Abduction of Human
Rights Worker Spotlights
Labor Violence in Bolivia
LA PAZ, FEBRUARY 4, 1997
A simmering
labor dispute
became a political scandal
on January 25, when Bolivian
newspapers reported that Waldo
Albarracin, president of the non-
governmental Permanent Human
Rights Assembly of Bolivia, had
been kidnapped and severely
beaten by police officers posing
as guerrillas of the Peru-based
Tdipac Amaru Revolutionary
Movement (MRTA). Just days
before, Albarracin had publicly
accused the government of brib-
ing the families of slain striking
miners with $10,000 in “hush
money.” A La Paz newspaper also
quoted Albarracin as saying that
the police officer who was killed
during an army attack on striking
miners last December was shot by
one of his own men, though
Albarracin denies making such a
statement. After Albarracin was
released, the police claimed it was
a case of mistaken identity.
International repudiation of the
abduction forced President
Gonzalo Sinchez de Losada to
fire the director of the National
Police, saying that Albarracin’s
abduction was “unacceptable in a
democracy.”
The labor dispute surrounding
this incident boiled over this past
December when Bolivian securi-
ty forces stormed the gold mines
of Amayapampa and Capacirca,
in northern Potosf, in an attempt
to dislodge striking miners who
had seized mining installations
there. Twelve people were killed
and scores more injured in the
military siege, which lasted sev-
eral days.
The miners were trying to gain
bargaining leverage in a protract-
ed labor dispute with the new
owners of the mine, the Denver-
based conglomerate, Vistagold
Corporation. Negotiations be-
tween the miners and Vistagold,
which purchased the mines in
mid-1996, stalled last September
over issues of wages and job
security. Miners were also ques-
tioning the price Vistagold paid
for the mines, claiming that it was
well below state appraisals, which affected the tax revenue
the community was slated to gain
from the purchase.
On December 19, the first day
of the military operation, two
miners were killed. The brunt of
the fighting took place the follow-
ing day, when seven miners and a
police officer were killed.
Congressman and Human Rights
Delegate Juan Del Granado visit-
ed the mine that same day, plead-
ing with military and police com-
manders to stop the fighting.
Meanwhile, another army contin-
gent launched an attack against
the mining center of Llallagua,
leaving a woman and child dead.
Minister of the Interior Carlos
Sinchez Berzafn, who reportedly
led the operation, defended the
army, claiming that operatives of
the MRTA were organizing an
insurrectionary army among the
miners-a charge that most
observers, including Congress-
man Del Granado, have dis-
missed as “absurd.” Fifteen
police officers were given medals
of valor and promoted for their
participation in the massacre.
Congress called five government
ministers involved in the affair to
appear before Congress, but none
were censured.
-Carlos Perez
Disturbances Rock
Free-Market Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE, JANUARY 30, 1997
Sn January 16, tens of thou-
sands of Haitian workers
stayed at home in a nationwide
strike, while thousands more
blocked the streets with burning
tires to demand the government
put an end to free-market eco-
nomic policies. The free-market
package has been pushed by the
international financial communi-
ty, and is meant to kick-start Haiti
into the global economy. Dozens
of organizations demanded the
resignation of the pro-business
prime minister, Rosny Smarth.
The protest is one of many
since September, 1994, when
U.S.-led multinational troops
ousted Haiti’s military goons and
restored the country’s elected
civilian government, on condition
that it implement privatization
and austerity measures. Foreign
aid worth $100 million was also
frozen to ensure that Haiti keep
its promise. While popular oppo-
sition to the plan has kept it in
slow motion, last September,
Congress passed a law enabling
the sale of all nine state-run
industries, including the highly
profitable telephone company.
Grassroots groups and power-
less lawmakers were outraged.
Haiti’s poor-90% of the popula-
tion-suffer most from the new
economic program, which
restricts any minimum-wage
hikes, cuts social services and
eliminates civil-service jobs.
Most Haitians live under a system
they call peze souse-“squeeze
and suck,” the way one eats a
mango from the top without peel-
ing it first.
In 1996, unemployment reached
80%. Five million Haitians live
on less than 70 cents a day. Haiti’s
per-capita GNP is still under $250
a year, less than it was in 1960,
yet the cost of living continues to
rise. A sack of rice, which cost
$11 in 1991, costs $32 today, and
the price of a gallon of oil has
nearly tripled. Two hundred thou-
sand street kids-nearly a tenth of
the urban population-roam the
capital. Many Haitians would
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Vol XXX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1997 1NEWSBRIEFS
barely survive were it not for the
estimated $300 to $500 million a
year that Haitians living abroad
sent home in remittances.
Meanwhile, Haiti’s elite have
never had it so good. Lower tar-
iffs, a frozen minimum wage and
tax breaks for big business are a
boon to the wealthiest 1% of
Haitians, who claim 44% of the
country’s income. Those involved
in the import/export business
have done especially well. In
1995, over $20 million worth of
women’s lingerie was exported
from Haiti’s sweatshops to the
United States. Importing basic
commodities such as rice, oil and
sugar for public consumption is
also highly profitable. Remark-
ably, Haiti-which once supplied
over half the world’s sugar as a
French colony in the 1700s-no
longer produces enough for its
own consumption.
