Wkly Update on the Americas #408 11/21/97 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS ISSUE #408, NOVEMBER 23, 1997 NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499 1. Over 600 Arrested at School of Americas Protest 2. Anti-Cuba Terror Plots Exposed; Rightwing Leader Dies 3. Police and Military Mix It Up in Mexico City 4. "Asian Contagion" Brings Brazilian Austerity 5. Colombian Violence Hits Panama 6. More Paramilitary Murders in Colombia 7. Honduran Indigenous Leaders Freed & Other News 8. Honduran Students Protest University Corruption 9. Chile: Amnesty Lifted, FBI Opens Files 10. Spanish Judge Sets Bail for Argentine Ex-Colonel 11. Puerto Rico: New Ruling on Citizenship, Anti-Gay Law Dropped 12. Sweatshops Strike Back: Haiti, Mexico, US 13. Sweatshop Furor in Nicaragua 14. Other News: El Salvador, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela 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. To subscribe, send a check or money order for US $25 payable to Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012. Please specify if you want the electronic or print version: they are identical in content, but the electronic version is delivered directly to your email address; the print version is sent via first class mail. For more information about electronic subscriptions, contact wnu@igc.apc.org. Back issues and source materials are available on request. If you are accessing this Update for free on electronic newsgroups, we would appreciate any financial support you can contribute. We are a small, all-volunteer organization funded solely through subscriptions and contributions. Please also help spread the word about the Update. If you know someone who might be interested in subscribing, send their email (or regular mail) address to and request a free one-month trial subscription to the Weekly News Update on the Americas. 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. OVER 600 ARRESTED AT SCHOOL OF AMERICAS PROTEST On Nov. 16, nearly 2,000 people took part in a demonstration to close the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia. Six hundred and one protesters were arrested as they marched with crosses bearing the names of SOA victims onto the army base in a silent funeral procession, led by pallbearers carrying eight coffins filled with petitions with more than 100,000 signatures calling for the closing of SOA. All 601 people arrested were released; 28 of them who had entered Fort Benning during previous protests were charged with crimes. On Nov. 19, judge William L. Slaughter sentenced three of the protesters to six months in federal prison and a $3,000 fine after they pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of "unlawful reentry" at the US District Court in Columbus, Georgia. The three are Carol Richardson, Director of SOA Watch in Washington, DC; Anne Herman, a grandmother and advocate for the poor in Binghamton, NY; and Richard Streb, a World War II combat veteran and retired professor of history and education from Roanoke, VA. Twenty-five others who were in court on Nov. 19 chose to appear before a federal judge at a later date. SOA has been nicknamed the "School of the Assassins" by its opponents because its graduates repeatedly have been linked with murders and other human rights abuses in Latin America. SOA trains between 900 and 2,000 soldiers a year at an annual cost of $20 million dollars to US taxpayers. The protest was held on Nov. 16 to mark the 8th anniversary of the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador. Nineteen of the 26 Salvadoran officers accused in the Jesuit massacre were trained at SOA. [SOA Watch Press Release 11/17/97, 11/19/97] *2. ANTI-CUBA TERROR PLOTS EXPOSED; RIGHTWING LEADER DIES On Nov. 16 the Miami Herald published the results of a two-month investigation into 11 bomb attacks that took place at Cuban tourist hotels and one Cuban restaurant between Apr. 12 and Sept. 4. The generally conservative newspaper said that its investigation "largely supported the Cuban police version" that the bombings, in which an Italian tourist was killed, "were the work of Salvadorans and Cubans abroad and not, as rumored in Havana, the work of opponents inside the island." The Herald confirmed earlier reports in its Spanish-language edition, El Nuevo Herald [see Updates #398, 405], that a key figure behind the bombings is Cuban-born rightwinger Luis Faustino Clemente Posada Carriles, a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "asset" since the early 1960s. Training and coordination for the bombings was handled by a still unidentified Cuban man in his 30s. The