Latinamerica Press

Independent information from Latin America & the Caribbean for the world www.latinamericapress.org

ISSN 0254-203X

N° 5, OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013. VOLUME 45

Communities oppose wind projects Companies start work without consulting indigenous peoples on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico.

PAGE 10

War crime archives in suspense Quota met for 50 percent of women in public office in Nicaragua, but they don’t have the right to decide about their bodies and lives.

PAGE 16

Catholic Church closes office which provided legal assistance to war crime victims in El Salvador.

PAGE 24

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

ORSETTA BELLANI (TOP); EL NUEVO DIARIO (LEFT); TOMÁS ANDRÉU(RIGHT)

Violence against women is systemic

1

NICARAGUA Carmen Herrera in Managua

CARMEN HERRERA

Three decades developing agroecology

Campesinos abandon harmful practices, such as slash-and-burn farming, and push for crop diversification and the use of native seeds and organic fertilizers.

The Campesino to Campesino program encourages an appreciation of local knowledge to reestablish food sovereignty.

I

N AN area carved into small farms known as minifundios, where each lot measures 0.75 to 1.5 Ha (1.8 to 3.7 acres), participants in the project called Farmer to Farmer (Campesino a Campesino) are spearheading agroecology efforts in Nicaragua. Crop diversification is one method for which small-scale farmers are using their skills and creativity to “take advantage of the soil,” said Leonel Calero, an 18-year veteran of agroecology practices and program promoter in El Mojón, about 37 kilometers (22 miles) from Managua, in the municipality of Catarina, Masaya.

They are employing new techniques rather than burning the land, and use crop residue and weeds to their advantage, Calero explained. “It’s a matter of conscience, to understand the earth needs care, that it can die but it can also live if we treat it well,” he said. “Everything is in nature

2

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

as long as we use those resources from our farm and from our communities.”

Since the mid-1980s, the promotion of soil management practices and the incorporation of other farming techniques have taken place in Nicaragua, pushed by the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG).

Founded in 1981, with more than 60,000 individual producers now of which 20,000 work with their families using agro-ecological practices, the organization is becoming Nicaragua’s agroecology keystone.

“After the Farmer to Farmer Program [PCAP] started in 1986, it has developed a methodology of learning by doing, placing great value on the knowledge of the campesino family, including women and young people,” explained PCAC expert Eugenio Pavón.

“The program is focused on a variety of agro-ecological topics, food safety, organic fertilizer, and maximization of local resources, the farm, like using the plants, native seeds, and training space for promoters. There are 1,200 promoters at the national level, 38 percent of which are woman. The virtue of this program is the campesino family

60,000 individual producers united in the Farmer to Farmer Program 20,000 work with their families using agro-ecological practices

is the main protagonist in this methodology, while we technicians are only facilitators,” Pavón told Latinamerica Press.

“The program has done a great job of giving us knowledge, of teaching us to fish and not just giving us fish. They have taught us how to have diversified farms through exchanging information and training.

Knowledge is important for the producer and allows one to become independent, to not just ask for a handout. Without knowledge you cannot do anything. This large crop I have, it didn’t come from my pocket, I didn’t go to a nursery to buy it, I only made use of the knowledge I acquired to reproduce plants,” Calero said. “If today I calculate the cost per plant, that would be an expensive investment, then the knowledge is crucial for helping people emerge from poverty.”

Difficulties in meeting technical standards

PCAC promoters considered a success the 2011 approval of the Agro-ecological or Organic Production Development Law. It will enter into force with the Nicaraguan Mandatory Technical Standard (NTON), which creates a blueprint for tools that develop agro-ecological production, allowing the characterization of the production units, such as the development of management plans to guide the transformation of production processes in terms of compliance with the NTON. Nevertheless, there isn’t consensus on the application of NTON, said Jorge Vásquez, an expert with the PCAC, because “producers are questioning the dissemination of technical standards, especially as pertains to incentives, because that has to do with the assistance, which remains unclear,” he told Latinamerica Press.

Another factor aiding the agro-ecological movement is the Food Sovereignty and Security Strategy within the government’s National Human Development Plan, with the goal to “reduce food and nutrition insecurity in the rural population, rooted in small- and medium-scale food producers.”

The government’s document on Sectorial Policies for Food Security states that “food security and sovereignty reflects to the state of availability and stability in the food supply for everyone, everyday, in a timely manner to ensure nutritional wellbeing and enable [people]

CONTENTS LATIN AMERICA Indigenous communication gain strength

34

LATIN AMERICA/ THE CARIBBEAN “Wake up before it is too late” Gender gap is closing Modern slavery prevails An outbreak of xenophobia?

Poverty reduction stops Climate summit, another disappointment

9 20 27 29 36 37

ARGENTINA/URUGUAY Conflict over paper mills flares up again

12

BRAZIL A recycled future

28

CHILE Electoral campaign becomes polarized

33

COLOMBIA State apologizes for Palace of Justice Holocaust

26

COSTA RICA Indigenous rights still neglected

31

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Support of small-scale farming is lagging behind

5

EL SALVADOR Free of agrochemicals The lives of women in danger War crime archives in suspense

11 13 24

GUATEMALA No future for girls

18

HAITI First free zone with agroecological practices Sexual violence in refugee camps

8 19

HONDURAS Farmers seek to secure food sovereignty LGBTI community battles discrimination, violence Ruling party wins elections “Today it is a crime to defend human rights” Increasing violence against women MEXICO Communities oppose wind projects Limited progress in reproductive rights NICARAGUA Three decades developing agroecology Violence against women is systemic

6 21 32 38 39

10 14 2 16

In addition to our electronic and printed journal, we have a range of other online resources, in-depth reports and a free email information service.

For information about our products and services, please contact our Marketing Manager, Patricia Díaz, at pdiaz@comunicacionesaliadas.org OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

3

to make good biological use of food to achieve development without affecting the ecosystem.”

The Nicaraguan Agro-ecological Movement, comprising organizations that defend ecological practices in production systems, is establishing strategies for campaigns to counter unrestrained propaganda promoting the use of agrochemicals. Instead, it is encouraging agro-biodiversity, which has to do with the conservation of genetic resources related to agriculture, native seed conservation and crop diversification.

Rescuing native seeds

An unavoidable issue for the agro-ecological production sector is the use of native seeds, which in Nicaragua’s case reaches 70 percent to 75 percent in the case of basic grains crops —ensuring food sovereignty and security.

“We aren’t promoting salvaging native seeds out of a sense of folklore, but rather as a strategy for food safety and security because sovereignty has to do with exercising power, with making decisions; as long as people don’t have the power to decide about their genetic resources, we believe that there isn’t sovereignty. In that sense, we’re trying to build capacity at the local level to take advantage of those genetic resources people traditionally have in their communities, trying to make improvements, to multiply those genetic resources,” Vásquez explained.

With European Union funding, the state’s Nicaraguan Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), is developing a program to strengthen technical tools for seed production, since this is an unregulated field.

Vásquez said the government can’t meet the strong demand for basic grain seeds. “This production system is not recognized and has an important role in food security; even if it has low yields, it guarantees people’s food. The performance is a criterion that has to do not only with seed, but with soil nutrition,” he said.

“We aren’t promoting salvaging native seeds out of a sense of folklore, but rather as a strategy for food safety and security because sovereignty has to do with exercising power, with making decisions.”

— JORGE VÁSQUEZ

4

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

“We’re trying to build capacity at the local level to take advantage of those genetic resources people traditionally have in their communities.”

— JORGE VÁSQUEZ The current ruling party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, is promoting the widespread use of native seeds use through state programs.

But in the opinion of some producerleaders, this task should remain in the hands of trade unions as with previous governments, specifically the Pound for Pound program promoted by the administration of former President Enrique Bolaños (2001-2006). It was supported by the UNAG, which administered the program.

The Pound for Pound program, run by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAGFOR), gave improved seeds to UNAG, which would then distribute them to farming families to improve the yield of basic grain crops (corn, sorghum, and beans) to guarantee food security. At present, UNAG works with government agencies like INTA and MAGFOR, but the actual distributors of the seeds and providers of technical assistance to producers is the government, not the trade unions.

Unresolved issues in the agro-ecological sector are the threats of transgenic crops pushed by multinational companies, the impact of the agricultural frontier on forest clearing, the excessive use of firewood and the resulting stress on flora, fauna and water— especially in the drier parts of the country in the northern municipalities of Estelí, Nueva Segovia and Madriz, and on the Pacific coast in León and Chinandega, among others. q

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Latinamerica Press

Support of small-scale farming is lagging behind Government promotes agricultural export industry in the detriment of food production for local use.

A

ccording to estimates, approximately 80 percent of the food that is consumed by the Dominican population is produced in the country, to which an important part is provided by the small-scale farming. In spite of this the government is doing very little or nothing in order to invest in this sector.

“In the rural sector the percentage of poor people is the highest in the Dominican Republic,” affirmed Rosa Cañete, director of international humanitarian organization Oxfam-Dominican Republic. “Therefore investing in small-scale, family farming has strong effects regarding the reduction of poverty, as well as positive impact on environmental sustainability and on food security.”

According to the Budget Transparency Index for Small-scale, Family Farming (ITP-AFC (ITP-AFC), which was presented by Oxfam at the end of July, the Dominican Republic takes last place among the 10 studied Latin-American and Caribbean countries.

ITP-AFC is a global index concerning budget transparency which evaluates data, accountability, access to information and participation.

It is measured on a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 means that the conditions to deliver effective policies for small-scale, family farming do not exist, and 100 means that all the necessary conditions exist. The Dominican Republic scored 22 points.

“Those countries that stand out due to their low score in the Index, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Dominican Republic, also face the pending challenge of greater investment in improved budget management and transparency in general. However, the existence of good practices in general terms does not necessarily guarantee positive performance in terms of the needs of the AFC sector,” states Oxfam in the report “Blind Budgets”.

The producers dedicated to the small-scale, family farming require support concerning marketing, equal access to resources of production both by sea and land as well as access to agricultural techniques in agreement with environmental sustainability,” Cañete pointed out.

Eight of 10 units of agricultural production in Latin America and the Caribbean belong to the small-scale farming, a sector which faces difficulties accessing productive, technical and financial resources as well as being highly vulnerable to economic and environmental factors.

Although agriculture production contributes 6 percent to the GNP, only 0.5 percent of national budget are assigned to this area.

The Dominican president Danilo Medina assured that his priority lies with agro industry but in this

LATIN AMERICA/THE CARIBBEAN Budget Transparency Index for Small-Scale, Family Farming (ITP-AFC)* Country

Score

Brazil Peru Mexico El Salvador Bolivia Paraguay Colombia Haiti Nicaragua Dominican Rep.

62 59 53 49 34 31 30 28 25 22

*Scale of 0 to 100, where 0 means that the conditions to deliver effective policies for small-scale, family farming do not exist, and 100 means that all the necessary conditions exist.

Source: Oxfam

priority rural domestic agriculture is not included. Early September, Medina stressed in front of representatives of the agro industry that “the effort which we are making in order to convert the agricultural sector into an exporting sector, is what we want to do, that [the sector] will be exporting, generating foreign currencies.”

“The small farming plays an important part regarding the protection of natural resources by developing sustainable agricultural practices as well as an agriculture which provides environmental services,” said Cañete. “In contrast to the big production of commercial plantation, the small farming has a higher capacity of adopting cultivation methods which contribute to conserve the soils and to reduce he pollution caused by agrochemicals.” q OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

5

HONDURAS Jennifer Ávila in San Pedro Sula

Farmers seek to secure food sovereignty

JENNIFER ÁVILA

Campesino organizations push for agroecology and economic solidarity to fight poverty.

Campesinos produce coffee and vegetables, as they salvage native seeds.

I

N MANY Honduran communities, men and women awake at dawn to tend the land to feed their families. The hillsides and valleys at daybreak smell of freshly made coffee and damp earth, so much so it’s a part of the national identity.

Nevertheless, the campesinos are one of the most vulnerable populations in a country where land scarcity is a daily battle.

Santa Bárbara, in the northwest, is one of Honduras’ most productive regions. At the same time, it is also one of the country’s poorest.

The non-government organization Social Forum for External Debt and Development in Honduras (FOSDEH), estimates that by 2014, 80 percent of the population there will be living in poverty.

The Regional Association of Organized Communities (ARCO) attempts to counter the hunger affecting marginalized populations, especially among small-scale farmers. It was created to break the development paradigms touted to farmers in the region, where coffee has emerged as the only crop.

6

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

The association works with families in four Santa Barbara municipalities: Arada, Atima, San Nicolás and Santa Bárbara; 27 villages and approximately 100 families are part of this project, which started in 2002 through the social ministry of St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Santa Barbara.

“Our goal is to promote socioeconomic development with economic solidarity, restoring our native seeds and training families to produce for their own consumption,” said Orlando Martinez, one of the leaders of ARCO. The families produce coffee and vegetables, there is a farmer’s fair, and the use of native seeds is encouraged to avoid transgenics, Martínez told Latinamerica Press.

Healthy foods

The encouragement of agroecology to establish food sovereignty goes against market forces and therefore is a challenge for those who dream of a food production system free from transgenics and rooted in indigenous culture.

In Honduras, there is the National Association for the Promotion of Agro-Ecology (ANAFAE), an umbrella group of 35 organizations around the country that promotes recuperating native seed usage and clean, healthy farming to work toward food justice and sovereignty, especially in communities and municipalities in the country’s poorest areas — which are paradoxically also the regions with the richest soil and natural resources.

The association has documented diverse experiences around the country, especially in the south, where drought is the leading enemy of small-scale farmers.

Engineer Jacqueline Chenier, expert and consultant on agroecological farming, told Latinamerica Press Honduran farmers have a sad history, from agrarian reform to the current economic crisis crippling the country..

“In the 1970s Honduras was called the breadbasket of the Americas. Now we see a form of excessive consumption with imports, we import most of the grains we eat: rice, beans and corn,” Chenier said. Recent reports from the Secretariat for Central American Economic Integration (SIECA) rank Honduras third among countries in the region that buy more food than it exports.

“We would appreciate it if the FAO, along with government, wouldn’t counteract our work to salvage native seeds, because they are also carrying out campaigns supposedly to guarantee food sovereignty, but what they are doing is promoting transgenics and that’s what we want to eradicate.”

—JERSON MEDINA

Central American countries in January achieved a 5.7 percent increase in exports across the board compared to the same period in 2012, according to SIECA, however they still bought more than they sold.

