People Before Profit blog

Embracing the African presence in Mexico

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:44:00 +0000

CHICAGO — The Mexican Fine Arts Museum is revealing the missing chapter in Mexican history with a groundbreaking exhibition. “The African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to the Present” showcases the past 500 years alongside two other companion exhibits: “Roots, Resistance and Recognition,” and “Common Goals, Common Struggles and Common Ground.”

The project provides an opportunity for African Americans and Mexicans to embrace a common cultural past, allowing the rest of American society to have a better understanding of the complexity of race issues that face both the U.S. and Mexico.

“The African Presence in Mexico project is the most important cultural presentation ever organized by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum,” said Carlos Tortolero, president of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum. The exhibit “demonstrates a dynamic cultural connection between Mexicans and African Americans, the two largest cultural groups in Chicago,” he said.

Aquilina Carranza, a college student at the exhibit, summed up its impact. “I’m really glad people are finally getting to know about the Afro-Latino culture. It helps us branch out. There is a lot of segregation and we need to focus on the beauty of bringing us all together.”

Africans in Mexico

While just under 2 percent of the population in Mexico was enslaved Africans, they had a huge presence in colonial Mexico (1521-1810) working as domestic servants, day laborers, cattle ranchers, artisans, farmhands and miners on haciendas (large plantation estates). Africans worked in the sugar and silver industries helping to establish Mexico City and many other cities and towns throughout Mexico.

The contribution of Africans is seen throughout Mexican history and culture, from the struggles to abolish slavery to the Mexican Revolution.

Runaway slaves were called cimarrones by the Spanish. They lived in fortified settlements called palenques, which were used as bases, living quarters, meeting places and centers to attract rebels. Well organized, the former slaves conducted surprise attacks on the Spanish ruling class. Like Robin Hood, they robbed the rulers of their ill-gotten wealth, using guerilla tactics, camouflage and the ability to disappear quickly, preventing counterattack and pursuit.

Yanga, a runaway slave, led cimarrones hiding in the mountains of Veracruz for more than 30 years before founding the first free African town in the Americas, San Lorenzo de los Negros, in 1609, a decade before the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown, Va. In 1930, San Lorenzo was proudly renamed Yanga.

African people in Mexico did not face the same powerful slavocracy as their brothers and sisters to the North. During the war for independence from Spain (1810-21), Afro-Mexicans in the military received a salary, held higher positions in society and were authorized to carry arms. Despite Spanish and Criollo (Spanish-born in the Americas) attempts to impose a caste system, slavery in Mexico was abolished in 1830, 35 years before the U.S. Civil War.

By the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), most Mexicans believed their heritage was strictly indigenous and Spanish. The African ancestry had been disregarded. But battalions of Afro-Mexican revolutionaries fought along side Emiliano Zapata. Zapata, a revolutionary leader in the south, made alliances with one of the few Afro-Mexican female battalions from Guerrero. Upon becoming widows in the war, these women would become revolutionary soldiers and continue the fight for their rights to the land.

Three roots

The combination of African, Spanish and indigenous people into interracial families goes back to the 16th century. Names like mestizo (Spanish and indigenous), mulatto (Spanish and African), and Zambo or Lobo (African and Indian) became common place. By the end of the 18th century, one-quarter of the total population was “racially mixed.”

In 1992, as part of the 500th anniversary of the “encounter” with Spain, the Mexican government officially acknowledged Africa to be Mexico’s “Third Root.”

The term Afro-Mexican first emerged in the 1940s, although contemporary Afro-Mexicans identify themselves as Mexicans, not as African. And according to the exhibit, “With nearly five centuries of helping create Mexico and the Mexican culture, how could they be anything but Mexican?”

But the Afro-Mexican communities today in Veracruz and Costa Chica have their own traditional repertory of dances and are accompanied by instruments of African origin, such as the marimbol, the cajon, the bote and the donkey’s jawbone. “La Bamba” was an Afro-Mexican song made famous in the late 1950s in the U.S. by Mexican American musician Richie Valens. Since 1986, the annual Aug. 10 Carnaval feast day is celebrated in the town of Yanga, Veracruz, contributing to the revitalization of Afro-Mexican culture.

The Underground Railroad’s southern stop

When courageous individuals helped enslaved African Americans escape to freedom, also known as the Underground Railroad, thousands fled slavery by going south and crossing the Rio Grande to Mexico. African American slaves and Seminole Native Americans banded together migrating to Mexico where they were granted citizenship and given land in northern Mexico. One leader of the Black Seminoles in Mexico said, “When we came fleeing slavery, Mexico was a land of freedom, and the Mexicans spread out their arms to us.”

Known as “Indios Mascogos,” descendants continue to live in Nacimiento de los Negros. Research on the Underground Railroad has identified the first “Freedom Station” outside the U.S. at Mazamitla Mexico, in the state of Michoacan.

Freed African Americans and Creoles left Louisiana when their freedoms were restricted and chose to settle along Mexico’s Gulf Coast between the cities of Tampico and Veracruz.

A haven from U.S. racism

African American writer Langston Hughes (1902-67) and artist Elizabeth Catlett (b.1915) both spent time in Mexico creating some of their best-known works. Hughes wrote his most celebrated poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” and his first book of prose, “Mexican Games,” far from the segregated and racist environment in the U.S.

Catlett moved to Mexico in 1946, where she met fellow artist Francisco Mora (1922-2002). The two married, raised children and continued to create art from their home in Cuernavaca. Her mission was “to present Black people in their beauty and dignity for ourselves and others, to understand and enjoy and exhibit my work where Black people can visit and find art to which they can relate.” During her studies in Mexico she noticed similarities between ancient African and Mexican art that deeply affected her work, often making Black people look Mexican and vice versa.

African American researchers and scholars in the U.S. understand the Afro-Mexican presence to be just as much a chapter in the African Diaspora as a chapter in Mexican history.

Today’s challenges

Although the Mexican Post Office issued stamps honoring Martin Luther King Jr. in 1969, 10 years before the U.S. would, a recent Mexican stamp caused controversy.

Memin Pinguin, a popular 50-year-old comic book character was commemorated in 2005 on a Mexican postage stamp. Afro-Mexicans from Costa Chica objected to this, charging that Memin is a demeaning image that continues to corrupt public perceptions relying exclusively on derogatory stereotypes that mock more than illustrate their community.

The interactive exhibit “Common Goals, Common Struggles, and Common Ground” deals with divisive problems while it displays a colorful spirit of hope, remembrance and unity. This exhibition highlights the similar struggles within the African American and Mexican communities throughout Chicago history such as the civil rights movement of the 1960s, electoral politics and the current movement against gentrification.

The exhibit’s mission states: “Our hope is that this exhibition portrays not only the positive aspects but also addresses the divides in these communities. These are divides that are not so much geographical but those that are found in our hearts and minds. Our hope is to contribute to the eventual collapse of these divides that more than anything deny both groups the solidarity of truly sitting at the table united as brothers and sisters. Both groups have an opportunity to contribute to the constant redefinition of what Chicago stands for. Not only could it be the city of big shoulders but also the city of open arms, one that embraces all of our hopes for the future.”

One wall features a mural called “Helix: African American and Mexican American timeline, 1900 – Present.” The exhibit demonstrates a true fighting spirit of unity colored in the struggle of solidarity in the shared fight against racism and for a more just society based on equality, peace and freedom.

Influencing each other

The exhibit “Who Are We Now, Roots, Resistance and Recognition” describes the ways in which the two groups have influenced each other, resisting oppression, racism and assimilation. It also points out that African Americans and Mexicans are the two largest cultural groups in the city of Chicago and the two largest communities of color in the country.

Baseball players of the Negro Leagues moved to Mexico in the 1930s and ’40s long before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Willie Wells, a Black shortstop, said in 1944, “One of the main reasons I came back to Mexico is because I’ve found freedom and democracy here, something I have never found in the U.S. … Here in Mexico, I am a man.” African American baseball players in Mexico sometimes made up to four times what they made in the Negro Leagues.

Political moments in the recent history of African American and Mexican unity are also highlighted.

African American leaders Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Braithwaite Burke helped lead a predominantly Black and Mexican coalition to elect Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor of Los Angeles in 2005.

In 1983, Harold Washington was elected as the first African American mayor of Chicago when Blacks and Latinos came together, with a record number of Latinos turning out at the polls on Election Day. Mexican leaders Rudy Lozano, Juan Soliz and Juan Velazquez championed Washington’s campaign that helped bring unity to the table.