actual bombings were carried out by a gang of Salvadoran car thieves: Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, who was arrested in Havana on Sept. 4; Jose Eduardo Ramirez, a classmate of Cruz Leon in El Salvador's Gen. Gerardo Barrios Military Academy in 1991 before they both dropped out; former Academy employee Victor M. Palma; and the gang's leader, Francisco "Gordito" Chavez. Salvadoran police investigated illegal activities by the gang in the middle 1990s, but no arrests were ever made. Salvadoran intelligence officials say "Gordito" Chavez' father, Francisco Chavez Diaz, was "extremely close to several senior army officers who were highly influential in El Salvador in the 1980s," according to the Herald. At that time Chavez Diaz was reportedly an arms dealer who supplied weapons to the US-backed Nicaraguan contra rebels; that's how he met Posada Carriles, who at the time was supplying the contra operation from a secret warehouse in El Salvador. Rightwing Cuban-Americans told the Miami Herald that Posada Carriles raised some $15,000 in Miami for the bombing plot in the middle of last year. "Some of the money came from big names but not the well-known organizations," one unidentified Cuban- American told the reporters. The paper's sources refused to give names, noting that US neutrality laws prohibit plotting armed operations against other nations. [MH 11/16/97] On Nov. 18 the US government's Assassination Records Review Board released 1,500 pages of documents relating to the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination of US president John Kennedy. The documents include plans drawn up by the US military, on the request of President Kennedy and his brother, then-attorney general Robert Kennedy, as part of "Operation Mongoose," a covert effort to eliminate the leftist government of Cuban president Fidel Castro Ruz. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US armed forces' top command, concluded that "military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow" the Cuban government. Pentagon planners proposed various pretexts for an invasion. "We could blow up a US warship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," they wrote. "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated)." On Mar. 13, 1962 the Joint Chiefs of Staff endorsed these proposals for killing US and Cuban civilians as "suitable for planning purposes." [New York Times 11/19/97, 11/23/97] A man long associated with the US government's Cuba policy, rightwing Cuban-American leader and multi-millionaire Jorge Mas Canosa, died in Miami on the afternoon of Nov. 23 at the age of 58 from complications of Paget's disease. [National Public Radio 11/23/97; Notimex 11/23/97] Mas Canosa headed the rightwing Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and the giant Mastec telecommunications firm; he was hospitalized three times this year because of complications from medication he was taking for his condition, although CANF officials denied that he was seriously ill [see Update #402]. A federal grand jury in San Juan, Puerto Rico, has charged four Cuban emigres with illegal weapons possession and lying to authorities but failed to bring a more serious charge of conspiracy to murder. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 11/23/97 from AP] The four were detained in Puerto Rico on Oct. 28 while taking a boat belonging to CANF board of directors member Juan Antonio Llama towards the Venezuelan island of Margarita, apparently with the intention of assassinating Fidel Castro as he attended the 7th Ibero-American Summit there [see Update #406]. *3. POLICE AND MILITARY MIX IT UP IN MEXICO CITY An elite Mexico City police unit known as the "Zorros" (foxes) mutinied for nearly 24 hours on Nov. 19 and Nov. 20 when army generals attempted to arrest 14 agents wanted in connection with six murders that took place in September. The Zorros put on ski masks and barricaded themselves in their headquarters in the Tlahuac delegacion (borough) when the generals wouldn't give in to a demand for the 14 agents to be accompanied by a lawyer. The standoff ended the next day when several hundred soldiers dressed in police uniforms seized control of the headquarters and ransacked the Zorros' dormitories. Six Zorros and three soldiers were injured in fistfights and rock-throwing incidents. [La Jornada (Mexico) 11/21/97; New York Times 11/20/97, 11/21/97] The mutiny was the latest incident coming out of the detention, torture and execution of six youths in the high-crime Buenos Aires neighborhood on the night of Sept. 8. Dozens of members of the Zorros and another