News of interest from Latin America by David Morris
Vol. 1, No. 2. Monday, September 10, 2007
Bolivia besieged
The first Bolivian government in modern history to be controlled by the country’s indigenous majority is still under siege as opponents, apparently with financial help from the United States government, stage violent demonstrations and plot against President Evo Morales Ayma and Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), the party he represents.Last week Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera met in Washington with John Negroponte of the U.S. State Department to express concern over the use of aid money to support groups opposing the Bolivian government. On the basis of articles by U.S. journalist Eva Golinger, who had earlier documented U.S. aid to opposition groups in Venezuela, the Bolivian executive branch claimed on August 29 that some 89 million dollars of the 134 million sent to Bolivia had been used against the government.
Golinger reported that USAID money had been directed to groups of conservative former elected officials which used it to oppose the Constituent Assembly, to promote separatism in areas rich in natural resources like Santa Cruz, Tarija and Cochabamba, to infiltrate indigenous communities and to promote capitalism and pro-U.S. sentiment.
The opposition is angry over a vote in the lower house of Congress, in which MAS holds a majority of the seats, to dismiss four members of the Constitutional Tribunal on charges of malfeasance; over the lack of support for their demands for regional autonomy; and over a vote by the Constituent Assembly not to take up the question of moving the legislative and executive branches of the government from La Paz to the historical capital of Sucre, the site of the judiciary and a stronghold of rightist opposition to the government.
The 255 members of the Constituent Assembly, chosen by popular vote, began meeting a year ago with the aim of producing the first draft of a constitution by mid-August. The deadline has since been extended to mid-December.
The government says the real aim of agitation over moving the government to Sucre is to defeat the effort to write a new constitution, which would, presumably, insitutionalize government acquisition of idle land and the nationalization of natural resources. The government nationalized hydrocarbons in May, 2006.
Members of the Assembly argue that the location of the government is not a constitutional question but should be decided by referendum.
On September 5 some 3,000 rightist university students armed with rocks and Molotov cocktails marched on the Gran Mariscal, the colonial-era theater in Sucre where the Constituent Assembly meets. Police response resulted in 24 injuries to students and three arrests. The Constituent Assembly has since announced it will suspend its deliberations for a month.
Indigenous, campesino and labor organizations planning to march on Sucre on September 10 in support of the Constituent Assembly hope to draw 100,000 participants.
The question of the Constitutional Tribunal was settled on September 8 when the Senate, which is controlled by the opposition, voted to reinstate the four members the lower house had dismissed.
There is a history of friction over the Bolivian judiciary. It reached a high point last April during a protest by 4,000 miners at the Constitutional Tribunal building when a group of them blew open the doors with dynamite, injuring two police officers. The miners were responding to an opposition senator’s petition to the Tribunal to declare the nationalization of the Pokosoni mine unconstitutional.
President Morales announced on September 5 that a pamphlet had been circulated in Santa Cruz and Sucre, both opposition strongholds, titled “Plan for Getting Rid of the Indian Shit.” In it was a detailed plan for returning the government to the control of the Ladinos, those of European descent.
(Sources: La Jornada, Correo del Sur, Agencia Boliviana de Información, Upside Down World, Prensa Latina)
Violent election
A violent campaign season and a relatively peaceful election day have ended with social democrat Álvaro Colom and retired military officer Otto Pérez facing a November 4 runoff for the presidency of Guatemala. Despite heavy rains and flooding in some parts of the country, a record-breaking 60 percent of voters cast ballots for national legislative offices and governorships as well as the presidency.Presidential candidate and Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú received less than five percent of the vote.
Pérez, of the Partido Patriota, promised a “firm hand” (“mano dura”) to combat the violence that has plagued the country since peace accords signed in 1996 ended 36 years of civil war. He vowed to reinstate the military zones and revive the civilian self-defense patrols dismantled at the end of the war. Pérez attended the U.S. School of the Americas in 1987.
Colom, representing the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza, a party he himself founded, began his political career in 1999 as presidential candidate for a coalition of leftist organizations led by the Unidad Nacional Revolucionaria Guatemalteca, which had been a guerrilla group. He is currently owner of maquilas manufacturing clothing. He offers himself as an alternative to a return to the violent past represented by Pérez.
Despite deep and widespread poverty and pressing economic problems, the dominant topic of the campaign was violence, the legacy of 36 years of civil war, and more than 40 candidates and campaign workers were murdered during the campaign itself. Hardest hit was Rigoberta Menchú’s party, Encuentro por Guatemala, which suffered several murders and other forms of violence, a probable factor in their poor showing at the polls.
