Haitians Debate
the U.S. Occupation
PORT-AU-PRINCE, OCTOBER 10, 1994
A lthough thousands of
Haitians have greeted the
occupying U.S. troops by literal-
ly dancing in streets, a number
of organizations in the democrat-
ic and popular movement are
emerging from hiding to con-
demn the invasion and occupa-
tion. Many student, peasant,
neighborhood and church-based
organizations from the decimat-
ed-but not destroyed-popular
movement are issuing press
releases and position papers
arguing that Haiti has been sad-
dled with an insideous U.S. mili-
tary presence sent to protect the
Haitian army and elite, and that
the country will soon be facing a
harsh neoliberal “structural-
adjustment” program.
“The Yankees occupied Haiti
for 20 years, under the same pre-
text of reestablishing democracy
in Haiti,” said the National
Popular Assembly (APN), a
mass organization with base
groups in several regions of the
country. “Have we ever gotten
that democracy?” Kbmbit
Komilfo, a popular organization
based in Grand-GoAve, a town
west of the capital, issued a two-
page statement on September 29
saying it is up to the Haitian
population, not foreign troops, to
create democracy here. “The
Haitian people,” said the group,
“have to be really clear that if
they want to end the coup and
bury the Tonton Macoute system
forever, they will have to count
first on their own forces and on
their own arms.” Members of the
group have been trying to return
to their town. Although Grand-
Goive is occupied by about a
dozen U.S. soldiers, paramilitary
bands still roam the streets at
night, threatening to persecute
members they find.
The National Federation of
Haitian Students (FENEH) said
on September 22 that it totally
opposes the occupation “perpe-
trated against the legitimate aspi-
rations of the Haitian popular
masses and their arrival on the
political scene.” And on October
7, after several days of clashes
with armed thugs, demonstrating
students seized control of the
university’s school of adminis-
tration, a bastion of support for
the illegal regime. Professors
associated with the C6dras
regime, including Yvelie
Honorat, wife of the first post-
coup prime minister, were liter-
ally chased away. Students and
pro-democracy professors also
regained control of the medical
school, the teachers’ college, and
the science and social sciences
colleges. — HIB
Cardoso Wins
Brazilian Elections
RIo DE JANEIRO, OCTOBER 11, 1994
In the first presidential elec-
tions in Brazil since Fernando
Collor de Mello resigned in dis-
grace in 1992, Fernando
Henrique Cardoso was elected
president on October 3 with
54% of the vote in first-round
balloting. He beat the socialist
Workers’ Party candidate, Luis
Indcio “Lula” da Silva, who
received only 26%. Cardoso’s
election ushers in a phase of
political realignment which has
economic stability as its princi-
pal axis.
Heading an alliance of social
democrats and conservatives,
Cardoso-who will take office
on January 1, 1995-presented
the country with a program of
government based on the success
of the “Real Plan,” which he
crafted during his ten months as
economy minister in the Itamar
Franco Administration. Under
the tight-money plan, inflation
has dropped from near 50% in
June to only 1.51% in
September. Cardoso’s principal
challenge will be to ensure con-
tinuing stability and low infla-
tion while enacting widespread
social reforms, and maintaining
the precarious political alliance
that backed him.
Cardoso’s Vice-Presidential
running mate, Marco Maciel,
affirmed that his rightist Liberal
Front Party (PFL) would not
obstruct the enactment of social
reforms. The President-elect has
already warned that if the forces
of the Right-whether his allies
or those in the opposition-
oppose these reforms, he will
appeal directly to the population
for its support, using the authori-
ty of his electoral mandate of
more than 33 million votes.
“Brazil is not an underdevel-
oped country; it is an unjust
country,” Cardoso said in his
first public appearance after the
release of the election results.
The declaration awakened hope
in sectors of the Left that the
future president would govern as
the progressive sociologist who
wrote the 1973 book
“Dependency and Development
in Latin America,” a classic of
the Latin American Left. At the
same time, Cardoso’s statement
sowed seeds of doubt among his
conservative allies about how the
power-sharing arrangement
would work in practice.