On a wall a poem by Kuumba Lynx, a youth group from the city’s North Side, evokes the spirit of that era: “Stands of struggle prove we can overcome, schooled by sacrifice of man / Little Village y Birmingham, Black pearls demand / De Chavez to King, let freedom ring, all over Chicago, de los barrios to the hood / Cuando razas combine / Chi remnants of Harold, running neck to neck / Rudy’s last breath, finding reverence, a genesis renewed, both new and old / We shall all be re-skooled, Then we shall all know!”

Elena Gonzales, 24, curating her first exhibit, told the People’s Weekly World how the stories of Mexican and African Americans in the U.S. are very important. “They are positive stories, people forget that they have a long mutual productive history that needs to be told. When Mexican and African Americans get together they are the majority, we need to work together.”

The project will run until September, featuring numerous public and educational programs and is expected to tour at least four other museums in the U.S. and Mexico.

Pepe Lozano (plozano@pww.org) is a writer for the People’s Weekly World.

Coke goes flat with Teamsters, students

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:26:00 +0000

“Our union brothers and sisters at Coca-Cola bottling facilities in Colombia have been threatened, kidnapped, tortured and murdered,” said Jim Hoffa, general president of the Teamsters union. Hoffa called for the company to negotiate a global human rights agreement that will “protect the rights and safety of those who produce, package and distribute Coca-Cola products.”

Responding to a growing international campaign spearheaded by United Students Against Sweatshops, delegates to the Teamsters Brewery and Soft Drink Workers Conference authorized its leadership to seek a just resolution of the dispute between Coke and human rights groups.

Katishi Masemola, general secretary of South Africa’s Food and Allied Workers Union, which represents 6,000 Coke workers at three South Africa bottling plants, was a guest at the conference. He pledged his union’s cooperation in the conference’s efforts “towards concrete solutions to these human indignities. No worker should have to endure the abuse that our fellow workers in Colombia have had,” said Katishi.

United Students Against Sweatshops has charged that Coca-Cola has supported paramilitary groups in Colombia in terrorizing union members and leaders.

“Coca-Cola’s refusal to take the students seriously is having a direct impact on the company, its reputation and the Teamsters who service university contracts,” said Joe Wojciechowski, president of IBT Local 812, which represents nearly 2,000 Coca-Cola workers in New York. Twenty university campuses have banned Coke as a result of the USAS campaign.

Dennis Hart, Western regional representative for the Teamsters Brewery and Soft Drink Conference, spoke at a USAS meeting in Oakland on Feb. 11, updating students on working conditions of Coke workers in the U.S.

WORLD NOTES

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:14:00 +0000

Algeria: Saharawi refugees homeless

The worst rains in 12 years washed out mud brick homes and schools and damaged hospitals and markets in Saharawi refugee settlements in western Algeria last week. An estimated 150,000 Saharawi refugees have lived in desert settlements near the borders of Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania since 1975. Women and children make up 80 percent of the population of the camps and, according to the UN World Food Program, about 35 percent of the children suffer from chronic malnutrition.

The UN High Commission on Refugees is coordinating airlifts of plastic sheeting, tents and blankets, and the World Food Program issued a plea to the international community for additional food assistance in efforts to reach the 90,000 considered most vulnerable.

The Saharawi traditional homeland is the Western Sahara, an area between Mauritania and Morocco, considered a colony of Spain until 1975, but still in the center of a territorial dispute with Morocco.

Japan: Unions defend ‘Peace Constitution’

Two of Japan’s major maritime workers trade unions have called for increased efforts to defend the nation’s “Peace Constitution” and block attempts at its revision. Article 9 of the postwar Constitution renounces war or war preparations.

“During the Korean War and the Vietnam War, harbor workers were forced to engage in loading/unloading war materials. … We are resolved that we will never give assistance to war planners,” Watanabe Saburo, Liaison Council of Harbor Workers’ Unions secretary-general, told Akahata newspaper.

The All Japan Seamen’s Union and the Liaison Council of Harbor Workers’ Union issued a joint statement, stating, “Never again will seamen go to war and that dock workers will not load or unload any war materials.”

The appeal calls on 20 trade unions and democratic organizations to defend the Peace Constitution and to oppose a referendum bill on a revision procedure.

The Liberal Democratic Party is discussing a plan to realign U.S. forces in Japan so that Japanese forces will join U.S. wars.

Venezuela: Parliamentarians hit the streets

In a campaign called the “Workday of Social Parliamentarianism,” public officials took to the streets last week to implement participatory democracy.

Members of the Venezuela Parliament left the National Assembly in Caracas to travel to the capitals of 23 states and the capital district to discuss the country’s priorities from the standpoint of the people.

Prensa Latina reported that two previous trial runs resulted in 600 meetings involving almost 2 million people. After listening to constituents speak about their chief priorities, the officials cut their legislative proposals from 72 to 50.

Simultaneously, a network of 3,000 communal councils has been established to work out solutions to local problems. The goal is to have between 13,000-15,000 councils around the country.

The councils and workdays are a reflection of President Hugo Chávez’s position that socialist transformation requires the full participation of the people.

Nigeria: Conflict in the oil fields

Nigeria is the scene of a major 21st century contradiction: the vast labyrinths of swamps and tidal creeks that make up the oil rich Niger Delta host an extremely profitable Shell oil operation alongside desperately impoverished fishing villages.

According to BBC News, exports in Nigerian oil in 2006 will reach $50 billion, but local villagers see none of the profits.

Over the past 20 years, tensions between Shell and the local people have persisted with disruptions connected to demands for jobs, clinics and community development, but in the past month, the conflict reached a new level.

A relatively new organization, MEND, or Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, has initiated a series of large-scale attacks against the oil rigs, demonstrating a high degree of military expertise and possession of significant resources.

Local people fear government reprisals. In a 1999 incident, government troops seeking armed militants leveled an entire town and killed 1,000 people.

Italy: Gearing up for elections

In recent developments leading up to the run-off for national elections on April 9, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, have joined forces. Mussolini, along with the leaders of two neo-fascist parties, has agreed to withdraw from the elections in support of Berlusconi.

According to BBC News, media mogul Berlusconi is about to face new allegations of corruption and bribery for false testimony in court. Most opinion polls show his ruling House of Freedoms coalition either trailing his opponent by 5 percentage points or running neck-and-neck.

Rival candidate Romano Prodi of the left-center Union has said he considered the decision to enter the Iraq war a mistake, and if elected, Italy would immediately pull out. The union leader and former chief of the European Commission has promised posts to the Italian communists if his party wins.

World Notes are compiled by Pamella Saffer (psaffer@pww.org).

Haitis Preval prevails after mass demonstrations

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:09:00 +0000

Rene Preval, presidential candidate of Haiti’s Platform of Hope (Lespwa) party and a longtime ally of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was declared winner of the Feb. 7 elections after more than a week’s delay. Preval’s victory, which came on the heels of massive demonstrations protesting evidence of vote fraud committed by his opponents, was announced Feb. 16.

During the extended vote count, officials of the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) reported that Preval, after starting out with a big lead, was gradually falling below the required 50 percent-plus-one-vote required to avoid a run-off.

Then cracks began to appear in the CEP, which is largely composed of Preval’s opponents. Two CEP members publicly denounced the tally as fraudulent.

Fueling charges of vote fraud, thousands of partially burned ballots, many cast for Preval, were found in a Port-au-Prince garbage dump.

Preval, unwilling to accept the official vote count, called his supporters to take the streets. Tens of thousands of Haitians protested in cities and towns across Haiti, sometimes erecting flaming barricades to vent their anger.

Another issue was the very large number of blank ballots, which diluted Preval’s vote percentage. CEP President Max Mathurin subsequently admitted the 85,000 to 90,000 blank ballots “were probably introduced into the ballot boxes in a fraudulent manner.” He put the blame on polling station workers.

After intense negotiations with Preval’s supporters and others, the CEP agreed to equally distribute the blank ballots to all the candidates based on the proportion of votes they received, which raised Preval’s vote to 51.5 percent, adequate for a first-round victory.

The Feb. 7 vote was also marked by complaints that the CEP discouraged Preval’s supporters from casting their vote. Long delays in opening the polls in poor neighborhoods, long waits in line and missing names from voter lists all hurt his vote total. The CEP said 2.2 million voters turned out, about 63 percent of those registered.

The elections represented a defeat for the anti-Aristide opposition. None of the 33 rival candidates, who were part of the opposition that helped oust President Aristide, garnered any significant popular support. Preval’s closest rivals were Leslie Manigat, who received 11.83 percent, and Charles Baker with 7.93 percent.

The election, organized by the CEP in conjunction with the U.S., Canada, France, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations, cost $75 million.

The New York-based Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) is calling for an investigation into the role that the Brazilian-led UN stabilization forces (Minustah) played in the disappearance and burning of ballots, the OAS’ role in supervising the election, and the awarding of election-related contracts.

