ECONOMY-SOUTH AMERICA: Day-to-Day Impact of Crisis Not Yet Felt

October 13, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 13, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Mario Osava*

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 13 (IPS) – The financial crisis that originated in the United States demonstrates, more clearly than any previous such event, the distance between capital markets and ordinary citizens, especially in developing countries.

Most people in South America have not yet felt the effects of the panic sweeping those with investments in the stock markets, big companies or abroad. But the newscasts are frightening everyone, because of the size of the figures being bandied about, and due to memories of previous economic crises.

In Brazil, the value of the local currency, the real, has dropped by 31.6 percent against the dollar since August, and the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange (BOVESPA) has fallen by 20 percent so far this month, and 44.2 percent since the beginning of the year. The day will come, experts say, when these indices will produce inflation, unemployment and the exacerbation of social ills.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Development, Economy, IPS, Latin America

BOLIVIA: Deaths in the Amazon

September 13, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – Global Analyst Online – IPS
Saturday, September 13, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Sep 13 (IPS) – The Bolivian government declared martial law in the northern province of Pando after as many as 15 indigenous supporters of President Evo Morales were killed by rightwing protesters near the town of Cobija.

A group of public employees of the provincial government of Pando, in the hands of the rightwing opposition, intercepted the victims as they were heading to a meeting of Morales supporters from Amazon jungle communities, where they planned to organise resistance against the pro-autonomy demonstrators who have been occupying public offices and holding protests over the past few days.

The killings occurred in the context of a wave of demonstrations that broke out on Tuesday, when members of the rightwing Santa Cruz Youth Union (UCJ) took control of public offices in the central Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, after breaking past the military and police cordons protecting the buildings.

The pro-autonomy movement led by Santa Cruz Governor Rubén Costas and backed by the regional governments of Beni, Pando, Tarija and Chuquisaca, which with Santa Cruz make up Bolivia’s relatively wealthy ”eastern crescent,” has in practice put an economic stranglehold on the country by blocking the main highways and partially cutting off supplies of natural gas to Brazil and Argentina.

On Thursday, leftwing President Morales, the first indigenous president in the history of Bolivia, accused groups of landowners in the eastern lowlands provinces of ”financing a criminal mentality,” and warned that ”patience also has a limit.”

The Roberto Galindo hospital in Cobija presented a dramatic scene as emergency room personnel tended those injured in the attack. They had deep slash cuts from machetes and axes, as well as bullet wounds from shotguns and rifles.

Some of the dead had bullet wounds from firearms used in the ”ambush” of the government supporters, which took place in the early hours of Thursday morning with the goal of preventing a meeting in the small town of Filadelfia, 50 kilometres south of Cobija, according to the local representative on the Comité de Vigilancia (Citizen’s Watch committee), Leyla Tudela.

Former Mayor of Cobija and leader of the Movimiento Amazónico de Renovación Democrática (MAR, Amazon Movement for Democratic Renewal) Miguel Becerra told a local radio station that it was ”a massacre of the campesinos (indigenous peasants), some of whom were run over by a truck belonging to the governor’s office.”

For their part, supporters of the governor of Pando, Leopoldo Fernández, accused Becerra of instigating the violence.

The Deputy Minister of Social Movements, Sacha Llorenti, a close Morales adviser, said the victims were shot in an armed attack by ”hired killers” in what he described as ”an outright massacre” in Cobija.

Llorenti blamed the incident on Governor Fernández, a rightwing landowner with a long track record in Bolivian politics.

Fernández called for a truce in the conflict to pacify the province. But in response to the national government’s statements, he said he would be ”the last to walk away from the fight.”

On Friday, the executive branch asked Congress to take action against Governor Fernández for the Porvenir massacre, according to the government news agency Agencia Boliviana de Información (ABI).

Former President Jorge Quiroga, the head of the rightwing Social and Democratic Power (Podemos) party, appealed to the Morales administration and called on both sides of the conflict to rein in their groups of organised activists.

”This is an entreaty, as an ex-president I know that this conflict can spill over and run out of control, causing many deaths,” he said.

Violence continued Thursday in the slum neighbourhood of Plan Tres Mil on the outskirts of Santa Cruz, which is basically populated by Aymara and Quechua Indians from Bolivia’s impoverished western highlands provinces.

UJC groups attacked a neighbourhood market where indigenous people sell their wares, and local residents showed up to protect the vendors.

Native people who have settled in the neighbourhood, originally from the western provinces of La Paz, Oruro and Potosí, are in fear of being attacked by the radical rightwing youth groups.

Meanwhile, in the town of Yacuiba, on the border with Argentina, a group of demonstrators swarmed a natural gas facility that exports fuel to Buenos Aires, and managed to cut off supplies.

Bolivia exports six million cubic metres a day of natural gas to Argentina, Bolivia’s second largest gas export market after Brazil.

An attack on the gas pipeline to Brazil Wednesday reduced the volume of gas flow from 26 to 23 million cubic metres per day, creating concern among diplomats at the Brazilian embassy in La Paz.

Filed Under: Latin America, News, Politics

LATIN AMERICA: Food Price Hikes Hit Poor Hard – ECLAC

September 5, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – Global Politics Online – IPS
Friday, September 05, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Sep 5 (IPS) – The countries of Latin America have coped relatively well so far with the rising global food and fuel prices. But the main challenge they face is to focus more attention on the plight of the poor, experts said at a seminar being held in the Chilean capital.

”The countries have responded very well and very promptly, but obviously some are facing major difficulties, like nations in Central America that are not only net food importers, but oil importers as well,” Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), told IPS.

Bárcena avoided calling the present situation in Latin America and the Caribbean a ”crisis”, because ECLAC, a United Nations agency, estimates that the regional economy will grow by 4.7 percent in 2008 and by about four percent in 2009, thereby achieving seven consecutive years of growth.

However, she warned about the possible effects, particularly on the poorest segments of the population, of accelerating inflation, which has been increasing year on year.

Over the last year, the consumer price index (CPI), especially for foods, has increased by an average of 16 percent in most of the economies in the region, Bárcena said. CPIs have seen increases of between seven and 30 percent, depending on the country.

The real cost of basic products has increased by 140 percent over the last 25 quarters (six and one-quarter years) in a row, Bárcena said.

ECLAC forecasts, omitting the effects of any measures taken or planned by governments, indicate that if inflation rises by 15 percent, the poverty rate will increase by three percentage points, from 35 percent of the population in 2007 to 38 percent.

Bárcena opened the two-day seminar on ”The Food and Energy Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean” Thursday, at the ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, with a presentation on food and fuel price volatility in the region.

”One of the goals of the seminar is for countries to compare their plans and policies, and for ECLAC to help on the technical aspects to facilitate early detection of potential economic and social impacts,” she said.

