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03/28/2006:
"Justice and Impunity in Latin America"
Guatemala's Efrain Rios Montt earned the nickname "the General" after taking power in a 1982 coup d'etat. His sixteen-month rule is considered one of Guatemala's bloodiest periods since the Spanish conquest. Under the General's command, entire villages were massacred in a bloody counterinsurgency campaign, and some 150,000 mostly indigenous Guatemalans were killed. Despite his gruesome history, Rios Montt remained a powerful political figure and in 2003 ran as a presidential candidate despite a constitutional ban prohibiting former dictators from entering the race. In 1999, Maya activist Rigoberta Menchú submitted an indictment against the former dictator, but over six years later, the trial is still pending.Rios Montt is not an anomaly in Latin America. F! rom El Salvador to Chile, ex-military leaders guilty of violent crimes perpetrated during the region's "dirty wars" of the 70's and 80s roam free. Many, like Rios Montt, wield enough political power to ensure that their macabre pasts remain buried from public scrutiny. Throughout Latin America, human rights groups are seeking to convict these criminals, but most have confronted the greatest obstacle to a functioning justice system--impunity. In Guatemala, the state has made little attempt to investigate or prosecute those responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of war victims--most likely because a large percentage of these criminals still hold high government positions. In the few cases that have ended in conviction, only the material authors, those at the lowest level of the military, have been punished, while the intellectual author! s remain immune to prosecution.
counterpunch.org
Condoleezza Rice Revisits The Scene Of Us Crimes
"Do you know how Chileans first learned about Indonesia?" asks Jorge Insulza, foreign secretary of the Chilean Communist Party. "Long before the coup of Pinochet, right wingers were intimidating members of progressive movements and parties: 'Watch out, Jakarta is coming!'"
Thus the reference to the 1965 military coup led by General Suharto which was full-heartedly supported by western politicians and companies. In a matter of months, between 1 and 3 million Indonesian Communists, atheists and members of the Chinese minority were mercilessly slaughtered in what can be described as easily the most intensive massacre of the 20th century.
A few days after talking to Insulza I was facing Chilean victims of the 1973 coup who had come to see my documentary film "Terlena--Breaking of a Nation," about the Indonesian dictatorship, at Universidad Arsis in Santiago. One elderly woman, apparently shaken, came close to me and whispered: "we heard it was bad there, in Indonesia, but we had no idea that it was so bad. Apparently, Chile and Indonesia not only share the same ocean, they also share a horrific past."
In March, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice decided to embark on a round-the-world journey, visiting Chile, Indonesia and Australia. The symbolism of her trip conveniently escaped the attention of almost all mass media outlets.
In both countries, dictatorship officially collapsed under tremendous popular pressure: in Chile in the late 80's, in Indonesia almost 10 years later. But both former client states developed in a radically different way: one proudly embarked on a democratic path emphasizing social development, while the other struggled under a feudal system with most people living in outright misery.
The reason for Ms. Rice's visiting Chile was the inauguration of new Chilean President, Michelle Bachelet - a socialist, single mother of three and an agnostic. Ms. Rice had to sit through and swallow an inaugural speech in which President Bachelet paid homage to her father, Alberto Bachelet, an air-force general kidnapped, tortured and murdered in prison for opposing the 1973 coup against the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende.
Michelle Bachelet herself survived imprisonment, torture and exile, by-products of US foreign policy. But now she was proudly taking her oath at the crowded Hall of Honor of Chile's Congress in the historical and stunning port city of Valparaiso, surrounded by her friends - leaders of left-wing governments from all over South America.
"South America has changed," declared Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela who has managed to survive a US-supported coup. "A worker is president of Brazil - there comes Lula; an Indian is president of Bolivia; a woman is president of Chile, and in Venezuela, a revolutionary soldier, which is what I am."
Condoleezza Rice described the elections in Chile as a "triumph of democracy," omitting the fact that the triumph took more than 3 decades to achieve at the cost of more than 4 thousand dead and millions of men, women and children who were tortured, dispossessed or exiled. But a triumph nevertheless!
Debates - BOLIVIA: Has Morales sold out?
Even before the January 22 inauguration of Evo Morales as Bolivia's first indigenous president, commentators from all sides of the political spectrum, particularly on the left internationally, have begun to speculate about what course Bolivian politics will take under a Morales government.
One of the most prolific contributors to the debate has been US Marxist sociologist James Petras. Given his long history of well-respected research and also of working with some of the most important social movements in South America, Petras's critical viewpoint has been taken seriously and welcomed by many.
