Newsbriefs

Strong Showing by FMLN
in Congressional and
Mayoral Elections
SAN SALVADOR, APRIL 1, 1997
Six years after laying down
arms and becoming a legal
political party, the Farabundo
Martf National Liberation Front
(FMLN) enjoyed a strong show-
ing in congressional and munici-
pal elections held on March 18.
The FMLN won the mayoralty
of San Salvador-the most
important political office after
the presidency-as well as other
key departmental municipalities,
including Chalatenango City and
Santa Ana. Of the country’s 262
municipalities, the FMLN will
govern 53, which contain 45% of
the population. The conservative
Nationalist Republican Alliance
(ARENA) will govern 161
municipalities, while the remain-
ing 48 will be governed by other
parties.
On the Congressional front, the
FMLN won 27 out of 84 seats,
while ARENA took 28. The con-
servative National Conciliation
Party (PCN) took 11 seats, the
Christian Democrats took seven,
and five smaller parties shared the
remaining 11 seats. This means
that ARENA will have to legislate
in coalition with at least two other
conservative parties.
Voter turnout for the elections
was dismayingly low. Only 39%
of the country’s 3.1 million regis-
tered voters turned out for the
elections. Some sources say, how-
ever, that if the estimated half-
million dead and “phantom” voters
along with the 300,000 emigres
were purged from the lists, the
turnout is actually around 52%.
The FMLN’s strong showing is
due to the fact that it has retained
a firm stance against anti-popular
economic measures, but always
within the framework of seeking
consensus and real solutions, said
Sigfrido Reyes, a deputy in the
Central American Parliament.
“This attitude has given the
FMLN enormous credibilty and
respect,” said Reyes, “because
people see that it does not violate
its principles.” Another critical
source of support was the
FMLN’s record governing the 14
municipalities they won in the
1994 elections, “where people
have seen that they are capable of
resolving day-to-day problems.”
While some right-wing sectors
have tried to stir fear by suggest-
ing that foreign investors will
abandon the country in light of the
FMLN’s gains, the FMLN has
stated that it will respect the mar-
ket economy but that it will imple-
ment policies to benefit El
Salvador’s poorest groups.
-InterPress Service
Union-Organizing
Breakthroughs in Central
American Maquila Sector
WASHINGTON D.C., MARCH 25, 1997
Tabor activists here are hailing the recognition of a Guate-
malan union by a major U.S. shirt
manufacturer as a breakthrough in
the fight for corporate responsibil-
ity and stronger unions in over-
seas assembly plants.
On March 14, Bruce Klatsky, chief executive officer of Phillips
Van Heusen, pledged to negotiate
a labor contract with the Union of
Modern Shirts Workers (STE-
CAMOSA), which had battled
seven years to gain recognition.
Van Heusen, which is registered
in Guatemala as Modem Shirts,
had long refused to recognize
unions organizing in its plants.
Klatsky’s decision was prompt-
ed by a Human Rights Watch
(HRW) report, “Freedom of
Association in a Maquila in
Guatemala,” which details evi-
dence that Van Heusen’s man-
agers had consistently discrimi-
nated against workers who joined
the union. At least one manager is
alleged to have made threats
against the lives of organizers-
threats not to be taken lightly
given the history of labor violence
in Guatemala. Klatsky, a member
of the Human Rights Watch board
of directors, pledged that any Van
Heusen personnel found to have
engaged in such discrimination
“will be dealt with appropriately.”
“This case represents a signifi-
cant step towards implementation
of a new level of corporate
responsibility,” says Stephen
Coats, director of the Chicago-
based U.S.-Guatemala Labor
Education Project. “By recogniz-
ing the union on its own, Phillips
Van Heusen has underlined the
need for serious codes of conduct
in countries which don’t enforce
their own labor laws.”
The announcement coincided
with another breakthrough for
Central American unions which
have been trying to organize the
region’s growing maquiladora
sector. On March 20 in Nicaragua,
Fortex, a Taiwanese-owned com-
pany with a plant of 2,000 work-
ers in Managua’s Las Mercedes
free-trade zone, signed a collec-
tive-bargaining contract with a
local union, the first ever to be
negotiated in the zone.
The agreement was reached
with the help of the Nicaraguan
Labor Ministry, which formally
recognized the union in January, and the U.S. group Witness for
Peace, which sponsored a tour of
Fortex union organizers to more
than 50 U.S. cities last October.
Witness for Peace had also sent
hundreds of faxes to Nicaragua to
press for an accord.
