Colombia’s rebels hit the airwaves

By Karl Penhaul

Bogota, Colombia, Dec. 24— The DJ rests his Russian-made assault rifle across his knees, adjusts the dials on the console in front of him and spins another compact disc.

In a gloomy corner of an abandoned farm outhouse, a small green and yellow parrot called Hamil perches on an array of gadgets and chirps along to a medley of tropical salsa tunes and 1960s protest songs.

Outside, a 12-foot antenna sways in the breeze on top of a finger of mountain that rises high above the jungle canopy. This is Colombia’s rebel radio.

“Against state terrorism and Yankee intervention, this is ‘The Voice of Resistance’ calling our exploited people,” DJ Leonardo Tovar cried into the microphone as he flicked through a stack of some 200 CDs.

Tovar, the son of a Bogota pharmacist, dropped out of a computer studies course at college two years ago to join the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Latin America’s largest surviving 1960s Marxist guerrilla army with some 17,000 combatants and control of up to 40 percent of the country.

After carrying out clandestine political work in the capital, Tovar, in his early 20s, was moved into an 18-guerrilla unit that runs the transmitter of the FARC’s Southern Bloc fighting division.

“Like [Cuban songwriter] Silvio Rodriguez sang, the ‘war of today is the peace of the future.’ And if there’s a real reason and if hunger is commonplace then our war is justified,” said Tovar, as he launched into a diatribe on social inequality and the root causes of the FARC’s 36-year-old uprising to topple the state and usher in a socialist regime.

“Here, we’re doing our shooting from the radio,” Tovar added with a grin.

In the last decade alone Colombia’s war, which has pitted Communist guerrillas against right-wing paramilitary gangs and state security forces, has claimed more than 35,000 lives, many of them civilians.

Many observers believe the political violence will escalate further over the next few months after the United States decided to grant a $1.3 billion package of mostly military aid to help “Plan Colombia”, a $7.6 billion counterinsurgency and counternarcotics project.

“The Voice of Resistance” broadcasts on 95.9 FM stereo to much of southern Caqueta province. On a good day, the guerrillas say they can even manage to beam the signal into parts of a neighboring Putumayo province.

The transmitter is deep within a Switzerland-sized region of the southeast that President Andres Pastrana cleared of government security forces about two years ago to create a forum for peace talks between the government and the FARC.

There has been no cease fire outside the demilitarized zone and the conflict has raged on. So far there has been no agreement on a single item on the 12-point negotiating agenda.

And in one corner of this makeshift radio shack, there is a pile of wooden boxes fitted with shoulder straps-just in case the slow-moving talks break down completely and the guerrillas have to pack up turntables, CD and tape players and go on the run once again with their clandestine transmitter.

After some seven years dabbling on and off with radio with mixed results, the FARC is now firmly embarked on taking its revolution to the airwaves as well as the battlefield.

The organization now has at least six rudimentary but highly mobile transmitters that broadcast from rebel strongholds around the country. In the near future, the FARC hopes to link up all the stations to provide a network with near-nationwide coverage.

“This is a war, and within that war there is the propaganda war. We have the huge task of encouraging the struggle,” said Ivan Perdomo, 33, one of the guerrilla commanders in charge of rebel radio. “All our actions are a cry against Yankee imperialism.

We are the resistance against this rotten and corrupt regime.” Perdomo, son of a former union leader at Colombia’s leading soft drinks manufacturer Postobon, is a 15-year veteran of the FARC’s struggle.

At present, Colombia has about 1,500 licensed radio stations and authorities estimate there are a similar number of pirate transmitters.

The police and army have their own licensed radio networks, ultra-right paramilitary squads have a clandestine transmitter in northwest Colombia and National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels intermittently broadcast “Radio Free Fatherland” on a short wave band.

Most of “The Voice of Resistance” listeners in southern Colombia are impoverished peasants, many of whom eke out a living cultivating illegal plantations of coca leaf, the raw material for cocaine. The audience size is difficult to calculate but weather conditions and the rugged terrain make it difficult to tune into other commercial stations except at night.

The jingle between songs and a couple of short political slots each day are the only times the rebels deliver real harangues to listeners.