In January, the trade deficit balance in Central America grew by 11 percent over a year earlier. The region imported in 2012 US$2.1 billion more than it exported. “ We would appreciate it if the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations], along with government, wouldn’t counteract our work to salvage native seeds, because they are also carrying out campaigns supposedly to guarantee food sovereignty, but what they are doing is promoting transgenics and that’s what we want to eradicate,” Jerson Medina, a small-scale coffee producer who belongs to ARCO, told Latinamerica Press.

Medina has a microbusiness affiliated with a cooperative ARCO created to encourage fair trade for small-scale farmers who produce organic crops.

Still, Medina and other Honduran farmers are used to seeing the Department of Agriculture and Livestock (SAG) team with the FAO to form a destructive duo against those who want more sustainable and environmentally-friendly farming.

Many campesinos accept the technological bonus for improved seeds and fertilizers allotted per block (0.7 Ha or 1.74 acres) of basic grain crops, which SAG offers as its only aid to the agriculture sector and pays once a year, especially in May. Chenier said although FAO runs the Special Programme for Food Security (PESA) — which promotes improvements to sustainable production systems for family farms to achieve food security — even if it has worked well in other countries, the lack of political will in Honduras among the government counterparts has turned PESA against the goal of food sovereignty.

“For us, whose traditional crop is corn, we have that wealth. However, it’s an uphill climb for those betting on agroecology because of all the actors behind this industry,” the expert said.

Land in few hands

Honduras has a long history of land ownership concentrated in the hands of few people, which has intensified with incentives for monocultures especially in the valleys, and is now reaching the hillsides like Santa Bárbara with coffee and also African oil palm production.

“We know who wins with this method, the landowners win — like Miguel Facussé, one of the country’s largest palm growers, who has exacerbated the agrarian crisis in the Bajo Aguán,” Chenier said, referring to OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

7

the conflicts that have occurred since 2009 between landowners and campesino groups occupying estates cultivated with African oil palm.

Farmers claim they received the land in 1980 through agrarian reform.

However, a 1992 law allowed the sale of plots in the form of cooperatives, which have been fraudulently acquired by landowners at very low prices.

Furthermore, the monoculture of sugarcane and palm has generated massive displacement of people from rural to urban areas, causing increased poverty.

ARCO is one of many initiatives seeking to eliminate systemic hunger and poverty in Honduras. They started small, working with farming families for the project.

Now the scope is bigger, with field schools, rural credit unions, and community stores.

As an organization they have many ambitions, like a training center to operate a public school that will expand agroecology and salvage traditional knowledge that is being lost in younger generations. Another is to establish marketing for their products in line with fair trade principles.

They also dream of someday witnessing public policy that ensures the welfare and health of all Hondurans. q

HAITI

First free zone with agroecological practices Project is expected to produce bananas and organic food for export within the fair trade approach.

T

he first Agricultural Free Zone dedicated to organic production in Haiti was established after the signing of an agreement between government and business representatives last September.

The free zone, called Nourribo, is located in Trou du Nord, in the northeastern part of the country, near the Haitian-Dominican border.

The agreement — signed by Wilson Laleau, acting Minister of Trade and Industry and President of the National Council of Free Zones, Rode Préval, Director General of the Directorate of Free Zones and Jovenel Moïse, CEO of Agitrans, a local company that will be in charge of the project — is expected to create nearly 3,000 direct jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs in the next five years.

Laleau underlined that the government of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe “is willing to mentor and encourage this kind of rapid investment in all sectors,” and has invited “other promoters to present structural projects in agriculture and in many others sectors.”

Haiti as one of the poorest nations in the world suffers from food insecurity due to soil erosion and soil infertility caused by bimodal rainfall pattern, low fertility soil types and its mountainous topography.

Only 58 percent of Haiti’s over 10 million people have access to an adequate amount of food while 30 percent of harvests go to waste as mango exporter JeanMaurice Buteau pointed out. “Poor handling and nonexistent storage facilities and transport networks are the main reasons for this,” said Buteau to the press.

The importance of small farming Agriculture has long been Haiti’s mainstay although nowadays it contributes just 25 percent of GDP. Critics claim that this is due to its under8

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

funding. In 2009-2010 only 7 percent of Haiti’s budget was allocated to this sector. Various civil society organizations such as Haiti Support Group, Hope for Haiti and Farm Haiti believe that small farming is the only way to ensure food security and food sovereignty.

The Nourribio project aims at producing approximately 20,000 tones of organically produced bananas and other vegetables. Due to its status as a Free Zone it has to export 70 percent of its production in order to benefit from tax concessions and customs reserved for Free Zones.

According to the fair trade approach of the project 20 percent of profits are supposed to be redistributed to small farmers who present about 60 percents of Haiti’s population. Préval stressed that Nourribio is seeking to increase the incomes of small farmers in order to improve their purchasing power and quality of life.

Preparations for project Nourribio already began in 2002 after the government of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s (1991, 1995-96 y 20012004) had negotiated a deal with Washington and Dominican politicians and businesspeople. Small farmers were offered money to leave the land they were working and a bulldozer came to demolish gardens without any prior warning. Back then Colette Lespinasse, a representative of the Refugees and Repatriated Support Group predicted that “the result will be an environmental and social catastrophe.”

Alberta, a peasant leader interviewed in 2002

by Latinamerica Press, said: “That land is the mother and father of my children, and now they want me to accept a little pile of money and walk away. That money won’t do anything for me, but we can always eat the rice we plant.” — LP

LATIN AMERICA/ THE CARIBBEAN

Latinamerica Press

“Wake up before it is too late” UNCTAD highlights the importance of agroecology and ancestral farming practices to face climate change.

T

he United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNC TAD) called on rich and poor countries alike to change the paradigm of the agricultural development model that is based on monoculture and highly dependent on external inputs, and move toward sustainable and regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivit y of small farmers.

“We need to see a move from a linear to a holistic approach in agricultural management, which recognizes that a farmer is not only a producer of agricultural goods, but also a manager of an agroecological system that provides quite a number of public goods and services (e.g. water, soil, landscape, energy, biodiversity, and recreation),” says the Trade and Environment 2013 Review, published on Sept. 18.

More than 50 experts participated in the elaboration of the report, entitled “Wake up before it is too late: Make agriculture truly sustainable now for food security in a changing climate,” including members of international organizations such as La Via Campesina, Grain, and the ETC Group (Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration), who defend farmer agriculture, food sovereignty and agroecology.

“Over the past few years, we have seen a steady flow of high level reports from the UN system and development agencies arguing in favor of small farmers and agroecology,” say the three organizations in a joint statement. “International recognition that this is the way to solve the food and climate crisis is clearly building, but this has not been translated into real action on the ground where peasant farmers increasingly face marginalization and oppression.”

For Henk Hobbelink, founder of Grain, “the industrial food system is directly responsible for around half of all global greenhouse gas emissions, as we showed in our contribution to the UNCTAD report. We cannot solve the climate crisis without confronting the industrial food system and the corporations behind it. We should be turning to peasant based agroecology instead.”

Olivier de Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, agrees in pointing out that “by supporting the multiplication of largescale monocultures, we risk further widening the gap between this model and small-scale, family farming, while promoting a pattern of industrial farming that is already responsible for one-third of man-made greenhouse-gas emissions. Similarly, schemes solely based on the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers have also shown their ecological limits, and their ability to sustainably benefit the poorest farmers working on the most marginal land is questionable.”

“Under these circumstances,” maintains Schutter, “moving towards agroecological ways of production

is needed if we want to feed the world, fight rural poverty and combat climate change at the same time.”

The UNCTAD document gives as example three investigations carried out in Latin America, Cuba, and Mexico assessing agricultural performance after extreme climatic events, revealing the close link between enhanced agrobiodiversity and resilience to extreme weather events.

A survey conducted in Central American hillsides after Hurricane Mitch (1998) showed that farmers engaged in diversification practices, such as cover crops, intercropping and agroforestry, suffered less damage than their neighbors who practiced conventional monoculture. The survey, spearheaded

by Farmer to Farmer (Campesino a Campesino) movement in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, found that plots where farmers adopted sustainable farming practices has 20 to 40 per cent more topsoil, greater soil moisture and less erosion than their conventional neighbors. Similarly in Sonotusco, Chiapas, coffee systems exhibiting high levels of vegetation complexity and plant diversity suffered less damage from Hurricane Stan (2005) than more simplified coffee systems. And in Cuba, 40 days after Hurricane Ike hit the country in 2008, researches conducting a farm survey in the provinces of Holguín and Las Tunas found that diversified farms exhibited losses of 50 percent compared to 90 to 100 percent in neighboring monoculture farms.

Likewise, agroecologically managed farms showed a faster recovery of productivity.

“All three studies emphasize the importance of enhancing plan diversity and complexity in farming systems to reduce vulnerability to extreme climatic events,” says the UNCTAD report. “Since many peasants commonly manage polycultures and/or agroforestry systems, their knowledge and practices could provide a key source of information on adaptative capacity centred on the selective, experimental and resilient capabilities of those farmers in dealing with climate change.” q OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

9

MÉXICO Orsetta Bellani in Oaxaca

ORSETTA BELLANI

Communities oppose wind projects

The Municipal Palace of San Dionisio del Mar on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which was occupied by protesters who opposed the construction of a wind farm on Barra de Santa Teresa.

Companies start work without consulting indigenous peoples on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

T

HE WIND hasn’t stopped blowing on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the southern state of Oaxaca. Night and day it rustles leaves, sweeps across the sea and spins the blades of wind tur-

bines.

To drive wind energy production in this Mexican region, in 2004 the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), published the “Wind Energy Resource Atlas of Oaxaca” assuring that communities would receive social and economic benefits from renewable energy. According to the atlas, the wind potential of much of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec is “excellent,” so it was unsurprising when in December 2012 the Mexican Wind Energy Association (AMDEE), which unites the leading companies in this sector, already had 15 wind farms in the area.

“The companies divided up our land, like the Spanish when they came to America,” Bettina Cruz Velázquez, a member of the Assembly of Indigenous Communities of

10

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

the Isthmus in Defense of Land and Territory, told Latinamerica Press. “I recognize there is worldwide concern about climate change, but what is motivating the companies is turning our air into money. Green energy is a business that profits from cheating the communities; they destroy our way of life and menace our food sovereignty, forcing us into displacement.”

There are 10 multinational companies running 15 projects on the isthmus in Oaxaca — Iberdrola, Acciona, CFE, Enel Green Power, Gamesa, Cemex, Peñoles, Eléctrica del Valle de México, Renovalia, and Demex — and the Mexican federal government’s Energy Regulation Commission has approved more projects. The goal for the government of Oaxaca is to generate 2,000 MW of renewable energy by 2015.

No prior consultation

All the energy companies seem to be operating under the same scheme that doesn’t include any free and informed prior consultation to the 15 indigenous communities on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, as established by the International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples ratified by Mexico in 1991, in addition to several national laws.

To obtain the right to possession of the land for 30 years, company representatives go door to door, asking campesino families to sign draconian contracts that set the amount of payment for the land lease. In addition, they promise work, development, infrastructure investments and reduced electricity bills once the wind farm is in operation.

In reality, 10 of the wind fields on the isthmus function under the

premise of “self-sufficiency,” which the federal government’s Energy Secretariat defines as the “production of electricity for subsistence purposes, provided that such power is intended to meet the needs of individual and legal entities and isn’t inconvenient for the country.”

The “individual and legal entities” using the energy produced by the wind farm to meet their needs are large transnational corporations, including Nestlé, Femsa-Coca Cola, Bimbo, Nissan and Mitsubishi.

What Oaxacan farming families are receiving in return are pure crumbs. According to Roberto Garduño, of the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, in Europe the standard rent wind companies pay for land represents 3.9 percent of total production costs, while in Mexico it’s between 0.025 percent and 1.53 percent.

In many cases these contracts are illegal, given that much of the land used for the wind farms isn’t private, but rather communal.

“In this property system, land belongs to the community; families have the usufruct on it without being owners,” attorney Raúl Rangel González told Latinamerica Press. “Only the community assembly may give the company the right to operate.”

The case of Barra de Santa Teresa

An emblematic case demonstrating the discriminatory and violent attitude the wind companies have toward the isthmus’s indigenous communities is the project Mexican consortium Mareña Renovables wants to implement in Barra de Santa Teresa, a 27 km (17 miles) strip of sand and mangroves. The project includes a US$1 billion investment to build 132 turbines that would produce 396 MW of electricity.

“When they started to do studies, there was a massive fish kill. Here, we live from fishing and the Barra de Santa Teresa is our daily bread. We don’t want this project and the pushback came strongly after the municipal president Miguel López Castellano sold out to the company, signing the permit for its entry,” a resident of San Dionisio del Mar who preferred to remain anonymous told Latinamerica Press.

Repression against those who opposed the project has been strong. In February, Governor of Oaxaca Gabino Cué Monteagudo said in a statement that “all necessary action would be taken to avoid such a substantial investment from leaving the state.”

CONTINUE >

EL SALVADOR

Free of agrochemicals President must ratify legislation prohibiting the use of fertilizers and pesticides.

O

n Sept. 5, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador passed amendments concerning two laws regulating the use of pesticides and environmental safety. The amendments gradually ban the use of 53 highly toxic agrochemicals in the next two years and constitute safety standards concerning the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

The agrochemicals, which have already been prohibited in more developed countries, contain heavy metals and metalloids and are linked to a renal disease that has already taken 5,808 lives in El Salvador since 2002, according to the Public Health Ministry.

The Public Health Ministry confirmed that the agrochemicals might be one of the triggers of the disease but stressed that investigations have not yet been concluded. Mario Tenorio, a member of the party Grand Alliance for the National Unity, however said that according to the Ministry the majority of people suffering from the renal disease in the coastal region of the country were exposed to toxic factors while working in agriculture.

The Pan American Health Organization states that El Salvador has one of the highest figures of deaths caused by chronic kidney disease in the Americas. Other affected countries are Panama, Nicaragua and Guatemala while in Costa Rica and Honduras data is insufficient.

Ongoing debate Approved by parliament with only a slim majority the amendments have caused a controversy in the country as opponents of the law changes such as the Agricultural and Agribusiness Chamber (CAMAGRO) stress the possibility that without the agrochemicals agriculture will be slowed down. General Director Luis Felipe Trigueros said to the press: “We think that this (prohibiting the agrochemicals) is not convenient and establishes a bad precedent for agriculture.”

