLN was probably also testing the political climate after gains by the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in July 6 elections; party founder Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano is to be sworn in as governor of the Federal District (DF), which includes Mexico City, on Dec. 5. EZLN leader "Insurgent Sub- Commander Marcos"--who didn't join the march--played to the change in Mexico City politics with a Sept. 12 communique that hailed "the city that...knew how to rebel against the evil government." [Associated Press 9/8/97; LJ 9/10/97, 9/13/97; New York Times 9/13/97, 9/14/97; Reuter 9/11/97; San Jose Mercury News (California) 9/10/97] The FZLN is to be founded in a Sept. 13-15 congress, followed by a demonstration to mark Independence Day on Sept. 16. Two previous efforts by the EZLN to form a broader, national political movement--the National Democratic Convention (CND) of July 1994, and the National Liberation Movement (MLN) of February 1995, which Marcos had wanted Cuauhtemoc Cardenas to lead [see Update #262]--ended in infighting between leftist groups. Some of these groups are now in the Broad Front for the Construction of a National Liberation Movement (FAC-MLN). [LJ 9/7/97, 9/8/97, 9/9/97] *5. MEXICAN POLICE CAUGHT RUNNING DRUGS, EXECUTING SUSPECTS The Mexican rebels arrived in a capital faced with two major police scandals. As of Sept. 5 three pilots and 18 other employees of a special anti-narcotics unit of the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) had been arrested after 60 kilos of cocaine were found in a PGR plane the unit flew to Mexico City on Sept. 2 from Tapachula, Chiapas. Ten more PGR agents are under suspicion, and the entire Tapachula unit, with more than 60 employees, has been reassigned either to the DF or the Chiapas state capital, Tuxtla Gutierrez. The agents allegedly used one of the PGR's US-built Grumman XC-AA transport planes to bring drugs from Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, to the capital for transshipment to the US. The detainees were part of the PGR's air interdiction group, and some were reportedly trained in radar surveillance by the US Customs Service. [LJ 9/6/97, 9/7/97; Washington Post 9/12/97) One civilian and one police agent were killed in a confused shooting incident on the evening of Sept. 8 involving several young men from the working-class Buenos Aires colonia (neighborhood) and two plainclothes agents from a special police unit known as the "Zorros." According to the authorities, the Zorro team surprised a group of robbers, who began shooting. Neighbors say that the Zorros provoked the incident, and that another unit, the "Jaguares," came to back up the Zorros, arresting four or five young men. The next day the bodies of three of the youths--Daniel Colin, Juan Carlos Romero Peralta and Miguel Angel Leal--were found in a ravine just south of Mexico City. They had been shot in the face at point-blank range, and their ears had been cut off. A fourth man was found alive, being interrogated at a police station. On Sept. 9 Brig. Gen. Enrique Salgado Cordero, the DF police commissioner, denied that any arrests had been made or that the police were involved in the three murders. But the next day Salgado said, without further explanation, "It's a deplorable action, and meting out justice in that manner is unjustifiable." The DF attorney general's office admitted that an investigation was under way. [AP 9/10/97; Reuter 9/10/97] Salgado was appointed to head the DF's 70,000 police agents in June 1996, and he brought 11 generals and nine colonels along with him from the army. Ostensibly, the police were being "militarized" to fight their notorious corruption [see Update #336]. This summer the police have carried out a series of well- publicized raids in high-crime colonias like Buenos Aires, with many arrests but few serious charges. On Sept. 5, just two days before the triple murder, Amnesty International (AI) president Morris Tidball criticized the measures, suggesting that the purpose might be "to create a climate of crackdown or facilitate an increasing militarization." [Mexico Update (Equipo Pueblo) #139, 9/11/97, from LJ 9/5/97] Mexico City activist and former PRD federal deputy Marco Rascon charged that "the objective was to create tensions in the transition" to the Cardenas government, "more than the persecution and apprehension of criminals or organized gangs." [LJ 9/11/97] *6. HAITI: HUNDREDS KILLED IN FERRY DISASTER The Haitian ferry "La