Nils Kastberg, the regional head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said he was concerned about the food and ”nutritional” security of Latin American children and young people in the present inflationary context.

There are fears that chronic malnutrition (low height for age), in particular, may increase, Kastberg said.

”Food prices will continue to rise until 2015 because of the levels of supply and demand,” said Máximo Torero of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), where he is head of the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division and coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean.

”The region’s immediate response to the price hikes was protectionism,” Torero told IPS.

”Central America, for instance, tried to create a regional grain reserve, which has dwindled away because experience demonstrates that it can’t work. It’s very difficult to generate food reserves and fix a stable price,” he said.

”Many countries initially instituted price controls, which are a bad idea because they are not sustainable,” he said.

”Gradually, countries have implemented better policies that are more market-oriented. They have begun to lower import tariffs and reduce local taxes so that consumers can maintain their purchasing power,” Torero said.

”But what is still lacking is a stronger reaction in defence of the poorest sectors. A start has been made on reactivating conditional money transfer programmes, but the value of these is not keeping up with inflation. This is where I think faster responses are needed,” he said.

In Torero’s view, assistance programmes must be properly targeted. ”The dichotomy between the urban poor and the rural poor still exists. Governments have mainly addressed the problems of city dwellers and forgotten about those living in the countryside, where the poverty experienced by landless families, for example, may be even more extreme,” he said.

”In structural terms, increasing the productivity of the agricultural sector has still not yielded much in the way of significant results,” he said.

Bárcena, too, said ”the most successful programmes are the most tightly focused ones, because they reach poor families directly.”

”When a subsidy is applied across the board, sometimes it is the well-off who benefit most, as in the case of petrol subsidies,” she said.

The head of ECLAC said ”petrol is associated mainly with individual transport for people and, in a very few cases, with transporting loads over short distances,” unlike diesel fuel, which ”is used predominantly for public transport and the trucking industry.”

Bárcena stated that Latin America and the Caribbean is the world’s most unequal region in terms of wealth distribution, a fact that in her view should directly influence public policies.

”Differential energy pricing policies may have to be introduced, such as applying a sliding scale, or cross-subsidies, to fuel prices,” she said.

Torero said ”there is still a great deal to be done. Although price volatility has already been discussed, I think we must discuss what concrete measures need to be implemented now.”

”In Latin America, the present situation is more of an opportunity than a problem, but careful attention needs to be paid to inequality, and especially to people who are poor or extremely poor. That is where the crisis is biting,” he concluded.

Filed Under: Agriculture, Economy, Latin America, Report

COLOMBIA: Justice on Strike

September 3, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – IPS
Wednesday, September 03, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Sep 3 (IPS) – Some 34,000 judicial sector employees in Colombia began an indefinite strike Wednesday, demanding labour stability, the enforcement of a new salary scheme, and guarantees of independence for the courts.

Monday’s devastating car-bomb attack on the Palace of Justice in the western city of Cali was just one more reason for the protest.

”All judicial proceedings are being suspendedàin the civil, administrative, labour and criminal spheres,” announced Fabio Hernández, president of the National Association of Judicial Branch Employees (Asonal Judicial).

Eighty percent of the sector’s 43,000 workers are going on strike, ”which will be general and will affect all jurisdictions,” although ”we will continue to attend extremely serious cases,” he added.

The Asonal Judicial presented a list of grievances and demands in November 2007, but ”the government has kept silent,” said Tarsicio Mora, president of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), Colombia’s main trade union confederation, of which the Asonal Judicial is a member.

”The avenue of dialogue has been exhausted. The workers have no other option than to protest,” said Mora, who added that ”it is clear that there is no dialogue here with the social sectors, and even less in the case of the labour union movement.”

The Asonal Judicial is demanding a new salary scheme, as established by a 1992 law that has only been partially implemented and enforced.

Another problem, said Mora, is that public employees have no labour stability, because they are hired under fixed-term contracts that may or may not be renewed at any given time. ”There are civil servants who have been working for more than 20 years as temporary public employees, even though that is illegal,” he stressed.

Labour instability affects more than 18,000 judicial branch employees. Many have worked for a decade or more under fixed-term contracts that must be periodically renewed. Currently, 4,000 judges and other judicial branch workers are facing the possibility of losing their jobs in December.

Apecides Alvis, president of the Confederación de Trabajadores de Colombia (CTC), Colombia’s oldest central union, founded in 1936, said that reducing the number of judges or appointing new ones would require a period of adaptation for the proceedings presently under way, which ”would clearly generate great difficulties.”

In response to a question from IPS, Asonal Judicial president Hernández said the situation ”undoubtedly” affects the independence of the justice system, ”because the mechanism of temporary contracts is used to pressure judicial branch employees to adopt certain kinds of decisions at a given moment.”

That is a particularly touchy aspect at a time when those most responsible for the massacres and killings committed in Colombia’s decades-long civil war have come under the scrutiny of the justice system.

Colombia has been caught in the grip of an armed conflict since the mid-1960s, when the leftist guerrilla groups rose up in arms. In the 1980s, far-right paramilitary militias emerged to fight the insurgents, in alliance with government forces.

”The country needs investigations and clear, prompt sentences in these questions — ‘para-politics’ and paramilitary activity — that have shaken Colombian society,” said Hernández.

He was referring to the legal investigations and prosecutions of legislators for their alleged ties with the paramilitary groups, which are blamed for the lion’s share of the atrocities committed in Colombia’s civil war, and that have partially demobilised as a result of controversial negotiations with the rightwing administration of Álvaro Uribe.

Nearly all of the roughly 70 lawmakers under arrest or investigation are Uribe allies.

Hernández added that ”society needs responses to the demands of the victims and the population at large — answers that are in line with the magnitude of the crimes committed,” many of which are classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity.

”If the public employees who have this delicate mission are not even sure of their jobs, it is very easy to pressure or manipulate them,” said the head of the Asonal Judicial.

”We have demanded that the government ensure their labour stability, given the experience, performance and responsibility level of these workers,” said Hernández.

In fact, respect for the independence of the judiciary is the first point on the list of demands presented by the Asonal Judicial.

”A very serious situation has arisen from the meddling of the executive branch in judicial affairs, and from the constant aggression,” he said, referring to Uribe’s repeated verbal attacks on the magistrates handling the cases against dozens of members of Congress who are implicated in what has been dubbed the ”para-politics” or ”para-gate” scandal.

”Colombia’s judicial branch is facing a critical situation,” because the president ”is constantly lashing out at the highest echelons of the judiciary, particularly regarding the work of the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court in the ‘para-politics’ investigations,” said Hernández.