Cardoso’s Brazilian Social
Democratic Party (PSDB) and
its allies will control the Senate,
but they will have to negotiate
with other parties-situated
from the center to the right of
the Brazilian political spec-
trum-to obtain the majority in
the Chamber of Deputies.
Lula and the PT have already
announced that they will not
engage in “systematic opposi-
tion” to the future government.
2NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 2 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASNEWSBRIEFS
The former trade unionist said
that he intends to become “a
kind of prosecuting attorney for
the people,” demanding that
Cardoso fulfill the promises he
made during the electoral cam-
paign.
-Aldo Horacio Gamboa
PRI Wins Yet Again
MEXICO CITY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1994
” 4 etter a known evil than
“an unknown good” is a
common saying in Mexico. It
captured the prevailing philoso-
phy at the voting booths on
August 21 when an unprecedent-
ed 78% of Mexican voters
turned out to elect a new presi-
dent and legislature. Instead of
voting in the sweeping change
that many had either hoped for
or feared, Mexicans granted
another six years to the “known
evil” of the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI),
which has held power since
1929.
PRI candidate Ernesto Zedillo
Ponce de Le6n won with just
over 50% of the vote, the nar-
rowest but also perhaps the
cleanest victory for the PRI in a
presidential election.
Conservative National Action
Party (PAN) candidate, Diego
FernAndez de Cevallos, made a
strong showing with 26%, but
the PAN lost its three governor-
ships in the states of Baja
California, Chihuahua and
Guanajuato. Cuauht6moc
Ctrdenas of the center-left Party
of the Democratic Revolution
(PRD) won a paltry 17% of the
vote-a surprise given that many
believed he had won the fraud-
ridden elections of 1988. The
PRI also won easy majorities in
both the expanded 128-seat
Senate and 500-seat Chamber of
Deputies.
If August’s elections were
cleaner than those of the past,
the most praise should go to the
conscientious work of the hun-
dreds of thousands of election-
booth officials, selected random-
ly by the Federal Electoral
Institute (IFE) on the basis of
birthdays in November or Dec-
ember. Despite widespread cyni-
cism about the possibility of fair
elections, they attended training
classes in the new electoral
process, and then sacrificed their
Sunday to perform a civic duty
for which they were not paid.
Continued on page 45
The PRI probably did win more
votes than any other party, but
whether it won the majority or not
is uncertain because of the many
irregularities that still tainted the
voting process. Thousands of citi-
zens could not vote because of a
lack of ballots at “special needs”
voting stations (which made up
6% of the total stations), partially
erased voters’ lists, or difficulty in
getting the new photo-ID voter
registration card. Some voters had
no privacy while voting, while at
many booths PRI partisans
attempted to sway voters.
Tensions were high in the weeks
leading up to the election. The
Mexican army made sweeps
through “problematic” areas of the
country, while Mexican newspa-
pers plastered their front pages
with photos of U.S. army equip-
ment rolling across the border.
Cirdenas threatened massive civil
disobedience if the PRI won by
fraud, and many Mexicans feared
a possible civil war. The Zedillo
campaign slogan, “I vote for
peace!,” seemed to contain a
veiled threat. Only a few days
before the vote, armed men
assaulted the leaders of the Civic
Alliance, Mexico’s most important
electoral observation organization,
at a public restaurant.
Although over a decade of crises
has weakened the PRI’s grip on
the country, the party proved once
again that it thrives in uncertain
times. For financial support, President Salinas turned to
Mexico’s billionaires, whose ranks
swelled from one to 24 in the last
seven years. Though a new law put
caps on campaign donations, it
nonetheless allowed for undis-
closed donations of up to $6.5 mil-
lion.