elite unit known as the "Jaguares" (jaguars) have been charged in the "Buenos Aires case" [see Updates #398, 399, 401, 404]. Agents now say that a special military unit was also involved and that the entire operation had been planned by the commander of a motorcycle unit, Col. Jesus Alonso Valdes, as revenge against people he thought had mugged him earlier in the year, stealing about $375 and a Rolex watch. Col. Valdes is now being held in the city's main army installation, along with Zorros head Brig. Gen. Jose Lamberto Ponce and Jaguares head Lt. Col. Moctezuma Zepeda. [LJ 11/21/97; Clarin (Buenos Aires) 11/20/97, 11/22/97] The mutiny came just two weeks before Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) is to be sworn in on Dec. 5 as the first elected governor of the Federal District (DF), which includes Mexico City. Cardenas himself was in San Francisco attempting to bring US private investment into the cash-strapped DF. Asked about the incident, the governor-elect limited himself to calling for "strict compliance with the law" in making arrests, presumably referring to the military's attempt to deny the police agents a lawyer. [LJ 11/21/97] *4. "ASIAN CONTAGION" BRINGS BRAZILIAN AUSTERITY On Nov. 10 Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced a package of 51 austerity measures to shore up the real, the dollar-backed currency he designed in 1994 when he was finance minister; the real's success in curbing inflation is credited with Cardoso's victory over Luis Inacio Lula da Silva of the leftist Workers Party (PT) in presidential elections in October of that year [see "Former Leftist Cardoso Wins Presidency in Brazil," Weekly News Update Supplement 10/8/97]. The austerity plan is expected to save the government $20 billion by laying off 33,000 government federal temporary workers; freezing government workers' salaries in 1998; raising the income tax 10% for two years; and raising taxes on gasoline, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages by 5%. The new measures followed a series of dramatic declines in Brazilian stock markets set off in late October by the Southeast Asian financial crisis [see Update #404], and the Oct. 30 decision by the Brazilian Central Bank to double interest rates to more than 40%. The markets fell again by about 6% on Nov. 7, precipitating the announcement of the austerity plan. [New York Times 11/11/97; Washington Post 11/11/97] "We are very worried that these measures, along with the increase in the interest rates...will create recession and constrain the economy," said Horacio Lafer Piva, vice president of the Sao Paulo Federation of Industries. [WP 11/11/97] Brazilian stocks were hit again on Nov. 12, with the Sao Paulo exchange plunging by 10.20% and the Rio de Janeiro market by 10.18%. The Dow Jones index of New York stocks fell 2.08%, and the Mexican stock index fell 4.25%. [La Jornada 11/13/97] "Asia is much worse than people think," said David Shulman, chief equity strategist at Salomon Brothers in New York, "and the Asian contagion has moved to Brazil." [NYT 11/13/97] *5. COLOMBIAN VIOLENCE HITS PANAMA On Nov. 15 a group of 40 to 50 armed individuals--or as many as 200 according to some local media--attacked a police station in the small town of Boca de Cupe, in Panama's Darien province. Three police agents were wounded as they fled; according to press reports, one police agent died when he threw himself into a river to escape the shootout. Local press reports said that the assailants cut the electricity in Boca de Cupe and robbed a health center and a shopping center, taking medicines and an electrical energy generator. The town is home to some 600 indigenous Panamanians of the Embera tribe, living alongside many Colombian immigrants, many of whom are undocumented. Authorities have not identified the attackers, but media sources have suggested that they are either leftwing guerrillas or rightwing paramilitary groups from Colombia which operate in the jungle regions around the Panamanian border. Several months ago the Panamanian government sent a contingent of some 2,000 specialized counterinsurgency police troops to try to control the border situation. However, the police have had little success. Some observers have suggested that the Panamanian government's apparent passivity concerning the situation in Darien is a tactic to justify the presence of US soldiers in the area. [La Prensa (Honduras) 11/18/97 & 11/21/97 from AP; El Colombiano (Medellin) 11/19/97 from AFP] The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has denied responsibility for the attacks in Darien. Panamanian daily La