Fierte Gonavienne" (The Pride of La Gonave) capsized and sank in the early morning of Sept. 8 as passengers were starting to disembark 200-300 feet from the shore near the town of Montrouis on Haiti's western coast. As of Sept. 13 there were 62 survivors, and 114 bodies had been found; as many as 200 or more bodies may still be trapped in the wreckage. "La Fierte Gonavienne" had been in service for just two weeks. It was licensed to carry 265 passengers, but ferries provide the only regular transport from the western island of La Gonave to the rest of Haiti and are often overcrowded. Apparently the boat capsized as the passengers crowded to one side to board the rowboats that would take them to the shore; there are no docking facilities at Montrouis. [El Diario-La Prensa 9/14/97 from AP; New York Times 9/9/97; Washington Post 9/12/97] Hundreds of the victims' relatives have camped by the shore waiting for US Navy divers to bring up the bodies. Many reviled Haitian president Rene Preval when he visited the scene on Sept. 12, blaming him for the government's failure to regulate the ferries and to build docking facilities. "Preval, you have no shame," one mourner told the president. "Do you see our misery?" [Newsday (Long Island, NY) 9/13/97] Demonstrators burned tires in Montrouis on Sept. 10 and 11 to protest government inaction. Ferry disasters are a regular occurrence in Haiti; some 700 people died when the "Neptune" capsized on Feb. 17, 1993 during the 1991-1994 military regime [see Update #160]. Preval blames the government's lack of funds. International lending institutions and the US are holding up tens of millions of dollars in promised aid because the government has been unable to force neoliberal economic policies, such as the privatization of several enterprises, through Parliament. [WP 9/12/97] The Montrouis disaster is just the latest blow for the Preval government. Prime Minister Rosny Smarth resigned in June, and Parliament voted 43-9, with nine abstentions, to reject Preval's new choice, Eric Pierre, on Aug. 26 [see Update #396, which accidentally omitted the date]. While the US uses aid and loans to influence events inside Haiti, New York City's large Haitian community has started to influence local politics in the US. In an upset, Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger was unable to get the 40% of the vote she needed to win her party's nomination for mayor in the Sept. 9 Democratic primary. She will have to face African-American maverick Rev. Al Sharpton in a runoff. Sharpton won 32% to Messinger's 39%; analysts attribute his unexpectedly strong showing to his ability to associate himself with anger among blacks, Latinos and immigrants over allegations that police agents tortured Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in August. Neither candidate seems likely to defeat the Republican incumbent, Rudolph Giuliani. [NYT 9/10/97] *7. ARGENTINE EX-NAVY CAPTAIN SLASHED FOR TALKING TO REPORTERS Argentine former Navy captain Adolfo Scilingo has charged that he was attacked and abducted on Sept. 11 by four men who slashed his face and warned him to stop speaking to journalists about human rights violations committed during the military regime of the 1970s and early 1980s. Scilingo's attackers carved the letters MGV in his face--a reference, he said, to the journalists Magdalena Ruiz Guinazu, Mariano Grondona and Horacio Verbitsky. The three journalists had interviewed Scilingo in March 1995 as he prepared to go public with the admission that the Navy routinely threw political prisoners out of planes into the sea to die during the dictatorship [see Update #267]. [Clarin 9/12/97, 9/13/97; New York Times 9/13/97] Scilingo was freed from prison this past June 17 after serving nearly two years in La Plata on fraud charges which were subsequently dismissed. At the time of his confession, President Carlos Saul Menem used the fraud charges as evidence that Scilingo's testimony was unreliable, and as justification for stripping him of his military rank. According to Scilingo, his attackers warned him "not to mess with the Buenos Aires ones," referring to the police force of Buenos Aires province. Scilingo charges that his attackers also made a reference to "the reserved meeting"--private meetings he had requested with Buenos Aires provincial governor Eduardo Duhalde and Interior Minister Carlos Corach in confidential letters. Judicial authorities are now seeking to identify the agent of the Federal Police who Scilingo says was near