The rest of the day, from 5 a.m. to early evening, is taken up with a mixture of traditional Colombian music: harp pieces from the eastern plains, protest songs of Cubans Silvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milanes, accordion tunes from the cattle-ranching North and some commercial tropical sounds such as salsa and merengue.

Many of the traditional Colombian rhythms have been adapted by FARC musicians, who set them to more radical lyrics with revolutionary titles such as “We Will Conquer,” “Ambush Rap” and “Guerrilla Girls.” “This is a way of broadcasting our ideology and using the language of music to talk to the people about social problems,” Perdomo said.

A link to The Voice of Resistance can be found at www.farc-ep.org.

Source: Colombian Labor Monitor: www.prairienet.org/clm

Mexican army closes base at Amador Hernandez

By Niko Price

Mexico City, Dec. 22— Mexico’s army closed a base at the center of the conflict in troubled Chiapas state on Friday, pulling out of a jungle town where it has faced daily confrontations with townspeople for more than a year.

The handover of the base — part of new President Vicente Fox’s strategy to woo the Zapatista rebels back to the negotiating table — continued a pullback of troops in the troubled region.

“This is demonstrating with actions, not words, the will of the government to find a negotiated, peaceful solution to the Chiapas conflict,” Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda told The Associated Press in announcing the move.

The final 75 troops at Amador Hernandez, a remote jungle town 100 miles east of the highlands city of San Cristobal de las Casas, turned over their base to Chiapas Gov. Pablo Salazar and boarded helicopters for their retreat.

Salazar immediately turned the land back over to the community, from which it had been taken by government decree when the army moved in last year.

The withdrawal came on a highly symbolic day: the third anniversary of a massacre of 45 Indians in the Chiapas village of Acteal by pro-government paramilitary fighters. In Acteal, Indian residents re-enacted the massacre with wooden rifles and firecrackers.

Since Fox was sworn in as president Dec. 1, ending 71 years of single-party rule, he has made peace in southern Chiapas a top priority.

One of his first actions was to order the closing of 53 military roadblocks across the state and the withdrawal of 2,200 troops scattered in some of the state’s tensest areas. He also gave Congress an Indian rights bill the Zapatistas support — and which the previous government had rejected.

The rebels, whose peace talks with the government broke down in 1996 when the government balked at implementing the Indian rights bill, said they were encouraged by Fox’s moves and would return to the negotiating table under certain conditions, including a more complete withdrawal of troops.

The closure of the base Friday was a big step in that direction, and was expected to prompt a favorable response from the rebels.

The army moved into Amador Hernandez in August 1999 after the government expropriated communal land to build the military base.

Every day since then, townspeople — who support the rebels – have marched against the soldiers, accusing them of stealing their land. The soldiers, hunkered down behind sandbags, have blasted classical music to drown out the antimilitary chants.

“The government concedes that (the rebels) have certain historical reasons to be distrustful of the government, to want to see proof of good will,” Castaneda said.

Castaneda, whose duties don’t directly involve Chiapas but whom the president asked to spread the word about the withdrawal, said the action is important no matter how Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos reacts.

“The government doesn’t see these actions as concessions, but rather it believes they are intrinsically important, positive, correct,” he said. “They are things we need to do, not just because Marcos wants us to.”

Under a cold rain, 1,500 people marched to the village of Acteal to commemorate the third anniversary of the massacre, which took place as residents were praying in the village chapel.

Part of the commemoration was a re-enactment, with Tzotzil Indian residents huddling in the chapel while others burst down the hill, brandishing wooden rifles as firecrackers sounded. Others with wooden machetes acted out hacking the wounded to death.

The 120 survivors of the massacre stood in the form of the cross while Roman Catholic officials said a Mass for the dead.

“The blood of our fallen brothers covers us,” said village leader Pedro Gutierrez. “The blood of our brothers strengthens us and helps us bear this life.”

Source: Associated Press

Zapatistas question “ signs of peace”

By Diego Cevallos

Mexico City, Dec. 22 (IPS)— The tragic memory of the massacre of 45 indigenous men, women and children in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas three years ago Friday fanned the flames of the conflict between the government and the Zapatista guerrillas, who do not see signs of peace.

“Unlike what is said in the government’s lavish publicity campaign, nothing has changed,’’ the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) stated in a communiqué. “There is nothing in Chiapas providing a guarantee that there will be no repeat of Acteal’’ - the site of the massacre committed by paramilitary forces.