The National Council of Rural Workers and Vía Campesina El Salvador, both in favor of the changes, published a petition on Sept. 12 requesting president Mauricio Funes to ratify the reforms. The two organizations argue that these agrochemicals put the state to expense due to the treatment of ill farmers while only big agricultural enterprises benefit from the advantages of using agrochemicals. They stressed that the prohibition will not cause a drop in productivity as the agrochemicals can be substituted by non-toxic pesticides and fertilizers.

In response to parliamentary debate President Mauricio Funes proposed to prolong the timeframe in which the agrochemicals would be substituted arguing that food security must be ensured first. He suggested setting up a technical commission which would be in charge of further discussions while failing to appoint a date for ultimately banning the toxic substances. —LP OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

11

Assault groups are mobilizing to silence project opponents, who are visited by strangers who threaten them in front of their children. They have also tried to forcibly remove people from the Municipal Palace of San Dionisio del Mar, occupied by the community since January 2012 after overthrowing Mayor López Castellano, who received 20.5 million pesos ($1.5 million) from Mareña Renovables under the pretext of land use rights, though he hasn’t clarified where that money went.

In October 2012 a group of hooded people, apparently members of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the same community, tried to stop the humanitarian convoy that traveled to San Dionisio del Mar to deliver food to the Ikjot and Zapotec indigenous communities who oppose the construction of the mega wind farm project in the area.

They poured gasoline over community member Isaúl Celaya López, threatening to burn him alive.

Nevertheless, the judicial system has sided with the indigenous communities of Barra de Santa Teresa. A court in the town of Salina Cruz ruled Oct. 9 to temporarily suspend construction in response to a request for protective action from the General Assembly of San Dionisio del Mar. In statements to the press, Miguel Ángel García Aguilar, a member of that General Assembly, called the ruling “a resounding victory in the fight for respect of the land and the rights of indigenous communities.”

“We demand that all authorities involved in the wind farm project of San Dionisio del Mar, and he consortium of Mareña Renovables, comply with the provisions of the suspension issued by the federal judge,” he added. q

ARGENTINA/URUGUAY

Conflict over paper mills flares up again Permission to increase productivity of paper plant causes trouble.

T

he ongoing debate about a paper factory on the Uruguayan-Argentinean border near the cities Gualeguaychú (Argentina) and Fray Bentos (Uruguay) boiled up when the Uruguayan government gave permission on Sept. 27 to increase the production of the plant by 10 percent.

In response, the Argentinian Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman announced that Argentina is going to once again lodge a complaint at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Haag as it already did in 2006.

The Finish owned plant (UPM) was constructed on Uruguayan territory — on the banks of the Uruguay River shared by both countries — in 2005 and has ever since been a matter of argument. Argentina assumes that the production has a strong impact on the fragile and complex ecosystem of the border river, which provides water for approximately 1 million people. According to the ICJ verdict of 2010, however, the country failed to provide sufficient evidence on the matter.

Argentina further accuses its neighbor of breaching obligations under the Statute of the Uruguay River signed by the two nations in 1975 which obliges both parties to prevent pollution and holds them liable for ecological damage. Timerman stated on Oct. 2 that “the unilateral decision of Uruguay compelled our country to turn once again to the ICJ as (the decision) affects environmental sovereignty [and] violates treaties between the two nations as well as the verdict of the court.”

Uruguay, however, as it has done during the previous trial, denies having neglected its responsibilities.

Foreign Minister Luis Almagro stated that the Uruguayan government “has acted according to its international obligations at all times, especially concerning those contracted under the Statute of the river Uruguay.”

12

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

Ambiguous information The bi-national Administrative Commission of the Uruguay River (CARU) investigated between 2001 and 2011 the environmental impact of the paper mills in both countries but could not come to an agreement concerning the findings. The Uruguayan government accused its Argentinean counterpart of incompletely informing the public by omitting facts that are favor the Uruguayan point of view. Samples for example of the mouth of the river were not taken into consideration. The Uruguayan government also argued that the level of the agrochemical endosulfan found in the river was 10 times higher on the Argentinean side.

The Argentinean side, however, fears deterioration in biodiversity, harmful effects on health of citizens and damage to fish stocks as well as tourism and related economic interests. It accused Uruguay of making exceptions for UPM disrespecting standard procedures in regard to temperature limits of effluent water. Timerm regretted that the Uruguayan government “privileges the interest of UPM over the history of two brother nations.”

In response to his statement, in which he added the Argentinean government was going to wait a few days before taking actions, the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry stated on Oct. 16 that an ultimatum was not acceptable. It proposed, however, to extend binational controls as well as to continue negotiations regarding the paper plant but refused to consider withdrawing the license granted to UPM. Despite the discussions in the past weeks, environmentalist argue that the Argentinean government does very little to remedy the situation accusing it of “inactivity” and “lack of commitment.” The Environmental City of Gualeguaychú Assembly, formed by residents of the region that has been active ever since Uruguay gave permission to construct plants in 2005, requests the closure or the relocation of the plant. — LP

EL SALVADOR Tomás Andréu in San Salvador

The lives of women in danger

W

ITH THE signing of the Peace Accords in 1992, a new era began for Salvadoran society and for women. The signing of the Peace Accords ended more than a decade of armed conflict between the guerrilla group Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) and the government of the right-wing National Republican Alliance, ARENA. “I think that women’s voices and our struggles began to be heard after 1992 because of the strength of the organized feminist movement.

I also think that with the change of government [in 2009 with the coming to power of FMLN] some of those demands of social organizations have been put into concrete forms, which can be linked to the acceptance of feminists in the government of [President] Mauricio Funes,”, affirms Mariana Moisa, from the Feminist Collective for Local Development (CFDL), to Latinamerica Press.

Despite seeing changes in different areas in the country, such as politics, employment, or even the military sector in which women are allowed to participate, Moisa

SECRETARY OF SOCIAL INCLUSION

Progress in women’s rights is halted because of high rate of adolescent pregnancies and penalization of abortion.

In 2012, almost 30 percent of attended births in El Salvador involved adolescent mothers.

considers that there are topics which are still kept in the dark.

“El Salvador does not have sexual education programs that are free of prejudice”, exposes the feminist. She adds that the Central American country “penalizes abortion in any circumstance, even if the life of the mother is or could be in danger”.

American anthropologist and feminist Ellen Moodie, professor at the University of Illinois, who has investigated the transition to democracy in El Salvador after the signing of the Peace Accords was consulted by Latinamerica Press on women’s reproductive rights.

“El Salvador does not have sexual education programs that are free of prejudice. The country penalizes abortion in any circumstance, even if the life of the mother is or could be in danger.”

— MARIANA MOISA

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

13

“There is no freedom for women to make their own reproductive health decisions,” said Moodie. “Women live in a suspecting environment. If a woman miscarries, she is suspected to have illegally aborted her fetus. The abortion laws in El Salvador are some of the most restrictive on the continent.”

Adolescent pregnancies

Last May the Ministry of Health (MINSAL), became alarmed by the number of adolescent pregnancies despite the decline in the last few years. The head of MINSAL, María Isabel Rodríguez, told the press that “the rate is very high. We have a [pregnancy] rate among adolescents of 89 out of 1,000 women between 15 and 19 years of age. It is high because the average in Latin America is 77.”

According to what the newspaper La Prensa Grafica recorded, the minister called on “both men and women, for sexual and reproductive health education to spread, to start it in schools and [to eliminate] any taboos against this type of education because the problems that adolescent pregnancies cause are very serious.”

According to the MINSAL 2012-2013 Work Report 63.7 percent of the population is younger than 30 and women represent 52.8 percent of the total population of the country. “In Central America, we have the second lowest rate of adolescent pregnancies. Costa Rica has the lowest.

It is a number we have been reducing gradually over the last 20 years, yet the numbers are still alarming,” said Sofía Villalta, Coordinator of MINSAL’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Unit, to Latinamerica Press.

CONTINUE >

MEXICO

Limited progress in reproductive rights Morelos might be second state to legalize abortion after Mexico City.

M

orelos, located in South-Central Mexico, could become the second state in the country where abortion is legalized. So far only the federal district of Mexico City permits abortion at request of the woman for non-medical reasons during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, while in the rest of the country women can only legally abort when they have been raped.

Due to the federal system in Mexico the states can independently decide whether and for what reason they legalize abortion. In Morelos abortion is presently punished with jail sentences up to five years.

During the third Latin-American congress on legal reproductive rights, held in Cuernavaca, capital of Morelos, from Oct. 14-16, Jorge Messeguer, minister of the local government in Morelos stated that “[We] are not going to criminalize a woman who for various reasons has suffered an abortion. They will not be sent to prison and it will be made possible that their right to decide about their bodies will be respected.”

Legalizing abortion was one of the campaign pledges of Graco Ramirez, current governor of Morelos from the left-wing Democratic Revolution Party (PRD). Yet passing the law amendments might be difficult as the changes not only depend on the government’s decision but also on the approval of the state congress where parties in favor of abortion do not have the necessary majority. The right-wing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexican’s president Enrique Peña Nieto, however, is not unanimously against abortion. The president himself stated during his election campaign in 2012 that although he was in favor of life he was not in favor of criminalizing women who decided to abort.

14

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

Unsafe abortions According to a recent report on reproductive rights in Mexico by the Information Group on Reproductive Choice (GIRE), Mexico has one of the highest figures of induced abortions in the world.

In 2009 for example, 1,025,669 induced abortions in women aged between 15 and 44 were documented. Access to safe abortion, however, is scarce. In 2010, 11 percent of maternal death was caused by abortion. In Mexico City, since de adoption of legal abortion in 2007 there were about 100,000 legal abortions, without having recorded deaths from causes related to this procedure.

Despite the example of Mexico City, 16 states have opted for tightening measures in order to make it more difficult for women to abort. Between 2009 and 2011 GIRE documented 679 cases in 24 federal states in which women were denounced for having tried to abort. Some were sent to prison serving sentences between four months and six years while others were remanded in custody under precarious conditions despite the fact that it was not proven that the miscarriage from which some of them suffered was self-induced.

Legal abortions in rape cases are often not performed due to limited access and lack of information in rural areas of federal states.

“Therefore, access to abortion depends on the place of residence of the woman as well as on her social-economic status, which additionally turns the topic of abortion in Mexico into a topic of social justice and gender discrimination” the report states. It further points out that the risk of having an insecure abortion is nine times higher for indigenous women and stresses the fact that women who are legally allowed to undergo abortion also take to insecure abortion due to lack of facilities. — LP

“We welcome the Ciudad Mujer project. It is able to find quick answers, yet these policies still represent welfare services. They don’t have elements that allow women to question their condition. It treats women as victims and does not [allow] another element that serves to empower women.”

—MARIANA MOISA

According to Villalta, in 2012 12 cases of pregnant adolescents who died because of complications were documented. For that same year, MINSAL totaled 82,586 births attended by qualified personnel, 24,190 of which were of adolescent mothers.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) detailed in the report “The State of World Population 2013”, published on Oct. 30, that “about 19 percent of young women in developing countries become pregnant before age of 18,” and that “around 70,000 adolescents in developing countries die annually of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.” Worldwide, “7.3 million underage, adolescent girls give birth in developing countries every year.”

The report points to gender inequality, poverty, sexual violence and coercion, national policies that restrict access to birth control and lack of ageappropriate sexual health education policies, as well as lack of access to education and reproductive health services as underlying causes.

“At this age they should be studying, transitioning from high school to college, but instead they are becoming mothers,” pointed out Elena Zúñiga, representative of the UNFPA in El Salvador, in a press conference. “In the case of adolescents younger than 18 years old, and particularly those under 15, pregnancy is not a result of a deliberate decision. On the contrary,

pregnancy is generally a result of the ‘lack of power of decision’ and circumstances that are beyond the control of the girl. Pregnancy at a young age reflects poverty, and pressure from classmates, partners, families, and communities”.

“Adolescent pregnancy is a worrisome phenomenon in El Salvador that requires comprehensive attention. One out of four women will become a mother before the age of 18,” said Zúñiga as she called on “all key actors of society to face the issue of adolescent pregnancies.”

To eradicate pregnancies among girls and adolescents, the UNFPA recommends a preventive intervention among young adolescents, a ban on marriage among those younger than 18 years of age as well as protection of the right to health, education, safety and right to a life without poverty, the call on men and boys, and to ensure that girls go to school and stay there longer.

Ciudad Mujer

In 2011 the comprehensive care center Ciudad Mujer opened. The center is an ambitious and unprecedented project that was part of Funes’s campaign promise. The program is carried out by the Secretary of Social Inclusion, and the head of this initiative is First Lady Vanda Pignato.

Among the services that are offered are sexual and reproductive health, help for gender violence, economic empowerment and promotion of rights.

There is also a designated area for the children of women who receive care. There are a total of four Ciudad Mujer headquarters in the departments of San Salvador, San Miguel, Usultan, and La Libertad.

“We welcome the Ciudad Mujer project. It is able to find quick answers, yet these policies still represent welfare services. They don’t have elements that allow women to question their condition. It treats women as victims and does not [allow] another element that serves to empower women”, observes Moisa.

“Another element that is not in favor of it (Ciudad Mujer) is infrastructure and maintenance of the site. This is economically expensive and at political level there is no law ensuring that if there is a change of government this project will continue,” she adds.

The feminist activist points out that it is necessary to address without taboos the important issues and problems that affect the Salvadoran woman.

“The issue of sexual and reproductive health is not being address as it should be,” Moisa observes. q OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

15

NICARAGUA Carmen Herrera in Managua

Violence against women is systemic

EL NUEVO DIARIO

family unity and on the discretionary principle, which prevents that cases of minor importance go to trial.

According to the reform, mediation will be used to resolve cases of “minor” violence, “like domestic or family violence, if there are minor injuries,” and will only be considered appropriate and valid if the perpetrator is not a repeat offender and if the victim is of free will to mediate with the perpetrator.

Nevertheless, groups of women assert they can prove the police and court systems are forcing women to meWomen’s organizations claim that mediation with aggressor can condemn diate with their abusers or attackers. women to almost certain death.

From January to October, the network Catholics for a Free Choice documented 67 femicides and the state’s Medical Forensic Institute recognized 2,902 cases of sexual violence against children and teens.