Despite receiving support from abroad, notably from Bolivian President Evo Morales, Menchú failed to win much approval from the 40 percent of the Guatemalan population that shares her Mayan heritage. She was perceived as having ties both to Marxist guerrillas and to conservative incumbent President Óscar Berger. With no explanation, she failed to attend an important indigenous summit in March of this year.
Menchú says her campaign nevertheless set a precedent for other women, especially indigenous women, to seek public office. Currently 14 of 158 legislators and eight of 332 mayors in Guatemala are women.
(Sources: Prensa Libre, Prensa Latina, La Hora, El Periódico de Guatemala, Council on Hemispheric Affairs)
Denying the undeniable
The Haitian ambassador to the Dominican Republic has stirred an angry response with comments concerning the treatment of Haitian migrant sugar-cane cutters and the citizenship of children born to them in Dominican territory.Ambassador Fritz Cinéas, claiming to speak for the government, told a meeting of the Corripio Communications Group on August 29 that migrant cane cutters are not subject to harsh treatment in the cane fields or in their living quarters and that they are not slaves. He said he and the Haitian government consider children born to migrants while they are in the Dominican Republic to be Haitian citizens, not Dominicans.
Cinéas began his diplomatic career during the rule of François Duvalier and was later in Jean-Claude Duvalier’s cabinet. He served for a time as Haitian ambassador in Washington, where he was welcomed by the Reagan administration despite accusations of political violence. The interim government of Gérard Latortue appointed him ambassador to the Dominican Republic, where the government of President Leonel Fernández also welcomed him warmly.
Last March, Listín Diario of Santo Domingo reported on its front page that Haitian President René Préval had made similar comments denying the mistreatment of Haitians by Dominicans, a report Préval has denied.
A group of 20 prominent individual Haitians and 30 Haitian organizations in the Dominican Republic issued an open letter challenging Cinéas’s comments and demanding that the Haitian government state clearly its position on the questions. The head of the Haitian foreign service was out of the country but others in the government reportedly contacted Cinéas to ask for an explanation.
The open letter says Cinéas’s comment on the question of citizenship not only reveals a lack of understanding of constitutional principles but “provides a mistaken official argument to those who, in a discriminatory fashion, are opposed to the social integration of Haitians into Dominican society.” The International Court of Human Rights ruled in 2005 that Article 11 of the Dominican constitution states clearly that children born in the country are citizens regardless of the legal status of their parents.
The letter further states that after a quick visit to the bateys, the living quarters provided to the workers, which a sugar company had organized as a public relations effort, the ambassador was able handily to dismiss as exagerations the abundant documentation and the findings of countless human rights organizations over the past 20 years that the workers are subject to deplorable conditions. It added that evidence of modern-day slavery in both countries is undeniable and that Cinéas’s ignorance on the subject is unacceptable.
(Sources: Agence Haïtienne de Presse, AlterPresse, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Listín Diario)
Not the way it is
Sharply divergent views on the continuing presence in Haiti of MINUSTAH, the United Nations stabilization force, are revealed in recent statements by the Haitian prime minister and by a Brazilian lawyer sent to review the situation.After meeting on September 4 with the defense ministers of the nine countries supplying troops for the UN force, Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis repeated his government’s request that the MINUSTAH mandate be extended. Progress has been made in the area of security, he said, but the situation is still precarious. “We should continue in the direction of emphasizing the development of the police force,” he said, “and of making available to them adequate means of accomplishing their mission effectively and professionally.”
But Aderson Bussinger, representing the Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil, an organization of lawyers, returned from a tour of Haiti earlier this year with sharp criticism of the UN force, which is led by Brazil. He compared the role of Brazilians in Haiti to that of United States troops in other countries. “Their presence there is fundamentally military,” he declared. “In my view there is nothing humanitarian about it. What I saw in Haiti is that 85% of the military force is used for repressive activities. So the image we get here, that it is a peace force, that it is humanitarian, that’s not the way it is! I didn’t see schools being built, I didn’t see hospitals being built. I talked with people who had been beaten by our forces and by the police.”
Bussinger stated that the Brazilian military blame the Haitian police for the violence but that in fact the foreign troops routinely support police actions. He said that when there are protests the police are directly repressive while the foreign military remain in the background to confine the demonstrators.
“We should work earnestly,” Alexis reportedly told the defense ministers, “to intensify the struggle against impunity, corruption, smuggling, drug trafficking, with the aim of establishing a state of laws in this country.” Alexis apparently had nothing to say in response to the widespread condemnation of the UN military presense by human rights organizaitons and by Haitian citizens, particularly those living in the poorest areas like Cité Soleil.
Chilean defense minister José Goni Carrasco declared that all the countries making up the UN force in Haiti agreed on the need to deepen and broaden their efforts for the sake of socio-economic development. Haiti needs much more than military support, he said, to improve the lives of its people.
(Sources: Agence Haïtienne de Presse, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra)
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