-Catherine Orenstein
Peace in Guatemala and
the Tides of History
GUATEMALA CITY,
JANUARY 1, 1997
t was almost inevita-
ble that the hostage-
taking by the Tdpac
Amaru Revolutionary
Movement (MRTA) in
Lima would be con-
trasted with the signing
on December 29, 1996
of the peace treaty
between the Guate-
malan government and
the Guatemalan Nat-
ional Revolutionary
Unity (URNG). The
former was widely pre-
sented as a “throw-
back,” the latter as rep-
resenting the “direction
of history.”
Amid the celebration Journalists
of the success of Movemen group cc Guatemala’s President February
Alvaro Arzd in ending group’s pr
a civil war which lasted 30 years,
a couple of things have been
overlooked. One-largely unre-
marked outside Guatemala-is
that the peace agreement was
purchased in exchange for a blan-
ket pardon for all “political”
crimes, as well as related “com-
mon” crimes, committed during
the war.
Just prior to the signing, the
Guatemalan Congress passed a
law “extinguishing penal respon-
sibility” for such crimes, whether
they were committed by guerril-
las, the military or the police.
Many in Guatemala feel that this
lets all those who committed
atrocities and grave human rights
abuses off the hook-in the
country with the worst human
rights record in the hemisphere.
The amnesty law does exclude
from its benefits “genocide, tor-
ture, forcible disappearances and
crimes for which there is no
statute of limitation.” Attempts to
spell this out more precisely were
overruled by the ruling party and
right-wing legislators. Members
of the left-wing opposition,
human rights organizations and a
number of legal experts have all
said the text is hopelessly
ambiguous.
Also overlooked in the contrast
between Guatemala and Peru is
the fact that the MRTA is not the
only “throwback” still active in
Latin America. In Peru itself,
Shining Path has been staging a
comeback. In Colombia, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) and the
National Liberation Army (ELN)
have recently proved -that they
remain strong. In Mexico, the
Zapatistas still hold territory, and
the recently emerged Popular
Revolutionary Army (EPR) is
awaiting the completion of a
year-end “truce” to resume hos-
tilities.
There were two additional
reminders during the holiday
period. In Chile, the Manuel
Rodrfguez Patriotic Front (FPMR)
staged a daring helicopter rescue
of their imprisoned leaders from
a maximum-security prison. In
Argentina, the shady People’s
Revolutionary Organization (ORP)
-thought to have links with for-
mer intelligence operatives–has
re-emerged after a frustrated
attempt to extort money from a
supermarket chain in neighboring
Uruguay.
It may be some time yet before
all these groups “catch up with his-
tory.”
— Latin American
Weekly Report
Colombian Hostage
Seige Continues
BOGOTA, FEBRUARY 7, 1997
W hile much of the world’s
attention has been focused
on the Peruvian hostage crisis,
rebels of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) have
been holding 60 soldiers hostage
since August 30, when the group
overran Las Delicias military out-
post in the jungle area near the
Ecuadoran border between the
states of Caqueti and Putumayo.
Another 27 soldiers were killed and
20 wounded in the attack. Despite
the mediating efforts of the Cath-
olic Church-sponsored National
Conciliation Commission (CNC)
and the International Red Cross, no
end to the crisis is in sight.
After months of deadlock, a
breakthrough seemed imminent last
December, when the FARC sent the
army a video showing that all 60
soldiers were still alive. In
response, President Ernesto Samper
complied with the guerrillas’
demand to withdraw the army from
a 5,400 square-mile area in
Caquetd. Some sectors were highly
critical of Samper for “caving in” to
the guerrillas.
Negotiations stalled, however,
when the army refused to withdraw
from the area of Remolinos del
Caguan within the designated
demilitarized zone. As the center of
operations for the entire zone, the
army said, this base was too impor-
tant to abandon. The military also
claimed that the guerrillas con-
trolled 30,000 acres of coca fields,
and that abandoning the area would
allow drug trafficking to flourish in
the area. In early January, however,
the Samper government suggested
it might withdraw the army from
Remolinos del Caguan if the FARC
made a firm commitment to release
the soldiers.
On January 9, the FARC sent a
letter to the government saying that
the soldiers would be released only
after a bilateral agreement was
reached between the government
and the rebels. A week later, the
government announced that it
would agree to a bilateral dialogue
with the FARC to negotiate the
release of the soldiers.
Critics say that if the government
agrees to a total troop withdrawal
from the area, it would be a defacto
recognition of FARC sovereignty
over that section of the country.
Others, including the mothers of
the hostages, insist that the release
of the soldiers should be more
important at this moment than the
defense of sovereignty.
The government’s willingness to
dialogue comes at a time when
FARC activity across the country
has increased sharply. In early
February, just 30 miles outside
Bogota, soldiers and rebels clashed
in five straight days of combat
which claimed 28 lives.