The rebels’ statement ran counter to the optimistic view shared widely by political leaders, analysts and social groups since the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) handed over the presidency on Dec. 1 for the first time in 71 years.

One of the first acts in office of President Vicente Fox of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) was to withdraw troops from several parts of the impoverished state of Chiapas.

In addition, politicians respected by the rebels were named to posts involving the conflict in Chiapas. Another demand by the EZLN was also met: the re-introduction to Congress of a draft law on indigenous rights drawn up in 1996. And the government pledged to meet more of the group’s demands.

Further buoying the general sense of optimism was the Dec. 8 inauguration of a new governor in Chiapas who is also respected by the EZLN, and is the first non-PRI governor in the history of the state.

The Fox administration, meanwhile, dismantled additional military bases and checkpoints Friday. Nevertheless, the rebels stated that ‘’the dirty war that made [the Acteal massacre] possible is still being waged. The counter-insurgency doctrine that inspired it remains in place. The paramilitary structures that have carried it out remain untouched. Murderers are still protected.

"The EZLN is issuing a call...to all honest people in Mexico and in the world to mobilize and demand an end to the policy that made Acteal possible, and to demand that the government send us the signals demanded for the renewal of the talks," the communiqué added.

The peace talks broke off in 1996 when President Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) rejected a bill on indigenous rights that was drafted on the basis of the San Andrés accord - the only agreement signed by the guerrillas and the government.

In the midst of the tension generated by the suspension of the talks, on Dec.22,1997 paramilitaries slaughtered 45 indigenous members-mainly women and children-of a pacifist group opposed to the government.

A total of 97 people, including mid-level Chiapas government officials, were thrown into jail for the massacre. However, the rebels and human rights groups say the intellectual authors of the killing got off scot-free.

Paramilitary groups remain active in Chiapas despite the Fox administration’s promises, complained the EZLN, which pointed out that paramilitaries expelled nine families from a rural community loyal to the Zapatistas on Wednesday.

Human rights groups report that at least 12 paramilitary groups operate in Chiapas, against which Fox has pledged to act.

From the Acteal mass killing up to last month, 150 more indigenous people were killed by paramilitaries, according to the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas human rights centre.

Dozens of Indians and members of human rights and church groups held events in Chiapas and in other parts of Mexico Friday to commemorate the victims of Acteal, and to demand that the government bring the perpetrators to justice.

The Fox administration has a legitimate and sincere interest, which has been demonstrated by its actions in favour of peace in Chiapas, said Secretary of the Interior Santiago Creel.

"For the new government, the EZLN is not a national security threat,’’ said national security adviser Adolfo Aguilar. "On the contrary, it is they who have been under threat, and who have lost the most people since 1994,’’ when the group first appeared on the scene and engaged in 12 days of fighting with the government before agreeing to an armed truce.

"The war was not declared against us, but against a regime that is already finished. We have come to make peace, and we are not going to build it from the same approach upon which the war was waged,’’ he said.

Today Chiapas has more to do with the conditions of abject poverty and marginalization suffered by the mainly indigenous residents of the area, than with war, Aguilar added.

But the EZLN-which thanks to a 1996 law on pacification cannot be attacked-does not trust the government, which it says has done nothing to crack down on the paramilitaries.

For that reason, the rebels demanded ‘’the definitive abandonment of the war-mongering optic, and a serious commitment to the search for a political solution.’’

Paramilitaries keep Colombia in state of terror

Soldiers in the Colombian Army, accused of collaborating with paramilitary groups.

By Robert Collier

La Hormiga, Colombia, Dec. 18— “We’re not bad. We’re waaaay bad,” said Joanny, puffing out his chest in a boast that would have fit right in at a gathering of any US inner-city gang.

Except for a few details. Such as the machine gun cradled in Joanny’s arms and the bandoleers of bullets over his shoulders. And the long trail of corpses that he and his fellow paramilitary gunmen have left in recent months.

They are the government’s tacit allies and the nation’s most feared killers: the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, whose 8,000 fighters have terrorized vast stretches of the countryside and countless towns and cities.

The paramilitaries, as they are known, present Colombian and American officials with a big dilemma. Their death squad-style violent executions of large numbers of peasant activists, trade union members, student leaders, and alleged rebel supporters have been crucial in helping the Colombian military hold off the guerrillas. But the terror has morally tainted the US-backed war.