“The official rhetoric about the inclusion of women as the subject of rights is a lie,” Patricia Orozco, regional director of the Mesoamerican Feminist Network (PETATERAS), HE 2013 Global Gender Gap Report, told Latinamerica Press. “ We believe this is part released Oct. 25 by the World Econo- of institutional violence, which is when the mic Forum (WEF), ranked Nicaragua authorities do not act in line with your rights.”

10th in the world in gender equality “ We can talk about institutional violence when — a move the women’s movement in the coun- Law 779 is not being applied, institutional viotry criticized, stating publicly Nicaraguan wo- lence when there is a law that dictates there men are facing a double standard when it comes should be funding for a Land Bank for women, to their rights. but no such funds exists; when Banco ProduzcaAlthough there is equal representation of mos (or Let’s Produce Bank) opened to provide women in government institutions at the fede- loans to small producers and entrepreneurs and ral and local levels, feminists say the problem it doesn’t reach women; institutional violence is President Daniel Ortega’s public policy, like when the majority of land is in the hands of men the criminalization of therapeutic abortion and not women; institutional violence because and the Supreme Court ruling last Septem- abortion is still punishable and women’s right ber that Article 46 of the Law against Violen- to decide over their bodies and their lives isn’t ce toward Women (Law 779), which banned recognized; institutional violence because womediation between a woman and the aggres- men don’t have work and their only way out is sor in cases of violence, is unconstitutional. to work in the maquila (assembly plant), where Those who defended the reform in the latter they endure sexual violence and aren’t allowed case based their view on the preservation of to organize themselves,” she added.

Quota met for 50 percent of women in public office, but they don’t have the right to decide about their bodies and lives.

T

16

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

No gender awareness

The government’s inclusive policies directed toward women in quantitative terms — the reason for the country ’s place in the WEF rankings — are based on allotting half of public positions to women. Compliance with the rule is high. Yet the policy, according to feminists, doesn’t mean that women in positions of power are acting with gender awareness. Instead, they are towing the government party line.

“The decisions of these women are a reflection of the rhetoric that comes down from the president and that doesn’t mean there is gender equality,” Orozco said.

In Nicaragua, the women’s movement brings together more than 105 organizations and is recognized as the only aggressive social movement that autonomously survived the crisis of social organizations in the country, most of which were disrupted by folding into the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) since the party returned to power in the 2007.

Associations of farmers, campesinos, trade unions, and some groups of women partial to Sandinismo, among others, aligned themselves with FSLN government. Government agencies coopted their agendas and took over the actions these social organizations previously pushed.

Currently, the activities of the Association of Rural Workers (ATC), the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG), the Association of Women Luisa Amanda Espinoza (AMLAE) and the Sandinista Workers Union (CST) — all of clear Sandinista tendencies

“The official rhetoric about the inclusion of women as the subject of rights is a lie. We believe this is part of institutional violence, which is when the authorities do not act in line with your rights.”

—PATRICIA OROZCO

“The decisions of these women [who occupy half of public positions] are a reflection of the rhetoric that comes down from the president and that doesn’t mean there is gender equality.”

—PATRICIA OROZCO — have been replaced in rural areas in order to develop community activities that supposedly reclaim the rights of the people those organizations targeted through state agencies created by the administration, like the Citizen Empowerment Councils (civic participation organization) created in 2007 (during the Sandinista mandate from 2006-2011), and the Cabinets of Family, Community and Life created in February to promote the common good, solidarity, Christianity and peaceful coexistence between the families of a community, which have legal backing as were included in the Family Code by the current government.

The vacuum in civil society leaves the women’s movement as the autonomous spokespeople of what women are really experiencing under the government’s control, which on the one hand claims to defend women’s rights by passing Law 779 in September 2012, but on their other hand repeats the aggression against women with the issue of mediation — a move which feminists claim has lead to more femicides.

Mediation can condemn women to almost certain death, because although the law deems it voluntary, police and courts are forcing women to participate, Nicaraguan feminists say.

“That there even was a law meant a huge step for women’s organizations, but it didn’t last long. Soon after there was pressure from some groups who were offended and mobilized to push the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional Art. 46 of Law 779. W ho was behind that mobilization? We’ ll never know, but it’s obvious the government doesn’t want to take any responsibility for the lives and OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

17

health of this country ’s women. Mediation opens the door for women to be killed; we found that 67 women went through mediation [with the aggressor] in their home and went to mediate in the police stations, and even then they were killed,” said Magaly Quintanilla, an activist with Catholics for Free Choice.

Forced to mediate with the perpetrator

“Mediation seeks to cover up psychological violence. They say shouting, a bad look, a gesture doesn’t trigger violence; they say they ’ ll [mediate] when it’s the first time it’s happened, when in reality we know that when a woman reports violence, it’s because she’s lived through it before. For a woman, it’s difficult not to mediate with her attacker, because of the weight on her of the idea of family and religion that dictate that she made a pact with her partner ‘until death do us part.’ Many women see as normal that their partner is abusive,” Orozco said.

During a recent women’s forum, Orozco added that a councilwomen from the muni-

“The state of Nicaragua is supposed to guarantee human rights for women, but is failing by not supporting the fight against violence toward women.”

— VIRGINIA MENESES

cipality of Rosita, 300 km (190 miles) northeast of Managua, showed photos of battered women who are being forced into mediation with their abusers by police and courts there.

For the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25, the Committee of Latin America and the Caribbean for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), launched in Nicaragua and other Latin CONTINUE >

GUATEMALA

No future for girls One in five births is to a teenage mother.

R

ecently published statistics show an alarming increase in teenage pregnancies in the CentralAmerican state of Guatemala where according to the government every fifth child is the child of an underage mother. Data provided by the Reproductive Health Observatory show that in 2012, 26 percent of children were born by girls under the age of 19 at the time.

Juan Enrique Quiñónez, specialist in youth and adolescents of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) adduces article 81 of the civil code as one reason for this development as it allows marriages with the girl’s consent from the age of 14 onwards.

Under the pretext of such legal marriages crimes of sexual violence are committed, while cases in which children are conceived before the girl’s fourteenth birthday also go unpunished. “The matter is even more severe than the numbers tell us”, Quiñónez stated and added “We have to revise the civil code, it contains a lot of articles which violate the rights of women and children”.

Zulma Zubillaga, head of the Department Against Sexual Violence, Exploitation and Human Trafficking (SVET), drew attention to the fact that these young mothers have no choice but to dedicate themselves to their babies although they might not have wanted to have children at so early an age.

“It is a model of exclusion which repeats itself and in which the chances of the girl to plan her own life are almost annulled. It is violating her human rights,” she said.

18

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

Mothers aged between 10 and 14 Es especialmente preocupante el incremento del númEspecially worrying is the rising number of girls under the age of 14 who give birth although sexual intercourse with under-14-years-olds constitutes a sex crime in Guatemala. Between January and July 2013 were registered 2,906 cases of these very early pregnancies.

Leonel Dubón, director of The Childhood Refuge Association, stressed the fact that victims of sexual violence are younger and younger, while such crimes are often committed by family members. He pointed out that in 90 percent of the cases they work with in the refugee centre girls are raped by someone close to them, as for example fathers, step-fathers, granddads, uncles and cousins adding thus to the trauma of sexual violence the issue of incest.

The Guatemalan government started to take action to remedy this situation. On Oct. 11, during the International Day of the Girl Child proclaimed by the United Nations last year, representatives of the ministries of Health, Education, Culture, Social Development among others signed the national plan of pregnancy prevention in girls and teenagers which aims at reducing pregnancy rates by 5 percents within the next 5 years and includes governmental efforts to draw attention to the matter via sex education as well as information campaigns concerning sexual violence and abuse. According to SVET, the focus of the government’s program lies especially on preventing pregnancies in under 14 year old girls. — LP

American countries the campaign “For a government that upholds women’s rights. It’s time.”

CLADEM Representative Virginia Meneses said in a press conference it was “regrettable that the State of Nicaragua revised Law 779 regarding mediation. This attitude falls in line with a sexist system. The state of Nicaragua is supposed to guarantee human rights for women, but is failing by not supporting the fight against violence toward women,” she said. “CLADEM joined Amnesty International in reprimanding Nicaragua’s noncompliance with the conventions on the rights of women that the country has ratified.”

Moreover, the women’s movement is proposing to mobilize to denounce the official rhetoric that seeks to put women in the same category as family, recreating in

this way a culture in which woman are overlooking themselves to serve the rest.

Government programs like Hambre Cero, or Zero Hunger (which covers food costs), Usura Cero, or Zero Usury (a microcredit program), or land deeds, for example, although they are under women’s names, are promoted as family programs. The woman acts as the guarantor of its implementation, but it doesn’t further her to achieve social and economic autonomy.

“This family-oriented government vision, coupled with the discourse we receive in the family and in the Church, makes women miss out because it says you do not exist as a person and that is profoundly undemocratic and anticitizenry because it allows you not to be a subject of the law, but as a woman who’s rights are based on those of others,” concluded Orozco. q

HAITI

Sexual violence in refugee camps Almost four years after earthquake women are still scared of sexual assaults.

A

fter the earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, more than a million people had to move to refugee camps where more than 350,000 of them still live today. Sexual violence against women exacerbated due to the insecure living conditions granting no protection to women and girls.

Displacement is named as one of the key factors in the rise of sexual violence against women in Haiti as social and familial networks no longer function in order to protect them. This is worsened by the housing situation in camps since tents cannot be locked and shielded from unwanted intruders at night. Women are also being attacked while fetching water or waiting for food distributions as well as in latrines and at bathing sites.

Sexual violence has a long history in Haiti where women are still treated as second class citizen. Rape won notoriety during the dictatorships of François Duvalier (1957-71) and his son JeanClaude (1957-1986), during the regime of Raoul Cédras, who ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, and the post-coup period until 1994 when Aristide was restored to power, that were often used as a tool of political oppression against female supporter of democratic movements.

The current legislation still favors the discrimination of women and leaves them vulnerable to sexual abuse as for example marital rape is still not recognized as such. It was only in 2005 that rape was made a crime while before it was only considered as a ‘crime against morals’ Women unprotected Due to the lack of state infrastructure after the catastrophe impunity for perpetrators increased even further, while basic services regarding

protection from abuse and medical treatment were rendered ineffectual or destroyed. According to Human Rights Watch, 60 percent of health facilities were destroyed while 10 percent of health professionals died or emigrated. The earthquake also took its toll among trained staff of organizations supporting women and girls affected by sexual violence.

As women living in the camps often have no means to maintain their family prostitution and transactional sex became a way of dealing with these additional economic problems triggered by the earthquake and the loss of means to a livelihood. As a new post earthquake coping mechanism it entails additional hardships for women as unwanted pregnancies often result from it leaving the women in an even worse situation as they then also have to deal with the pregnancy and later on with the newborn baby.

Unwanted pregnancies are also often the result of rape in as well as of lack of information concerning post rape treatment and scarce access to contraceptives.

On grass root level refugees are trying to tackle the rape problem in the camps by forming watchdog groups which check up on women striding up and down the tents. Delna Charlotin, head and founder of such a watchdog group in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince told to the press her reasons for starting this initiative: “One day, there was a young woman who had been violently raped not far from us.

No one dared to come to her rescue. That’s when I decided that we needed to come together, to unite and fight that we couldn’t let this go on anymore.” — LP OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

19

LATIN AMERICA/THE CARIBBEAN

Latinamerica Press

Gender gap is closing Region reports progress concerning economical opportunities and political participation of women.

A

ccording to the Global Gender Gap Report 2013, published by the World Economic Forum on Oct. 25, Nicaragua is the most developed country in terms of gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean, holding the 10th place in the global index.

This year the index, which is annually published since 2006, assessed 136 countries and calculated the extent of gender disparity in four categories: Economic participation and opportunity (salaries, participation and highly skilled employment); Educational attainment (access to basic and higher levels of education); Political empowerment (representation in decision-making structures) and Health and survival (life expectancy and sex ratio).

“The overall score of the Latin America region has improved by 6% between 2006 and 2013. This is mainly due to improvements in the Economic Participation and Opportunity and Political Empowerment subindexes. The Latin America and Caribbean region, which has closed 70% of its overall gender gap in 2013, is showing the biggest improvements from last year compared to the other regions.”

Among the countries of the region, apart from Nicaragua, only Cuba forms part of the top twenty best committed to narrowing the gender gap. It has the highest numbers of women in legislative positions (49 percent) and the highest index of women working as professionals and technicians.

“Countries will need to start thinking of human capital very differently — including how they integrate women into leadership roles. This shift in mindset and practice is not a goal for the future, it is an imperative today,” said Klaus Schwab, founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. q

20

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

LATIN AMERICA/THE CARIBBEAN ÍGlobal Gender Gap Index 2013 Score*

Country

Rank

Nicaragua

10 15 25 27

0.7715 0.7540 0.7389 0.7340

29 31 34 35 36 37 40 47 48 50 62 68 72 77 80 82 89 91 96 107 110 114

0.7301 0.7241 0.7195 0.7171 0.7166 0.7164 0.7128 0.7085 0.7085 0.7060 0.6949 0.6917 0.6867 0.6803 0.6787 0.6773 0.6724 0.6670 0.6609 0.6449 0.6369 0.6304

Cuba Ecuador Bolivia Barbados Costa Rica Argentina Colombia Trinidad and Tobago Panama Bahamas Jamaica Guyana Venezuela Brazil Mexico Dominican Rep. Uruguay Peru Honduras Paraguay Chile El Salvador Belice Suriname Guatemala

*0.0000=inequality, 1.0000=equality

Source: World Economic Forum

HONDURAS Jennifer Ávila in Tegucigalpa

LGBTI community battles discrimination, violence

WWW.CRISTIANOSGAYS.COM

Organizations defending sexual diversity demand justice for victims of discrimination and hate crimes.

LGBTI community calls for investigations into hate crimes, prison for perpetrators.

“

IT’S DIFFICULT to have a different sexual preference or gender identity in this country, it’s a daily battle,” says Indyra Mendoza, of the Gay-Lesbian Organization Cattrachas in Honduras, a country ranked as one of the most violent in the world, and one where the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/transvestite and intersex) community is doubly at risk.

From January 1994 to November 2013, 135 members of the LGBTI community have been killed, according to a research by Cattrachas, which until October 2012 placed that figure at 107.

Many organizations are concerned about the violence and discrimination against this group, which has worsened since the coup d’état in 2009. They also worry about a government that doesn’t recognize their rights or guarantee them access to health services and a dignified life.