Prensa reported that a FARC representative spoke with members of the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) over the weekend of Nov. 23 and told them that the authors of the attacks in Darien belong to a dissident group "not linked" to the FARC. "The policy designed by the leadership bodies of the FARC prohibits, under any consideration, the incursion of its men in the territory of neighboring countries," said a communique sent by the FARC to Panama's military command, as reported by the daily El Panama America. Panamanian daily El Universal quoted FARC diplomatic commission member Olga Martinez, who blamed the attacks on paramilitary groups supported by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with the goal of maintaining US military bases in Panama. PRD legislator Miguel Bush also charged that the armed attacks in the Darien are orchestrated by the CIA, in an attempt to demonstrate Panama's alleged inability to protect the canal. [Notimex 11/23/97] *6. MORE PARAMILITARY MURDERS IN COLOMBIA On Nov. 21 paramilitary groups murdered at least 14 campesinos in Viota municipality, in the central Colombian department of Cundinamarca. According to the official police report, 15 heavily armed men in camouflage military uniforms showed up at the La Horqueta farm, between Viota and Tocaima, and murdered six men and a woman. One of the victims was able to kill one of the assailants before dying. Minutes later, the same paramilitary group went to another farm close by and killed two men, three women and two adolescents. [El Colombiano 11/22/97] Eyewitnesses say the assailants went door to door, taking people from their homes, tying them up and shooting them point blank. [Agencia de Noticias Nueva Colombia (ANNCOL) 11/22/97] The police reported on Nov. 20 that armed individuals dressed in military clothing with high-powered weapons had murdered three miners and one other worker in the municipality of Amalfi, in northeastern Antioquia. Three of the victims were decapitated. All were local residents with no prior records. [EC 11/21/97] The 32 families living in the Inaia-Sue housing development in Tenjo municipality, Cundinamarca, have decided to abandon their homes because of threats and violence from a rightwing paramilitary group called Colombia Without Guerrillas (COLSINGUE). Members of COLSINGUE murdered Leonardo Tibaquira, one of the project's guards, on Nov. 16, and left pamphlets threatening the other residents that they must abandon their homes if they don't want to face the same fate. The residents believe they are being forced from their homes because of statements made by DAS director Gen. Luis Enrique Montenegro, who on Oct. 8 told the media that a raid at Inaia-Sue had led to the dismantling of a network of money launderers associated with leftist rebels. [EC 11/21/97] *7. HONDURAN INDIGENOUS LEADERS FREED & OTHER NEWS On Nov. 18 Honduran indigenous leaders Salvador Zuniga and Candido Martinez were released from jail after a court ruled that the Oct. 12 destruction of a statue of Christopher Columbus did not constitute a crime against the nation's cultural heritage. On their release, Zuniga and Martinez were greeted by hundreds of supporters who had come from all over the country to demand their release; they then went directly to the United Nations (UN) building to lift a hunger strike by dozens of supporters who had been fasting for five days [see Update #407]. [Communique 11/19/97 from nancy%vp@sdnhon.org.hn] The Honduran National Coordinating Council of Health Workers decided on Nov. 19 to suspend a month-long strike by hospital workers to renew dialogue with a government commission. The decision was made after the government insisted it would not negotiate while the strike continued, and demanded that the strikers return to work within 24 hours. [La Prensa (Honduras) 11/20/97] One prisoner died, six were wounded and 110 escaped on Nov. 15 from a prison in Gracias, Lempira province, after rebelling and setting fire to the building. Police guarding the prison shot seven prisoners as they tried to escape; Isidoro Mejia died of his wounds. The uprising began with a protest by prisoners demanding better conditions and an end to overcrowding. The prison was built for 150 but now holds 327 prisoners. So far this year prisoners have burned prisons in Trujillo, Santa Rosa de Copan, Choluteca and Santa Barbara over similar demands. Some 90% of Honduran prisoners have not yet been sentenced. [Notimex 11/15/97; El Diario-La Prensa 11/17/97 from EFE] *8. HONDURAN STUDENTS PROTEST UNIVERSITY CORRUPTION On Nov. 13, hundreds of students seized the building