WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
ISSUE #429, APRIL 19, 1998
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK 339
LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499
*8. CHAOS IN COLOMBIAN PRISON SYSTEM
Fifteen prisoners were murdered on Apr. 13 in the La Picota prison in
Bogota, Colombia, according to authorities. Francisco Bernal, director of the
Natinal Penitentiary and Prison Institute (INPEC), said that a group of
prisoners armed with guns and knives overpowered the guards of three
cellblocks and avenged the death of a prisoner by killing 14 others. [ED-LP
4/14/98 from EFE]
The INPEC guards' union has been in a state of protest since Mar. 5 to
demand better wages and benefits. The union is refusing to allow new
inmates at the Bellavista and El Buen Pastor prisons; the Antioquia
department People's Defender office charges that 150 detainees are being
kept in subhuman conditions in holding cells at local police stations. [El
Colombiano (Medellin) 4/14/98]
On Apr. 14, President Ernesto Samper accepted the resignation of INPEC
director Bernal, and replaced him with retired police colonel Bernardo
Echeverry. Bernal had criticized the situation of Colombia's prisons and had
offered his resignation on several occasions. Echeverry was one of the
founders of the National Penitentiary School and served as national prison
director during several previous periods. Bernal lasted five months as INPEC
director; his previous job was at the Superintendency of Guards and Private
Security. [EC 4/15/98]
On Apr. 4, rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
attacked a prison in Santander de Quilichao, Cauca department, and freed a
FARC leader imprisoned there. The FARC took all the guards' weapons in the
attack, as well as tear gas grenades, ammunition and communications
equipment. After freeing their leader, the rebels reportedly blew up several
charges of dynamite, killing two prisoners and wounding three others. A
mass breakout by some 65 prisoners ensued; seven were later recaptured
and two were said to have surrendered voluntarily. [La Jornada 4/5/98 from
AFP, DPA, AP, Reuter]
Four prisoners were killed and six wounded in several other incidents in
Colombian prisons the same week, according to police. Two prisoners died
and four were wounded during an uprising at the El Barne prison in Boyaca
department; a third prisoner died in unclear circumstances while outside
outside the same prison on leave. In Patia municipality in southwest
Colombia, two prisoners tried to escape from the El Bordo prison and one
was shot to death--according to prison director Luis Eduardo Ledesma--in a
shootout with guards. The other prisoner and one guard were wounded. [La
Republica 3/30/98 from EFE]
*9. SUMMIT OF AMERICAS: "DAY OF DICTATORS IS OVER"
The heads of state of 34 of the Western Hemisphere's 35 nations-- all
except Cuba--met for the first day of the second Summit of the Americas
on Apr. 18 in Santiago, Chile. As expected, the leaders approved a series of
agreements which are to be signed on Apr. 19, the second and last day of the
meeting. The agreements include a "multilateral counter-drug alliance" and
a plan to raise Latin American literacy rates by doubling education-related
loans from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and a 50% increase
in World Bank funding to $3 billion. The final accords will also create a new
press advocate post at the Organization of American States (OAS), with the
authority to go to the Inter- American Court on Human Rights with cases of
intimidation or violence against journalists. [Washington Post 4/19/98]
The summit also marks the formal opening of negotiations for the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA, or ALCA in Spanish), a plan for putting a
hemispheric trading bloc into place by 2005. FTAA was proposed by US
president Bill Clinton at the first Summit of the Americas, held in 1994 in
Miami. The US has played down the trade issue at the current summit
because Clinton was unable to win "fast track" negotiating authority from
the US congress last year. Instead, Clinton has focused on what he told
Chilean legislators was "[f]reedom's victory...throughout the hemisphere."