Anthony Fenton, co-author of the book “Waging War on the Poor Majority: Canada in Haiti” told the World that U.S. government agencies, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and the Agency for International Development, funneled money and material resources to anti-Aristide opposition parties to prevent a Preval victory.

The OAS awarded the contract to print the ballots to Rudolph Boulos, brother of Reginal Boulos, a leader of the Haiti Democracy Project, which was set up by forces sympathetic to the U.S. to oppose Aristide. Laurent said she would like to know if Rudolph Boulos was responsible for printing and distributing the blank ballots.

While the presidential votes have been counted, the votes for the parliamentary and senate races have not yet been tallied.

Meanwhile, the CEP’s executive director, Jacques Bernard, who has been accused of orchestrating the stuffing of ballot boxes with blank ballots and the dumping of ballots, fled the country on Feb. 19 aboard a special flight to Washington, D.C., without informing other CEP members. Sources within the CEP told the Haitian News Agency that Bernard left Haiti in order to avoid having to defend himself against fraud accusations.

Preval, a 63-year-old agronomist, previously served as president from 1996 to 2001. He served as prime minister under Aristide in 1991, and the two were regarded as close. In the recent period, however, he has sought to distance himself somewhat from Aristide’s movement, the Lavalas Party, and, in contrast to Lavalas, has sent mixed signals about keeping UN troops in Haiti.

Prime Minister Gerard Latortue will remain in power until Preval is sworn in as president on March 29.

South Africans gear up for local elections

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 10:03:00 +0000

South Africa is preparing for local elections March 1, the fourth set of elections since the demise of the country’s notoriously racist system of apartheid a little over a decade ago.

From about 1948 to 1994, South Africa was home to one of the most oppressive governments in the world. The system of apartheid, which means “separation” or “apartness” in the language of the white Afrikaner settlers, was the law of the land.

Under apartheid, all people were classified by race, with the white minority at the top of the pyramid. Blacks were systematically denied a wide range of civil and human rights, including the right to vote or to hold office. Segregation was brutally enforced in schools, public transportation, trade unions and social relations.

Apartheid laws also affected economic life. Blacks were the lowest paid. Black residential areas were the poorest, and Black homes rarely had plumbing or electricity. Hospitals and ambulances were segregated. In the 1970s, each Black child’s education cost the state only one-tenth of each white child’s.

In 1949, the African National Congress was founded and launched a series of mass campaigns against apartheid. These included resistance in the form of strikes, acts of public disobedience and protest marches, often resulting in violent clashes with the police. An international solidarity movement, including a boycott of South African goods, helped weaken the racist system.

The struggles led by the ANC, in alliance with the South African Communist Party, mushroomed in the 1980s and resulted in the eventual dismantlement of the apartheid laws in the early 1990s. The struggles culminated in the freeing of Nelson Mandela, a top ANC leader, after nearly 30 years of imprisonment, and his election as president in 1994.

Since that time the ANC has won every major election, typically with 50 percent to 70 percent of the vote. ANC-led governments have paved roads and provided streetlights for streets that were never paved or lighted before. Water and electricity have become more accessible to the Black majority. More homes and recreational facilities have been built, and services such as waste removal have improved. New education and training opportunities have been developed.

But serious problems remain. Four million South Africans are still without employment. Those who do work are oppressed by management and sometimes physically brutalized. Millions continue to live in poverty. Five million South Africans are living with HIV and of that number 500,000 have AIDS.

In the current campaign, the ANC is pledging to speed up the delivery of clean water and sanitation services, expand the number of households that have electricity, improve the housing stock, build the economic infrastructure through public works and create more job opportunities. It is also placing emphasis on strengthening ward committees and other forms of local self-government.

The ANC has worked with its partners, the South African Communist Party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Civics Organization (SANCO), at every level of planning for this election.

Following its 2005 guidelines, 50 percent of the ANC’s candidates are women. Its candidates have been asked to take an oath and sign the “Code of Conduct of ANC Councillors,” which states that they will (1) serve the community; (2) not seek material advantage or personal gain; (3) fight corruption; (4) listen to the community and hold report-back meetings at least four times a year; and (5) live in the community that has elected them.

The ANC’s opponents include the Democratic Alliance, which is linked to white elements in the capitalist class with links to the apartheid past, and the Inkatha Freedom Party, led by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. The IFP, among other things, has been linked to death squads that persecuted the ANC during the apartheid era.

In a disturbing development, Nsizwazethu (Sethu) Thusi, the ANC’s candidate for Ward 6 of the Umshwathi Municipality, was recently assassinated in his home.

The SACP, in a statement, called on “workers and poor, on professionals and progressives, on teachers and students” to “come out in our millions on March 1st — to Vote ANC!” It called for “a strong, unified, developmental state; mobilized people’s power — where we live and where we work.”

Churches demand closure of Guantanamo

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 06:47:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — National Council of Churches General Secretary Bob Edgar has written an open letter, signed by 13,000 others, demanding that the Bush administration close the Guantanamo Bay torture prison where 500 detainees have been held for as long as four years without criminal charges.

Under a headline, “Who Would Jesus Torture?” the NCC web site urges people to sign the Edgar letter addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanding closure of the prison.

“New photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and a blistering United Nations report calling on the U.S. to shut down the Guantanamo Prison in Cuba have once again reminded us that this chapter in our nation’s history is a moral disgrace and must end,” the NCC declares.

Edgar writes, “We emphatically support” the recommendations that the U.S. either expeditiously bring all detainees to trial or release them without further delay and that the U.S. government should promptly close the Guantanamo detention facility.

Edgar rebutted attempts to discredit the UN report on grounds that the five UN human rights investigators turned down the Pentagon’s prison tour offer. The Pentagon “ignores well established international practice that an investigation cannot be conducted without private access to detainees,” he writes.

In 2003 and 2004, the NCC was denied an opportunity to send a delegation to Guantanamo to monitor the physical, mental and spiritual condition of the detainees. The NCC renewed its request “not only for the benefit of the detainees but for the benefit of the reputation of our country.”

Vince Isner of the NCC’s Washington office told the World that the 13,000 signers is just the beginning. “We’ve appealed to online groups to help mobilize support,” he said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan swiftly endorsed the UN report. France, Germany and other European nations joined in its call.

The UN report cited a Dec. 2, 2002 memo signed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approving a long list of interrogation methods including “stress positions” and “hooding” of detainees, stripping them of all clothing while also exposing them to freezing cold or sweltering heat, sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, and interrogation for up to 20 hours. The memo also calls for exploiting detainees’ “phobias” such as fear of attack dogs.

Most recently, hunger strikers at Guantanamo have been strapped to chairs and had feeding tubes jammed up their nostrils, the report charges. Doctors and other medical personnel have participated in this “force-feeding” in violation of medical ethics, the report states. This “must be assessed as amounting to torture as defined in Article One of the Convention Against Torture.” The U.S. is a signatory to this law.

The report also singles out interrogation methods “specifically designed to offend the religious sensitivities of the detainees” such as trampling on the Koran.

“Extraordinary rendition,” the practice of transferring detainees to other countries where even more brutal methods of torture are used, is also condemned.

U.S. allegations thwart six-party talks

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 10:14:00 +0000

While the Sept. 19 round of the six-party talks aimed at resolving the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula ended successfully after the U.S. government agreed on paper to respect the sovereignty of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), November’s round was unsuccessful. Further talks do not seem to be in the cards anytime soon, mainly, many say, because of a series of provocative moves made by the Bush administration.

Since September the U.S. has accused North Korea of various offenses, including producing illegal drugs and “fake cigarettes,” proliferating weapons of mass destruction and counterfeiting American money.

The North flatly denied all such charges. “The DPRK has never issued counterfeit notes nor had ever been engaged in any illegal dealings,” said a Korea Central News Agency statement. “Such illegal activities are unimaginable in the DPRK in the light of its nature and mission.”

According to the KCNA, the Bush administration’s policy is a “foolish and mean attempt to tarnish the international image of the DPRK and shift the responsibility for the stalled six-party talks on to it at any cost.” North Korea says that it cannot participate in talks with the U.S. in the current atmosphere.

Without presenting any evidence, the U.S. has placed sanctions on eight North Korean companies, saying they were fronts for weapons proliferation. In addition, the administration imposed restrictions on a Macau bank for supposedly working with the DPRK to launder counterfeit dollars.

The U.S. alleges that North Korea produced counterfeit $100 “supernotes” in 2001-2003. According to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, however, this claim is false. In January, the NIS told Parliament that the DPRK had not been involved in counterfeiting at least as far back as 1998.