Unlike the Nicaraguan case,
STECAMOSA has not been rec-
ognized by the Guatemalan Labor
Ministry. None of the 80,000
workers employed in Guatemala’s
free-trade zones is protected by a
collective-bargaining agreement
Vol XXX, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1997 1 Vol XXX, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1997 1NEWSBRIEFS
with an employer. In most cases,
successful unionization has been
blocked by illegal mass dismissals
of union supporters or factory clo-
sures, according to the Human
Rights Watch report.
Rather than facing mass dis-
missals or targeted intimidation–
the traditional methods used in
the maquiladoras-union mem-
bers at Van Heusen faced “dis-
criminatory treatment that includ-
ed pressures to withdraw from the
union or resign from the compa-
ny.” The low wages paid in the
maquiladoras makes workers
dependent on supplementary
income earned on a piece-rate
basis. Management’s broad dis-
cretion in determining who gets
that work, according to the report,
was used as a way to punish
union members. The company
also used generous severance
payments to induce union mem-
bers to resign.
“Even if corporations don’t
illegally dismiss workers who
want to join a union,” said Mike
McCormick of Human
Rights Watch, “they may
still be posing major
obstacles that make union
membership untenable.”
Coats of the U.S.-
Guatemala Labor Edu-
cation Project says the
clandestine way STE-
CAMOSA organized the
plant may set an impor-
tant precedent for unions
elsewhere in Central
America. Instead of publi-
cizing their demands for
an agreement from the
outset, he says the union
“worked to establish a
strong base of support
within the workforce
first.” The union which
successfully organized the SAN DI
Fortex plant in Managua existin
pursued a similar strategy. of Ogp gratio — InterPress Service desert
Jamaica and Guyana
Mourn Passing of
Manley and Jagan
KINGSTON AND GEORGETOWN, MARCH 25, 1997
he deaths of Michael Manley, the former Prime Minister of
Jamaica, and Cheddi Jagan, President of Guyana, within a few
hours of each other in the first
week in March severed two links
between Caribbean politics and
the era of British colonialism. The
heart-felt mourning that followed
their deaths reflected their extra-
ordinary stature at home and
abroad.
Michael Manley was born in
1924, the son of one of Jamaica’s
national heroes, Norman Manley,
founder of the People’s National
Party (PNP) and the newly inde-
pendent country’s first prime
minister in 1962. As a member of
the light-skinned elite (his mother
was Scottish), Michael Manley
came from a privileged back-
ground and had an effortless entrde
into Jamaican politics. He began
as an organizer of the PNP-affili-
ated National Workers Union in
1952, quickly rising to the top. At
the same time he became a mem-
ber of the PNP national executive
and was elected to parliament five
years later. He succeeded his
father as PNP leader in 1969.
Manley served as prime minis-
ter of a PNP government from
1972 to 1980, and his actions on
behalf Jamaica’s dispossessed
earned him the wrath and distrust
of Washington. CIA-inspired
destabilization made governing
impossible and led eventually to
the election of the right-wing
Jamaica Labor Party under
Edward Seaga. When Manley
returned to power in 1989 he had
made peace with his enemies and
had accepted economic liberal-
ization.
Cheddi Jagan, born in 1918,
came from a very different back-
ground. His parents were inden-
tured laborers from the Indian
state of Uttar Pradesh, brought to
Continued on page 46
Continued from page 2
the sugar plantations of Berbice in
the late nineteenth century. He
worked his way through college in
the United States, graduating from
Northwestern Dental School in
Chicago, where he met and married
a Jewish-American student named
Janet Rosenberg. Together, they
founded the Political Affairs
Committee in 1946 to campaign for
independence, which later became
the People’s Progressive Party
(PPP). When he was elected premier of
what was then British Guiana in
1953, he was seen as the leader of
the poor, rural, East Indian commu-
nity. He was so distrusted by the
British government of Winston
Churchill that he was quickly dri-
ven from office by British troops.
He was subsequently forced out of
office after again being elected pre-
mier in 1964. His former lieutenant
and rival, Forbes Burnham, then
took his place and, with U.S. and
British support, led the country to
independence in 1966. After 28
years of the corrupt and autocratic
rule of Burnham and his successor,
Desmond Hoyte, Jagan was
returned to power in 1992, but like
Manley, a mellowed man.
Both Jagan and Manley were
trade-union organizers and champi-
ons of the poor who began their
political lives as radical socialists
and enemies of British colonialism.
Both suffered through Washington-
inspired destabilization, and both
ended their political lives accepting
a certain degree of privatization,
deregulation and foreign invest-
ment: “good governance and effi-
cient management,” as Jagan put it.
Manley retired from politics in
1992 and became a business consul-
tant and a cricket columnist. He
died on March 6 after a long strug-
gle with prostate cancer. Jagan died
in office on March 5 in a
Washington hospital three weeks
after suffering a heart attack. His
body was cremated in the Hindu
fashion on March 12 in his home
town of Port Mourant.