Clinton arrived in Santiago on Apr. 16 and addressed a joint session of
Chile's Congress the next day. "With a single exception," Clinton said,
referring to Cuba, "the day of the dictators is over." Former Chilean dictator
Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), now a senator for life, missed the
speech, saying he was unwell. Clinton spoke from behind a special bullet-
proof lectern flown in from Washington. [New York Times 4/18/98]
[Chile's Chamber of Deputies voted 62 to 52 on Apr. 9 not to proceed with a
constitutional accusation against Pinochet. The accusation was introduced
by a group of deputies in mid-March [see Update #424]. [El Diario-La Prensa
4/10/98 from AP] The vote sparked violent protests in Valparaiso--where
the Chamber of Deputies is located--and in the capital, Santiago. [ED-LP
4/11/98 from AFP]]
Clinton praised Chile for taking part in the United Nations (UN) weapons
inspection program in Iraq and the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia
Herzegovina. Senate president Andres Zaldivar Larrain thanked the US for
its "support in those difficult moments," referring to the "interruption of
democracy" under Pinochet. [WP 4/18/98] [Pinochet came to power in a
bloody coup backed by the US government.]
On Apr. 16, shortly before going to Santiago, the presidents of Costa Rica,
the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua and the
economy minister of Guatemala met in Santo Domingo to sign a limited free
trade agreement which is eventually to eliminate tariffs between the six
nations, which have a combined population of 42 million. This is the first
time that the Dominican Republic has been included in a Central American
trade agreement. [El Diario-La Prensa 4/17/98 from EFE]
*10. SUMMIT QUESTIONED BY LABOR AND LEFT
Some 100 labor, social and human rights groups concluded a three- day
Peoples' Summit of the Americas in Santiago just as the official summit
was beginning on Apr. 18. [ED-LP 4/19/98 from AFP] The Interamerican
Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT), which organized the counter-
summit, calls for a "continental social alliance" and proposes that labor
ally with "other sectors of society, like progressive political parties, non-
governmental organizations, environmentalists, peasants, indigenous
groups, consumers, the unemployed, church groups, etc." Some of the
participants, including the main US labor federation, the AFL- CIO, have
tended to avoid such alliances in the past. But the big surprise of the
Peoples' Summit was the participation of the Mexican Workers
Confederation (CTM), an affiliate of Mexico's ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party (PRI) and until recently a strong supporter of free trade
pacts like NAFTA. [Mexican Labor News and Analysis, vol. 3, #8, 4/16/98]
In a four-hour address on Apr. 17 to 2,500 women participating in the
International Encounter of Solidarity Between Women in Havana, Cuban
president Fidel Castro Ruz warned that the US was not promoting free trade
so much as seeking to weaken South American trading blocs like Mercosur
and the Andean Pact "in its intent to dominate the world." Without referring
directly to the Summit of the Americas, to which he was not invited, Castro
said: "We would have preferred an integrated Latin America" to the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which links Mexico to Canada and
the US. Cubans are ready to renounce their sovereignty in favor of Latin
American citizenship when all the region's nations unite "for a just
society," Castro added, predicting that this would happen within the next
century, after the fall of capitalism, "a system already condemned by
history." [La Jornada 4/18/98 from AFP, AP, DPA]
Some analysts disputed Clinton's claim that democracy had triumphed in the
Americas. "Is Latin America Heading for a New Era of Dictatorship and
Repression?" the British daily newspaper The Independent asked in a
headline. The newspaper noted the re- emergence of former dictators like
Gen. Hugo Banzer, now Bolivia's president; the popularity among voters of
military coup leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Paraguayan ex-army
chief Gen. Lino Oviedo; and the reluctance of elected presidents such as
Argentina's Carlos Saul Menem and Peru's Alberto Fujimori to give up power
when their terms end. [Independent 4/15/98]
On Apr. 17 Paraguay's Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold a lower court
decision to give Oviedo a 10-year prison sentence for an April 1996 coup
attempt. Oviedo had remained the presidential candidate of the ruling
Colorado Party while he was appealing his sentence. According to various
polls, he had a seven-point advantage over Domingo Laino, candidate of the
Democratic Alliance coalition, in the May 10 balloting. The Supreme Court
decision ends Oviedo's candidacy and, according to the polls, assures Laino's
victory. [Clarin 4/18/98]
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