He complained that the attacks ”by the president and the executive branch as a whole have been systematic and organised, aimed at delegitimising, at any cost, the judicial investigations” in these cases.

The Asonal Judicial’s list of demands calls for ”the establishment of clear mechanisms for guaranteeing respect for the independence and autonomy of the judicial branch, a normal aspect of any state of law,” he added.

Last week, Argentine jurist Luis Moreno Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), raised red flags by making a three-day visit to Colombia.

In the scenario of Colombia’s internal armed conflict, where ”we have an enormous number of crimes and a massive number of criminals,” the criteria being followed is ”to go after the people who may be considered among those most responsible,” Moreno Ocampo said in Bogotá.

Against this backdrop, a car-bomb went off early Monday near the Palace of Justice in Cali, Colombia’s third-largest city, killing four people and injuring 20.

Ten of the 18 stories of one of the two courtroom building towers were totally destroyed by the blast, including some 200 offices and the computers in them, while the paper files and archives were also damaged.

More than 500 other buildings were damaged by the explosion as well, and the city government declared a state of emergency on Tuesday. Even without a strike, a 10-day suspension of legal proceedings was declared in that city. On Wednesday, the courthouse was surrounded by white carnations, and judges were picking their way through the ruins, to see what could be salvaged.

President Uribe, Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos and national police chief General Óscar Naranjo blamed the bombing on the ”Manuel Cepeda” column of the leftwing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

But ”it was not the Manuel Cepeda column. That has been confirmed,” an analyst who closely follows the war with the FARC told IPS.

The perpetrators must be sought in the drug trafficking gangs that are active in the region, said the expert, with the Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, a think tank in Bogotá that focuses on peace and development issues.

The president of the Asonal Judicial said that ”we were really struck by the fact that this attack occurred just prior to our strike, which was announced over a month ago.”

”We prefer to wait and see what the investigation reveals,” before reaching any conclusions, said Hernández.

But ”if this was an attempt at intimidating judicial branch employees, they have wasted their time and their criminal act. Because we are going to continue with this movement, which we see as necessary to improve the administration of justice in Colombian society and, of course, the well-being of the judicial sector workers,” he said.

Mora, of the CUT, said the judicial branch ”has been especially beleaguered and harassed, and has been hit hard by the war. More than 26 judges and other judicial sector employees have been killed,” including three so far in 2008, he noted.

The country’s trade union confederations and a number of social organisations have announced a Sept. 11 demonstration in support of the Supreme Court.

Filed Under: Featured, Justice, Latin America, Politics

POLITICS-US: Candidates Stay the Course on Latin America

September 3, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – IPS
Wednesday, September 03, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Charles Davis

WASHINGTON, Sep 3 (IPS) – With an election to replace an immensely unpopular president just weeks away, Republican nominee John McCain and Democratic candidate Barack Obama have both sought to distance themselves from the record of George W. Bush — but when it comes to Latin America, neither candidate promises a major break with the policies of the last eight years.

From maintaining the embargo against Cuba to expanding efforts to fight the war on drugs in Mexico and Colombia, McCain and Obama support most aspects of current U.S. policy toward Latin America. Indeed, outside of their shared pledge to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, there is little to suggest that either candidate would overhaul the Bush administration’s approach to the region.

In general, issues concerning Latin America have not played much of a role in the current U.S. presidential campaign, generally taking a backseat to concerns about high gas prices and a struggling economy. When the region has been discussed, it has usually been within the context of a broader discussion of national security issues, as happened during a July 2007 debate among contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In response to a question on whether to diplomatically engage countries considered hostile to the United States, Obama declared that he would be willing to meet directly with leaders such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Obama’s position — at the time ridiculed as ”naive” by members of his own party — contrasts sharply with the Bush administration policy, endorsed by McCain, of refusing to engage in direct diplomacy with leaders such as Chavez and Cuba’s Raul Castro.

But while Obama’s openness to meeting with controversial leaders is welcomed by critics of current U.S. policy, some analysts see little evidence that the agenda he would push in those meetings would be noticeably different than that of the current administration.

”He has adopted some of the same hostile rhetoric toward Venezuela, pledged to maintain the embargo on Cuba, and even showed support for Colombia’s March 1 raid into Ecuador,” writes Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research.

”Against these statements, Obama’s expressed willingness to possibly meet with Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro do not offer much cause for optimism, and indeed there is not much hope for change among Latin American diplomats here in Washington.”

Among other Bush policies, Obama has endorsed the so-called Mérida Initiative, a more than 400-million-dollar aid package to assist security forces in Mexico and Central America in combating illicit drug traffickers and ”narco-terrorists”. Approved by the U.S. Senate in June, the plan has been strongly criticised by human rights groups, with critics noting that the Mexican military — which is to receive the bulk of the funds under the initiative — has a long record of torture and extrajudicial killings.

In addition, Obama’s running mate, Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, is a vocal supporter of anti-drug efforts in Latin America who boasts of having been a strong advocate for ”Plan Colombia”. After more than 35 years in the U.S. Senate, Biden has also gained a reputation as an outspoken proponent of U.S. intervention in general, having supported both the Iraq war and the NATO bombing of Serbia.

In keeping with the increasingly hawkish tone of his campaign, in March Obama joined the Bush administration and McCain in backing Colombia’s controversial raid inside Ecuador that killed a top FARC official. Condemned by the Organisation of American States as a violation of international law, Obama declared that his administration would always ”support Colombia’s right to strike terrorists who seek safe-haven across its borders.”

Obama has, however, broken with Bush and McCain on trade policy involving Latin America, opposing both the Central American Free Trade Agreement and a pending trade agreement with Colombia. Obama did support a controversial trade deal with Peru in 2007, but has promised to as president sign only agreements that contain strong protections for the environment and organised labour.

Yet despite a number of high-profile differences with the Bush administration, Obama has reversed himself on several key issues facing Latin America, lending credence to the view that an Obama administration would lead more to continuity in U.S. policy than actual dramatic change.

In response to a 2003 questionnaire during his run in Illinois for the U.S. Senate, Obama stated that U.S. drug policy had been unsuccessful ”both abroad and at home”, and declared that the embargo against Cuba had been a ”miserable failure”.

”I believe that normalisation of relations with Cuba would help the oppressed and poverty-stricken Cuban people while setting the stage for a more democratic government once Castro inevitably leaves the scene,” Obama stated.

Five years later, Obama’s position on the embargo is nearly identical to that of President Bush and to the eight presidents who preceded him — although Obama has vowed that, if elected, he would allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island by Cuban Americans.

”I will maintain the embargo,” Obama declared in a May 23 speech in Miami, Florida — home to a large and politically influential Cuban-American population. ”It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: if you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalising relations.”