Claudia Spellman is transgender, and has seen peers die because of a lack of medical attention and social stigma in a society that singles them out. According to the Colectivo Unión

Color Rosa (Pink Unity Collective), of which Spellman is a member, 35 percent of Honduras’ trans community is HIVpositive.

“We don’t have comprehensive health services because trans people require specialists who can provide services like hormone therapy. For example, there is no endocrinologist in the public health system, which means that to feminize our bodies we have to resort to underground resources, which has consequences,” Spellman told Latinamerica Press.

“We don’t have comprehensive health services because trans people require specialists who can provide services like hormone therapy.”

—CLAUDIA SPELLMAN OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

21

The trans community, disproportionately affected Since 2001, the Pink Unity Collective has fought for the rights of trans people, which are those who have created a gender identity for themselves different than the one they were culturally assigned based on their biological gender. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) notes that “trans” (transgenderism) includes people who are transsexual (who choose medical intervention — hormonal, surgical, or other — to achieve a physiological appearance in line with their psychological, spiritual and social reality) and those who are transvestite (who express their gender identity — whether temporarily or permanently — through clothing choice and attitudes other than those assigned to them because of their biological gender.)

“Discrimination and stigma is less now, but it’s always there, because of our appearance. A few years ago, no one would even serve us, they stigmatized us for

LGBTI organizations continue to fight for laws that would allow them to change their names, legally modify their gender identity, benefit from marriage equality and access to justice in cases of murders and discrimination. being HIV-positive, so some doctors wouldn’t treat us.

The security guards laugh at us and the nurses call us by our legal name, not the one we’ve adopted socially.

Those things happen,” Spellman said.

The trans community is disproportionately affected by unemployment and violence. Cattrachas documented that of the 135 murders in the LGBTI community, 64 were trans people. For Mendoza, the killings reflect a perversity among the perpetrators, who take advantage of the vulnerability of trans people, especially those in sex work, to rape and kill them.

Discrimination as a crime In May 2012, Honduras approved an amendment to Article 321 of the Penal Code, which defines the crime of discrimination and establishes sentences from three to five years for people convicted of “publically or through the media or other public dissemination incite discrimination, hate, contempt, persecution or any other form of violence against a person, group or association, foundations, companies, corporations, (or) 22

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

non-governmental organizations.”

It also imposes fines from 50,000 to 300,000 lempiras (US$2,400 to $14,600).

Although LGBTI organizations and networks view the amendment as a success, they continue to fight for laws that would allow them to change their names, legally modify their gender identity, benefit from marriage equality and access to justice in cases of violence and discrimination.

Cattrachas prepared a report on the LGBTI community in 2010 for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which regularly reviews compliance with the human rights obligations and commitments of the 193 member states. Seven state-parties gave recommendations to Honduras regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.

Based on these recommendations, the Ministry of Security and the Attorney General’s Office created a unit to investigate the violent deaths of members of the LGBTI community. This unit subsequently prompted various organizations and networks to form in 2011 the Bureau of Access to LGBTI Justice in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba, the three major cities of Honduras. The agency promotes the creation of a legal framework to decrease killings related to sexual orientation and gender identity.

“The number of deaths has not decreased because that is not the way to do it, creating these institutions, but of all the cases presented to the Public Ministry (dating back to 1994), since 2008 there have been 30 trials and nine sentences. There are already problems with access to justice because Honduras looks through a heterosexual lens, we are second-class citizens constitutionally in this country, so we can not get married or adopt— which is the pretext politicians depend on to say that we have no rights,” said Mendoza.

On June 28, 2009, the day of the coup d’etat, trans woman Vicky Hernández was killed. In 2010, Cattra-

chas send the case to the IACHR . Yet until today, there has been no condemn in this case.

Then, in 2012, the Commission denounced the murder of Barbarita, another trans woman, whose body was found on August 2, 2012, on a secluded road near the town of San Martin in San Pedro Sula with bullet wounds to her face and head. In a statement, the IACHR noted that according to media, family members reported four people went to her home the day before her death, claiming they were agents of the National Department of Criminal Investigation.

inbrief • On Sept. 17, the Caribbean Community (Caricom) announced its plans to present a legal case at the International Court of Justice against former colonial powers Great Britain, France, Portugal, Spain and The Netherlands in order to seek reparations for the slavery of Africans and the genocide of native people in colonial times.

During the first Regional Reparations Conference at St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the 15 Caricom states formed a Regional Reparations Commission while member states were also encouraged to set up their own commissions in order to document the atrocities committed by European nations during the colonial period.

• On Oct. 6, Asamblea Malvinas en Lucha por la Vida, or Malvinas Assembly Fighting for Life, brought a lawsuit against the transnational agrochemical Monsanto in the central province of Córdoba, Argentina, accusing it of “attempted contamination.” The case aims at impeding the installation of a seed processing plant because of the impact it would have on the environment as well as

They apprehended her, claiming she was being arrested.

The Commission reminded the State of “its obligation to investigate such acts on its own initiative and to punish those responsible” and “urges the State to conduct an investigation that takes into account whether this murder was committed because of the gender expression, gender identity or sexual orientation of the victim.”

In August 2012, four alleged members of the Mara Salvatrucha criminal gang in San Pedro Sula were arrested and investigated for this crime. This is the last thing that is publicly known of this case. q

on health of citizens. Social organizations and ecologist groups demand compliance with the Environment Law which requests the conduct of an environmental impact assessment before constructing the plant.

• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) expressed their concern about the Sept. 23 unappealable verdict imposed by the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic which retroactively strips citizenship from people born in the country after 1929 whose parents had an irregular migratory status.

The sentence refers to the case of Juliana Deguis Pierre, the daughter of Haitian parents who does not fulfill the requirements in order to be registered as a Dominican citizen, according to the court.

The regulatory action will affect around 210,000 people of Haitian origin born in the Dominican Republic who due to this measure would face statelessness.

• The quarrel concerning the waste incineration plant in Arecibo, Puerto Rico continues after professors of the Public Health Department of the University of Puerto Rico spoke out against the project

developed by the US-based company Energy Answers and took sides with opponents of the project on Sept.

7. The company obtained the air permit by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to construct a waste incineration plant at the former site of Global Fibers Paper Mill in June 2013 while other necessary permits still are being processed. The professors warned of possible increase of cancer cases due to emissions of toxic substances.

• Results of a field trip in 2012 led by researchers of Conservation International in the southeast of Suriname published on Oct. 2, reveal the existence of 60 new species of plants and animals.

However, in taken samples of water researchers found traces of mercury, a metal widely used in mining in the gold-rich state of Suriname and other countries. Trond Larsen, director of Conservation International’s Rapid Assessment Program commented on the surprising findings suggesting that the metal had been transported by the wind to this remote and pristine area. He expressed his concern about the high levels of mercury as the region provides vital water for approximately 50,000 people.

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

23

EL SALVADOR Tomás Andréu in San Salvador

War crime archives in suspense

TOMÁS ANDRÉU

and two of their collaborators in 1989 as well as a lot of other proceedings which arrived at Tutela Legal after the signing of the Peace Accords between the guerilla and the government in 1992.

The closure of Tutela Legal occurs at the same time that the Constitutional Court of the Supreme Court of Justice reviews whether the 1993 General Amnesty Law, which impedes judging war crimes, is unconstitutional.

Mons. Romero promoted the foundation of Tutela Legal (Legal Protection Office), which belongs to the Catholic Church aiming at providing legal assistance for war victims.

Catholic Church closes office which provided legal assistance to war crime victims.

I

N 1977 El Salvador was heading for a civil war and violations of human rights were the order of the day. Because of these events and thanks to Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero, Tutela Legal (Legal Protection Office), to provide legal support to victims, was founded. The effort became part of the Salvadoran Catholic Church in 1982. This year, however, the organization was shut down on Sept. 30 by the archbishop José Luis Escobar, president of Salvadoran Episcopal Conference leaving more than 50,000 cases in uncertainty.

“Tutela Legal had no reason to exist”, was the surprising explanation which more than 10 employees of the institution obtained from Mons. Escobar, who affirmed that he had encountered “irregularities” in the organization management. His reasoning was objected and people criticized him severely. International and national human rights organizations gave their views on the matter and urged to defend the memory of the victims.

Escobar said that the files belong to the Church. They contain cases of violations of human rights like the massacre of El Mozote, La Guacamaya (Morazán province) and El Sumpul (Chalatenango province), the murder of six Jesuits

24

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

Embracing memory

Professor Margarita Pascasio de López disappeared one day after leaving her work place in San Salvador in 1982. The only known fact about her whereabouts is that she was captured and detained in then military facilities.

Her daughter Nora López Pascasio turned to Tutela Legal and reported the disappearance. The case is still open.

On Oct. 6 she returned to the office of Tutela Legal which used to be located in the Metropolitan Cathedral.

“We hope that he [Mons. Escobar] has not destroyed the files because this man identifies himself with the right,” said Lopéz Pascasio to Latinamerica Press. “He made it up that employees were working badly. He is a distractor.

He has to hand in the files.”

“We hope that he [Mons. Escobar] has not destroyed the files pbecause this man identifies himself with the right.”

— NORA LÓPEZ PASCASIO

She fears that the files about the case of her mother like a lot of others could disappear. Ever since she lost her mother she has dedicated herself to finding her and to seeing that justice is done to her, which is why she joined the organization SOS Justice.

“No forgiveness, no oblivion. I want justice,” exclaimed Lopéz Pascasio.

It have been the new generations which summoned people via social networks to demonstrate peacefully under the slogan “Embracing memory to get justice which belongs to us” ever since people knew about the closure of Tutela Legal. The protest which took place on Oct. 6 aimed at forming a human chain of women, men and children in order to embrace the Cathedral.

“There is a lot of violence against our people. This embrace shows that people are protecting these files documenting severe violations of human rights. They are not just papers they are memory. Peace will not come until all these crimes have been recognized,” Ramiro Navas told Latinamerica Press.

He belongs to the organization Oveja Negra (Black Ship) which affirms being “worried about national reality because the country needs changes pushed forward by Salvadoran people.”

Public pressure made Mons. Escobar talk about new facilities which would not only keep watch about what happened at war. For this reason he formed a commission consisting of Mons. Jesús Delgado and the priests Jaime Paredes, Luis Coto and José María Tojeira who enjoy good reputation in the Salvadoran society and will create the Mons. Arturo Rivera Damas Documentation and Archive Center, as was announced on Oct. 13 after the closure of Tutela Legal.

Mons. Arturo Rivera Damas was the one who continued the work done

by Mons. Romero after the latter had being shot in the chest by a killer hired

by Salvadoran extreme right in 1980.

Before the Catholic high official talked about the commission, lawyer investigator of former Tutela Legal Wilfredo Medrano told Latinamerica Press that “in the Archdiocese social work [health, sustainable agriculture,

“In the Archdiocese social work [health, sustainable agriculture, housing] has been eliminated.

We don’t know what kind of institution he is going to establish.”

— WILFREDO MEDRANO housing] has been eliminated. We don’t know what kind of institution he is going to establish. What we did was for the benefit of dispossessed people who did not have the financial resources to pay a lawyer.”

President Mauricio Funes also expressed his concern about “the message that is being send out, the bad signal that the Catholic Church and in particular the Archbishop of San Salvador are not willing to attend the just causes of this people like an office [should] that plays an important role for the defense and validity of human rights.”

The Culture Secretary of the Presidency tried to enforce that the archives of the closed Tutela Legal were declared cultural heritage but the Constitutional Court impeded this on Nov. 1 after the lawyer of the Church, Mario Machado, sought the support of members of the court arguing that the religious organization was private and that the documents were the property of the Church and should not be made public. The court also ordered that “no other state authority will execute or dictate orders which permit entry and access to the historic documental archive”. The Church was ordered to adopt “special measures to protect the information in the offices (...) while the situation concerning protection and handling of the mentioned archives is being solved.”

Children of war

During the armed conflict thousands of children were snatched from their families or their homes. The Salvadoran army did business with this suffering by handing over these little ones to families in the USA and Europe. In other cases they kept or executed them. In 1994, the priest Jon Cortina — already deceased — together with family members of these disappeared children founded the Asociación Pro Búsqueda (Pro Search Association) in the district of Chalatenango. Its mission is to reunite those little ones — now adults — with their biological parents or surviving family members of the warlike conflict. The founding of the association was triggered by the discontent which the 1993 Amnesty Law provoked by not tackling the issue of forced disappearances of Salvadoran children at war.

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

25

If the closure of Tutela Legal already appalled the Salvadoran people the theft and the fire on Nov. 14 in the office of Pro Búsqueda gave rise to a wave of national and international condemnation. Armed men entered the building in the early morning, tied up the employees and the security guard, stole files and computers, sprinkled gasoline and set the offices on fire.

Ester Alvarenga, spokeswoman of the association did not want to

venture wild guesses but assured to the press that it was not a normal crime. There was a deliberate intention.

On Nov. 18 a special hearing which investigates the fate of nine children was suspended for the second time. The case dates back to 1982 when the army raided in the district of Chalatenango. The operation did not only cause hundreds of deaths but was also responsible for the disappearance of 53 children, 20 of which, according to Pro Búsqueda, have been recovered.

Pro Búsqueda assures that around 2,000 children disappeared at war. The institution, since its inception until the present, has resolved 387 cases of more than 1,000 claims received. q

COLOMBIA

State apologizes for Palace of Justice Holocaust Military operation to recapture judicial building taken by guerrilla caused more than a hundred deaths and forced disappearances 28 year ago.

T

he Colombian state apologized to victims of the operation to recapture the Palace of Justice which had been taken by the guerrilla organization April 19 Movement (M19) in 1985.

During the 49th period of extraordinary sessions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which took place in Brasilia from Nov. 11-14, the director of the National Agency of Juridical Defense of the Nation, Adriana Guillén, recognized the responsibility of the state regarding the events 28 years ago which are known as the “Palace of Justice Holocaust .”

“The Colombian state apologizes to the victims and their families,” said Guillén. “We profoundly regret that state acts and failure to act have deepened the wounds caused by the events.”

On Nov. 6, 1985, during the so called Operation Antonio Nariño for the Rights of Man, 35 members of M19 occupied the Palace of Justice and took around 350 hostages. The incursion was immediately met by the army which started a recapture operation that lasted 27 hours and resulted in the building’s destruction.

During the operation about a hundred people lost their lives, among them judges, senior civil servants, clerks, visitors and guerrilla fighters, while 12 people disappeared. In 2005 a truth commission (TC) was formed which held M19, the then president Belisario Betancur (1982-86) and the army responsible for the events. The latter’s action was considered as “disproportionate “ and according to the TC it did not try to save the hostages.