the area when he was attacked. [Clarin 9/12/97, 9/13/97] The reference to the notoriously corrupt and brutal Buenos Aires provincial police has puzzled investigators, since most of Scilingo's accusations had focused on the Navy--particularly Navy admiral Emilio Massera--not the police. [Clarin 9/12/97] But the Buenos Aires police have a record of threats against the media: provincial agents are believed linked to the murder last Jan. 25 of journalist Jose Luis Cabezas, who was investigating corrupt practices within the force [see Update #370, 374, 386, 391]. This is not the first time in Argentina that attackers have slashed words into their victims faces or bodies: on July 31, 1996, four assailants attacked journalist Santiago Pinetta, who had been reporting on a financial scandal involving the Argentine subsidiary of the US computer company IBM, and carved the letters IBM into his chest; a month earlier, the sister of a federal prosecutor investigating a gold trafficking gang was attacked and forced to cut the word oro (gold) into her own forehead [see Update #340]. *8. CHILE MARKS LAST COUP ANNIVERSARY UNDER PINOCHET Sept. 11 marked the 24th anniversary of the bloody coup in Chile that deposed democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende and began a 17-year military rule by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet, who remains the country's armed forces commander-in-chief, is set to resign no later than Mar. 11, 1998, by constitutional decree; this was the last Sept. 11 he will celebrate in power. Despite expectations, however, the general remained unusually quiet, and a rally called in his honor was only attended by about 400 people. Air Force chief Gen. Fernando Rojas Vender, meanwhile, broke military tradition with a conciliatory statement: "This is not a day to celebrate, but rather to remember what the importance of the 11th means and to together seek our common points to build the future." The day, which is an official holiday, has always been controversial and divisive among Chileans. Since the military regime formally ended in 1990, annual Sept. 11 protests by human rights groups and leftists have often ended in clashes with police. [La Republica 9/12/97 from EFE; Clarin 9/12/97; La Tercera 9/14/97] Pinochet's successor as armed forces chief will be named in October. [El Diario-La Prensa 9/13/97 from Notimex] This year, some 10,000 people marched peacefully through the center of the capital and 5,000 gathered at the final rally at the Santiago General Cemetery. "This transition to democracy has turned into a transaction," said Gladys Marin, secretary general of the Chilean Communist Party (PCC), speaking to the crowd from in front of an enormous mural that includes the names of 3,000 people murdered or disappeared during the 1973-1990 military regime. The rally turned violent when anti-riot police arrived: some 60 youths near the cemetery entrance threw rocks at police, and the agents retaliated by attacking the entire crowd with tear gas and water cannons. "This government doesn't allow people to demonstrate freely, not in the streets or in the cemeteries," Marin charged. Marin was forced to leave the podium for 20 minutes as tear gas filled the area; other participants, many covering their faces and chewing on limes to counteract the effects of the gas, also fled, and Marin used a megaphone to urge participants to disperse peacefully. There were at least 90 arrests at the cemetery, and a total of 122 for the day; at least 24 of the detainees were 16 years old or younger. [LR 9/12/97 from EFE; Clarin 9/12/97; LT 9/13/97, 9/14/97; ED-LP 9/12/97 from EFE, 9/13/97 from Notimex] Students had been participating in protests since the week before, when the "day of the combatant" was celebrated. On Sept. 9, police agents with guns drawn stormed the University of Santiago (USACH) and searched the campus--in violation of university autonomy--arresting 20 students for involvement in earlier clashes. The siege was criticized by the university faculty, which announced it would lodge a complaint against police for behaving in a manner that was "inadequate and too violent," according to rector Eduardo Morales. In another clash on Sept. 10, hooded youths armed with molotov bombs erected barricades in the streets and clashed with police in front of the Metropolitan University of Education Sciences (UMCE) and the Social Sciences Department of the University of Chile. Police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators. Clashes