The PRI flaunted its bottomless
resources and sophisticated infra-
structure by flooding the streets
and air waves with a deluge of
propaganda which far outstripped
that of any other party. The party
also stepped up its usual nation-
wide distribution of “gifts” such as
aprons, jackets, T-shirts, baseball
caps, plates, buckets, notebooks,
pens, bumper stickers and match-
books stamped with the PRI logo.
It also hosted free rock concerts
for young people, sold low-priced
produce to homemakers, and gave
free haircuts to the general public.
The greatest pork-barrel
resource to which the PRI had
access was the federal anti-poverty
and public-works program,
Solidarity, and its rural spin-off
Procampo. In the months and
weeks before the vote, Solidarity
stepped up construction of roads, sewage systems, clinics and
schools to cement alliances with
PRI supporters or to combat politi-
cal opposition.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to
democracy in Mexico is the PRI’s
almost sacred impunity. It is near-
ly impossible to make individuals
accountable for corruption or out-
right repression, a particular con-
cern in restless areas like Chiapas
where human rights abuses could
escalate if international vigilance
diminishes. Many nations praised
Mexico’s elections as cleaner than
usual, but they should not be
accepted as clean enough.
-Alison Gardy
Harsh Blow
To Colombian Left
BOGOTA, OCTOBER 7, 1994
A s Liberal president Ernesto
Samper and the new Congress
were sworn into office on August
7 in Bogota, hope for the emer-
gence of a left, or even the center-
left, alternative came crashing
down. Two events brought home
this collapse: the electoral disaster
of the Acci6n Democritica/M- 19,
and the brutal assassination of the
only Uni6n Patri6tica (UP) sena-
tor, Manuel Cepeda, on August 9.
The M-19 once seemed on the
verge of breaking the stranglehold
of the two traditional parties on
electoral politics in Colombia. In
1990, M-19 leader Antonio
Navarro Wolff, just two months
after making the transition from
guerrilla leader to presidential can-
didate, received over 12% of the
vote. In special elections held later
that year, this time for a
Constitutional Convention, the M-
19 slate, headed by Navarro Wolff,
garnered over 26% of the ballots
cast.
Despite having quickly estab-
lished themselves as a viable polit-
ical movement, the M-19 failed to
distinguish themselves from the
politicians who came before them,
both ideologically and in practice.
They joined the Gaviria govern-
ment and soon became bogged
down in patronage games. The
Colombian voters responded
harshly. In the Congressional races
this March, the M-19 garnered a
mere 2.8% of the vote. By con-
trast, the Liberals and
Conservatives-in an election
where almost 70% of the eligible
voters stayed home-received over
92% of the vote. The M-19’s dele-
gation went from nine senators to
zero. In the presidential balloting
last May, Navarro Wolff, once
thought to be a serious contender
for the presidency, received a pun-
ishing 3.8%.
The decline of the UP was more
protracted and involved more
bloodspilling. Perhaps no legal
party of the Left has ever faced
such a systematic campaign of
physical extermination. After a
while, the numbers lose all mean-
ing, though not their ability to
shock. Senator Cepeda was the
2444th member of the party to be
assassinated since the party was
founded in 1985. Among the mur-
dered were presidential candidates,
mayors, councilmen, congressmen
and, of course, senators.
Founded in 1985 by the
Communist guerrillas, the FARC,
the UP went on to win 14 seats in
Congress in 1986. But the assault
on the lives of UP members was
unceasing. By 1994, the UP had
been reduced to an inconsequential
party, relying mostly on the aging
machinery of the Communist Party
of Colombia for their political sur-
vival. They managed, however, to
elect one senator in 1994-one
more than the M-19.
Senator Cepeda had widely
denounced the existence of a cam-
paign to exterminate the UP, but he
was largely ignored. His murder
forced President Samper-only
two days after taking office-to
confront directly the question of
official involvement in human
rights violations, including the
assassination of elected officials.
To his credit, President Samper did
not sidestep the issue, as several of
his predecessors had done. He
insisted that bringing those respon-
sible to justice and ending the
reigning impunity will be a center-
piece of his government.