According to the report of the TC it was proven that persons detained alive by the military died or disappeared.

26

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

“Once the catastrophe was over, the military did not only impede that basic procedures of criminal investigation were conducted but burned corpses, washed others, took away their clothes, and ordered some fire fighters to take them away from the site of crime together with material proof some of which was just swept away, thus destroying traces and important evidence. Later on the corpses were brought to a forensic institute in a chaotic manner diverging thus from basic technical norms, where it was also not permitted to conduct all the necessary autopsies as it was ordered to move them to mass graves,” stated the TC. The president of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, José de Jesús Orozco welcomed the “partial recognition” of the Colombian state concerning its responsibility in the events although he pointed out that “concrete juridical consequences of this recognition are still outstanding .”

“The current approach of the Colombian state is positive,” but “incomplete” and it [the state] is still not done with answering “the imperatives of justice and of human rights,” he said. “It is confirmed that after the recapture of the Palace physical and psychological torture took place. The cases of torture and forced disappearances continue to be unpunished [and] although some military have been condemned no punishment has been imposed until this day.”

Pilar Navarrete, wife of one of the 12 missing people demanded sentences for people responsible for these deeds.

“It can’t be denied that executions, torture, forced disappearances and concealment evidence was undertaken deliberately,” she stated at the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights. — LP

LATIN AMERICA/THE CARRIBEAN

Latinamerica Press

Modern slavery prevails More than a million people in the region live in slave-like conditions.

A

lthough almost all over the world slavery is prohibited round about 30 million people are victims of this perverse system as well as other analog practices as for example bonded labor, forced marriages, trafficking of children and child exploitation, human trafficking and forced labor.

According to the first edition of the Global Slavery Index, presented by the Australian organization Walk Free Foundation on Oct. 17, 3.8 percent (1.1 million) of enslaved people worldwide are to be found on the American continent.

The ranking of 162 studied countries reflects a combined measure of three factors: estimated prevalence of modern slavery by population, levels of child marriage and levels of human trafficking in and out of a country.

“The measure is heavily weighted to reflect the first factor, prevalence. A number one ranking indicates a more severely concentrated modern slavery situation; 160 shows the least,” states the report.

Haiti after Mauritania is the second country with the highest number of enslaved people (between 200,000 and 220,000) correlating with its population of 10.2 million inhabitants.

“The long history of poor government, a strong legacy of slavery and exploitation, and an ongoing environmental crisis has pushed its population into extreme vulnerability to enslavement,” says the report. “High levels of poverty combined with a lack of access to social services and information regarding the dangers of human trafficking have allowed a system of child labor in Haiti called ‘restavek’ to thrive. The concept of restavek is a cultural practice where disadvantaged children from rural areas are sent to work as domestic helpers for wealthier families, usually living in urban areas.

Although initially the term “restavek” referred to a form of solidarity between families in which one offered shelter and food for the children of another, the system became open to corruption and nowadays, according to estimates, between 300,000 and 500,000 boys and girls are being exploited.

“Many of these children suffer the cruelest form of neglect — denied food, water, a bed to sleep in and constant physical and emotional abuse,” adds the report which also mentions Mexico as an important transit country for South American and Central American citizens who try to enter the United States entailing a highly developed criminal economy which lives off trafficking and enslavement of the economic migrants. q

LATIN AMERICA/THE CARRIBEAN Global Slavery Index

Country Haiti Peru Suriname Ecuador Uruguay Colombia Paraguay Venezuela Bolivia Guyana Dominican Republic Chile Brazil El Salvador Guatemala Mexico Nicaragua Honduras Argentina Jamaica Trinidad and Tobago Barbados Panama Costa Rica

Ranking

Weighted Measure*

2 65 68 69 72 73 74 75 76 77 79 89 94 95 101 107 108 110

52.26 10.04 9.79 9.78 9.51 9.50 9.49 9.34 9.30 9.29 9.01 7.44 7.16 7.12 5.75 5.57 5.47 5.42

122 124 133 135 145 146

4.35 4.03 2.81 2.70 1.67 1.66

* Combined measure of three factors: estimated prevalence of modern slavery by population, levels of child marriage and levels of human trafficking in and out of a country.

Source: Walk Free Foundation

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

27

BRAZIL José Pedro Martins in São Paulo

A recycled future

JOSÉ PEDRO MARTINS

Recycling cooperatives create jobs and income for workers, while protecting the environment.

The Antônio da Costa Santos Recycling Cooperative won the right to use the space where it was operating, according to a decision by the Municipality of Campinas.

E

VERY DAY, Valdirene Ferreira dos Santos wakes up early to start the day with her four children and, a bit later, walks a long stretch of road to work at the Antônio da Costa Santos Recycling Cooperative in the neighborhood of Jardín Satélite Iris on the outskirts of the city of Campinas in São Paulo. Like the other 30 cooperative members, Dos Santos is originally from the state of Minas Gerais and moved to Campinas, a wealthy university city, seeking a better life for her family. But like other internal migrants, she found few work opportunities and joined the cooperative, which is becoming more frequently a part of life for Brazilians, especially in selective waste collection and garbage recycling. Dos Santos said she enjoys the work and that the dream of all the cooperative members is to “improve even more.”

The Antônio da Costa Santos Cooperative is in a neighborhood significant to the history of urban waste management in Campinas. Jardín Satélite Iris was for years the city’s landfill. There, like so many other Brazilian municipalities, trash was dumped under the open sky, causing a huge environmental impact to

28

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

the land and its surroundings. Moreover, the landfill was where hundreds of people, including children, went every day in search of materials to resell, or even to eat in extreme cases.

The cooperative is an example of how the issue of waste disposal and the organization of workers in the sector are evolving in the country. Brazilian law is making progress. The National Solid Waste Policy outlines the closure of all landfills by 2014, after which only regulated, controlled landfills will be allowed to function.

To reach that goal, “it’s fundamental to broaden and strengthen the activities of the cooperatives,” said Cláudio Domingos da Silva, secretary of the Union of Cooperatives and Solidarity Enterprises (UNISOL Brasil), which unites groups involved in the solidarity economy in 10 sectors and is present throughout the country: metallurgy and polymers, food, construction and housing, clothing and textiles, social cooperatives, recycling, crafts, family farming, beekeeping and fruit farming.

With little more than a decade of activity, UNISOL demonstrates how the organization of workers leads to employment and income generation, through the actions of solidarity economy.

Cooperatives gain strength UNISOL and other organizations that support recycling workers understand cooperatives generally get stronger and result in higher income for families, as well as increase incentives for more waste to be processed through cooperatives.

Currently, less that 3 percent of all garbage in Brazil goes

through these groups. Large companies collect the vast majority of trash to landfills — a waste of natural resources and a great environmental toll to the places where the landfills are located.

Moreover, densely populated municipalities don’t have the space for new landfills. “The expansion of recycling is better for everyone, for the social sphere and the planet,” Da Silva added.

The Brazilian government recently started the third phase of the Cataforte Program-Sustainable Businesses in Solidarity Networks. The initiative provides a R$200 million (US$92.1 million) investment in recycling start-ups in order to get the cooperatives into the recycling and solid waste market. It also helps the country comply with the law to close landfills by next year.

Landfills continue receiving about 240,000 metric tons of refuse daily in Brazil. The Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), estimates there are 2,906 landfills in the country in 2,810 municipalities, only 18 percent of which use the selective recycling system.

In 1999, the National Movement of Recyclable Materials Collectors (MNCR), was born and in June 2001, the group held its inaugural congress in Brasilia, the capital city, with more than 1,700 attendees. Participants wrote the so-called Carta de Brasilia, a document that explains the needs of those people who earn their living as recyclers.

In 2003, in the city of Caxias do Sul, state of Rio Grande do Sul, the first Latin American Congress of Recyclers was held with recyclers from several countries. Similarly, the group endorsed the Carta de Caxias, unifying workers across the continent.

CONTINUE >

LATIN AMERICA / THE CARRIBEAN

An outbreak of xenophobia?

Incidents in various countries in the region prove profound prejudices against immigrants.

T

he Colombian government expressed its concerns regarding a call for protest against Colombian immigrants in the Chilean city of Antofagasta on Oct. 19, appealing at the same time to “tolerance and respect to stop the promotion of messages which incite violence.”

The action convened via social networks gathered about 70 people. A Facebook page called “Take back Antofagasta. We can’t live like this” contains offensive images and comments regarding Colombian immigrants.

“Every day they take away our jobs, not to mention that lots of them come here to mess up, commit offenses, sell drugs and prostitute themselves,”it says on the page.

Local organizations that offer help to immigrants, like Global Citizen, argued that “this kind of call constitutes an apology for national and racial hatred and incites violence for those reasons while going against elemental norms relative to Human Rights.”

According to the Colombian consulate in Antofagasta, there are about 11,000 Columbians living in this region of North Chile, most of them professionals, technicians or qualified workers, attracted by the boom of the mining industry and real estate development which require foreign workers to satisfy demands.

Another proof of intolerance is the verdict of the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic from Sept. 23 which retroactively strips citizenship from people born in the country after 1929 whose parents had an irregular migratory status. The sentence refers to the case of 29-year-old Juliana Deguis Pierre, the daughter of Haitian parents who according to the court does not fulfill the requirements in order to be registered as a Dominican citizen. The regulatory action will affect around 210,000 people of Haitian origin born in the Dominican Republic who due to this measure would face statelessness and restriction of their rights.

Amnesty International (AI) appealed to the Dominican government not to apply the sentence of the Constitutional Court.

“The full implementation of this ruling will have a devastating impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people whose identity documents would be cancelled and, therefore, would see many of their human rights — freedom of movement, education, work and access to healthcare — totally denied,” said Chiara Liguori, Amnesty International researcher on the Caribbean, who added that the ruling is the last of a number of administrative, legislative and judicial decisions that since the early 2000s have had the effect of retroactively depriving Dominicans of Haitian descent of their Dominican nationality.”

Further, the sentence violates the Dominican Constitution which clearly prohibits the approval of retroactive measures. Nevertheless, Dominican authorities like the president of the Senate, Reinaldo Pared Pérez, consider it “an act of full sovereignty.”

The arrival of Cuban doctors in Brazil as part of the governmental program “More doctors” which aims at satisfying the demand of health professionals in remote regions provoked protest of Brazilian doctors at the end of August who accused the Cubans of “incompetence” and of accepting “inacceptable working conditions.”

Although the program includes the employment of about 4,000 foreign physicians, the allegations focused on the Cuban doctors. The Brazilian Medical Organization lodged a constitutional complaint against “More doctors” at the Federal Supreme Court and demanded the revaluation of professional titles granted by foreign universities.

The Health minister Alexandre Padilha accused the Brazilian doctors of an attitude that incites “prejudices and xenophobia.” —LP

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

29

Improved management MNCR estimates there are a million recyclers in Brazil, most of who continue working in precarious conditions. Still, visibility for the workers and the challenges they face has increased in recent years, as has support from other sectors.

That’s been the case for the Antônio da Costa Santos Cooperative, which started to take shape in 2001 after several workers took a Cáritas Campinas class on cooperativism. The early days were difficult, said Aparecida de Fátima Assis, a pioneer in this arena and the current cooperative president. The group started operations in a shed that was once used for rearing pigs. Workers stood in the shade of a tree.

“The women worked on the ground, separating materials spread out on a board,” Assis recalled.

The group finally got the support of the then-mayor of Campinas, Antônio da Costa Santos, who would become the cooperative’s namesake. The mayor never saw the cooperative’s official inauguration because he was gunned to death Sept.

10, 2001. In 2011, the cooperative won the right to use the space where it was operating, according to a decision by the Municipality of Campinas.

inbrief • On Oct. 31 the Canadian mining company Barrick Gold informed about the suspension of the construction work regarding the Pascua Lama project located at the border between Chile and Argentina because of unfavorable market conditions. Environmentalist and indigenous groups consider the decision of the company “excellent news”. Last April a judge of the Chilean city of Copiapó ordered the stop of works due to environmental infractions related to the destructions of glaciers and the contamination of water resources making reference to an indigenous appeal for legal protection.

• In Colombia, according to figures of the presidential agency Acción Social (Social Action) from the multimedia report “Profesión: Mujer. Ni un abuso más” (Profession: woman. Not a single abuse more) every six hours a woman is abused because of the armed conflict and 245 women are victims of some kind of violence every day. These figures were published by the newspaper El Tiempo on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on Nov. 25. Between 2001 and 2009 more than 26,000 women became pregnant because of a suffered violation 30

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

Last year, the cooperative improved its management thanks to its participation in the PorAmérica Program run by the InterAmerican Network of Corporate Foundations and Actions for Grassroots Development, or RedEAmérica, an initiative by business organizations dedicated to social investment, including the Brazil Arcor Institute which has given financial and technical support.

The Catholic University of Campinas and the Referral Center for Cooperativism and Associativism (CRCA), helped the cooperative implement quality controls. All cooperative members went through workshops, which improved their job skills.

“Ten years ago we never imaged what we would achieve, because we were still so isolated,” said Valdecir Viana, another pioneer and the cooperative’s first president. “Now we are consolidating a business vision and the cooperative is making its own investments as it is getting stronger.” q

and in the last 10 years around 400,000 women were abused. Acción Social registered close to 2 million displaced women, of which 30 percent fled from their homes because of sexual violence and 25 percent of them suffered further abuse in the shelter houses. In very few cases the perpetrators were tried.

• On Oct. 22 the Cuban government announced the end of the double currency and the implementation of a plan of measures which will lead to exchange and monetary unification. It thus aims at “guaranteeing the restoration of the Cuban peso and it functions as currency, that is to say as a monetary unit, payment method and currency used for saving deposits. Since 2004 there are two official currencies: the convertible peso (CUC) which has a similar rate to that of the U.S. dollar with an additional ten percent exchange tax and is designated for people who have access to foreign currency and the Cuban peso (CUP) used by the population to pay for basic services and productsandinwhichwagesandsalaries are paid.

• Guyana will lose around US$20 million designated to it by the forest conservation trust as it failed to prevent the destruction of the Amazonia by mining activities in search for gold and diamonds.

In 2010 Guyana teamed up with Norway to found one of the biggest REDD mechanism (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) projects worldwide for which it will receive US$250 million until 2015. Although in the first two years Guyana fulfilled its duties it enlarged its deforested area in the third year to an extent larger than agreed which is why it will not obtain the incentive bonus. Guyana, however, continues to have the lowest deforestation rate in South America.