The relationship between the military and the rightist paramilitaries is controversial in the US Congress, and allegations of collusion have prompted Washington to bar aid to two army brigades, including one based in Putumayo province, where Joanny and his comrades operate.

Government officials hotly deny the accusations.

“We fight the illegal armed groups of the right just like we do the ones of the left,” Gen. Mario Montoya, the government’s military commander for southern Colombia, said during a recent visit to Putumayo.

Montoya, who is highly regarded by US diplomats and military brass, said the charges of cooperation are “utterly false.”

But in Putumayo, where the paramilitaries and leftist guerrillas are fighting a bloody war of attrition for control of the world’s largest concentration of coca fields, there is little doubt that Joanny and his fellow gunmen are doing the army’s dirty work.

Since early last year, when the army started a gradual offensive to try to take back rebel-dominated Putumayo, the paramilitaries have been right behind them, working in silent tandem.

The paramilitaries came to La Hormiga in January 1999. With army troops from the nearby 24th Brigade blocking roads behind them, the gunmen selected 26 people, mostly youths, and executed them on suspicion of being guerrillas. In November 1999, the death squads massacred 12 more people in El Placer, 10 miles away. And over the past year, as many as 100 civilians have been killed in the province, mostly one by one.

Human-rights groups in Bogota and Washington complained, government investigators were sent, reports were written. No one has been convicted. Instead, US diplomats temporarily blacklisted the 24th Brigade, barring it from receiving US aid or training.

However, American assistance is flowing faster and faster to Montoya’s regional command these days as the US aid program gets cranked up. Critics call the process a public-relations shell game, in which wrists are slapped yet vast quantities of US aid wind up helping the paramilitaries.

A study released earlier this month by Human Rights Watch concluded that despite the official denials, the Colombian military is in close collusion with the death squads. The report’s conclusions included:

-There is “abundant, detailed, and continuing evidence of direct collaboration between the military and paramilitary groups.”
-Many army officers implicated in death-squad killings remain on active duty.
-The armed forces blocked or took no action on most arrest warrants issued by the attorney general against paramilitaries.
-Many of the killers “collected warrants like badges of honor,” and paramilitary commander Carlos Castano moves freely despite 22 outstanding warrants.

In Putumayo, paramilitary leaders, army officials and local residents admit that nothing has changed.

“The army collaborates by not bothering us, and we don’t bother the army,” said Joanny’s boss, a paramilitary commander who uses the pseudonym John Byron.

“When the army leaves a place, we enter it.”

He was speaking in an open-air ice cream parlor on La Hormiga’s main street, surrounded by armed bodyguards. Suddenly, a platoon of army troops marched past on the sidewalk. They looked stone-faced at the paramilitaries; the paramilitaries looked back with the same expression. The soldiers continued.

Many military officers privately admit that they help the paramilitaries -- or at least do nothing to hinder them.

“The paramilitaries are helping us by fighting the same people I’m fighting, “ said one aide to the 24th Brigade commander. “Why should I fight them?”

“The army has its hands tied by human rights,” said Byron. “We don’t. We are free to fight the war.”

The paramilitaries were founded by Fidel Castano, a wealthy landowner in northern Cordoba province, after the leftist guerrillas kidnapped his father in 1980 -- and then, after the family paid a ransom, killed him.

The paramilitaries were lavishly funded by drug traffickers, including Medellin cartel boss Pablo Escobar, and were given weapons and training by the Colombian army -- a shadowy alliance that made a mockery of the government’s war against drugs.

Castano disappeared in uncertain circumstances in 1994, and three brothers and a sister were killed by the rebels. Now Carlos Castano, another brother, carries on a fiercely personal, scorched-earth war against peasant organizers, trade unionists, leftist civilians or anyone suspected of links to the guerrillas.

Castano said earlier this year that about 70 percent of his organization’s revenues come from taxing drug traffickers.

Government and paramilitary officials say drug traffickers who depend on Putumayo’s coca crop financed the paramilitaries’ incursion into the province because the rebels have raised the traffickers’ costs.