The actions of the Bush administration appear to be isolating the U.S. further, even from its one-time closest ally against the DPRK, South Korea. The South Korean news daily Chosun Ilbo, in a Feb. 13 editorial on relations between Washington and Seoul, said, “One side is either lying or thinks the other is. The bilateral relationship between the so-called allies is unraveling, and now the two can barely agree on basic facts or trust that evidence the other produces is authentic.”

North Korea said that dialogue is the best alternative in the current situation, saying in a KCNA statement that the U.S. should “lift its financial sanctions against the DPRK and sincerely work to find a solution to the problem at the six-party talks.”

World Notes

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 08:47:00 +0000

Zimbabwe: Child labor on farms

Experts report an increasing number of children under the age of 16 working in the agricultural sector in Zimbabwe. An estimated 20,000 children work for long hours on cotton and timber plantations, tea estates and tobacco farms, sometimes with hazardous chemicals and always for very low wages.

Wellington Chibebe, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, told the Zimbabwe Standard that the children work under conditions of slavery. The head of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe described the problem as rampant and said it is hurting school attendance.

Children unable to pay school fees turn to farm work as a way of supplementing their families’ incomes. In one district, children join a program called “Earn and Learn,” where they work in the agricultural sector in exchange for free schooling later.

UNICEF reports an estimated 246 million working children globally. In sub-Saharan Africa, about 29 percent of children below the age of 15 work.

Indonesia: Labor leaders imprisoned

Five trade unionists from PT Musim Mas Palm Oil plantation and refinery in Sumatra were sentenced to prison last week in a labor dispute between the union and one of Indonesia’s largest palm oil firms. When the company persistently refused to comply with a wide range of legally mandated minimum working standards, the union organized a series of demonstrations and industrial actions.

The company responded with strikebreaking actions, mass dismissals and police intimidation.

According to The Asian Food Worker, Suyahman, secretary of the PT Musim Mas Union, addressed the court. “We are not criminals,” he said. “We are workers oppressed by the despotic employers in our workplace. Is the law and justice in this country ... not for the ordinary people and the workers like myself?”

The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) denounced the sentence as a “hideous travesty of justice.”

Germany: Public sector workers strike

About 10,000 workers in the service industry went on strike in southwestern Germany last week and union leaders warn work stoppages could spread across the country. In a strike vote, almost 95 percent of the members of the ver.di trade union voted for a work stoppage.

The workers object to attempts to extend the workweek from 38.5 to 40 hours per week with no raise in pay, equivalent to a 4 percent salary cut, according to the union. Union officials insist regional authorities should implement public service wage agreements scheduled for October 2005.

They argue that extending the workweek would increase unemployment. “On the one hand Germany has 5 million unemployed, and on the other the employers want to prolong the working week for those newly employed,” ver.di chief Frank Bsirske told Deutsche Welle.

The strike is the first widespread service industry strike in 14 years.

Panama: New energy policy demanded

Two coalition movements in Panama joined forces last week in a demonstration against rising utility costs. The National Front in Defense of Economic and Social Rights (Frenadeso) and the Movement for National Dignity and Unity have called for the re-nationalization of electric and telephone companies, a national energy policy that reduces Panama’s dependence on foreign oil and a condemnation of the free trade agreement with the United States.

The groups’ demands include a reduction of oil prices, salary increases for workers and substantial reductions in gas, oil, electric and telephone bills.

Frenadeso unites trade unions, civic organizations, students and the professional sectors and, according to Prensa Latina, stresses, “The people must protest against the voracity of foreign companies that control power generation and distribution.”

Frenadeso led strikes in Panama in 2005.

Britain: Church issues apology

The Church of England general synod opened last week by commemorating its role in the abolition of slavery in 1807 and then, prompted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, engaged in a debate on the church’s complicity in the slave trade and the huge profits gained from it.

According to the Guardian UK, the Rt. Rev. Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark, told the group, “The profits from the slave trade were part of the bedrock of our country’s industrial development. No one who was involved in running the business, financing it or benefiting from its products can say they had clean hands.”

When slavery was abolished on the church’s Barbados plantation, both the church and the then Bishop of Exeter received huge sums to compensate for the loss of slave labor.

The meeting voted unanimously to issue an apology, although it did not endorse reparations or other financial compensation.

World Notes are compiled by Pamella Saffer (psaffer@pww.org).

FBI attacks journalists during Puerto Rico raids

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 08:38:00 +0000

MAYAGÜEZ, Puerto Rico — Voices from almost all sectors of Puerto Rican society have been raised, once again, in protest against imperial arrogance and violations of people’s rights in this colony by U.S. authorities, following FBI raids of homes of pro-independence leaders on the morning of Feb. 10 in which a number of journalists were attacked with pepper spray. All the video footage shot by different news agencies showed the FBI attacks were unprovoked.

The FBI raided five homes and one economic development agency in six municipalities, mostly in the western part of this Caribbean nation. The raids on the activists’ homes were conducted while they were away at work. All were members of Breaking the Perimeter Coordination, a group set up after the killing of independence leader Feliberto Ojeda Rios five months ago in an FBI raid.

In a press release, the FBI claimed the raids were carried out to prevent “potential terrorist attacks,” yet there have been no arrests and no apparent measures taken to prevent any of the raid’s targets from leaving Puerto Rico.

The statement, which substituted for a promised but scuttled press conference, also claimed the belligerent actions of the FBI were undertaken to “protect the public, the press and our agents during the operation.” To justify its actions, it said some items were thrown at FBI vehicles when they were leaving the area. However, it failed to note that the items were thrown at them only after they attacked and injured the journalists.

During the raid on the home of Lilian Laboy in Rio Piedra, the FBI refused to let either her daughter or her lawyers be present during the search. After the search, Laboy’s daughter went back into the building, and left the gate to the condominium’s common area open. Reporters followed. The federal agents then attacked.

“Besides it being another FBI abuse of power in Puerto Rico, it implies a violation of client-lawyer communication,” said the Puerto Rican Bar Association president, Julio Fontanet. Fontanet also said that federal rules governing search and seizures stipulate that there should be at least one person representing the owner of the premises observing the search.

The offices of Jose Morales, executive director of the Ecumenical Committee for Community Economic Development (CEDECO), were left in shambles, and computers and files were taken. Morales, a Presbyterian minister, said FBI agents had visited his office not too long ago acting as federal auditors. CEDECO develops housing using grants from both the Puerto Rican as well the U.S. government.

Teachers’ Union leader Jesus Delgado said it was “the FBI that took part in a terrorist act” by attacking the press. He said it was an attempt to smear and silence “pro-independence and socialist” activists.

The head of the FBI office in Puerto Rico, Luis Fraticelli, issued another press release claiming that journalists were at fault because they “attacked” the agents. Oscar Serrano, president of the Puerto Rican Association of Journalists, demanded charges be filed against the agents involved. Annette Alvarez of the Overseas Press Club demanded the same.

Margarita Sanchez de Leon of the Puerto Rican branch of Amnesty International said clips from the video footage of the incident “speak for themselves.” She added, “In all the tapes we saw the FBI use excessive force.”

Meanwhile, the FBI’s Fraticelli refuses to answer questions from the press.

Independence Party (PIP) legislators filed resolutions demanding the Puerto Rican secretary of justice investigate and file charges against the FBI agents. The legislative leadership of the autonomist Popular Democrats announced they would join in co-sponsoring the PIP resolution.

Hunger strikers tortured at Guantanamo. UN report calls for closing U.S. prison

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 06:20:00 +0000

WASHINGTON — Grisly details of torture of detainees at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are revealed in a new UN report, not yet released. The torture includes jamming feeding tubes up the nostrils of hunger strikers twice daily and force-feeding them Ex-Lax so they lose control of their bowels.

The report calls for the closing of the prison and release or due process trials of the 517 detainees.

Prepared by five special human rights envoys, the report charges that the force-feeding causes excruciating pain and constitutes torture. The authors also found that brutality in the transport of the prisoners and several methods of interrogation also meet the definition of torture.

“We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the U.S. government,” said Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture. “We concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture.”

The UN team declined the Bush administration’s offer of a tour of Guantanamo because the Pentagon refused to allow them to question any of the detainees about their treatment. Thus the report focuses on the testimony of the few detainees who have been released.

One detainee, a Kuwaiti named Fawszi al-Odah, said he stopped his five-month hunger strike this month when he heard the screams of a fellow prisoner as guards rammed a feeding tube up his nose. Al-Odah reported that in December guards started taking clothes, shoes and blankets away from 85 hunger strikers. He charged that guards mixed Ex-Lax with the liquid formula force-fed to 40 other strikers, causing them to defecate on themselves.

The report buttresses recent charges by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights that torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading practices are being inflicted on the Guantanamo detainees in flagrant violation of U.S. and international law.