of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) to demand that they be allowed to participate in the Nov. 13 internal elections of the Federation of Honduran University Students (FEUH). Violence erupted when members of the University Reform Front (FRU) used rocks and sticks to eject members of the rightwing United Democratic University Student Front (FUUD) from the building and FUUD members fought back with rocks and pistols. Several people were hurt. The protest was sparked by the FUUD- controlled university student electoral council's decision to bar FRU members from taking part in the elections. [La Prensa (Honduras) 11/14/97; Notimex 11/13/97] Human rights organizations charge that since 1982 the FEUH has been controlled by the FUUD, which was supported by then rector Osvaldo Ramos Soto. Ramos, an adviser to then armed forces chief Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, helped gather information for the lists that Alvarez used to order the abductions and subsequent disappearances of nearly 184 grassroots leaders during the 1980s. "We want to end the dictatorship of Osvaldo Ramos, corruption and obscurantism [opposition to reform]," shouted demonstrators from the FRU, which was formed in the 1970s at the UNAH. FRU leader Ricardo Orellana charged that FEUH president Mario Castillo--a militant in the FUUD--blocked them from registering for the FEUH elections. FRU leaders say that current rector Ana Belen Castillo protects FEUH president Castillo because they are related and belong to the same conservative current. The rector denied the charges and warned she would take action to prevent disturbances at the campus. [Notimex 11/13/97] *9. CHILE: AMNESTY LIFTED, FBI OPENS FILES On Nov. 20 Chile's Supreme Court lifted an amnesty applied by a military court to a case involving the detention and disappearance of Socialist Party members Rodolfo Espejo and Gregorio Lopez on Aug. 15, 1974, under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The court decision is primarily symbolic since during the trial no one was able to identify the individuals who detained Espejo and Lopez, so there are no perpetrators who can be charged with the crime. In addition, the court did not order the reopening of the case for a new investigation, but merely blocked it from being considered a definitively closed case. [El Diario-La Prensa 11/21/97 from AP; Clarin 11/21/97] The US government has announced it will allow Spanish judge Manuel Garcia Castellon to come to Washington to examine documents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concerning human rights violations in Chile. Castellon has been investigating a case in Spain concerning human rights violations committed against Spanish citizens by the Chilean military under the Pinochet dictatorship. [ED-LP 11/16/97 from EFE] The announcement that the FBI will open its archives on Chile has provoked fear among the Chilean army ranks. The FBI documents include the testimonies, never before released, of two individuals arrested in the US: Michael Townley and Capt. Armando Fernandez Larios, both top agents of Pinochet's secret police, the DINA. [Clarin 11/21/97] A new trial will begin soon in Santiago against DINA agents for the murder of Chilean chemist Eugenio Berrios Sagredo, killed in Uruguay in April 1995. Berrios, who worked for the DINA at Townley's home, was implicated in the September 1976 car bomb murder of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier. To avoid allowing Berrios to testify in the Letelier murder trial in Santiago, unknown persons took Berrios from Chile to Argentina in 1992. He then ended up in the custody of a group of current and former military personnel in Uruguay, according to a report published by the Chilean daily La Tercera on Nov. 20. In December 1992, Berrios managed to escape and ask for help at a police station in the Uruguayan beach city of El Pinar. The police returned him to those who were "guarding" him, and again he disappeared. His body was found on Apr. 13, 1995 on a beach in Uruguay [see Updates #176, 177, 182, 314, 331]. Because there was no evidence that Berrios was murdered, a trial was never initiated. [Clarin 11/21/97] *10. SPANISH JUDGE SETS BAIL FOR ARGENTINE EX-COLONEL On Nov. 18 in Madrid, Judge Baltasar Garzon set $35,000 bail for Argentine former navy captain Adolfo Scilingo, who is on trial for human rights violations of Spanish citizens during Argentina's dirty war [see Update #402]. Scilingo remains in a Madrid prison; he says he cannot pay the bail. Even if he pays bail and is released, he must remain in Spain and appear in court every