-NotiSur
Daring Prison Break in
Chile
SANTIAGO, JANUARY 30, 1997
1 n a question of minutes, a heli-
copter spewing rounds from M-
16s descended over the prison yard
of Santiago’s Maximum Security
Prison and scooped up four jailed
members of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR). Created in
the early 1980s as an armed wing
of the Chilean Communist Party,
the FPMR split in 1990 when one
group decided to abandon armed
action and support the country’s
return to elected rule. Another fac-
tion held onto its arms and staged a
series of spectacular actions, includ-
ing the kidnapping of businessman
Cristidin Edwards and the assassina-
tions of intelligence agent Roberto
Fuentes, Carabineros Colonel Luis
Fontaine, and right-wing senator
Jaime Guzmin. Between 1991 and
1994, the Patricio Aylwin govern-
ment launched a campaign against
the FPMR, and after jailing nearly a
hundred members of the group,
claimed that “terrorism was over.”
The breakout reverberated
throughout the Chilean govern-
ment, as cabinet ministers offered
their resignations and prison offi-
cials complained they lacked suffi-
cient firepower to fight off the rebel
copter. The presumably escape-
proof prison was built three years
ago to house leftists accused of par-
ticipating in violent acts since
Chile’s return to elected govern-
ment in 1990. Two of the escapees
had been serving life sentences for
the 1991 assassination of Senator
Guzmsn, who authored the military
regime’s 1980 Constitution and the
amnesty law that shields human
rights offenders from prosecution.
News of the breakout caused
President Eduardo Frei to postpone
his annual state of the union
address, which was to be aired the
evening of December 30. In his
speech on New Year’s Eve, Frei
touted his government’s positive
economic performance in 1996,
then proceeded to urge the country
to rally against terrorism. A few
days later, after Congress endorsed
Frei’s plans to combat terrorism, the
President announced that he would
draft a series of anti-terrorism bills
for congressional approval.
Among the president’s requests to
beef up the country’s anti-terrorist
apparatus is a proposal to create a
new intelligence system that would
involve the military in domestic
intelligence and grant the security
forces the same kind of sweeping
powers now restricted to anti-nar-
cotics operations. Critics of the plan,
including members of the center-
right opposition, say the armed
forces have no business poking
their noses in internal security mat-
ters which are best left to civilians.
-Maxine Lowy
Garifuna Communities
Win Concessions from
Honduran Government
LA CEIBA, JANAUARY 29, 1997
Sver 3,500 black men and
women from 53 Garffuna
communities along Honduras’
Atlantic Coast participated in the
“First Great Peaceful March of
Black People” in Tegucigalpa last
October. The Garffuna, descen-
dants of runaway African slaves
and Carib-Arawaks, urged the gov-
ernment to offer legal guarantees
for the preservation of their ances-
tral lands, located on the last and
largest stretch of Honduras’ virgin
Caribbean beach. The lands are
being threatened by ladino invaders
and transnationals which, in con-
cert with national investors, seek to
develop the area for tourism and
other projects.
The march, which was organized
by the National Coordinator of
Black Organizations of Honduras
(CNONH), brought the Honduran
government to the negotiating table
for the first time in history. The gov-
ernment issued a decree promising
to issue government entitlements
for Garffuna land, bilingual educa-
tion, proportional representation
equal to the size of the Garffuna
population (now 300,000, with an
additional 100,000 migrants in the
United States), and health and trans-
portation infrastructure.
The collective entitlements pro-
gram is scheduled to begin in early
February. The process, which will
be carried out by government offi-
cials, the CNONH and community
governing bodies known as
patronatos, will include drawing
boundaries, evicting squatters,
broadening land limits according to
the original deeds and current popu-
lation, and compensating those who
bought Garifuna lands in good faith.
On April 12, 1997, the Garffuna
Bicentennial will commemorate the
deportation of more than 5,000
Garffuna from their ancestral home-
land of St. Vincent, an island in the
eastern Caribbean, to Roatdn, an
island near the Honduran coastline.
-Walter Krochmal
Sources:
Carlos Perez is associate producer of Our
Americas, NACLA and Pacifica Radio’s
weekly report on Latin America and the
Caribbean.
Catherine Orenstein is a New York-based
independent journalist who investigated
human rights crimes for the United
Nations and for the Government of Haiti
in 1995 and 1996.
Latin America Weekly Report is published
weekly by Latin American Newsletters.
For free samples and subscription infor-
mation: Latin American Newsletters, Dept
96A11, 61 Old Street, London EC1V 9HX,
England, E-mail: WR@latin.ftech.co.uk.
NotiSur is available as a closed Peacenet
conference: carnet.ladb. For subcription
information: Latin American Data Base,
Latin American Institute, University of
New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131,
(800) 472-0888.
Maxine Lowy is a freelance writer based
in Chile.
Walter Krochmal, who lives in La Ceiba,
Honduras, is a correspondent for WBAI
99.5 FM. For information on the Garifuna
Bicentennial, call the New York Bicen-
tennial Committee at (718) 385-6505.