“We have not yet read the report but from media accounts it confirms what we have been saying about Guantanamo for years,” said Sharon Singh, Amnesty International’s media spokesperson. “We have been calling on the Bush administration to permit independent doctors in to assess the medical condition of the detainees. They have been held for years without criminal charges. Either charge them with a crime or release them. More and more groups are speaking out. Guantanamo and these other secret sites should be closed.”

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the UN report would “revive concern about the government’s mistreatment of detainees” and “get people to take another look at the legal basis. There are lots of lingering questions about how you justify holding these people.”

The Bush administration has stiff-armed all appeals that it end these practices. Last year it rammed through Congress a $36 million appropriation to build a permanent prison at Guantanamo, brushing aside Sen. Robert Byrd’s (D-W.Va.) amendment to strip the funds from a spending bill. The administration has even asserted the right to execute prisoners at Guantanamo.

Amnesty International released its own report this month, titled “Guantanamo: Lives Torn Apart,” based on interviews with detainees and their families. It points out that President Bush asserts his prerogative to detain so-called “enemy combatants” indefinitely without criminal charges or due process rights.

“But the torment does not in Guantanamo,” the report states. “For some of the ‘war on terror’ detainees, transfer from Guantanamo has meant a move from one place of unlawful detention to another. For others, it has meant continual harassment, arbitrary arrest and ill-treatment.”

Amnesty’s report urges readers to “take action now! Write to U.S. President George W. Bush demanding that he close down the detention facilities at Guantanamo.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights released a report Feb. 6 by Seton Hall law professor Mark Denbeaux and attorney Joshua Denbeaux showing, based on Pentagon records, that the majority of the Guantanamo detainees had committed no hostile act against the U.S. Only 5 percent were captured by U.S. forces, the report says. “The rest were picked up in Pakistan and handed over to the Pentagon by warlords and others for large bounties.”

CCR spokesperson Gita Gutierrez commented, “Now for the first time, the military’s lies and misrepresentations about the prisoners in Guantanamo have been debunked through the military’s own documents. Yet these men remain in prison while at every turn the Executive seeks to avoid judicial scrutiny of its unlawful conduct.”

Underlining Pentagon disdain for the rule of law, The New York Times reported Feb. 13 that years after two Afghan detainees were murdered, prosecution of the killers has virtually collapsed. The two men were found dead within days of each other, hanging by their shackled wrists in isolation cells at the U.S. Bagram prison north of Kabul. They had been beaten to death. Of 27 soldiers and officers who faced criminal charges, only 15 have been prosecuted. Five pleaded guilty to assault charges and the stiffest penalty was five months in a military prison. Only one soldier has been convicted and he was not imprisoned at all.

Hotel flap reveals imperialist essence of U.S. relationship to Mexico

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 12:05:00 +0000

A storm is raging in Mexico over extraterritorial rights claimed by the United States.

On Feb. 3, 16 Cuban oil industry officials were thrown out of the Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel in downtown Mexico City, the management even refusing to refund their money. They were told that they could not even buy a cup of coffee at the hotel restaurant, or use the passageways, simply because they were Cubans. They had come to Mexico City to meet with U.S. oil industry representatives interested in exploring purchases of Cuban crude from reserves recently discovered off that country’s northern coast. U.S. law prevents such deals, but the oilmen are making preliminary contacts in case this should change.

The Maria Isabel belongs to the U.S.-based Starwood Corp. The Helms-Burton law forbids U.S. companies, including their overseas branches, from trading with Cuba (there are some exceptions covering cash sales of food and medicine). Pressured by the Bush administration, the home office in Phoenix not only instructed the Maria Isabel to throw the Cubans out, but also to grab their room deposits and hand them over to the U.S. government.

Interpreting this law this way, no business in Mexico or anywhere owned or part owned by a U.S. entity, or which sold products wholly or partly produced in the United States, could do business with any Cuban citizen.

Under NAFTA, there is a huge increase in the businesses and products found in Mexico that are U.S.-owned or produced. Mexico could be more and more subject to the U.S. Helms-Burton law, which is opposed by the vast majority of the Mexican people. Eventually, Cubans traveling in Mexico would not be able to eat tortillas, because lately they are often made from U.S. maize, which has flooded Mexico under NAFTA.

Branches of U.S. companies in other countries besides Mexico have been told they cannot make deals with Cubans. And even foreign companies which manufacture products that contain U.S.-made components are told they must obey not only the Helms-Burton law, but other orders from the U.S. government. Currently, the U.S. is trying to stop Spain from selling fighter jets to Venezuela on the grounds that the jets contain some U.S.-made components. U.S. imperialism and neoliberal, free trade policies are two sides of the same coin.

However, Mexican law specifically forbids any company doing business in Mexico from obeying the Helms-Burton law, which the Maria Isabel did by giving the Cubans the boot. The question now is whether within Mexican national territory, U.S. or Mexican law is applicable. Or put another way: Is Mexico still a sovereign, independent country, or not?

Before, Mexico made at least some show of enforcing such laws, in the name of national dignity. However, the current government of President Vicente Fox of the right-wing National Action Party has been excessively eager to please the Bush administration, especially in relation to Cuba. Mexico’s relations with the socialist island having been repeatedly jeopardized in an evident attempt by Fox to curry favor with Bush, partly in hopes of doing an immigration deal.

This has gotten Fox nowhere, and for his pains he has been slimed in a bizarre campaign of vituperation in the right-wing U.S. media which accuse him, the most right-wing, pro-Washington Mexican president since 1911, of being a radical anti-American revolutionary who wants to invade the United States and “reconquer” the U.S. Southwest.

While representatives of all three major political parties in Mexico (the former ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party, or PRI, the left-center Revolutionary Democratic Party, or PRD, and Fox’s own PAN) denounced the incident, the initial response from the government has been that it is “a problem between the two parties involved.” In other words, “We disapprove of what the hotel did, but we’re not going to do anything about it.” But as the political temperature over the incident rose, this changed slightly. The Mexican Movement in Solidarity with Cuba organized demonstrations demanding the hotel obey the law and the government enforce it.

Fox’s foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, changed course to some extent, announcing that the government will investigate possible violations of the law and might go so far as to close the hotel. But at this writing, he has doggedly refused to send a note of protest to the U.S. government. The United States, meanwhile, insists that U.S.-linked companies in Mexico have to obey U.S. law and not Mexican law when the two collide. Last week the government of the Mexico City borough where the hotel is located carried out an intensive inspection, and announced that they were contemplating closing the hotel for multiple code violations in addition to the charge of illegal discrimination against the Cuban guests.

Progressive people in the United States need to raise our voices about this also, demanding an end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba, an end to imperialist assaults against the national sovereignty of Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela and every other country, and an end to the neoliberal, free trade policies under cover of which such assaults have become a routine matter worldwide.

Schafik Handal, revolutionary leader, 75

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:57:00 +0000

Tributes from around the world flooded in to the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) last week on the death of Schafik Jorge Handal, a distinguished revolutionary leader in El Salvador.

On Jan. 24, Handal collapsed and died of a heart attack at Comalpa Airport in San Salvador on his way home from the inauguration of Evo Morales in Bolivia. He was 75.

Schafik Handal was born in El Salvador on Oct. 14, 1930, the son of immigrant Palestinians from Bethlehem. From a young age he was involved in the struggles against U.S.-installed military dictatorships in his country, eventually becoming the general secretary of the Communist Party of El Salvador.

Like many of his compatriots, he was detained, tortured and eventually exiled. He returned to the country clandestinely, and in 1980 he helped form and became one of the leaders of the FMLN, a national liberation movement.

After a 12-year civil war, in a stalemate between the U.S.-backed Salvadoran military and the FMLN, Handal participated in the signing of 1992 Peace Accords. He then went on to lead the FMLN in making the transition from a guerilla force to a left political party.

Handal was elected to the country’s Legislative Assembly in 1997. In 2004 he ran for the nation’s presidency. He was defeated in that race by the candidate of the U.S.-backed, right-wing ARENA Party, whose campaign was aided by Bush administration threats to cut off economic aid to El Salvador if Handal were elected.

Handal was an internationalist. He was solidly supportive of the Cuban revolution and all progressive movements in Latin America. He was a man of principle; he was a revolutionary. His death is a great loss to El Salvador, Latin America and all progressive peoples throughout the world.

Compañero Schafik Jorge Handal, presenté!

WORLD NOTES

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:27:00 +0000

India: Airport workers on strike

About 23,000 employees at Mumbai and Delhi airports successfully resolved their strike that followed a decision by the authorities to turn over the airports to private companies for upgrading. All of India’s main airports are state-run enterprises, and some, like Mumbai and Delhi, are below international standards for modernization although they service about half of the estimated 50 million Indians who traveled by air last year.