• The office of environmental evaluation and tax inspection (OEFA) assigned to the environment department of Peru fined the Argentinean oil company Pluspetrol demanding it to pay a 20 million soles (US$ 7.1 million) fine for having contaminated and destroyed a lagoon in the Amazonian region of Loreto. The company was fined for harming the Shanshococha lagoon located in the oil block zone 1AB in the community of Andoas by using liquid hydrocarbon and having thus caused the irretrievable destruction of the ecosystem through conducting drainage activities and removal of soils.

OEFA ordered Pluspetrol to create a new lagoon or to foster or to protect a body of water in the zone of influence of the affected place.

COSTA RICA George Rodríguez in San José

SERVICIO DE PAZ Y JUSTICIA-SERPAJ

Indigenous rights still neglected

Indigenous community leaders in Salitre welcome the international mission on indigenous rights.

An international human right mission highlights weaknesses regarding indigenous rights.

T

HE INDIGENOUS peoples of Costa Rica face the historic and constant infringement of their rights, while public policies in this field, however well-intended, are insufficient, at best.

Such are some of the findings by an international mission on indigenous rights, headed by Argentine human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1980) Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, after a five-day visit, in August, to this Central American nation.

The International Observers’ Mission on the Situation of Indigenous Peoples’ Human Rights also found “increasing organization and mobilization of the indigenous peoples, through different forms of expression which coincide with their deep respect for Mother Nature, their demand for autonomy and other rights linked to the exercise of their own culture.”

“There are open mechanisms [for dialogue] between the indigenous peoples and State authorities, but they must be reinforced through concrete actions that create the essential trust between the parties,” the mission further pointed out.

In an Oct. 2 press release, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon recognized the effort taking place in Costa Rica to improve the indigenous peoples’ living conditions,

through the Dialogue Table between the government and indigenous peoples of the country’s southern zone, launched in January in the city of Buenos Aires, Puntarenas province.

Ban met on Sept. 27 with Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla, and expressed his satisfaction regarding the initiative, focusing “on the inclusion of indigenous territories in national planning processes, providing the communities with territorial security, promoting legislation to protect those communities,” according to the press release.

Also quoted in the communiqué, UN Coordinator in Costa Rica, Yoriko Yasukawa, explained that dialogue processes to guarantee indigenous peoples’ rights are a priority for the world body, a framework in which the Costa Rican case is “a positive example for other countries.”

Yasukawa pointed out that, as part of the dialogue, both sides are reviewing a key bill on Indigenous Autonomy.

Faith in autonomy bill diminishes

But Sergio Rojas, a leader of the Bribri people, thinks otherwise, and, as he told Latinamerica Press, the Dialogue Table is a mechanism for political control over actions by the peoples demanding autonomy.

As an example, he pointed, precisely, to the fact that the bill has been stagnant in the Legislature for 19 years.

As part of the hundreds of indigenous leaders who met with the international mission in Salitre, a southern community some 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of San José, the nation’s capital, Rojas said autonomy was the central issue put before the working group headed by Pérez Esquivel.

“The most important point” taken up with the mission was “indigenous OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

31

peoples’ autonomy — and that includes selfgovernment, education, policies of our own, economy of our own, decision-making of our own, respect for our identity, our culture —,” he said, and went on to underline that the leaders highlighted “the right to our land,” to have it “really in our hands (…) and selfgovernment.”

Rojas thus referred to illegal takeovers of land belonging to local communities by non-indigenous settlers.

Regarding the autonomy bill, Rojas said the leaders told the international mission that “in the past, we (…) believed it was our salvation, we considered it as a life project for the indigenous peoples, and we still see it that way.”

“But after all these years, the government has no will to pass it. We gave it [the government] an ultimatum to pass it or reject it, either way (…) but the government hasn’t wanted to do it,” the Bri-bri leader explained.

“And when we demanded this, they threw us out of the Legislative Assembly,” Rojas added, recalling the incident of Aug. 9, 2011, when a delegation of indigenous peoples arrived at congressional headquarters in San José, to lobby for passage of the

bill, but security personnel removed them from the premises.

“Starting that moment, the indigenous peoples decided we would exercise our autonomy (…) and we’ve been doing that and it has forced the government to accept a dialogue table, in Buenos Aires, to discuss the issues,” he added, referring to the talks.

The autonomy exercise includes recovery of land illegally taken over by non-indigenous settlers, he explained.

Referring to the Dialogue Table, Rojas pointed out that the authorities say “there’s good will, that they love us very much, and that they’re helping, and that they’re working. During the meetings (…) the [government] say all this, it’s all on paper, but in reality it’s something else. So, that’s why we don’t believe it.”

According to Rojas, Salitre is an icon of the communities’ struggle “for recovering rights, especially land.”

Costa Rica’s invisible indigenous people

On the eve of the mission’s departure, during the group’s press conference on preliminary findings, CONTINUE >

HONDURAS

Ruling party wins elections Official preliminary results show Juan Orlando Hernández, of ruling National Party, as winner of elections.

T

he Supreme Electoral Court labeled as “irreversible” the tendency towards the victory of government’s candidate Juan Orlando Hernández, of right-wing National Party, in the Nov. 24 elections. Out of 67 percent of counted votes Hernández obtained 34 percent, followed by opposition candidate Xiomara Castro of left-wing Liberty and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), gaining 29 percent.

Eight candidates participated in the elections.

Mauricio Villeda of the Liberal Party came in third with 20.7 percent, next was Salvador Nasralla of the Anticorruption Party, with 15.6 percent. The other four candidates obtained in total less than 0.7 percent of the votes.

Castro is married to deposed president Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) who refused to accept the results alleging fraud. Opinion polls prior to elections pointed to a technical tie between Hernández and Castro.

“We will defend the results [proving] the triumph and the victory we gained at the polls and if it is necessary [we will do so] in the streets, we will take to the streets to defend them,” said Zelaya in a press conference when finding out about the results. According to Zelaya, exit polls showed Castro as the winner.

Hernández on his part celebrated the results.

“Thank you my God and thank you Honduran 32

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

people for this victory!” he said in front of his supporters. “Honduras voted for peace and reconciliation.

The voice of the people is the voice of God.” More than 5.3 million voters went to the polls in order to elect the next president for a four year term which will begin on Jan. 27, 2014. Furthermore, 128 members of parliament and 298 mayors were elected.

One of the main problems which the next president should face is the elevated level of violence which makes Honduras, with 8.5 million inhabitants, the country with the highest number of homicides in the world, with 96.1 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime data.

The Observatory of Violence of the National Autonomous University of Honduras documented 7,172 homicides in 2012, which means that 20 violent deaths occur daily in the country. In October, the Military Police of Public Order started to operate after the Congress presided by Hernández approved the creation of the body. This force is dedicated to intelligence activities in order to fight organized crime.

During the campaign Hernández, driving force behind this police unit responsible for public security, announced: “The Military Police of Public Order will be a key factor in the fight against crime during my government. The idea is to get to 5,000 policemen in the four years of my term of office.” — LP

Pérez Esquivel said that, as it happens in other countries; Costa Rican indigenous peoples are invisible when it comes to rights.

“Until not too long ago, they were totally invisible (…) we could mention, here, Costa Rica, but we could mention many countries in the continent,” said the Nobel laureate, adding that “when they’re emerging forces — I mean forces as a people — (…) they begin to demand their rights, they’re repressed and victimized.”

“One notices (…) that indigenous peoples, when they demand, they go from being victims to being

victimizers,” and “from being land owners (…) to being invaders,” he underlined.

According to Pérez Esquivel, “a change in thought must take place, and also in policies.”

Costa Rica’s indigenous peoples are a minority — approximately 64,500 or less than 2 percent of this country’s population of 4.6 million.

The eight peoples — Bri-bri, Brunka, Cabécar, Chorotega, Guaymí, Huétar, Maleku and Téribe — are settled in 24 territories, mainly the northern, eastern, and southern zones, with some of the highest levels of poverty nationwide. q

CHILE

Latinamerica Press

Electoral campaign becomes polarized Former socialist president Michelle Bachelet wins first round but must face right-wing Evelyn Matthei in December.

I

n an unprecedented situation in Latin America, two women with antagonistic political visions will face each other on December 15 in a second electoral round which will decide who will rule the country from 2014 until 2018. The former socialist president Michelle Bachelet (20062010), heading the center-left coalition New Majority, won the November 17 elections with 46.7 percent of the votes and will compete with the governing party’s candidate Evelyn Matthei, of the right-wing coalition Alliance, who obtained 25 percent of the votes. Alliance is made up of the two parties National Renewal and Independent Democratic Union.

Three women and six men, nine candidates participated in the first voluntary elections to choose a president, 20 out of 38 senators, 120 congressmen and 277 regional counselors. Only 6.5 million of the 13.3 million registered voters went to vote.

Leftist Marco Enríquez-Ominami finished in third place with 11 percent of votes, followed by independent Franco Parisi with 10.1 percent of votes. The remaining candidates, Marcel Claude, Alfredo Sfeir, Roxana Miranda, Ricardo Israel and Tomás Jocelyn-Holt, together had 7.1 percent of the votes.

After learning of the results, Bachelet declared that she will continue with the campaign “as we have done until now, with proposals, in a clean way and with joy.”

“We were so close to [winning] and we are going to work to win with a broad margin in December,” said Bachelet to her sympathziers.

Meanwhile, Matthei warned her followers that with a leftist government represented by Bachelet, the nation runs the risk of “losing progress and growth”.

New Majority — which includes the parties of the Consert of Parties for Democracy (Christian Democracy, Party for Democracy, Social Democrat Radical Party, Socialist Party, and now were

joined by the Communist Party, Citizen Left, and the Broad Social Movement) that governed Chile between 1990 and 2010 — will have the majority in both houses. It was able to place 67 of 120 congressmen and 12 senators of the 20 disputed seats, thus having 21 of the 38 Senate seats.

Proposed reforms One of the pillars of Bachelet’s government program is an education reform that promises free and quality public education. In fact, four former student leaders who headed the student demonstrations of 2011 were elected congress members.

These individuals are Gabriel Boric, Karol Cariola, Giorgio Jackson and Camila Vallejo, who is the youngest congresswoman of Parlament.

Bachelet has proposed a tax reform that includes increasing corporate taxes by 5 percent, more audits, and measures to fight tax evasion.

“Today Chilean men and women have voted for a tax reform that will allows us to make this huge transformation to our education system, but also improve our public health, our pension system, our social policies,” Bachelet pointed out.

She has also suggested a constitutional reform to the complex binominal electoral system inherited from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-90) that allows two candidates from each majority bloc and one candidate for each minority party to register. Only the candidate with the most votes from each majority bloc wins, unless the sum of the votes of the two candidates from one bloc exceeds by 50 percent the votes of the two candidates from the other bloc. The representatives of minority parties or independent candidates generally do not win because the system favors the majority blocs.

However, this reform requires the approval of three fifths of the Legislature (72 parliamentarians and 23 senators), meaning that Bachelet, if she wins the second round, will have to negotiate with legislators from opposing parties. — LP OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

33

LATIN AMERICA Orsetta Bellani in Oaxaca

ORSETTA BELLANI

Indigenous communication gain strength

Indigenous women gain ground in community media.

Pueblos indígenas demandan espacios comunicativos que incorporen su cosmovisión.

I

N LATACUNGA, capital of Ecuador’s Cotopaxi province, the antenna for Tv MICC stands beside the one for state television. It’s a symbolic victory for the country’s first Kichwa-language television station, which started operating in 2009 following an initiative by the Cotopaxi Indigenous and Campesino Movement (MICC). After four years, the station is second in ratings in this central province of roughly 600,000 residents.

The channel, which was able to face private and public media and push them to change their agendas and programming, has achieved more than symbolic victories.

“At first, they looked down at us as the ‘indigenous channel,’ then they grew concerned because we had a good product with a strong signal, and we were well received by the people,” told Latinamerica Press MICC communicator José Venegas. “They thought that because it’s an indigenous channel, it would be indigenous programming all day, but we have one news program in Kichwa and one in Spanish, musical and cultural shows, documentaries and reports that other

34

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

channels won’t give you, [and] independent Latin American, European and US cinema to make people think differently.

We connect also with the mestizo population and believe we don’t have to stay small just because we’re an indigenous channel.”

One of the tasks for indigenous media is to reclaim the image of native peoples and report on their culture and their struggles, as well as on the government projects affecting their lands.

It’s about exposing these issues externally, without abandoning internal communication, using the indigenous languages that reflect the indigenous worldview. These media organizations should reinforce the organizing process and indigenous cohesiveness and identity, promoting the concept of Buen Vivir, or Good Living, and countering neocolonialism, racism and patriarchy.

The role of women in indigenous and community media is also improving. At the same time, both are fields for training and empowering women.

“During a three-week march that we organized [in Bolivia] in 1996, I was the only female communicator, but now the situation has changed.”

— SUSANA PACARA

“During a three-week march that we organized [in Bolivia] in 1996, I was the only female communicator, but now the situation has changed,” said Susana Pacara, of Bolivian radio station AlterNativa Lachiwana, in Cochabamba.

In fact, according to Yolanda Pilar Coque president of the National Quechua Network, which brings together producers and radios stations in Bolivia’s Quechua villages, “at this time in the country there are more women than men working in radio.”

Autonomy in media

These and other experiences were shared during the Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication of the Abya Yala, held in Santa María Tlahuitoltepec, Mexico, from Oct. 7-13.

In this chilly town in the northern mountains of the southern state of Oaxaca, 1,700 indigenous communicators from the Americas, which is called Abya Yala in the language of the Kuna people in Colombia and Panama, got together.

The term is widely used by the region’s indigenous movement.

The event was a mandate of the Fourth Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples in Puno, Peru, in 2009, and the First Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication in La María Piendamó, Cauca, Colombia, in 2010.

The issue of autonomy in indigenous media with respect to governments was one of the most debated topics by participants this year. Opinions were divided between those who believe it’s possible to receive public funding without affecting a media outlet’s autonomy, those who maintain it’s impossible to be autonomous with financial support from the government, and those who think public funding should be accepted, but not from just any government agency and only under certain conditions.

The final declaration from this summit demanded states “recognize and respect the communication rights of indigenous peoples through legislation and regulations and public policy design that comes from the communities, that ensure our sustainability, ow-

“The Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication is very important because it allows us to strengthen our network of mutual support, so we can create international pressure.”