-Latin America Weekly Report
[Editors’ note: Cheddi Jagan was
interviewed by NACLA just before
he died. The interview will appear
in our July/August Thirtieth Anni-
versary issue.]
Colombian Paramilitaries
Attack FARC Rebels in
Remote Panamanian
Territory
PANAMA CITY, APRIL 8, 1997
Sn April 2, a unit of Colombian
paramilitaries entered the vil-
lage of La Bonga, located in
Panama’s Darien province on the
Atlantic coast, where they executed
four suspected members of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC). The attack was
the latest of a series of incidents in
the remote mountainous jungle
which forms the border between
Panama and Colombia. Colombian
paramilitaries have been increas-
ingly active in the region, a known
rebel safe haven, over the past 12
months.
Residents who fled to safety in
neighboring Puerto Obaldia told of
how the paramilitaries had entered
their village shooting machine guns
and singing anti-rebel songs.
According to refugees from La
Bonga, the paramilitaries raped sev-
eral women, slaughtered livestock
and destroyed several houses. They
left signs reading “death to the
toads (rebels)” signed by the
“Campesino Self-Defense Com-
mittee of Urabd and C6rdoba.”
Panama has also seen an increas-
ing number of Colombian refugees
from the Urabd region over the past
several weeks, as military repres-
sion has stepped up in response to a
powerful FARC offensive in sever-
al parts of the country.
The government of Panama has
refused to comment on the incident
except to say that the border with
Colombia is under control.
Authorities seemed more worried
about the impact on tourism-a key
generator of foreign exchange–
than those who were killed or dis-
placed by the incursions.
-Jon Mitchell
World Bank Agrees To
Investigate Yacyreta Dam
On Argentine-Paraguayan
Border
WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 21, 1997
O n March 3, the World Bank
authorized an inspection panel
to evaluate the environmental and
resettlement problems associated
with the Yacyreta dam, a joint pro-
ject of the Argentine and Para-
guayan governments intended to
supply electricity to Argentina. The
dam straddles the Paranm river,
which forms part of the border
between the two countries. Funded
principally by the World Bank and
the Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB), the project is now nine
years behind schedule and has
already cost $8.2 billion, well
beyond the original estimate of $1.5
billion.
Sobrevivencia, the Paraguayan
affiliate of the U.S. environmental
group Friends of the Earth, filed the
complaint against the World Bank
that led to the establishment of the
inspection panel. According to the
group, more than 5,000 people
have been forced to leave their
homes because of the dam’s con-
struction, while another 50,000–
mostly Paraguayans-will eventu-
ally have to be relocated because
the still-uncompleted dam has
caused the Parani river to rise and
submerge their old neighborhoods.
Damming the river has also
blocked fish migrations and fouled
water quality, substantially reduc-
ing fish catches and depriving resi-
dents of a vital source of income.
Health problems are also increas-
ing because of the deterioration in
the river’s water quality.
The World Bank panel has four
months to probe allegations that the
bank failed to uphold its environ-
mental, social and financial policies
in lending money for the dam-
approximately $1.6 billion since
1979-as well as charges that the
Binational Yacyreta Commission
(EBY), the Argentine-Paraguayan
entity that operates the dam, violat-
ed the terms of its loan agreements.
Sobrevivencia claims that the banks
never consulted local residents in
drawing up resettlement plans, they
never provided adequate supervi-
sion of the project, and they never
held the borrowers to their contrac-
tual obligations.
Environmental and citizen-rights
organizations in Latin America,
Europe, and the United States are
watching the process closely to see
what effect it has on the credibility
of the banks’ inspection mecha-
nisms, which were set up two years
ago to allow communities to seek
redress for harm allegedly done to
them by the banks’ operations.
After the Yacyreta project is com-
pleted, Paraguay will be the
region’s largest exporter of hydro-
electric energy to the MERCOSUR
member-countries, although four
out of ten Paraguayans lack elec-
tricity in their homes.
-NotiSur
SOURCES:
InterPress Service is an international news service based in Italy. Its dispatches can be read on-line in the Peacenet con- ferences: ips.espafiol and ips.english.
Latin America Weekly Report is pub- lished weekly by Latin American Newsletters. For free samples and sub- scription information: Latin American Newsletters, Dept. 96A11, 61 Old Street, London EC1V 9HX, England. Email: WR@latin.ftech.co.uk.
Jon Mitchell is a freelance photographer and journalist based in Panama City.
NotiSur is available as a closed Peacenet conference: carnet.ladb. For subscription information: Latin American Data Base, Latin American Institute, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, (800) 472-0888.