week. Lawyer for the plaintiffs Carlos Slepoy told Clarin he will present an appeal to block Scilingo's release. Scilingo claims he is "financially ruined"; his lawyer is asking the court to pay for Scilingo's food and lodging in Spain, and to pay for his family to join him from Argentina. Scilingo's wife says she is penniless, and doesn't even have enough to feed her children, let alone pay the $35,000 bail. She says she will try to get bail money from friends and relatives. [Clarin 11/19/97] *11. PUERTO RICO: NEW RULING ON CITIZENSHIP, ANTI-GAY LAW DROPPED Puerto Rico's Supreme Court ruled on Nov. 18 that even though independence activist Juan Mari Bras had renounced his US citizenship, his vote in Puerto Rico's November 1996 elections was valid. However, the court also ruled that the Puerto Rican legislature has the right to set US citizenship as a prerequisite for voting, reversing a ruling by a lower court which had declared such prerequisites unconstitutional [see Update #352]. The Supreme Court decision came a day after pro-statehood governor Pedro Rossello signed a bill setting US citizenship as a requirement for Puerto Rican citizenship. [El Diario-La Prensa 11/19/97 from AP] Puerto Rico's Senate has tabled a proposal to ban marriage between same sex couples [see Updates #402, 405]. The Senate voted 16 to 7 on Nov. 3 to refer the proposal to the Joint Commission for the Revision of the Civil Code, a forum which is carrying out a complete evaluation of the norms established in Puerto Rican civil law. The evaluation will take four years. The move to pass the proposal off to the Joint Commission was orchestrated with bipartisan support by Senator Kenneth McClintock, a member of the ruling New Progressive Party (PNP). Furious at the move, the evangelical leaders who had promoted the measure pushed for a second vote; in the second vote, held on Nov. 4, an even greater majority of 19 senators voted to hand the bill over to the Commission. "We know that there are several senators who are defending the interests of the homosexuals and the lesbians," evangelical minister Jorge Raschke--the main force behind the bill--told reporters. [ED-LP 11/5/97 from correspondent] *12. SWEATSHOPS STRIKE BACK: HAITI, MEXICO, US The Haitian labor group Batay Ouvriye (Workers' Struggle) reports that the L.V. Myles apparel corporation has now fired more than 150 of 500 employees from its Haitian maquiladora (assembly plant for export) in a campaign to stamp out protests and to intimidate workers. The firings began the weekend of Oct. 25 after a group of workers spoke to a fact-finding team they believed was sent by the Walt Disney Company, which subcontracts apparel assembly with L.V. Myles and a number of other companies with Haitian assembly plants [see Update #407]. [It is not clear who the "fact-finders" really were.] L.V. Myles' New York office denies that the firings are arbitrary. Letters of protest can be sent to Disney president Michael Eisner at fax 818-846-7319 and L.V. Miles president Paul Miller at fax 212-268-1845 (note new number). [Labor Alerts/Labor News (Campaign for Labor Rights) 11/20/97] The Han Young de Mexico maquiladora in Tijuana, Mexico, has fired 12 leaders of an independent union which the plant's welders voted to join on Oct. 6 [see Updates #394, 402, 403, 404, 407]. The company, which produces tractor trailer chassis for Hyundai Motors in San Diego, has said that it would dismiss all 55 workers who voted for the Union of Metal, Steel and Iron Industry Workers (STIMAHCS), a member of the independent Authentic Labor Front (FAT). The company is now hiring new workers who are being bused in from the eastern state of Veracruz. Four Han Young workers--Miguel Angel Sanchez, Miguel Angel Meza, Armando Hernandez and Fernando Flores--began a hunger strike on Nov. 20 outside the offices of Baja California Norte governor Hector Teran Teran. The workers accuse the governor, a member of the conservative National Action Party (PAN), of manipulating the local branch of the National Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JNCA), which threw out the vote on Nov. 10. The FAT's Bertha Lujan charges that the local JNCA president, Carlos Perez Astorga, was fired after he acknowledged the FAT victory and was replaced by a president who would oppose the independent union. The workers say their hunger strike will be joined by additional workers each week. They plan to fast until their demands for union recognition are met. [Mexican Labor News and Analysis vol. 2, #21, 11/16/97; Labor Alerts/Labor News 11/17/97; United Electrical Workers (UE) alert 