Since earlier this year, when the rebel army FARC grabbed control of the region’s coca business, the rebels have forced traffickers to raise the price for coca paste by about 25 percent (to an average of $1,000 per kilo) and pay a “tax” of 500 pesos (22 US cents) per kilo. The paramilitaries, in areas they control, allow traffickers to set prices, and charge only 100 pesos tax per kilo.

“We were invited here by many businesses, including the drug traffickers,” said Byron.

Most paramilitary members are from lower-middle-class origins, and some are motivated by money: starting pay for paramilitary recruits is $400 per month (volunteer army soldiers receive half that, while guerrillas are unpaid), while officers such as John Byron receive more than $1,000 per month (the same as an army general).

But like Castano, many paramilitary members are motivated by sheer revenge. And because the guerrillas also practice an eye-for-eye philosophy, there’s plenty of killing to be done.

For example, Joanny and Byron said several of their family members had been killed by the guerrillas. Joanny admitted that he enjoys killing. When he does it, he said, he thinks of his dead brother.

Executions, however, are a drag. “I like killing in combat, but point-blank is disagreeable. It gets messy, you know?”

Byron felt otherwise. “To kill is easy, as long as the person is guilty,” he said. “You just point and pull the trigger.”

But for a fearless killer, Byron said he has a soft side. Since three years ago, when he quit his old job as a hotel receptionist in northwest Choco province and joined the paramilitaries, he hasn’t squared with his mother about his new job.

“I told my mother I’m a bodyguard to a drug lord,” he said. “It’s safer and more acceptable. If she knew I’m doing this she’d be very worried.”

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Turkish police launch deadly assault on fasting prisoners

Protesters carry the coffins of prisoners who died in the police crackdown.

By John Catalinotto

Istanbul, Turkey, Dec. 20— At 4 a.m. on Dec. 19 the Turkish government sent police and army riot squads armed to the teeth into 20 prisons where over 1,100 political prisoners were conducting a hunger strike. Almost 300 prisoners were on a death fast. As of 7 p.m., the assault had left 20 people dead, including 18 prisoners and two police, according to BBC News.

The prisoners were protesting plans to separate inmates into individual cells-the so-called Type-F prisons. They demanded to remain in dormitory prisons where they could continue to have contact with each other.

While the regime presented the assault as an attempt to stop the hunger strikers from dying, other reports say troops opened fire on some of the prisoners and beat many more. Police were armed with explosives and heavy weapons, according to reports from Turkish revolutionary groups.

In some prisons the fasting prisoners set themselves on fire. In all places they fought back against the vicious attack from the Turkish state. According to Turkish Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk, two prisoners in Istanbul’s Bayrampasa prison died after setting themselves on fire. A third inmate was shot and killed by soldiers in Istanbul’s Umraniye prison after setting himself on fire and rushing toward soldiers, he said. Prisoner or prisoner-support sources have not yet verified Turk’s statements as to how the prisoners died.

Type-F means torture and isolation.

The revolutionary and anti-imperialist prisoners have been on a hunger strike since Oct. 20 to stop their transfer to Type-F prisons. The new prisons are modeled on US maximum-security, behavior-modification prisons.

These impose high-tech total isolation in order to break down prisoners’ morale and control them politically.

This total isolation of all prisoners combines physical and psychological torture.

Members of three leftist groups in Turkey started this hunger strike. Imprisoned members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), the Communist Party of Turkey-Marxist-Leninist (TKP-ML) and the Communist Workers Party of Turkey (TKIP) have called for the death fast. These groups were followed by other organizations with political prisoners, including the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). And the action has spread outside the prisons.

About 12,000 of the almost 72,000 prisoners in Turkey are political prisoners. These include members of different communist organizations, Kurds, writers, journalists and members of Muslim groups. The Turkish state imposes truly horrible conditions on the leftist and Kurdish political prisoners, turning prisons into centers of torture. Prison guards and soldiers frequently murder prisoners. Last year prison guards and soldiers attacked political prisoners in Ulucanlar prison, killing 10 of them.

According to a Reuters report from Istanbul, an official of the Human Rights Association, which closely monitors prisons, said she knew of at least five deaths from self-immolation or gunshot wounds during raids on several jails.

“The so-called life-saving operation by the Justice Ministry is causing deaths,” she said.