In 2000, John McCain also sounded markedly different when discussing Cuba, especially compared to the hard-line rhetoric he has employed during the 2008 campaign.

”I’m not in favour of sticking my finger in the eye of Fidel Castro,” McCain said in an interview with CNN. ”In fact, I would favour a road map towards normalisation of relations such as we presented to the Vietnamese and led to a normalisation of relations between our two countries.”

But in a speech earlier this year — also in Miami — McCain made clear that any path toward normalising relations with Cuba under his administration would take place only after there have been serious political reforms on the island nation, including the freeing of political prisoners and the establishment of internationally monitored elections.

”The embargo must stay in place until these basic elements of democratic society are met,” McCain said, echoing official U.S. policy toward Cuba for nearly five decades.

Still, with two ongoing military occupations in the Middle East and increasingly hostile relations with Russia, it is unlikely U.S. foreign policy resources will be focused on Latin America regardless of who wins in November.

”After years of disappointment, Latin Americans have few expectations for dramatic change,” writes Michael Shifter of the Washington-based think tank, Inter-American Dialogue. While ”Obama’s message of ‘change’ appeals to a region suffering from ‘Bush fatigue’ after eight years,” Shifter states, it is far from clear that he could push for major changes in U.S. policy even if he were so inclined.

That said, Shifter notes that both major party candidates have committed to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and have signaled they would seek greater engagement on regional issues with Latin American leaders.

”Even absent a sharp departure in policy, those steps alone will go a long way towards improving relations with Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Filed Under: Africa, Conflict, Elections, Latin America, Politics, Report, United States

TRADE-CARIBBEAN: EU Pact Hit by Last-Minute Revolt

August 26, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – IPS
Monday, August 25, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Peter Ischyrion

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Aug 25 (IPS) – Eight months after congratulating themselves for having become the first region within the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) grouping to conclude negotiations with the European Union on a new trade and economic pact, Caribbean leaders are getting cold feet as the time draws near to affix their signatures to the document.

So far they have not kept to three earlier suggested dates, and it now seems that the Sep. 2 ceremony to be held in Barbados may not take place.

Instead, Barbadian Prime Minister David Thompson has called for an urgent meeting of the 15-member Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders as uncertainly surrounds how many regional states will now sign the agreement.

Thompson has sent a letter to Caricom’s chairman, Baldwin Spencer, who is also the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, expressing concerns about the ”untenable inconsistencies” among member states regarding the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) that was negotiated between Europe and the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORM) that also includes Caricom.

The regional leaders’ position is in sharp contrast to the communiqué issued at the end of their annual summit held in Antigua in July.

According to the four brief paragraphs allocated to the EPA, ”several of them (had) expressed readiness to sign”. Last week, Barbados gave an emphatic ”yes” to signing the agreement in September.

”Our position is that we are proceeding, there have been no instructions from the heads of government or from the prime ministerial subcommittee on external negotiations, which is chaired by Jamaica, that such a signing on that date ought not to take place,” said Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and International Business Minister Christopher Sinckler.

”We believe that after three to four years of intense negotiation, the option of opening up that agreement to renegotiation at this stage is just not a feasible option. We doubt very much in our minds that it would be agreed to by the European Commission,” he said.

But a Barbados government legislator, James Paul, earlier this month accused regional stakeholders who brokered the EPA of failing their people by agreeing to a ”bad deal”.

”We were prepared to sit down and listen to the garbage coming out of Europe about free trade without really examining what they were doing,” he told participants of a CARIFORUM-EU review meeting.

Carl Greenidge, the deputy senior director of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) that negotiated the EPA on behalf of Caricom, said last week that regional states that do not sign would not be able to derail the implementation of the new trade deal.

”If one (Caricom) country chooses not to sign at all, and they persuade the European Union that they don’t have the intention of signing, the regulation that the European Union passed on Dec. 20 requires that that country be taken off the list,” he said, explaining that the country would also be excluded from any of the institutional arrangements.

Guyana is not among those countries willing to sign the EPA at present. Like some Caribbean trade unions, academics, opposition parties and non-governmental organisations, Georgetown has been calling for a re-negotiation of the accord and has said it would only sign on after holding public consultations that are scheduled to start after the country hosts the 10-day Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) — the region’s premier cultural festival — which began on Aug. 22.
Last week, President Bharrat Jagdeo continued his attack on the EPA, noting that ACP countries had not been in favour of replacing the traditional ACP unit with EPAs and regional groupings.

”We have always resisted this. We thought that this would be problematic because they’re breaking the traditional ACP solidarity that we had, and you know with solidarity comes strength, especially with negotiations and secondly to argue for WTO compatibility, for small countries, developing countries in the world,” he said.

”This was contrary to the spirit of successive international agreements which argued that there should be special and differential treatment of these countries in international trade and economic international relations,” Jagdeo added.

Caribbean countries signed on primarily due to Europe’s significant negotiating power, which was no match for the Caribbean’s ”tiny” economies, he argued.

”If you combine the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of all the countries in our region, it would be less than the assets of a large bank in Europe, so you can imagine how unbalanced, how uneven the negotiations are because you’re not negotiating as two equal partners. They got their way because they’re essentially a bigger power and they can always threaten to cut off their markets,” he said.

However, Ralph Gonsalves, the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and one of the main supporters of the EPA, urged his colleagues to sign because ”it is preferable to sign than not to sign”.

”I, for instance, I am a right-hander. I will probably put my right hand on my heart and sign with my left hand. What I am indicating by that metaphorically is that one would wish that you had a better quote unquote deal. But you can manage in the circumstances,” he said.

In Jamaica, where the Bruce Golding administration supports the EPA, the main opposition People’s National Party (PNP) says it plans to raise serious concerns about the deal when Parliament resumes next month.

And St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Stephenson King, like his newly elected Grenadian counterpart, Tillman Thomas, flatly says he will not sign the deal as it currently stands.

”Based on the advice we have been receiving from several quarters we, as members of the Caribbean Community, are now in a better position to say let us slow down a minute and engage in a further review of the real value of the EPA to the region.”

”We are to appeal to the president of France to meet with us and consider some areas of concern and see whether we can get the European Community to understand and support our position,” he added.

The Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC) said it welcomed the new cautious approach by some governments.

”CPDC will like to reiterate its call for Caribbean governments to push for the renegotiation of the agreement even at this time, to correct the flaws and the contentious areas within the agreement,” it said in a statement.

CPDC Senior Programme Officer Shantal Munro-Knight said that her agency was saddened by the dismissive nature of some regional leaders toward those who are speaking out against the EPA.

”When it comes to engaging our population and to taking on board dissenting voices, our leaders and technocrats are dismissive and insulting. We seemed to have forgotten the true nature of representative democracy. Debate fuels growth, new learning and change and particularly about something so important, such debate should be encouraged not stifled or ignored,” she said.