Workers say the private companies announced they would fire 40 percent of the present workforce. “It is the question of the lives of thousands of airport employees and their families,” Nitin Jadhav, general secretary of Airports Authority Employees Union in Mumbai, told Reuters.

Left parties, including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party of India extended support and served as mediators for the agreement with the government, but warned against further moves toward privatization.

Iraq: Trade unionist killed

A prominent member of the executive board of the recently created General Federation of Iraqi Workers was assassinated outside his home in the early morning of Jan. 25. The murder of Alaa Issa Khalaf was strongly condemned by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions as one in a series of targeted attacks against Iraqi trade union activists.

In a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, the ICFTU general secretary urged the government to launch an investigation into the killing, and the ratification of International Labor Organization Convention 87 on the right to association.

The letter says, “It is unacceptable that trade unionists should exercise their activities in a climate of violence, and it is your government’s responsibility to ensure security.”

It continues, “I therefore strongly urge … that adequate steps are taken to provide security for trade unionists, so they can do their legitimate trade union work without having to fear for their lives.”

Colombia: Coca-Cola FEMSA investigation

A resolution filed on behalf of five New York City pension funds is before Coca-Cola shareholders, asking for an independent inquiry into allegations of human rights abuses at its Colombian affiliate, Coca-Cola FEMSA.

According to AFP Business News, consumer boycotts have affected sales in the U.S. and Europe amid charges of collusion between paramilitary forces and company officials in violence directed at union activists.

The U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project (U.S./LEAP) says more trade unionists are killed in Colombia than in all other countries combined. Global Exchange said Coca-Cola in Colombia “leads in the abuse of workers’ rights, assassinations, water privatization and worker discrimination. Hundreds ... who have joined or considered joining the Colombian union SINALTRAINAL have been kidnapped, tortured, and detained by paramilitaries who intimidate workers to prevent them from unionizing.”

South Africa: Local elections ahead

The South African Communist Party called on millions to come out to vote for the African National Congress on March 1. Citing advances such as greater access to clean water, electricity and low-cost housing, more local community clinics, greater opportunities for training and education and promotion of needs of youth, women, children and people with disabilities, SACP Secretary General Blade Nzimande said serious challenges remain.

Among the challenges facing national and local government are 4 million unemployed, 5 million living with HIV and many millions living in poverty, Nzimande said. “Our vote for the ANC is a vote for developmental local government,” he said. “Let’s build people’s power where we live and where we work.”

The elections will be the third non-racial democratic elections in South Africa. The first local elections took place in 2000.

Cuba: Chávez wins UNESCO Marti prize

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was in Havana last week to receive UNESCO’s 2005 José Marti International Award. The prize is a Cuban initiative created in 1994 “to honor an individual or institution having contributed to the unity and integration of Latin American and the Caribbean countries and to the preservation of their identities, cultural traditions and historical values,” reported Prensa Latina.

The awards ceremony in Revolution Square was attended by about 200,000 Cubans and international guests. Chávez said he would donate the monetary part of the prize to Bolivia’s people for flood relief or literacy campaigns.

World Notes are compiled by Pamella Saffer (psaffer@pww.org).

Venezuelans speak their minds

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:18:00 +0000

CARACAS, Venezuela — As this city filled up with delegates from 160 countries attending the sixth World Social Forum last month, one thing seemed to be on their minds: learning more about the revolutionary process taking place in Venezuela. And Venezuelans — from state officials to political party leaders to activists in the social movements to the man, woman or child in the street — are eager to talk about the Bolivarian Revolution.

Antonio Pérez, a mason, said, “The opposition doesn’t stand a chance. In 40 years they did nothing [for the people].” He noted that a recent opposition march of social-democrats, right-wingers and one ultra-left group was in an area “close to where the rich live.” He said they would have incurred the anger of the people if they had marched in the poor areas, although he quickly added that the Bolivarian Revolution is democratic and all points of views are heard.

The opposition press made a big deal of the anti-Chávez march, he said, even though only a few hundred people were involved. Pérez pointed to a newspaper photograph of Antonio Ledesma, the former mayor of Caracas, who writes a regular column. He said Ledesma consistently attacks Chávez and Juan Barreto, the current chavista mayor of the capital city.

“But the people are with the president,” Pérez said.

Responding to opposition claims that they could do things better, he said, “That is pure silliness. They never brought forth solutions to any problems.”

“I don’t know what this 21st century socialism means,” Pérez said. “All I know is that things are better for the poor.” Even something as simple as being able to enter the Simón Bolivar Plaza, where he was sitting reading his newspaper, was important. In the past, he said, “you could not enter without being ‘properly dressed.’ Now everyone can come in.”

Alicea Hurianes, a municipal worker with one of the many cleaning crews one sees throughout Caracas as part of a government clean-up campaign, said the situation has changed for the better for low-income people and indigenous peoples like herself. Hurianes is a Guaraní, one of the indigenous people of the country’s south.

Small businessman Luis Acuña said the opposition forces are wrong to blame Chávez for the political strife in the nation. “The people are united. There was more division with them [the old governments].” He said the majority are “together now.”

José Morales, a teacher, downplayed and laughed at the “great attention” the local press gave to the opposition march, contrasting it with the huge turnout for pro-Chávez actions. “If Chávez himself calls for a march now, everybody comes out.”

As if to confirm his words, a pro-Chávez march on Feb. 4 brought out tens of thousands while an opposition march on the opposite side of town the same day brought out only a few thousand.

While many have faith in Chávez and the people’s willingness to defend the Bolivarian revolutionary process like they did during the foiled right-wing coup of April 2002, trade unionist Omar Rangel said the situation is not all that rosy.

“We still have to raise the consciousness of the people,” Rangel said. He said the country’s new unions are trying to do just that. He urged the foreign delegates to the World Social Forum to talk and listen to the people, even those who may have differences with the revolutionary process. “You will learn a lot this way,” he said.

The people of Venezuela seem to be interested not only in what’s happening in their own country, but also in the world at large. This was reflected not only in the numerous questions they asked the foreign forum participants, but in the attention they gave watching the inauguration of the new Bolivian president, Evo Morales.

Morales, of indigenous and working-class origins, seems to have captured the hearts of poor Venezuelans as they watched him take his oath of office with a clenched fist in the air, simply dressed, with the only outward sign of office being the wearing of the presidential sash.

Cubas energy: revolution within a revolution

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 07:10:00 +0000

Cuba’s struggle goes beyond overcoming a state of siege and surviving the fall of the Soviet bloc. It ends neither with health care, schools, and food for all, nor with the battle of ideas. There’s more to be done.

Problems of inadequate housing and woeful public transportation have not gone away. The nation must deal with the corruption, special privileges and divisions that came in with capitalist methods used during what the Cubans call the “special period.” Increasingly severe hurricanes and continued drought add to the mix. But foremost among Cuba’s challenges is the specter of an energy shortage.

Cuba’s economy has improved. It expanded by more then 9 percent during 2005. Unemployment is down to 1.9 percent. The balance of trade was positive for the first time in 15 years. Trade compacts with Venezuela and China have stimulated mining and refining ventures, brought in oil and more consumer goods, and spurred banking services. Trade with China jumped 41 percent from 2004 to 2005.

Cuba’s financial structure has a new stability. The inflow of dollars is down 50 percent in favor of alternative hard currencies. Savings are up, and short-term foreign debt is being converted into long-term obligations. Currency reserves in the state bank have increased, as has liquidity, safety and control.

On Jan. 14, 12 relatively cheap, fuel-efficient locomotives arrived from China. The country’s transportation services will soon take possession of the last of 1,000 new Chinese buses. One million energy-efficient Chinese television sets are being distributed throughout the island, along with energy-efficient electric refrigerators and electric cooking devices. Many of these will end up in new housing, which the government is building at the rate of 100,000 units per year.

But the major chore is to cut down on energy waste and to build up the quantity and efficiency of the nation’s power generating capacity. In speech on Jan.18 in Pinar del Rio, President Fidel Castro proclaimed 2006 the “year of the Energy Revolution.”

That province is seen as a model for the nation. The changeover to new electric generating plants is almost complete there, and 95 percent of the households are using efficient electrical appliances. Castro credited the provincial Communist Party for ensuring cooperation among government bureaus. He praised the work of thousands of social workers and other young people who have gone house to house, delivering new electrical cooking equipment, promoting energy conservation and removing old appliances.

Pinar del Rio has gained 164,000 kilowatts in additional electrical generating capacity, and Cuba itself has upped its total by 2 million kilowatts. The annual savings from the new efficiencies is expected to amount to $1 billion nationwide.

There is a socialist way of doing things, Castro said in his speech. “We do not resolve a problem for one here or two there. The purpose of the revolution is to solve problems for everybody.”