Relatives of leftist prisoners gathered outside Bayrampasa and denounced the raids and the transfer plan, as well as an amnesty law that would mostly release non-political prisoners. “The goal is clear: they want to kill my children,” one woman said.

Turkish immigrants in Western Europe have already demonstrated support for the prisoners. An Italian organization has called a demonstration before the Turkish embassy in Rome. Prisoner-support groups have called upon the European left to demonstrate solidarity with the prisoners.

Turkey, a NATO member, is a client state of the Western imperialist powers and has especially close ties to the United States and Germany. Both Western powers supply weapons and training to the Turkish army even as it crushes the movement in Kurdistan. The Pentagon used Turkish air bases to launch air attacks on Iraq and Yugoslavia.

For these reasons, the Turkish left also holds West European and US imperialism responsible for the crimes of the Turkish state.

Source: Workers World: www.workers.org

Canada relieves debt of poor countries

Ottawa, Canada, Dec. 20— Canada is placing a moratorium on repayments of about $700 million in loans to some of the world’s poorest countries. The move, announced Tuesday by Finance Minister Paul Martin, puts Canada on the leading edge of an international initiative to forgive all debt owed by severely impoverished nations. The moratorium lets most of Canada’s poorest debtors off the hook for principal and interest payments. The debts will be forgiven when the countries fulfil promised democratic and human-rights reforms.

Canada has pressed the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other creditor countries to devise a comprehensive plan to forgive bilateral debts of the poorest nations.

“Crippling debt burdens represent a formidable obstacle to the poorest countries of the world,” Martin said.

“These nations must be given a sustainable path to enable them to provide basic services such as health care and education for their populations.”

About 17 countries are on Canada’s list of poor debtors. Eleven of them will benefit from the moratorium: Benin, Bolivia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia.

Countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sudan and Ivory Coast still have too many human-rights problems to be admitted to the club. Their combined debt to Canada is about $370 million.

“The countries that will be receiving the benefits of this moratorium are countries that have indicated unequivocally that they are prepared to put the money into (health and education),” said Martin, adding he’s satisfied they will.

He said the aid would be extended to the excluded countries as Canada becomes satisfied that they are prepared to provide good government and spend the money on health and education.

Britain said earlier this month it would scrap the debts of 20 of its poorest creditors to the tune of about $2 billion Cdn. Another 21 countries will be encouraged to qualify for similar relief.

The other 21 have so far failed to qualify because they are still involved in violent conflict or are not committed enough to reducing poverty, improving health and education and bringing in democratic reforms.

Canada’s plan, which comes into effect Jan. 1, 2001, won’t cost Ottawa much.

Since many of the world’s poorest countries aren’t servicing their bilateral debts anyway, Canada hasn’t been collecting much - about $20 million in principal and interest in 1999, or about 68 per cent of what it was owed for that year.

Canadian international development agencies welcomed the move, but urged more.

“The Canadian Council for International Co-operation commends the minister,” the agency said in a release Tuesday.

“But total and immediate debt cancellation remains the main objective. The fight continues.”

Even the conservative Canadian Taxpayers Federation supports Tuesday’s announcement, saying the impact will be negligible.

“As an affluent country, we have a role to play in the community of nations,” said president Walter Robinson. The challenge lies in ensuring the money is not invested in arms or “corporate welfare.”

Ensuring recipients foster free-market reforms, property rights and democratic governance are the best ways of offering a hand up and “breaking the cycle of welfare dependency,” Robinson said.

Source: Canadian Press

Vieques citizens stop Navy construction project

Vieques, Puerto Rico, Dec. 22— Thursday, December 21 around 9:00am, several members of the Peace and Justice Camp (PJC) in Vieques stopped a US Navy construction project on civilian land adjacent to the Camp García military fence. Carlos Cruz, Nilda Medina and Robert Rabin, placed themselves in front of the enormous Navy tractors and other heavy equipment to block what they described as an “illegal construction on land owned by the Puerto Rican people.”

Over the past several weeks military personnel have been building a camp, with permanent structures and several large trailer homes, about half a mile south of the PJC and the main entrance of Camp García. Vieques residents believe the Navy plans to make a new entrance to the base to avoid the constant protests and vigilance by the community that takes place from the PJC.