Filed Under: Europe, Latin America, News, Politics, Trade

ECUADOR: President ”Stabbed In the Back” by Church Over Constitution

August 26, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – IPS
Monday, August 25, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Rosa Rodríguez

QUITO, Aug 25 (IPS) – The campaign for the Sept. 28 referendum on Ecuador’s newly rewritten constitution has got under way, with fierce arguments between the document’s supporters and opponents.

At the moment the main conflict is between those in favour of the new constitution, approved Jul. 24 by the Constituent Assembly, and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

Church prelates are vigorously opposed to the proposed constitution because they allege it opens the door to the legalisation of abortion and same-sex marriage, although the word ”abortion” is not mentioned in any of its articles.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Latin America, News, Politics

ENVIRONMENT-ARGENTINA: Scarce Water Threatened by Gold Mine

August 26, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics – Global News Blog – IPS
Monday, August 25, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 25 (IPS) – For nearly a year and a half, local residents in the northwestern Argentine province of La Rioja have been blocking the road that climbs up to the Nevados de Famatina mountain to protest a gold mining project that they say will pollute the water in the country’s driest district.

”The mountain is our only source of water, and it regulates the region’s climate,” said Marcela Crabbé, a shopkeeper in Chilecito, a city of 45,000 located 30 km from Nevados de Famatina. ”One hundred years ago this was a mining zone, but that left the area neither gold nor progress, just a huge environmental debt,” she told IPS.

Chilecito and Famatina — a town of less than 8,000 people located 20 km from the mountain it takes its name from — are in the northern part of La Rioja, in the foothills of the Andes mountains, some 1,200 km northwest of Buenos Aires.

More than 2,000 people took part in the latest protest against the mine, earlier this month.

Criss-crossed by dry river beds, and with virtually no surface water, La Rioja is Argentina’s most arid province. It obtains its water from wells more than 200 metres deep, and from mountains like the 6,250-metre Nevados de Famatina, which provide water during the thaw period. If this melt water is polluted, the very survival of the two nearby towns would be in danger.

La Rioja Governor Luis Beder Herrera himself acknowledged this month that the province’s biggest problem is the lack of water: ”We are the only province which practically has no rivers; water means everything for us.” Nevertheless, his administration has promoted mining activity.

”I don’t understand people who say we are going to pollute,” said the governor. ”I don’t know of a single case of people who have died of this famous pollution. They are trying to scare people, but we aren’t going to bring this to a halt.”

Crabbé is a member of the assembly of residents of Famatina and Chilecito, who along with people from other towns in the province created the La Rioja Assembly, which is calling for a popular referendum on mining activity and protection from anti-pollution laws.

As a result of the mobilisation against local mining industry activity, Crabbé has come in for judicial persecution. She is facing three lawsuits, on charges of blocking traffic on the road to Famatina, defamation against a town councillor, and inciting violence in a street protest.

The movement emerged in 2004, when the Canadian-owned Barrick Gold started to explore for gold on Nevados de Famatina, using the camp left by the La Mexicana company, which mined for gold in the area a century earlier.

On Mar. 8, 2007, local residents worried about information that was circulating with respect to the impact of the project took Barrick employees by surprise by blocking access along the road to the mountain. The roadblock has remained in place since then.

That same day, the provincial legislature passed a law banning open-cast mining using cyanide leaching. It also approved laws calling for popular referendums in Famatina and Chilecito and creating a commission to investigate the process under which mining permits were granted to Barrick Gold.

Two days later, the company announced that it was suspending its exploration activities, and pulled out of the camp.

But the protesters continued to man the traffic blockade day and night until March this year, the beginning of the southern hemisphere autumn. Since then, the roadblock has been guarded sporadically throughout the winter.

The people of Famatina and Chilecito were already familiar with the complaints of water pollution in the neighbouring province of San Juan, where Barrick Gold is mining in Veladero, its biggest open-cast gold mine in Argentina.

Barrick Gold, which describes itself as the world’s largest gold mining company, also operates a controversial project in Pascua Lama, in the Andes mountains on the border between Chile and Argentina, a project that has been put on hold because the two countries have failed to reach an agreement on the distribution of the mining royalties and taxes.

The Nevados de Famatina roadblock has been kept in place, to press for the implementation of the new regional laws, which never actually went into effect.

This month, however, they were overturned and were replaced by legislation that promotes mining activity.

In a closed-door session on Aug. 7, the provincial legislature revoked the laws approved in 2007 and passed two new ones that permit the installation of ”responsible” mining operations that do not pollute.

”The province didn’t change its mind,” government spokesman Roberto Ludueña told IPS. ”The 2007 laws were never codified and implemented, so two new ones were passed: one that designates the Secretariat of the Environment as the regulatory authority for the mining industry, and another that create a consultative council.”

The council, to be made up of government officials, industry experts and representatives of social and environmental organisations, will be tasked with drawing up reports and recommendations on each mining project that is presented to the authorities. ”We are not opposed to mining; what we want is responsible mining,” he said.

”Polluting the water would be a crime in a province without rivers, where virtually all of the water consumed has to be extracted from underground sources,” said Ludueña.

He also admitted that, as the local residents point out, Barrick Gold did not cancel the project but merely ”suspended” it, while the provincial government has been working on other agreements for a uranium mine in the mountains around Famatina — a possibility that also worries people in that area.

”Mining activity from the period when La Mexicana was active in the area left tremendously acid drainage at the headwaters, and we ourselves never saw any of the gold,” said Crabbé.

Exploration for uranium, in neighbouring Sañogasta, prompted local residents there to join the La Rioja Assembly.

”Since the laws against open-cast mining were overturned, we have been in a state of permanent assembly,” said Crabbé, who added that the group has plans to carry out a signature drive to call a popular referendum against the Barrick Gold mining project, following the example of a similar vote held in the city of Esquel in the southern province of Chubut.

In Chubut, a citizen movement successfully blocked an open-cast cyanide leaching mine, after holding a referendum in which an overwhelming majority of local residents voted against the mining project.

Activists in Famatina and Chilecito say the mining industry will use huge amounts of water, which will hurt human consumption and lead to further difficulties for an agriculture sector that is already suffering from critical water shortages.

”Famatina produces some 476 litres of water per second, and Barrick Gold would need 1,000 litres per second for a mine of this size,” said Crabbé.

Filed Under: Environment, Latin America, Report

COLOMBIA: No Big Changes Expected after Rebel Chief’s Death

May 26, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net / IPS
May 26, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Diana Cariboni*

MONTEVIDEO, May 26 (IPS) – The death and replacement of FARC chief ”Manuel Marulanda” will bring neither a breakdown nor a change in direction in the Colombian rebel group, which has been militarily weakened and has fallen silent on the political front, according to experts on Latin America’s longest-lived guerrilla movement.