On Nov. 27, 2005, Francisco Soberón, president of the Central Bank, basing his analysis on “today’s world scenario of no elasticity in the cost of hydrocarbons,” declared, “If in politics ... we cry out, ‘Patria o Muerte!’ (country or death), in economy we could very well say, ‘Ahorro o muerte!’ (savings or death).”

For head banker Soberón, socialism makes all the difference: “The country has limited material resources ... it must constantly determine priorities for the use of its resources, priorities that differ considerably from those of capitalist countries. … We prioritize expenditures to save the life of a child over the purchase of state-of-the-art cars for elite consumers or luxury buildings. ... This is precisely why in Cuba fewer children die than in the rest of the Latin American countries.”

Anti-Muslim cartoons provoke furor. Rising calls for respect, dialogue

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 05:50:00 +0000

Religious and political leaders around the world appealed for respect, dialogue and an end to violence this week, as protests continued in many countries against publication of caricatures depicting the prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.

Initially published in September in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and then in a Norwegian publication last month, some or all of the cartoons were reprinted last week, largely in right-wing newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland. The resulting outrage among Muslims has taken many forms, from vigorous street protests to diplomatic sanctions, economic boycotts, and a wave of violent attacks against Danish, Norwegian and other diplomatic facilities in several countries. Several protesters have been killed and others injured as authorities sought to put down the actions.

Jyllands-Posten’s culture editor, Flemming Rose, claimed the cartoons were in the tradition of satirical caricatures and were not meant to be offensive. Newspapers and others defended their publication, citing freedom of the press. But observers pointed out that the cartoons were published in a climate of rising anti-immigrant agitation and pressure by far-right parties in Europe, including in Denmark. In a Feb. 6 article, the London Guardian pointed out that three years ago, Jyllands-Posten refused to run cartoons lampooning Jesus Christ, saying they would offend readers and were not funny. In a Feb. 3 statement, bishops from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark joined their Norwegian counterparts in urging increased dialogue with the Muslim community. “To provoke and offend the individual’s faith for the sake of provocation in itself serves no purpose,” a church committee stated. “We should dissociate ourselves from the drawings as well as from the burning of the Danish flag,” the Bishop of Copenhagen, the Rev. Norman Svendsen, said on the same day.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he shared Muslims’ distress over the cartoons, adding that freedom of speech “entails responsibility and judgment.” Annan called on Muslims to accept the apology offered by Jylland-Posten, and urged “everybody not to take any measures that will inflame an already difficult situation.”

“I share the anger of Muslims following this publication,” France’s chief rabbi Joseph Sitruk said Feb. 2, after France Soir published the cartoons. “I understand the hostility in the Arab world,” Sitruk added. “One does not achieve anything by humiliating religion. It’s a dishonest lack of respect.” Le Soir’s owner dismissed its main editor after the paper carried the drawings.

In a Jan. 6 statement, the French Communist Party said that while freedom of expression, including freedom of the press, “is one of the pillars of democracy,” it nonetheless has limits, “notably concerning publications with a defamatory character or inciting to hatred.” The FCP said the cartoons “legitimately arouse indignation and anger among Muslims,” which they “have a right to express freely.” But, the party said, this does not justify violence and threats, which it “condemns … with the greatest firmness.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Chirac issued a statement Feb. 3 defending free speech but also appealing for “respect … to avoid anything that could hurt other people’s beliefs.” But Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said he preferred “an excess of caricature to an excess of censure.”

In Jerusalem, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH) said it “views with grave concern and alarm the recent wave of hostilities by Palestinian activists” protesting the cartoons. Emphasizing that it “fully appreciates the sensitivity of the issue,” MIFTAH urged activists to “refrain from taking matters into their own hands.” While upholding press freedom, MIFTAH also condemned publication of material disparaging any faith.

In Washington, D.C., leaders of American Muslim organizations met Feb. 7 with Danish Ambassador Friis Arne Petersen to discuss the cartoons. Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, called for listening to local Danish Muslim community voices, to understand what he called an anti-immigration backlash in Europe, as immigrants are scapegoated for joblessness and lowered living standards. Bray emphasized, however, that responding with violence “does not uphold the dignity of our faith,” adding, “Muslims united and using their economic leverage, now that’s something the world can respect.”

The Bush administration said Feb. 3 that it understood the anger of Muslims over the images. However, it defended the right of the papers to publish them.

Most U.S. newspapers, with the exception of the Philadelphia Inquirer, did not publish the caricatures, and the only television network to show an entire cartoon was ABC.

U.S. threats to Venezuelas revolution escalate

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 07:22:00 +0000

Aggressive maneuvers against Venezuela from the Bush government have reached new heights. Here are some indicators.

That a coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was under way when opposition parties opted out of Venezuela’s December parliamentary elections was not obvious. But at the time Vice President José Vicente Rangel alleged that the U.S. Embassy was “extremely active” behind the scenes.

During the elections, explosions went off, an oil pipeline was blown up and electric substations were burned. Almost 100,000 soldiers were deployed to protect polling places. Authorities unearthed caches of weapons and ammunition. Two U.S. warships were cruising off the Venezuelan coast.

In fact Venezuelan authorities already knew of a coup planning meeting in Bogotá, Colombia, attended by a U.S. government official named “Thomas,” plus dissident Venezuelan military figures and Colombian intelligence officers. Some 500 Colombian paramilitary troops crossed the Colombian-Venezuelan border prior to the elections.

On Jan. 27, the Venezuelan government expelled naval attaché John Correa, stationed at the U.S. Embassy. Security personnel had infiltrated the group of Venezuelan junior officers recruited by Correa. The Bush government retaliated by sending a Venezuelan diplomat back to Caracas.

Another item: the Bush administration is blocking Spain’s $1.7 billion sale of military aircraft and boats to Venezuela. It claims that U.S. technology was used in the planes’ manufacture. According to Chávez, Venezuela may end up buying planes from China or Russia. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has berated Venezuela for spending on military hardware rather than provide for people’s needs.

Rumsfeld on Feb. 2 compared Hugo Chávez to Hitler, declaring, “We’ve got Chávez in Venezuela. … He’s a person who was elected legally, just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally. ... He is working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others. It concerns me.”

Intelligence director John Negroponte is worried too. In recent Senate testimony, he warned that if Chávez wins re-election this year, he will “use his control of the legislature and other institutions to continue to stifle the opposition, reduce press freedom, and entrench himself through measures that are technically legal, but which nonetheless constrict democracy.”

Lawyer Eva Golinger, writing in venezuelanalysis.com, sees “a scary escalation of aggression ... Rumsfeld and Negroponte represent the two entities in the United States that wage war: Defense and Intelligence.”

She reports that the U.S. government will be sending $9 million this year to opposition groups in Venezuela. She refers to an October 2005 U.S. Army publication, “Doctrine for Asymmetric War Against Venezuela,” in which Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution were labeled as the “largest threat since the Soviet Union and communism.”

The Arabic news service Aljazeera has recently opened an office in Caracas and announced plans for cooperation with Telesur, the new Latin American news agency funded by Venezuela, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. Florida Republican Rep Connie Mack (R-Fla.) could hardly contain himself: “Today Chávez has gone even further. It wasn’t enough for him to spread his socialist propaganda throughout Latin America. Now he’s in cahoots with the original terrorist TV.”

Mack introduced House Resolution 328 last month. In the name of “true democracy,” it asks for “assistance and material support” for opposition groups in Venezuela, the funding to be funneled through U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy.

The Bush administration has found one overseas ally. Former Spanish president and right-winger José María Aznar now heads up the Foundation for Social Studies and Analysis. That well-financed group recently announced that it is concentrating this year on “a region caught up in populism and indigenous stirrings in the dark shadow of an alliance between Fidel Castro and the Venezuelan Hugo Chávez,” something it called an “explosive situation.” That would be Latin America.

Cuba news briefs

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:59:00 +0000

Cuba travel under the gun

The Bush administration is cracking down on what it sees as illegal travel to Cuba. A foretaste of what lay ahead was provided in the May 2004 report of the “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” in which, among other proposed strictures, Cuban American family visiting came under the gun.

IFCO/Pastors for Peace and the Venceremos Brigade, a U.S.-based educational project, have long challenged the restrictions by defying them. Both groups announced on Jan. 12 that the U.S. Treasury Department has been requesting information from around 200 U.S. citizens who joined them on delegations to Cuba in the past two years. The Treasury action may portend individual fines of $7,500 or more.