took place in other cities as well, including Temuco. A total of at least 60 people were arrested in the protests leading up to Sept. 11. [LR 9/11/97 from EFE; Clarin 9/11/97 from ANSA; LT 9/14/97] According to the daily La Tercera, the violence was provoked by small groups of young people with anarchist tendencies who are "against the state, against the Church, against the [political] parties, and, of course, against the police." These youth have no leaders, according to the newspaper, and do not operate in hierarchical organizations; they are the same young people who take part in soccer fan clubs and movements such as Students Trying to Do Something (ETHA), based at USACH. [LT 9/14/97] The Student Federation of the Metropolitan Technical University (UTEM) charged that a UTEM student who was hit in the head by a police tear gas canister just outside the UTEM campus suffered a double cranial fracture and cerebral hematomas. [LR 9/11/97 from EFE] [This past June a student was critically wounded by a tear gas canister thrown by police during student strike--see Update #387.] As of Sept. 13, at least six teenage protesters remained in police custody. A 12-year old boy--accused of breaking the arm of an agent of the militarized Carabineros police with a stick--was released on Sept. 13, as was 65-year old Lilian Silva, charged with aggression against Carabineros. Silva had scratched one of the police agents arresting her as she kneeled in front of a police bus to stop it from entering the Santiago general cemetery. Parents of many of the arrested youth complained that those who provoked the violence were able to flee the scene, and the Carabineros then detained those who--because they didn't do anything wrong--just stood there. "Because the arrest is unfair they resist and then they are accused of aggression," said Alfredo Bastias, whose 22-year old son Jorge was arrested in the cemetery. [LT 9/14/97] In fact, this year's protests were milder than usual: in 1996, 41 people were injured (including 19 Carabineros) and 222 people were arrested; in 1995 a student was killed, five people were injured and 169 demonstrators were arrested; in 1994 three people were wounded by bullets and 171 arrested; in 1993 two people died, 52 were injured, and 203 were arrested. In both 1990 and 1991 there were minor clashes and about 100 arrests. [LT 9/14/97] President Eduardo Frei angered Chile's moderate left this year by failing to attend a mass held in honor of Allende, organized by Socialist Party leaders and attended by Allende's widow, Hortensia Bussi, at La Moneda national palace. [LT 9/13/97] Meanwhile, Chile's Supreme Court has unanimously approved an extradition request for rebel Patricio Ortiz Montenegro, who was arrested in Zurich, Switzerland on Sept. 4 [see Update #397]. Ortiz, a member of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR) who escaped the Santiago Maximum Security Prison (CAS) with three other comrades last Dec. 30, is seeking political asylum in Switzerland. However, in an interview with Chilean daily La Tercera from Lima, Peru, Swiss attorney general Carla del Ponti insisted that "there is no possibility" her government will grant Ortiz political asylum, and emphasized that the absence of an extradition treaty between the two countries will not impede his forced return to Chile. "Switzerland does not grant asylum to terrorists, nor does it protect criminals," said del Ponti. On Sept. 11, del Ponti suggested that Ortiz could be extradited "in a matter of days." However, La Tercera suggests that a speedy resolution is unlikely because of Ortiz' family connections in Switzerland, where his brother is an important lawyer and his sister works for a nongovernmental organization advising the Swiss government in matters relating to refugees. [LT 9/12/97, 9/14/97] *9. PROPERTY ACCORD REACHED IN NICARAGUA In a joint press conference on Sept. 5, Daniel Ortega Saavedra of Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and Attorney General Julio Centeno Gomez from the rightwing government of President Arnoldo Aleman Lacayo announced an accord on the contentious property issue. After more than seven months of negotiations, the two sides agreed on a legislative proposal that essentially confirms laws passed under the 1979-1990 FSLN government for the redistribution of property confiscated from supporters of the 1936-1979 Somoza family dictatorship. The ruling Liberal Alliance and the FSLN, the country's two main parties, have more than