The death of the founder and top leader of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), whose nom de guerre was ”Manuel Marulanda”, was announced Saturday in an interview with Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos in the Semana magazine and confirmed Sunday by ”Timochenko”, who forms part of the insurgent group’s seven-member secretariat, in a video broadcast by the Latin American TV channel Telesur.

”A great leader is gone,” said ”Timochenko”, whose real name is Timoleón Jiménez. He said Marulanda died of a heart attack on Mar. 26, in the arms of his girlfriend and surrounded by his troops.

Marulanda (Pedro Antonio Marín) was succeeded by guerrilla commander ”Alfonso Cano” (Guillermo Sáenz), Timochenko reported.

The late rebel chief, also known as ”Tirofijo” or Sureshot, was born in 1928 or 1930 — according to conflicting versions — in the coffee-growing town of Génova in the central Colombian province of Quindío.

His death was preceded by two other major losses for the FARC.

On Mar. 1, ”Raúl Reyes”, the group’s international spokesman, was killed in the aerial bombing of his camp, which was located in Ecuador. The cross-border incursion by the Colombian military sparked a serious diplomatic crisis in the Andean region.

And on Mar. 6, another member of the FARC secretariat, ”Iván Ríos”, was killed by one of his men, who cut off his hand to collect the huge reward offered by the government.

Marulanda ”is an extremely wary ‘campesino’ (peasant farmer) and a born military strategist,” was how he was once described by Gilberto Vieira, secretary general of Colombia’s Communist Party from 1946 to 1991, who knew the rebel chief very well.

Born into a poor rural family, Pedro Antonio Marín took up arms at the age of 18, after the assassination of Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948, which triggered a decade of political violence known as ”La Violencia”.

According to his official biographer, historian Arturo Alape, Marín and his brothers and cousins joined the armed struggle in 1949, because ”rising up in arms was the only way to survive.”

In 1950, he took the name Manuel Marulanda Vélez, in honour of a trade union leader who was tortured and killed.

During an armistice that began in 1957, after the collapse of the four-year dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, Marulanda was even a public employee, working as a highway inspector.

In 1964, Conservative President Guillermo León Valencia ordered, as part of the U.S. Latin American Security Operation (Plan LASO), an attack on the village of Marquetalia, where 49 families of former combatants, led by Marulanda, were living.

The military operation forced the families to scatter, and Marulanda, along with several dozen other guerrilla fighters, created the FARC in the southern region of El Caguán, in the province of Caquetá. More than four decades later, the group still maintains its original aim, agrarian reform.

In 1984, a peace agreement between the government of then president Belisario
Betancur and the FARC led to the creation of a leftwing political party, the Patriotic Union. But it was destroyed, as 5,000 of its members and supporters were killed off by far-right paramilitary groups and the security forces.

Between 1999 and 2002, under Conservative President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002), a 42,000 square km demilitarised zone was created in El Caguán, for peace talks between the government and the FARC.

But the only real advance made by the talks was a humanitarian exchange of hostages held by the FARC for imprisoned guerrillas.

After the talks broke off, Marulanda never again appeared before the cameras, and it was rumoured that he was in bad health.

”It is sad news?He was an important figure, which is not recognised by those who fan the flames of class hatred,” the secretary general of Colombia’s Communist Party, Jaime Caycedo, told IPS.

”He was important because of his trajectory, background and agrarian traditions against the oligarchy. It is also significant that he died of natural causes,” he added.

Iván Cepeda, head of the Movement of Victims of Crimes of the State, told IPS that ”it cannot be denied that he was a historic leader.”

But he also expressed his hope that ”this will represent a shift in course by the FARC, and that a priority will be put on negotiations that would lead to the release of the hostages” held in remote jungle camps by the rebel group.

MARULANDA’S SUCCESSOR

”We must not see Marulanda’s death in terms of a ‘before’ and ‘after’,” Luis Eduardo Celis, of the Bogotá think tank Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, told IPS from the town of El Retorno in the southern province of Guaviare.

The new head of the FARC secretariat, Cano, ”represents a long-expected succession, because he has a more intellectual background and can serve as a bridge between Marulanda’s generation of peasant fighters and the younger, more urban, university-educated generation,” he said.

”He has the complete support of the FARC, and his leadership does not come as a surprise to anyone,” commented Celis, who was in Guaviare to attend the National Forum for Reconciliation in Colombia, along with 400 other delegates from around the country.

The FARC represents the Colombia ”of the poor, marginalised coca farmer, and he (Cano) is very familiar with the movement, to which he has dedicated more than half his life. He has lived and worked alongside all of the FARC’s commanders, so I foresee a very smooth transition,” he added.

Under his leadership, ”there will be no significant changes. This is a very reclusive, meticulous and conservative guerrilla group, which is engaged in a trial of political and military strength with (rightwing) President Álvaro Uribe, something that is not going to change,” Celis predicted.

Changes could come ”if the political scenario is modified, for example, if a humanitarian hostage-prisoner swap is achieved,” said Celis, a former non-combatant member of the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia’s second-largest insurgent group.

But Uribe ”has dug in his heels against an agreement,” he said. ”The government’s aim is to defeat the FARC militarily, to force them into an armistice.”

Cano, 62, studied anthropology at the National University of Colombia and was a leader of the Communist Youth before joining the FARC. He led failed peace talks in Caracas, in 1991, and in Tlaxcala, Mexico in 1992.

The collapse of the talks in Mexico gave rise to a dispute within the secretariat, in which Reyes’ position of refusing to engage in further negotiations outside of Colombia reportedly won out.

Cano is the founder of the Bolivarian Movement, FARC’s clandestine political wing.

He is now apparently somewhere between the central province of Tolima and the southwest province of Valle del Cauca, an area besieged for months by 8,000 military troops.

But ”we are talking about huge areas, of 40,000 or 50,000 square km,” said Celis. ”This is a peasant army that moves around calmly and easily within that area. They’ve been there for 50 or 60 years, they aren’t improvising.”

Despite the recent loss of several members of the ruling secretariat, ”a military defeat of the FARC does not lie just around the corner,” said Celis.

He estimates that the group currently has 10,000 combatants, having lost a similar number — ”mainly the youngest, those who were recruited between 1998 and 2000” — over the last six years, to death, desertion or capture.

”The army has made important, but not strategic, advances. But if Uribe ends up in office for a third term (for which a constitutional reform would be necessary), the FARC would definitely find itself in a complicated position, because the guerrillas are not capable of returning to their previous military strength,” he said.