11/19/97; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/21/97] In the US, a group charged with establishing standards to keep US apparel from being assembled in sweatshops appears to be split because of a demand by garment companies for 50% representation on a tripartite governing board. The White House Apparel Industry Partnership--set up by US president Bill Clinton to bring together apparel giants Nike, Reebok, L.L. Bean and Liz Claiborne with human rights groups and the Union of Needletrade, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE)--is supposed to finalize its standards in a meeting on Nov. 24 but may not be able to agree. [New York Times 11/22/97] US labor opposition to sweatshop conditions in maquiladoras may have been seriously weakened on Nov. 17 when former US district judge Kenneth Conboy barred Teamster president Ron Carey from running for reelection. Conboy held that Carey had known of a plan for illegal fundraising in his campaign, and also implicated several other union presidents who like Carey were prominent in the labor movement's new "reform" leadership. These leaders had been successful over recent months in mobilizing their membership around demands that trade accords include protections for labor rights. The Washington Post noted that the ruling came just one week after "organized labor humiliated both the Clinton administration and the Republican House [of Representatives] leadership" by forcing the White House to postpone a vote on a "fast track" trade bill that omitted labor rights protections [see Update #407]. [WP 11/18/97] Correction: Due to a word processing error, the name of anti- union political cartoonist Oliphant appeared in Update #407 as "Elephant." *13. SWEATSHOP FUROR IN NICARAGUA On Nov. 17 three workers from maquiladoras in Nicaragua's Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone charged that they and two other employees had been fired for cooperating with investigators from the US television program "Hard Copy." The program ran a three- part series from Nov. 11 to Nov. 13 detailing sweatshop conditions in Las Mercedes plants producing clothes for US retailers like K-Mart, Wal-Mart and JC Penney; the investigation was carried out by "Hard Copy" and the National Labor Committee (NLC), a New York-based labor rights organization [see Update #407]. In a press conference at the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH), Julieta Antonia Alonso Lopez, Jose Efrain Miranda and Mao Selim Ramos Rugama said that they and two other workers were dismissed on various pretexts after they helped the investigators bring a video camera secretly into the zone. Union leader Pedro Ortega Mendez said that Lucas Wong, an official of a Taiwanese maquiladora in Las Mercedes, had threatened to take him to court because of his union's role in the expose. Ortega is general secretary of the Textile, Garment, Leather and Footwear Federation, an affiliate of the Sandinista Workers Federation (CST) which is organizing in the free trade zone. [Barricada (Managua) 11/19/97] The program's revelations created an uproar in Nicaragua. Gilberto Wong, CEO of the country's Industrial Free Trade Zone Corporations, said on Nov. 14 that after the program was shown he got a phone call from the president of the Taiwanese Chi-Hsing companies ordering the temporary suspension of a $17 million construction project that was to start in the zone in March 1998. "The companies' president said that buyers of textile industry products have started to cancel purchases because of the false accusations on `Hard Copy,'" Wong told reporters. [La Tribuna (Managua) 11/15/97] Labor Minister Wilfredo Navarro took reporters on a tour of Las Mercedes on Nov. 14 to demonstrate that there were no children working in maquiladoras there. The reporters agreed that they saw no underage employees, but asked if there were no labor code violations. "This is nothing new," Navarro said, "there are problems here... This isn't the earthly paradise... But tell me, where are the children?" [Barricada 11/15/97] On Nov. 17 the head of the Nicaraguan National Assembly's labor committee, Deputy Jose Espinoza of the centrist National Project (PRONAL) party, announced that the legislature took the "Hard Copy"/NLC charges seriously and would investigate. [William Grigsby news summary (Managua) 11/18/97] Concern about the maquiladoras increased on Nov. 19 when a young worker, Oscar Rivas Artola from the town of Tipitapa, was killed by an electric charge from the machine he was using in a Free Zone plant; he had complained earlier that the machine was malfunctioning. The next day the Labor Ministry (MITRAB) announced that there might be a temporary shutdown of the plant, owned by the Taiwanese Nien Hsing company. [Barricada 11/20/97, 11/21/97] During the Nov. 18 press conference by the three fired workers, CENIDH official Bayardo Izaba Solis announced that Nicaraguans might form their own National Labor Committee as early as January to monitor labor abuses. [Barricada 11/18/97] On the evening of Nov. 20 representatives of the Health Ministry (MINSA) and some 700 residents, interns and social workers agreed on 13 of 21 points in a labor dispute; the medical workers appeared to win their demand to remain covered as MINSA employees. [William Grigsby news summary 11/21/97] About 700 medical workers began a partial strike on Nov. 12 in 70 Managua area clinics and hospitals in the western city of Leon and the northern city of Esteli to protest MINSA's plans to reclassify them as students rather than doctors. The interns and residents were told to negotiate with universities to get a stipend to replace their current salaries, according to resident Marta Garcia from Berta Calderon Hospital in Managua. Nicaraguan doctors are among the worst paid in Central America, with monthly salaries between $60 and $100. [La Prensa (Honduras) 11/18/97 from AFP] *14. IN OTHER NEWS... On Nov. 17 Salvadoran president Armando Calderon Sol vetoed a legislative decree that would have forgiven the agrarian debt of some 45,000 Salvadoran producers, calling it unconstitutional. Calderon argued that the legislature did not have the authority to make laws concerning the debt. [La Prensa (Honduras) 11/18/97 from AFP]... The Bolivian government announced on Nov. 19 that it will compensate victims of a December 1996 attack by army and police troops on the mining communities of Capasirca and Amayapampa in southern Bolivia [see Updates #360, 361, 364]. The families of the 10 people killed in the massacre will receive about $19,000 each, while some 40 people who were injured will get about $9,000 each. The compensation payment was recommended last August by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (CIDH) of the Organization of American States (OAS), which sent a team to Bolivia to investigate the case [see Update #376]. However, the commission cleared the government of then-president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada of responsibilities in the incident. The shooting death of police commander Col. Eddy Rivas during the massacre remains unsolved [see Update #366]. [ED-LP 11/21/97 from AFP]... Two students and two police agents were injured and some 30 young strikers were arrested on Nov. 20 in street protests in Ecuador. The students are blocking streets and confronting police to protest efforts by Congress to move forward the privatization of state enterprises and block the right to strike. The protest strike is led by the leftist Popular Democratic Movement (MPD), which has influence in the student and teacher organizations. The teachers have threatened a national strike. [ED-LP 11/21/97 from AFP]... The Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in Brazil's Amazonia state has called for an investigation into the death of Elizeu Oliveira da Silva, a local leader of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in Apui municipality, who was found dead on Nov. 12 at the local police station. The local police chief, two doctors and the local public prosecutor all claim that Oliveira hanged himself. The CPT, Oliveira's relatives, the local rural trade union and the MST doubt the suicide theory and say that his body showed signs of torture. [News from Brazil supplied by Servico Brasileiro de Justica e Paz (SEJUP) #293, 11/20/97]... Oil workers in Venezuela held a 12- hour strike on Nov. 14 to demand better wages. The strike was called by the Federation of Oil Workers (FEDEPETROL), which represents 50,000 workers; the union is accusing negotiators of the state-run Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) oil company of using delaying tactics in talks over a new collective bargaining agreement. [ED-LP 11/14/97 from EFE] 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. Send your request to ======================================================================= Weekly News Update on the Americas * Nicaragua Solidarity Network of NY 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012 * 212-674-9499 fax: 212-674-9139 http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html * wnu@igc.apc.org ======================================================================= ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcamer-12.15.97-10:15:10-21613