enough votes to push the bill through the National Assembly. [Barricada (Managua) 9/6/97] The former owners reacted angrily, publishing a list of properties in upscale Managua neighborhoods they said had been acquired by high-ranking members and former members of the FSLN, including Doris Maria Tijerino Haslam, Lenin G. Cerna Juarez and Gen. Joaquin Cuadra Lacayo. [La Prensa (Managua) 9/10/97] *10. FREE TRADE WOES, MEXICAN AND HAITIAN MAQUILADORA ALERTS To the evident irritation of business lobbyists, the administration of US president Bill Clinton was unable to come up with the wording for "free trade" legislation it had planned to introduce to Congress on Sept. 10. The bill would give the president "fast-track" authorization to negotiate trade accords; the White House wants to get the legislation through Congress this year to avoid a confrontation right before the 1998 midterm congressional elections. In a recent poll commissioned by the Wall Street Journal and NBC, 43% of respondents gave negative ratings to the last major free trade pact, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), with 28% giving positive ratings. The White House expects to have the bill written by the week of Sept. 15. [Washington Post 9/10/97] Clinton wants the fast track--which keeps Congress from adding amendments to trade pacts--for upcoming negotiations over extending NAFTA to include Chile and for longer-term talks over a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Labor unions are pushing for the new accords to have stronger labor and environmental measures than the side agreements that were added to help pass NAFTA in 1993; some union leaders have called for increased minimum wages in countries covered by the pacts. Business leaders and Republican legislators are opposing all conditions on labor and environment, expressing concern for the sovereignty of Third World countries. United Automobile Workers (UAW) president Stephen Yokich says he won't even accept stronger labor accords "because we can't even enforce labor rights here in this country." [New York Times 9/11/97] The US-based Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras (CJM) has issued three urgent action alerts around maquiladora organizing in Mexico. On Sept. 5, 6 and 7 three men threatened the wife and two-year old daughter of Salvador Bravo, a former employee of the Custom Trim auto parts maquiladora in Valle Hermoso, Tamaulipas, after he participated in a meeting with Canadian Custom Trim workers, who are represented by United Steelworkers of America (USWA). In Nuevo Laredo, also in the eastern border state of Tamaulipas, there have been attacks on the owners and the legal representative of the daily El Manana, which has criticized governor Manuel Cavazos Lerma and defended illegally fired maquiladora workers. The independent Authentic Labor Front (FAT) and the US-based United Electrical Workers (UE) are asking for faxes to support free union elections at the Echlin Corporation's ITAPSA maquiladora in Mexico City. For more information on the alerts, contact CJM at 210-732-8957, [CJM Alert 9/10/97] In Haiti, BVF Apparel Manufacturing fired the union's secretary on Aug. 19 and its general coordinator on Aug. 30. BVF assembles garments with Disney Company labels. The Haitian organizing group Batay Ouvriye (Workers' Struggle) is calling for protests to BVF president Jack Brownstein (fax 203-575-0169) and Disney president Michael Eisner (fax 818-560-1930). [Batay Ouvriye Alert 9/5/97] END For New York area events, check out the CREED NYC calendar at http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/creed.html (if you don't have web access, write for info). 1996 INDEX OUT NOW!!! ANNUAL UPDATE INDEX available for each year from 1991 through 1996. Ascii text versions free to subscribers via electronic mail. Send your request to (specify which year or years you want--each is over 100kb). Each index will be sent as a separate text message (not an attached file) unless you request otherwise. STILL AVAILABLE: "Immigration in the USA One Year After Proposition 187," a Weekly News Update on the Americas special report, dated March 1996, accompanied by a resource list and organizing leaflet. Ascii text version free to subscribers via email. Send your request to 1996 SOURCE LIST STILL AVAILABLE: A list of sources commonly-used in the Weekly News Update on the Americas, along with abbreviations and contact information. Free to subscribers. 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