Continuing to wage war until a total defeat ”would be a very bloody route to take. Defeat would also mean the end of a social and community network” that supports the FARC.

POLITICAL ACTIVITY AT A STANDSTILL

Another question is the group’s current lack of political initiative. ”The FARC no longer presents proposals to the country,” said Celis.

The director of the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (INDEPAZ), Camilo González Posso, said Saturday at the National Forum for Reconciliation, in Guaviare, that ”major rectifications are needed on the part of the FARC.”

”This policy of seeking a humanitarian hostage-prisoner exchange has even silenced the FARC itself, because the group has suspended its political discourse while pressing for an agreement,” added the former government minister.

”Get into politics, we know you are politicians, engage in politics, don’t wander around the world asking for your status (as a terrorist group) to be changed; change it by getting involved in politics,” he urged the guerrillas.

But Uribe must also rectify his position, and move ”from humanitarian rhetoric to practice,” because the country ”does not deserve an escalation of the conflict within its borders as a result of the failure to reach a humanitarian accord on the hostages,” said González Posso.

For his part, Celis said ”there is a great deal of space for negotiating. Of course they (the guerrillas) have very big aspirations, which are out of line with their real capacity, but there is a possibility for discussing change.”

In Bogotá, meanwhile, Cepeda said ”we hope that under the new FARC leader, a political approach will prevail over a military focus.”

*With additional reporting by Constanza Vieira (from El Retorno) and Helda Martínez (Bogotá).

Filed Under: Latin America, News

The Rise and Fall of Shining Path

May 6, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net
Tuesday, May 06, 2008

© Copyright 2008 Council on Hemispheric Affairs, COHA. All rights reserved.
Link to the original article on COHA.org

By Waynee Lucero, Research Associate, COHA.org

In the Beginning:

The Shining Path (Sendero Luminosos) Maoist guerrillas were formed by university professor Abimael Guzman in the late 1960s and were based upon Marxist ideology. At the time, Guzman was teaching philosophy at San Cristóbal of Huamanga University, while engaging in left-wing politics. He attracted many like-minded young academics to his cause of staging a radical revolution in Peru. He visited the Peoples Republic of China in the mid-1960s and his collection of inchoate ideas was profoundly influenced by a mumble-tumble of Maoist theories, which became the basis of the ideological foundations of the Shining Path. In 1980, he launched his campaign to overthrow the Peruvian government.

The Shining Path’s main goal was to destroy existing Peruvian political institutions and replace them with a communist peasant revolutionary regime, while resisting any influence coming from other Latin American guerrilla groups like the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), as well as from foreign ideologies. According to researchers, Shining Path’s basic strategy was to use violence to bring down the country’s imperfect democratic institutions, prevent citizens from participating in local government, destroy Peru’s economy, and to thwart government-sponsored programs to provide aid and services to the population. As a result of a series of clandestine meetings, Shining Path officials established a military school to teach young recruits military tactics and weaponry use. At first, Shining Path was successful in many of its endeavors because the Lima authorities were beset by organizational instability, corruption, and were ill-prepared to fight the internal war that would foreshadow the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent villagers caught in the middle of the struggle.

The Revolution Begins:

Shining Path formally initiated its uprising against the Peruvian government in 1980 after decades of inequality and marginality immiserated the peasantry. Led by Guzman, the revolution based itself mainly in the rural areas of the country where it carried out the bulk of its activities; this tactic had been used by other revolutionary guerrilla groups like Colombia’s FARC, due to usual presence of a weak government, as was the case in Peru. The country’s armed forces did not have the necessary physical presence in the area to allow it to effectively deploy against the revolutionary cadres. This lack of on-site military credibility on the government’s part gave Shining Path the opportunity to deploy its forces to wage an effective guerrilla war against its enemies with near impunity. Shining Path initially based its headquarters in the mountainous region of Ayacucho and Huanta, to the remote regions around the central selva and south of Vilcabamba (the site of the last Inca resistance). Characteristically, it launched attacks on agricultural areas in the Upper Huallaga Valley and the southern part of Puno, which also helped to sever any lingering urban ties for its recruits. Guzman played the role of all-powerful military and spiritual leader of his organization; in this sense, Shining Path was organized as a hierarchical cult rather than on a cell-based model.

Buying and Selling:

Similar to the FARC in Colombia and other revolutionary insurgencies, Shining Path in part funded its operations through the process of narcotrafficking, ransoms from kidnapping and forced taxes on small businesses and individuals. Shining Path also required Colombian dealers and buyers operating locally to pay higher than prevailing prices for raw coca in return for protection and the opportunity to buy weapons from them. Today, on a much smaller scale, Shining Path is attempting to revive and re-establish such a financial relationship. It has been listed by U.S. authorities as a terrorist organization based on the tactics it has utilized which include car bombings, kidnappings, and staged political assassinations. In 2006, Shining Path ranked 41 on the U.S. list of top terrorist organizations. Initially, Shining Path targeted local authorities (mayors, governors and mid-level bureaucrats) police barracks, and local political leaders. However, experts believe that by 1983, the group gradually began to target wealthy peasants and state agency heads with violence and the threat of abduction, as well as launched comparable attacks against left-wing activists, grass-roots organizers, and left-liberal intellectuals. This change in strategy eventually proved counterproductive for the insurgents because they were not able to capture the hearts and minds of the average Peruvian by their violent tactics. Instead, villagers were subject to the unremitting brutality by Shining Path and were unprotected by the military and intelligence services. Both the first Alan Garcia administration and his successor, Alberto Fujimori, used intimidation to tromp out local citizens. The Garcia government, as did the Belaúnde government before it, used tortures and randomly assassinated citizens for their alleged backing or at least sympathy for Shining Path.

Peruvian Citizens Caught in the Middle:

There is no doubt that the average Peruvian often experienced traumatic brutality from both government forces and Shining Path. The U.S. Department of State, among other sources, determined that the combined death total caused by several decades of conflict reached at least 70,000. The total death toll from the beginning of the uprising in 1980 to 1990, just before the decade-long conflict under Fujimori, can be found in a study conducted by DESCO, in which fatalities attributed to the conflict between the government and Shining Path have been carefully scrutinized. The mid-1980’s, during the Garcia administration, proved to be the years in which a surge of fatalities occurred. This includes casualties inflicted upon ordinary Peruvian citizens, government personnel and security forces, as well as Shining Path recruits. In the early years of the revolution, Shining Path was estimated to have ten to fifteen-thousand members; with its recruitment efforts targeted at the most poverty stricken areas of the country and in the Quechua-speaking part of the highlands. Harsh tactics were an integral step in the organization’s operation and its devilishly skillful propaganda efforts were employed to engage those in the general population who were experiencing the greatest degrees of injustice at the hands of Lima authorities. A key factor contributing to the large number of resulting fatalities in the uprising was that the government found it difficult to distinguish between a Shining Path member and an ordinary inhabitant of the Altiplano, because of the similar native attire. In 1983, President Belaúnde was reported to have announced a 60-day national state of emergency, in which he suspended civil liberties and gave the police broad powers to seize suspected guerrillas for up to ten days without charges. In this account, 200 people were reported as being arrested just 24 hours after the announcement was made. The country had been attempting to move towards democracy before Shining Path declared its war, but President Belaúnde’s action in declaring martial law along with several of these authoritarian initiatives, countermanded the democratic trend taking place in Peru. Ordinary citizens were forced to pay the price, as the then Peruvian leader earned the well-deserved reputation for tolerating human rights abuses.