The Bush administration recently withdrew a license to provide legal travel to Cuba from La Estrella de Cuba, one of 250 travel agencies licensed nationally and one of Florida’s largest. Every month the agency had been booking 300 to 500 passengers to Cuba. And reports are surfacing of individuals caught up in Treasury Department surveillance, medical missionaries and bicycle tourists among them. The administration in 2004 collected $1.5 million in fines from 894 people. Nevertheless, “some 40,000 U.S. citizens visited the off-limits island of Cuba last year,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Campaigns are building in support of this year’s editions of the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment caravan and the Venceremos Brigade. The position of the former is to “fight to defend what we have achieved so far. It’s important to not allow them to erode any of the ground we have gained.”

Cheryl LaBash of the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange reports from Michigan that the Bush administration reassigned administrative law judges to hear Cuba travel cases instead of reviewing 270 safety citations issued against coal mine operators, including ICG, owner of the Sago Mine where 12 workers recently died.

Rights group wants answers on Cuban Five

Amnesty International (AI) sent a letter to the U.S. State Department Jan. 11 sharply critical of the treatment received by the Cuban Five in U.S. jails. The group also noted “serious questions which have been raised about the fairness of the convictions.”

In her letter, Susan Lee, AI’s program director for the Americas, drew particular attention to the U.S. refusal to allow Adriana Pérez and Olga Salanueva to visit husbands Gerardo Hernández and René González in jail. That stand, she asserted, is “contrary both to standards for the humane treatment of prisoners and to states’ obligation to protect family life.” The group had written a previous letter in December 2003 calling upon the U.S. government to honor family visiting rights.

On behalf of the Cuban government, the five men were monitoring Florida-based, anti-Cuban terrorist preparations when they were arrested in 1998. They gained a victory last year when an appeals court panel, determined that their Miami trial was biased and went on to nullify their convictions. The case is now before a full appeals court, with oral hearings scheduled for Feb. 14.

In questioning the fairness of the prisoners’ trial, the AI letter cited the report issued in May 2005 by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. The opinion there was that “the five had been arbitrarily deprived of liberty based on failure to guarantee the right to a fair trial.”

Venezuelan discounted oil arrives in Philly

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:45:00 +0000

PHILADELPHIA — On Jan. 27 Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) announced that Citgo, a U.S. subsidiary of the publicly-owned Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA, was going to begin shipping 5 million gallons of discounted heating oil here as part of a plan to provide assistance to 25,000 low-income families throughout the city.

Currently over 7,600 households in Philadelphia and surrounding areas that use heating oil have run out of their LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) aid.

The first Citgo delivery was made the next day to Geraldine Shields in the West Oak Lane section of Philadelphia. Neighbors and friends applauded, waving U.S. and Venezuelan flags, as they welcomed the oil delivery to their community.

Former Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II, now CEO of Citizens Energy, was driving the truck loaded with the Venezuelan owned oil. Citizens Energy is a nonprofit corporation that is supporting and financing the oil distribution program.

Fattah, Venezuelan Ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez, and Citgo CEO Felix Rodriguez also participated in welcoming Shields’ home delivery.

Shields expressed her appreciation, saying, “I’ve had to use my oven for heat. I couldn’t even buy my granddaughter a Christmas gift, because I had to save my money to buy oil. Thank the Lord for this help.”

Ambassador Alvarez said Venezuela welcomes the opportunity to show true friendship to the American people, especially those in need. Citgo’s Rodriguez said the gift was possible because PDVSA is publicly owned: “Our shareholders are the Venezuelan people,” he said.

State Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-Phila.) said he hopes other companies will follow Citgo’s example, and asked, “As Citgo stepped up, where is everybody else?”

The Energy Coordinating Agency, a nonprofit energy conservation group in Philadelphia, will administer the discounted oil program. It will use information from Pennsylvania’s Welfare Department to identify and contact eligible families that have used up their LIHEAP grants. These families will be able to buy up to 200 gallons of heating oil for $288, a savings of 40 percent. Heating oil prices have increased 30-50 percent this winter due to the increase in crude oil prices.

Fattah plans to meet with Gov. Ed Rendell’s staff next week to discuss whether the program can be expanded throughout the state. He credited fellow Congressman William Delahunt (D-Mass.) and Kennedy for helping arrange for the program in Philadelphia.

Last September, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced that he would help lead a campaign in making oil from PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela, SA) available to low-income families within the U.S.

Chavez toured Manhattan and Bronx communities in New York City after he attended the United Nations World Summit. Afterward, Citgo began to work with the nonprofit groups to supply low cost oil to low-income families in New York City, Rhode Island, Vermont and Indian reservations in Maine. A similar offer was made to the Chicago Transit Authority, but was declined by its management.

In a radio interview, Fattah was asked why he was “embarrassing the U.S. government,” since the Bush administration considers Chávez, a socialist, an enemy. “This is not a political matter. We have the ability to keep families in Philadelphia warm. I’m deeply appreciative of this humanitarian gesture,” he said.

Venezuela is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter in the world, and has the largest oil reserves outside of the Middle East.

Hunters history exposed in Congo film

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:30:00 +0000

Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death Peter Bate, director 2004, Belgium/UK, ArtMattan Productions (U.S. distributor) 100 min., English/French/Dutch with English subtitles

An African proverb reminds us, “Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.” I reflected on variations of this sentiment as I made my way home teary-eyed after seeing “Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death” recently in New York.

British filmmaker Peter Bate’s stirring documentary brings to the silver screen the unspeakable horrors of Belgian colonialism in the Congo. The crimes committed by the Belgians were met with American and European acquiescence, well described by Mark Twain in his book “King Leopold’s Soliloquy” more than a century ago.

The film begins with scenes of terror — Congolese children, men and women without their hands. We learn that their hands were cut off by the colonizers or their puppet troops in a macabre system of accounting. Sometimes hands were cut off because workers didn’t work fast enough. Sometimes the puppet troops brought back hands as evidence they had killed workers who had failed to meet their rubber bounty. Other times such hands helped the puppet troops “prove” they hadn’t wasted any bullets on hunting game, an offense in the eyes of the colonialists.

Children’s hands were chopped off as punishment for late deliveries of rubber.

Later in the film an African chief employs another kind of accounting: a fact-finding commission views a huge bundle of sticks representing the chief’s many “missing” villagers. Such stories about the destruction of villages, rape and torture abound in the film.

Fittingly, the film takes us to Brussels for a look at the other side of the tragedy as we see the city’s magnificent infrastructure and its children salivating over chocolate hands reminiscent of those missing on the amputees.

The fanatical rush for colonies, rubber and other raw materials was part of the drive to industrialize Europe. These valuable resources helped usher in Europe’s motorized transportation and the proliferation of many other commodities. African raw materials were prime targets of these insatiable demands.

For example, during the Belgian reign of terror, John Dunlop created the pneumatic tire, setting off a surge in bicycle sales and creating a huge demand for rubber latex and wild Congolese vine rubber.

In order to properly manage and maximize exploitation of Africa and to ease conflict among themselves, European imperialist powers sat around tables in Berlin, Germany, between 1884 and 1885 and decided the partition and colonial fate of Africa. Like butchers with knives dripping blood, the imperialists divided the continent into spoils. No regard was given to traditional borders or other historical factors.

It was to Congo’s misfortune that King Leopold was given this, the largest and, soon to become evident, richest chunk of the richest continent.

The film presents in almost elementary fashion the machinery of colonialism. It sheds light on how Belgium used European soldiers, administrators, businesspersons, missionaries and journalists and African collaborators to set in motion a system that transformed the huge, resource-rich, heart of Africa into a zone of death and conflict. That legacy is still with us today, and the region remains among the poorest areas on earth.

Over the next 20 years of direct Belgian rule, 10 million Africans would die by murder, disease and the deplorable conditions of life. Resistance was put down by wanton murder and what today we would call “ethnic cleansing.” In the meantime, the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company was racking up 700 percent profits on its shipments of rubber from the Congo. The company’s stock-market valuation increase 30 times in six years. King Leopold was celebrated in European capitals as a humane and progressive pioneer of Christian values in “darkest Africa.”

The film includes intermittent scenes from an imaginary trial of Leopold, placing the responsibility for “civilizing” the Congo on his shoulders. The bearded monster appears in full regalia all too often in the film for my tastes, but his trial for Hitler-like crimes, when it does take place, seems long overdue. Yet this writer feels that Leopold’s role is given too much emphasis, while a wider concert of sadistic players in a global system gets too little attention.

Today the colonial exploiters of the Congo are, under a different, neocolonial guise, still reaping profits from its land and people. A global diamond industry and the extraction of rare minerals and metals like colton for the burgeoning telecommunications, electronic gaming and other new technology industries, continues. In the meantime, the area known as Great Lakes Africa still bleeds.

Director Peter Bate and the film’s narrator, Congolese professor Elikia M’Bokolo (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris), follow the tradition of Mark Twain in proving to us that the “lions can have their historians.”