WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
ISSUE #883, JANUARY 14, 2007
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012
(212) 674-9499 <wnu@xxxxxxx>
1. Guatemala: Mining Firm Evicts Families
2. Venezuela: Chavez Nationalizing?
3. Nicaragua: Ortega Is President Again
4. Nicaragua: Abortion Law Challenged
5. Cuba: US Charges Posada With Fraud
ISSN#: 1084-922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news
from Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a
progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the
Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. If
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*1. GUATEMALA: MINING FIRM EVICTS FAMILIES
On Jan. 8, 430 Guatemalan police agents and about 200 soldiers
evicted 308 indigenous Maya Q'eq'chi families that had been
living on disputed land in the communities of La Union and La
Pisa, El Estor municipality in the eastern department of Izabal.
Security forces evicted another 175 Q'eq'chi families the next
day, on Jan. 9, from the nearby communities of La Revolucion and
La Paz. The agents were acting on eviction orders requested by
the Compania Guatemalteca de Niquel (CGN), a subsidiary of the
Canadian Skye Resources Nickel Mining Company. Judge Jose
Reynaldo Galvan Casasola signed the eviction orders, according to
local residents.
The evictions were carried out in an orderly way at La Union on
Jan. 8; Public Prosecutor Rafael Andrade Escobar was present as
workers contracted by CGN-Skye Resources carefully disassembled
the families' homes. But at La Pisa later in the day, police
agents burned or otherwise destroyed some of the houses. At La
Revolucion on Jan. 9 the CGN-Skye Resources workers burned 18
homes as helicopters hovered overhead and riot police surrounded
the residents; prosecutor Andrade Escobar finally ordered the
workers to stop the destruction and disassemble the remaining
houses.
The land has been the subject of various disputes since the
1960s. The Q'eq'chi families moved into the land from Chichipate,
east of El Estor, in September 2006. According to legislative
deputy Alfredo de Leon Solano, the eviction orders used on Jan.
8-9 were irregular and also targeted 100 families that had been
living in the area for more than 50 years and 80 families living
there for more than 30 years. An illegal attempt by the National
Civil Police (PNC) to evict people from the area without a proper
eviction order resulted in several injuries on Nov. 12.
Guatemalan groups and the Guatemala Human Rights Commission
(GHRC)-USA are asking for letters condemning the evictions to
Skye Resources president and CEO Ian Austin (email
info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), Guatemalan president Oscar Berger
Perdomo (email presidente@xxxxxxxxxxxx), Governance Minister
Carlos Vielman (fax 011 502 2362 0237, email
ministro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx). Sample letters are available from GHRC-
USA at ghrc-usa@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [GHRC/USA urgent action 1/12/07,
some information from the National Indigenous and Campesino
Coordinating Committee (CONIC) and Rights Action; Chiapas
Indymedia 1/9/07]
*2. VENEZUELA: CHAVEZ NATIONALIZING?
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez Frias started his third term--
his second full six-year term--on Jan. 10 in a ceremony before
the 167-deputy National Assembly. No foreign dignitaries attended
the Jan. 10 inauguration. According to Colombian foreign minister
Maria Consuelo Araujo, Chavez had made the decision not to have a
diplomatic presence. Instead, she said, heads of state would be
attending the inauguration of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega
later the same day. Chavez himself flew to Managua after his own
inauguration. [El Universal (Caracas) 1/10/07]
Chavez used the ceremony to emphasize his plans for what he calls
"21st-century socialism." In a three-hour speech he called for
the National Assembly to help the "acceleration of tempos" by
passing a special law empowering him to issue decrees with the
status of law. He has also been pushing for his backers to unite
in a single socialist party. On Jan. 8 he had announced his
intention to nationalize electric and telecommunication services
and to increase the government's stake in oil projects in the
Orinoco Basin. "All that was privatized, let it be nationalized,"
he said, referring to privatizations under neoliberal economic
policies in the 1990s. Shares of Compania Anonima Telefonos de
Venezuela (CANTV), a state telephone company that was privatized
in 1991, promptly fell 14% on New York stock exchanges. [La
Jornada (Mexico) 1/11/07 from correspondent; El Diario-La Prensa
(NY) 1/11/07 from EFE; New York Times 1/9/07 from correspondent]
In press conferences on Jan. 11, cabinet ministers indicated that
the nationalizations wouldn't be as dramatic as Chavez had
suggested. Telecommunications Minister Jesse Chacon explained
that CANTV would be the only telecommunications company affected.
Currently New York-based Verizon manages CANTV and owns 28.5% of
the shares; the Spanish firm Telefonica owns 6.9%, the government
owns 6.5% and CANTV employees own 11.7%. Verizon had planned to
sell its stake in April for $677 million to a joint venture of
America Movil and Telefonos de Mexico SA, controlled by Mexican
billionaire Carlos Slim; this plan is now on hold. Finance
Minister Rodrigo Cabezas insisted on Jan. 11 that CANTV
"[s]hareholders will receive...the fair value of their assets....
[A]ny decisions to be made are under the current laws.
Rationality will prevail; the process will [not be] traumatic."