Riot police sent to the area early in the morning, attempted to intimidate the Vieques residents to get them out of the area and allow the Navy to continue with its project. However, the protesters insisted the Navy produce necessary governmental agency permits to assure them the Navy was not acting illegally. Lt. Wally Matos of the Puerto Rican police, indicated that representatives of the Navy said they only had a permit from the regional office of Public Works. The protesters pointed out to police officials that they would not allow the Navy construction to continue since there were no permits from Natural Resources, the Planning Board or the Archaeological Council.

With the arrival of more people from the community and confronted with the lack of permits, the military were forced to take their equipment and personnel back onto the Navy‘s side of the fence. In addition to the dozen riot police and several local policemen, the Navy sent to the scene a military security team with dogs, pepper spray, shields and plastic handcuffs.

While Navy personnel looked for their permits, members of the PJC set up a new camp named Camp Luisa Guadalupe, in honor of the 83-year-old Viequense woman and well know activist against the Navy, who died last week. A 24 hour vigil was organized to keep an eye out and inform the community if the Navy attempted to resume work in the area.

Source: Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques

Military massacre victims discovered in Guatemala

By Ricardo Miranda

Choatalun, Guatemala, Dec. 20— Anthropologists have found the remains of 13 men buried in a mass grave at a former army base - a discovery that may lead to more victims of a massacre committed during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war.

The skeletal remains were found on land about 40 miles west of Guatemala City that was once part of the Choatalun base, researchers said Tuesday. Some of the victims apparently had been blindfolded or had ropes tied around their hands or necks.

The victims, buried about 10 feet deep in the early 1980s, were apparently some of the first to die during an army operation in the area against suspected supporters of leftist guerrillas. The number of remains may increase as excavations continue, said Freddy Peccerelli, president of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation.

“We are certain that there are more,” said Peccerelli. “According to witnesses, this is one of the holes where the military buried its victims.”

He said the foundation will continue excavations here and at four other sites.

According to a UN report, about 5,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up by the army in the area in December 1982. Of those, 3,000 were reportedly killed and their bodies buried in several nearby locations.

The killings came during a civil war that left more than 200,000 people dead. Reports by human rights groups indicate the army committed the vast majority of the human rights abuses reported during the war.

Leftist guerrillas and the government signed peace accords ending the conflict in 1996.

Source: Associated Press

Nicaragua: FSLN gears up for primary

Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) is holding a primary on Jan. 21 to select its candidate for the October 2001 presidential elections. The leading candidates so far are former president Daniel Ortega Saavedra, now the FSLN general secretary; FSLN national deputy Victor Hugo Tinoco; and economist Alejandro Martinez Cuenca.

Many Nicaraguans seem dissatisfied with the choices. On Dec. 18 former Nicaraguan army chief Humberto Ortega Saavedra, Daniel Ortega’s brother, announced at a press conference in Managua that he felt the primary election would be useful for taking the pulse of the Sandinista bases but not for picking a candidate: “It’s not enough to convince the Sandinistas; we have to win the vote of the non-Sandinistas.” Humberto Ortega said that he supported none of the three leading candidates, although he agreed that all were qualified to serve as president. He didn’t discount the possibility of running a candidate from outside the FSLN, such as former controller Agustin Jarquin of the United Social Christians (USC).

Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas: wnu@igc.org

Panamanians mark US invasion

Panama City, Panama, Dec. 19-- Panamanian labor and civic groups, including the National Movement for the Defense of Sovereignty (MONADESO), the National Confederation of Labor Union Unity (CONUSI), the Only Union of Construction and Similar Workers (SUNTRACS), the Revolutionary Student Front (FER-29) and Transforming Thought and Action (PAT), staged a peaceful protest in front of the US embassy in Panama City on Dec. 19 to mark the US invasion of Panama that began on Dec. 20, 1989.

Following the protest, the demonstrators joined nearly 1,000 workers of the Cable & Wireless company at another protest, this one against possible layoffs, and a planned increase in phone service and electrical rates set to take effect Jan. 1.

Hundreds took part in another protest march in Panama City on Dec. 20, commemorating the victims of the invasion and demanding compensation from the US government. Several demonstrators burned the US flag, as well as the US army flag and the Israeli flag. The march started with a ceremony at the Jardin de Paz cemetery, where relatives of the invasion victims mourned their deaths.

Source: Weekly News Update on the Americas: wnu@igc.org