The day after Senator Cepeda
was murdered, thousands of leftist
mourners came together in the
Plaza Bolivar to carry his coffin
through the streets of Bogoti
toward the national cemetery–a
now routine ritual for the Left.
This time, however, the marchers
seemed deeply subdued. No longer
defiant, as in the earlier marches
for the M-19’s slain presidential
candidate, Carlos Pizarro, or the
two slain UP presidential candi-
dates, Bernardo Jarramillo Ossa
and Jaime Pardo Leal, the
marchers could only hope that
Samper would live up to his
promise to end the dirty war.
— Marc Chernick
Cuba-U.S. Talks
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 20, 1994
If last summer’s exodus of
Cubans to Miami was the conse-
quence of a shortsighted U.S.
immigration policy, then the
Cuban refugee crisis was resolved
by the agreement signed by the
two countries in New York on
September 9. If, on the other hand,
the exodus was the consequence of
the island’s economic crisis, and if
economic hardship isn’t quickly
eased, then not even the September
accord will stop the exodus of
Cubans.
Any analysis of the negotiations
between Washington and Havana
over the thorny issue of Cuban
migration rests on which of those
perspectives one accepts. For the
proponents of the first proposition,
the results of the agreement
favored Fidel Castro: while the
issue of the U.S. blockade was left
hanging, the immediate crisis was
overcome. Moreover, Washington
agreed to sit down and negotiate
directly with Cuba, and U.S. immi-
gration policy was reformulated.
For those who believe that,
given the difficult conditions in
Cuba, the exodus will continue,
Washington won at the negotiating
table. The Clinton Administration
didn’t accede to Fidel Castro’s
demands to drastically raise the
number of yearly visas, or to dis-
cuss the issue of the blockade. In
the end the two country’s official
positions remained frozen.
The September 9 agreement
focused on the prevention of risky
departures from the island. The
Cubans agreed to clamp down on
illegal migration. In return,
Washington authorized a minimum
of 20,000 residential immigration
visas per year to be issued to
Cuban citizens who wish to come
to the United States. Additional
visas will be allotted for Cuban
relatives of U.S. citizens, and the
family-reunification category has
been expanded.
Many Cubans, however, believe
that the “real agreement” between
the two governments was not con-
tained in the document signed in
New York. Many are skeptical that
Fidel Castro would agree to stop
the exodus in exchange for an
agreement which is essentially the
same as the one signed in 1984.
That accord-with which the
United States never complied-
also authorized the issuance of up
to 20,000 visas per year. Nor do
most Cubans believe that their
government would agree to an
accord that does nothing to cancel
the measures announced by Bill
Clinton in August which stiffen
travel restrictions and ban remit-
tances sent by Cuban Americans
to their relatives on the island.
From clues dropped in state-
ments made by officials on both
sides, many Cuban political ana-
lysts have inferred the existence of
“the other accord,” not made pub-
lic. It may include an agreement
to continue discussions at a later
date on some of the truly conflic-
tive questions dividing the two
governments: communications,
family reunification, and drug
trafficking. It may also include
some measures to soften the
blockade. The “other accord” may
mean that the key issues will be
back on the table after this
November’s U.S. elections.
— ALAI
Sources
The Haitian Information Bureau (HIB)
publishes Haiti Info, a bi-weekly news
bulletin, in Port-au-Prince. For subscrip-
tion information: Haitian Information
Bureau, do Lynx Air, Box 407139, Ft.
Lauderdale, Fl, 33340; (e-mail:
hib@igc.apc.org).
Aldo Horacio Gamboa is a freelance
correspondent.
Alison Gardy is a regular contributor to
NACLA.
Marc Chernick is the acting director of
the Latin American Studies program at
the School of Advanced International
Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
The Latin American Information Agency
(ALAI) publishes the bi-weekly
Servicio Informativo in Quito. For
subscription information: ALAI, Casilla
17-12-877, Quito, Ecuador;
(e-mail: info@alai.ecx.ec).