But a major electric company, La Electricidad de Caracas, will be
nationalized, Cabezas said, even though unlike CANTV it was
started as a private company. [ED 1/9/07 from AP; International
Herald Tribune 1/11/07 from AP; El Universal 1/11/07 (Spanish and
English editions)]
*3. NICARAGUA: ORTEGA IS PRESIDENT AGAIN
Daniel Ortega Saavedra, leader of the leftist Sandinista National
Liberation Front (FSLN), was sworn in as Nicaragua's president on
Jan. 10 in Managua's Omar Torrijos Plaza of the Non-Aligned
States with 14 heads of state and some 300,000 Nicaraguans in
attendance. Leftist leaders such as Bolivian president Evo
Morales, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez Frias and Ecuadoran
president-elect Rafael Correa were present, along with
rightwingers like Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and Mexican
president Felipe Calderon. On Jan. 8 US president George W. Bush
phoned Ortega and congratulated him and the Nicaraguan people for
their "commitment to democracy," according to US national
security spokesperson Gordon Johndroe.
Ortega was the coordinator of the council that headed the
Nicaraguan government after a 1979 revolution overthrew the
Somoza family dictatorship, and he was president from 1985 to
1990. He failed in three attempts to regain the presidency--in
1990, 1996 and 2001--but won on Nov. 5, 2006 with about 38% of
the vote. Ortega's presidency may not lead to drastic changes.
Rightwing parties continue to hold a majority in the National
Assembly; Ortega's vice president, Jaime Morales Carazo, was a
leader of the US-backed contra movement that tried to overthrow
the FSLN government in the 1980s [see Update #874]. [La Prensa
(Managua) 1/10/07; La Nacion (Costa Rica) 1/11/07 from AFP; BBC
News 1/10/07]
On Jan. 11 Ortega signed on to the Bolivarian Alternative for the
Americas (ALBA), a trade pact promoted by Chavez as an
alternative to US-sponsored trade accords. Cuba and Venezuela
signed on Dec. 14, 2004, and Bolivia joined on Apr. 29, 2006;
Chavez, Morales and Cuban vice president Jose Ramon Machado
attended the ceremony, in the Ruben Dario Theater. [El Diario de
Yucatan 1/11/07 from DPA]
*4. NICARAGUA: ABORTION LAW CHALLENGED
On Jan. 8 the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (Cenidh) led a march
to the Supreme Court of Justice (CJS) in Managua to file a
constitutional challenge to a law that the National Assembly
passed on Oct. 26 criminalizing all abortions, including
therapeutic abortions when the life of the mother is at risk or
when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Therapeutic
abortion had been legal in Nicaragua for at least 100 years prior
to the new legislation. The CSJ has four months to respond to the
challenge. The law was rushed through the National Assembly in
the days before the Nov. 5 national elections, with the support
of most parties and candidates, including the leftist Sandinista
National Liberation Front (FSLN) and its candidate, current
president Daniel Ortega [see Update #873].
"We cannot teach medical students to kill women who need a
therapeutic abortion," Professor Matilde Jiron of the National
Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) medical faculty said
during the protest. "On the contrary, we must teach them respect
for life and women's rights." Women's groups have collected more
than 100,000 signatures on a petition in favor of therapeutic
abortions and expect to get at least 150,000. The petition will
be presented to the new National Assembly. [El Nuevo Diario
(Managua) 1/8/07, 1/9/07; La Prensa (Managua) 1/9/07]
*5. CUBA: US CHARGES POSADA WITH FRAUD
On Jan. 11 a federal grand jury in El Paso, Texas, indicted
Cuban-born Venezuelan national Luis Posada Carriles, a longtime
"asset" of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), on one count
of fraud and six counts of lying to government agents. Posada has
been in the custody of US immigration authorities since May 17,
2005; he entered the US illegally in March 2005. The charges,
which together carry a maximum sentence of 40 years, enable the
US to continue to hold Posada; federal district judge Philip
Martinez had given the government until Feb. 1 to justify holding
Posada for deportation when it has apparently made no progress in
arranging his removal from the US.
The US charges that Posada defrauded the government by stating on
a September 2005 citizenship application and during an April 2006
naturalization interview that he had entered the US by crossing
the border near Brownsville, Texas, with the assistance of a
smuggler. The US now says that his Florida-based supporter
Santiago Alvarez and others picked him up in the shrimping boat
Santrina at the island of Isla Mujeres, in the southeastern
Mexican state of Quintana Roo, and brought him to the US. Alvarez
and another supporter, Osvaldo Mita, are also charged in the
fraud indictment; they are currently serving sentences of more
than three years for illegal weapon possession. The Cuban
government had long insisted that Alvarez smuggled Posada into
the US in a private boat [see Update #875].
In 2005 Venezuela requested Posada's extradition to face charges
of plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cubana de Aviacion airliner, in
which 73 people died. Posada is also wanted in Cuba for a 1997
hotel bombing which killed an Italian citizen who had been living
in Canada. In April 2004 Posada was sentenced to an eight-year
prison term in Panama in connection with an alleged plot to
assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro Ruiz, but outgoing
Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso pardoned him in August 2004
[see Updates #743, 761].
The US has refused to declare Posada a terrorist or a danger to
the community, and it has failed to act on Venezuela's
extradition request. However, a grand jury in New Jersey is
reportedly looking at evidence from the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) that Posada got money from New Jersey
supporters, along with explosive materials and recruits, to
conduct the 1997 bombing campaign. The grand jury is said to have
issued a subpoena for a tape that journalist Ann Louise Bardach,
then under contract with the New York Times, made of an interview
in which Posada admitted his responsibility for the bombings [see
Updates #441, 442]. [La Nacion (Costa Rica) 1/11/07 from AFP; El
Nuevo Herald (Miami) 1/11/07; Miami Herald 1/12/07]
END
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Weekly News Update on the Americas * Nicaragua Solidarity Network of NY
339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012
phone: 212-674-9499 fax: 212-674-9139 email: wnu@xxxxxxx
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