However, his contributions to the left's discussion of the significance of Morales's electoral victory seems to be aimed at carving himself out a niche based on denunciations of Morales as a 'sell-out' In his article "New Winds from the Left or Hot Air from the Right", posted on the Canadian Dimension website on March 1, Petras wrote: There are powerful left-wing forces in Latin America and later or sooner they will contest and challenge the power of the neoliberal converts, sooner in the case of Bolivia, where the scale and scope of Morales's broken promises and embrace of the business elite has already provoked the mobilization of the class-conscious trade unions, the mass urban organizations and the landless peasants.
For Petras, it is the case not just in Bolivia, but in all of South America, that the rebellion against neoliberalism can be explained through the dogmatic schema of (nearly always) reformist leaders who betray and (nearly always) revolutionary masses who are betrayed.
The fact that Morales would go down the path of betrayal was a foregone conclusion for Petras, who writes that his predictions have been proven right because the principal economic and defense ministers and high ranking officials in Morales's government have been linked to the IMF, World Bank and previous neoliberal regimes. Morales has totally and categorically rejected the expropriation of gas and petroleum, providing explicit long-term, large-scale guarantees that all the facilities of the major energy multinational corporations will be recognized, respected and protected by the state.
While Petras seems almost glad to write that Morales has filled his cabinets with 'neoliberals', neither US imperialism nor the right-wing in Bolivia have taken comfort from the new cabinet, expressing particular alarm over Morales's choice for minister of hydrocarbons, Andres Soliz Rada, a long-time advocate of nationalisation of Bolivia's gas.
It is true that the Morales government will not be nationalising the foreign companies that currently run Bolivia's gas industry and booting them out of the country. But Morales didn't promise to do either of these things, so it seems odd to speak of ''breaking promises". Rather, Morales has promised, not unlike Venezuela, to nationalise the country's gas reserves, which his government has declared it will carry out by July 12.
Tabatinga, the other triple border - A new Vietnam?
"We are in one of the strategic points of the planet, in the heart of the Americas," says the mayor of Tabatinga, a small Brazilian city in the middle of the tropical forest, "on the triple border between Brazil, Colombia and Peru."
This is a highly militarized region, in Amazonia. This zone is almost uninhabited, approximately five million square kilometers in size and the government considers it a national priority. A beautiful treasure, that Brazil is determined to defend.
Brazilian public opinion is convinced that natural resources are for sure a cause for war. Amazonia has enormous oil deposits and possesses the biggest fresh water reserves in the world, not to mention a biodiversity that is well beyond comparison. Are these sufficient reasons for a future war?
So, who do they think they would have to defend this treasure from?
The military high command wearily watch US military bases close to the borders of Brazil, Colombia, Peru and also more recently Paraguay. The Defense Minister has recently sent a high-ranking military delegation to Vietnam to study the guerrilla tactics and strategies used against the US army in the jungle during the war. Soon they will also guard Amazonia's air space in partnership with the Venezuelan Armed Forces.
THE END OF THE WORLD
"Tabatinga is so important strategically, that we have deployed a Battalion here permanently," says Brigadier General Joaquin Maia Brandao, and Bishop Alcimar Caldas can feel the imminent danger of a military attack. "We are afraid that one of these days US troops will come here and say to us too: Ok, from now on, the airport belongs to us and you all answer to us because we now control the rivers."
Recuperated Enterprises in Argentina: Reversing the Logic of Capitalism
Argentina’s worker-run factories are setting an example for workers around the world that employees can run a business even better without a boss or owner. Some 180 recuperated enterprises up and running, providing jobs for more than 10,000 Argentine workers.
The new phenomenon of employees taking over their workplace began in 2000 and heightened as Argentina faced its worst economic crisis ever in 2001. Nationwide, thousands of factories have closed and millions of jobs have been lost in recent years. Despite challenges, Argentina’s recuperated factory movement have created jobs, formed a broad network of mutual support among the worker-run workplaces and generated community projects.
Water Law and Indigenous Rights in the Andes
n Andean countries, widespread protests over violations of traditional rights have resulted in creative reform proposals to secure indigenous water rights and water system management.
"Our irrigation system, we have to defend it because it is our work and it costs us much effort. So many mingas, so many meetings, so many commissions, so many problems we have faced in the Guarguallá irrigation project! They cannot impose on us, not the landowners, not the State; they cannot leave us without this project that has been achieved with the organization’s effort, with the effort of people who have stopped sleeping, of women who have left their duties at home… We have to defend it to death because of how much it hurts, and we can’t let nobody take from us what has cost us so much sacrifice!"1
— Rosa Guamán, Licto, Ecuador