— LILIANA PACHANA MOILA

nership and proper management of our media and new technologies, [and] access to mass media, allocating sufficient budgets for the exercise of this right.” It also called to include the airwaves as “common good,” stating that one-third of a country’s radio spectrum should be dedicated to indigenous media, and demanded the allocation of frequencies as the transition to digital progresses.

Multimedia platform

The participants agreed to operationalize a multimedia platform for Indigenous Communication in the Abya Yala, as a tool for articulating indigenous communication processes throughout the Americas. It will allow “indigenous communicators, community organizations and collective indigenous media outlets to access information, documents, and other materials, as well as be a space to share our processes, exchange experiences, have education and training, [create] a defined workplace, and [be] an official site to organize the Indigenous Communication Summits and publish their respective declarations and reports.”

They also agreed to further the consolidation of Continental Traveling School of Indigenous Communication to allow training of indigenous communicators in their hometowns.

“Indigenous media are a concern for governments, and even more in an international space like this,” said to Latinamerica Press Liliana Pachana Moila, a Colombian indigenous Misak who creates educational content for radio. “The Second Continental Summit of Indigenous Communication is very important because it allows us to strengthen our network of mutual support, so we can create international pressure.”

Acts of violence from companies and government repression makes the job of those working in communityOCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

35

based communications very dangerous, especially in countries like Colombia, Mexico and Honduras, where indigenous communicators have filed many complaints.

According to Wilma Calderón, member of the organization Moskitia Asla Tananka (MASTA), which brings together the Miskito people in Honduras, “the Lenca and Garifuna peoples work at the very heart in community radios, and have seen strong government repression. The government is afraid of them because radio spreads real information about what is happening in the country.” q

“The Lenca and Garifuna peoples work at the very heart in community radios, and have seen strong government repression.”

—WILMA CALDERON

LATIN AMERICA/ THE CARIBBEAN

Poverty reduction stops New ECLAC report points out that 164 million people in the region live in poverty.

A

lthough the rate of poverty in the region has been stable in 2013 with respect to 2012, the trend is not the same for people in extreme poverty. The number of indigent people rose from 66 million to 68 million due to the higher increase in food costs relative to general inflation, stated the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in its report Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2013, published on December 5.

“Since 2002, poverty in Latin America has fallen 15.7 percentage points and extreme poverty 8.0 points, but recent figures show a slowdown,” said Alicia Barcena, Executive Secretary of ECLAC, at the presentation of the report. “The only acceptable number of people living in poverty is zero, which is why we call on countries to carry out structural economic changes to achieve sustained growth with greater equality.”

The report explores multidimensional approaches to evaluating poverty.

“A multidimensional measurement of poverty limited to unsatisfied basic needs shows that shortages like the lack of access to drinking water or to appropriate sanitation systems still affect a significant number of people in the region. That makes one wonder if the public policies intended to overcome poverty put enough emphasis on the achievement of minimum standards,” says the report, which also analyzes three aspects of well-being: space, time, and co-existence, and examines problems such as atmospheric pollution and the high murder rate.

Regarding income distribution, the ECLAC report points out that “high inequality still defines the region in the international context.”

“The poorest quintile of the population (20 percent of households with the lowest incomes)

36

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

LATIN AMERICA / THE CARIBBEAN People in poverty 2012 (percent) Country

Poverty

45.3 Dominican Republic 41.2 Mexico 37.1 Colombia 32.9 Ecuador 32.2 Peru 25.8 Venezuela 23.9 Brazil 18.6 Costa Rica 17.8 Uruguay 5.9 Argentina 4.3 El Salvador

Indigence

13.5 20.9 14.2 10.4 12.9 6.0 9.7 5.4 7.3 1.1 1.7

Source: ECLAC gets just 5 percent of a country’s total income, with extremes ranging from less than 4 percent in Honduras, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic, to 10 percent in Uruguay. Meanwhile, the share of the wealthiest quintile is 47 percent on average, with that percentage rising from 35 percent in Uruguay to 55 percent in Brazil,” maintains ECLAC.— LP

LATIN AMERICA/THE CARRIBEAN

Latinamerica Press

Climate summit, another disappointment Developed nations do not agree to emissions reductions and COP19 ends with no major results.

A

s in ever y year since 1994, representatives from 193 countries got together for the 19th Conference of Par ties (COP19), of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Warsaw, Poland from Nov. 11 to 23.

And as in ever y year, there were no major advances in regards to developed nations’ commitments to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) which are responsible for global warming, neither to comply or at least increase their contributions to the Green Climate Fund, dedicated to helping developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states in its repor t “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis”, published Sept. 27 that “human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes.

This evidence for human influence has grown since AR4 [Assessment Repor t 4 of 2007]. It is ‘extremely likely ’ that human influence has been the dominant cause of the obser ved warming since the mid-20th centur y.”

However, despite the effor ts of the Kyoto Protocol —sole legally binding instrument signed in 1997 and extended last year until 2010 that forces developed countries to reduce their emissions of GHGs— some industrialized countries announced they would not abide by Kyoto’s mandate.

Social organizations retreat Facing this lack of advancement, representatives of social organizations present at the event, including Greenpeace, ActionAid, WWF, International Climate, Oxfam International, and Friends of the Ear th, decided to leave. “ We left because we cannot voice our concern as we see the climate issue become a business and the large corporations

decide many of the issues to be discussed”, said Carmen Capriles, a Bolivian ecologist from the Climate Action Movement, in statements to the press. “ The negotiations are not going anywhere while climate change awaits.”

In a statement entitled “Enough is Enough”, organizations and social movements declared that “the best use of our time is to voluntarily withdraw from the Warsaw climate talks. Instead, we are now focusing on mobilizing people to push our governments to take leadership for serious climate action. We will work to transform our food and energy systems at a national and global level and rebuild a broken economic system to create a sustainable and lowcarbon economy with decent jobs and livelihoods for all. And we will put pressure on ever yone to do more to realize this vision”.

Peru will host COP20 in December 2014; it will be a big challenge for the Andean nation.

According to the Peru 2013 Human Development Repor t, published on Nov. 28, Peru is one of the countries that is most vulnerable to climate change because it has four of the five vulnerability characteristics recognized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: low coastal areas, arid and semiarid areas, areas vulnerable to floods, droughts and deser tification, and arid mountainous ecosystems.

The repor t warns that the loss of forests in the Peruvian Amazon, due to the “dual effect of current warming and human activities such as deforestation and agricultural expansion”, pushes this region to become a CO2 emitter. q OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

37

HONDURAS Orsetta Bellani

“Today it is a crime to defend human rights”

Orsetta Bellani

Interview with indigenous leader Bertha Cáceres

Bertha Cáceres.

E

IGHTY PERCENT of crimes go unpunished in Honduras, yet social movements there are criminalized and prosecuted. In the Lenca peoples’ fight against hydroelectric power firm Agua Zarca, on the grounds the company is privatizing rivers, water, land and energy, three members of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) are accused of serious offenses: Tomás Gómez, Aureliano Molina and Bertha Cáceres, the organization’s general coordinator.

Latinamerica Press correspondent Orsetta Bellani interviewed Cáceres on the eve of the country’s presidential elections Nov. 24, which were ultimately won by right-wing candidate Juan Orlando Hernández.

What are you accused of, and how is the trial progressing?

Legal persecution is only one form of political persecution against COPINH, and it’s a strategy coming from presidential level. We are conscious that in our struggle, which is peaceful but determined, we are going up against major and influential power (players).

In one of the two cases against me—illegal weapons possession that threatened the internal security of the State of Honduras—the prosecution and Public Ministry have offered a conciliatory hearing. First, 38

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

“Legal persecution is only one form of political persecution against COPINH, and it’s a strategy coming from presidential level.”

they proposed to end the persecution against me if I compensated the State [for the allegations of threatening internal security] and asked for forgiveness, taking responsibility for the weapon being mine, which is obviously not something I would do; I didn’t commit any crime and I have no reason to conciliate. [She was arrested May 24 on these charges, however due to insufficient evidence she was released after 21 days and given an alternative to jail.]

Later, under pressure from the defense, social movements, InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, Amnesty International and thousands of manifestations of solidarity that have denounced this injustice across the world, [the State] offered for me to compensate for the trial expenses, since [the State] was my victim. I also rejected

this. Right now the probability is that at the next hearing, the trial will continue without any regard for conciliation.

The other case, in which the company is accusing us of continuing damages, coercion, and usurpation, in September I was ordered to be jail and a preliminary hearing is set for February 11, 2014. [In this case, there is a warrant for Cáceres’ arrest; she was declared herself a victim of political persecution.] A [legal] reform this year was approved stating that a person serving time through a method alternative to prison time—as in the first case, when they barred her from leaving the country, and ordered her to check in every two weeks—cannot benefit from a similar alternative in a different case. When I was accused of arms possession in May 2013, this law wasn’t in effect, but it was made retroactive and that is illegal, there is no such thing as a retroactive law in Honduras.

The accusations follow COPINH’s public opposition to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project in the community of Río Blanco (Intibucá department). Why is this community’s fight so important to Honduras?

Years ago, COPINH’s communities in Río Blanco took on the battle to defend the land and the CONTINUE >

HONDURAS

Increasing violence against women Honduras is one of the most dangerous places to be a woman in Central America.

E

xperts of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) expressed their concern about the dramatic rise of violent deaths of women and femicides in the country in recent years.

The Observatory of Violence of the UNAH published its annual report last August which reveals the alarming extent of femicides in this Central American country. In this fifth edition titled “Violent death of women and femicides” which covers the period from January to December 2012 it states that in the last eight years the data about the evolution of violent deaths and femicides “reflect a worrying panorama of sharp increase”.

According to the report, there has been a rise in violent deaths and femicides in 246.3 percent between 2005 and 2012. The document states that in 2012 there were 606 violent deaths of women, of which 52.6 percent were femicides, with 319 deaths. Of the total of femicides, the 59.6 percent were related to organized crime.

Migdonia Ayestas, director of the Observatory of Violence, stressed in a filmed interview: “The percentage that is most worrying is the one related to organized crime. It is not exactly because women (...) are undertaking illegal activities, it is rather their partners who are

linked to it, they [the women] live in contexts which are permeated by organized crime.”

In April this year Law 23-2013 was passed in order to reform the penal code now including femicides as a criminal offence which is punished with prison sentences between 30 and 40 years. Impunity, however, is still a severe problem in dealing with femicides.

Interviewed by La Prensa, judge Ramón Enrique Barrios stated that “impunity means that a murderer of women, someone who kills a woman, has a 70 percent chance in our country of not being detected as the perpetrator. The scarce investigation [that is undertaken] is the big failure of the judicial system of Honduras.”

According to the National Commission of Human Rights more than 90 percent of perpetrators are “unknown” to authorities in charge of investigations.

In response to the alarming rise in femicides the United Nations in cooperation with several women’s right organizations launched two campaigns this year. July’s campaign “Cairo+20. Moving from promise to action” focuses on gender equality and as the one launched in September, “The brave ones are not violent”, its aim is to reduce violence against women by raising awareness and sensitizing the public in general and men in particular. — LP OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

39

“We are conscious that in our struggle, which is peaceful but determined, we are going up against major and influential power (players).”

Gualcarque River, which is a sacred river for the Lenca people. In April 2013, we managed to oust Sinohydro/ Desa, one of the largest dam builders in the world. Ours is an exercise in autonomy and territorial control. The company got the concession illegally in 2010 and through its ties to the Army had really pressured the communities, not only harassing them but also offering bribes and trying to manipulate the residents. This demonstrates that multinational corporations don’t need political intermediaries, but rather they can go repress communities [on their own]. Wherever there are plans for mining or hydroelectric projects, there are plans for militarization.

The struggle of Río Blanco sets a bad precedent for big business, because it proved possible rolling back a project of domination and privatization and shows that it is possible to get rid of an invasive multinational company —and this is part of the Lenca people’s legitimate struggle.

The persecution against you seems to be taking place in a climate of criminalization of social protest throughout the country.

The state has built repressive structures that are well-funded —including by the Inter-American Development Bank under the Regional Security Plan for Central America. This is concerning to social activists, since repression is going to intensify. Today it is a crime to defend human rights. Congress and the oligarchy have pushed for the creation of a Military Police

Latinamerica Press offers information and analysis from Latin America and the Caribbean, with emphasis on the issues that affect marginalized populations within the region. Spanish version: Noticias Aliadas The journal is produced by Comunicaciones Aliadas, a Peru-based non governmental organization that for almost 50 years has been producing independent and reliable information and analysis. Our objective is to demonstrate the situation facing excluded and marginalized sectors of the population within Latin America and the Caribbean.

40

OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2013

Director: Elsa Chanduví Jaña (echanduvi@comunicacionesaliadas.org) Editor: Cecilia Remón Arnaiz Translators: Dana Litovsky Justyna Przybyl Victoria Macchi Graphics editor: Graciela Ramírez Ramírez

that is working as a paramilitary organization directed against social movements. They aren’t working alone, these police and intelligence apparatuses; there are also undercover operations and private security agencies, which are just another type of army that protects the interests of big business. They work alongside the Police and the Army, and doubles the number of agents. During elections week the military and police presence increased, and included reservists.

This is not a climate that fosters the development of democratic elections.

In the presidential elections tomorrow, the candidate for the Libre (Freedom and Refoundation) Party is Xiomara Castro, wife of former president Manuel Zelaya.

She mobilized against the 2009 coup that ousted him. Castro promises a life in Honduras with 21st century socialism and wants to break a 100-year-old bipartisanship in the country. What do you make of her?

The Honduran people are thirsty for profound changes, we have had a process of awareness and training, especially in the streets, where we have learned more than anywhere else.

I think it would be important for Libre to win. In Honduras there is a need for another political party to take over the government. It wouldn’t change things profoundly but it would represent a government different from what we’ve had under an ultra-right fascist (ruling party). q

Comunicaciones Aliadas Calle Comandante Gustavo Jiménez 480, Lima 17, Peru.

Apartado 18-0964, Lima 18, Peru.

Telf.: (511) 4603025 / 4605517 www.latinamericapress.org www.noticiasaliadas.org Comunicaciones Aliadas is a non-profit organization registered in the Registro de Personas Jurídicas de Lima, Peru, Ficha N°646 y continuada en la Par tida N°01965549.

Registered in the National Library of Peru, N°99-4053.