Under Garcia and Fujimori, the country again found itself caught in the middle of mounting ideological strife and was made to suffer severe human rights abuses from both Shining Path and government forces.

Shining Path singled out the poor, indigenous populations, whose interests it disingenuously claimed to have at heart. It forced farmers to slash production to subsistence levels and to destroy whatever modern farm equipment the campesinos possessed. In addition, Shining Path imposed puritanical regulations that outlawed fiestas and prohibited drinking as part of a strategy of strong-arming local populations into submission and self-abnegation. Any person believed to be sympathetic to the government or to even slightly disagree with Shining Path’s fundamental beliefs, was a candidate to be tortured and killed. Outlandishly, Shining Path then abandoned its professedly leftist ideology and began to identify leftists as candidates to be kidnapped, tortured and/or murdered.

Not surprisingly, Shining Path failed to capture the hearts and minds of the natives due to this extremely bizarre metamorphosis. With leftist and trade union officials being specifically targeted, more and more Peruvians learned to lean more heavily in favor of government efforts to bear down on Shining Path’s revolutionary operations. In the DESCO study, leftist assassinations carried out by Shining Path began to rise a few years after the revolution was triggered—peaking in 1988 and then slowly declining. In 1992, now under Fujimori, assassinations increased drastically, and then dropped after Guzman’s capture. During the Garcia era, leftist assassinations were targeted against two main groups when ideological factors gave way to more bare-boned battles between Shining Path and the government: Garcia’s American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) and the more radical United Left (IU). Shining Path’s tactic to force individuals into submission was a strategy calculated to eliminate the competition. Considering its goals of ousting foreign influence and rival organizations, it was Shining Path’s sudden and unpredictable strategy to turn against its own people as well as like-minded potential allies which foredoomed its end. In the ensuing struggle, large numbers of deaths occurred, helping to transform its revolution into a stark case of conflicting interests. The question of principle was increasingly not in play.

In 1992, the Alberto Fujimori administration staged a coup against itself which led to the dissolving of Congress and the dismantling of the country’s legal system. This cynical ploy enabled his administration and the military police to carry out large numbers of murders and kidnappings of those though to be enemies of the state without having an opposition party or legal capacity capable of challenging various illegal acts.

The various degrees of power under the administrations Belaúnde, Garcia and Fujimori worked to subvert law and order more than to uphold it. Under these governments, Lima’s security forces exponentially increased the murders of ordinary Peruvians, who were suspected of being part of the Shining Path. In addition to the unrestricted power of the government, the Fujimori administration did little to solve the country’s stressful economic situation. Research reports at the time found that 4.5 million people in Peru were living in extreme poverty (lack of sanitation, water, electricity, and gas). Fujimori then sought to enlarge the death squads that carried out orders to kidnap, torture and murder those suspected of being part of the Shining Path or known to harbor anti-Fujimori sentiments. For example, in 1997, the gruesome discovery of anti-Fujimori activist Mariella Barreto Fiofano’s body was found with her hands cut off and spine broken in half. This demonstrated how far the regime was prepared to go in order to suppress and silence those it saw as its foes.

The Decline of Shining Path:

After his 1992 auto-coup, Fujimori took control of the press and almost all of the country’s other institutions, promising a return to democracy within a year. This formula enabled him to rule Peru by decree, with a massive number of killings taking place during this period as the result of fierce fighting between Shining Path and Lima’s security forces. On September 12, 1992, Abimael Guzman was captured by local authorities without a drop of blood spilled. This resulted in a major decrease of fatalities and the shrinking of the Shining Path’s armed effectiveness. One of Guzman’s top lieutenants had been interrogated after being detained and eventually was induced to reveal some of Guzman’s hiding places. By the local authorities rummaging through trash cans looking for any signs of his presence, the security forces were able to close in on him, finally locating him and placing him under arrest. Subsequently, Fujimori displayed him in an outdoor cage so the press could witness this act of public humiliation—simultaneously boasting of his success. Since capturing Guzman meant the destruction of Shining Path’s hierarchy, the group began to disintegrate due to organizational issues and opposition in the ranks. Research by DESCO demonstrates this decline in political assassinations of moderate leftist figures as part of the general trend after Guzman was captured. Looking back on the process, the government was able to bring down Shining Path, but only at the cost of suppressing civil rights and by carrying out a barrage of human rights violations against Peru’s general population. A few years after his capture, Guzman called for a supposed peace deal which caused the Shining Path to split into two groups: those who insisted on continuing to fight and those who wanted to put down their arms. Since then, the Shining Path has not come near having the success that it achieved as a guerrilla group in the mid-1980s. It has remained relatively quiet in comparison to the past, racking up relatively few kidnappings and murders.

The Return of Shining Path:

Recent reports show that Shining Path may be making something of a comeback, reorganizing its cadres and military capabilities to combat the Peruvian state. Over the past decade a number of Shining Path leaders have been peacefully apprehended. For example, news articles reported in 1999 that Ramirez Durand, who goes by the nom de guerre “Comrade Feliciano,” had been cornered, along with three women rebels, after being pursued for two weeks by a force of more than 1,500 commandos. Durand was captured without a shot being fired.

On March 25, 2008 Shining Path rebel members working with drug traffickers killed a police officer and wounded 11 on anti-drug patrols. The unit is said to have been led by one of Shining Path’s last remaining leaders—Comrade Artemio. Comrade Mono—who eventually was caught in March of this year was, in fact, part of another branch of the Shining Path hierarchy. Their apprehension demonstrated that police efforts have been achieving some success in dismantling the organization. Along with these efforts, Peruvian authorities currently hold ex-President Fujimori. Fujimori now faces trial for corruption, fleeing his presidential office, and the ordering of death squads. Others are to be tried for a range of human rights and law violations. This shows that Peruvians may finally be witnessing some sort of justice, rather than the past neglect of democratic standards and the exercise of privilege in the country. Peruvians are responding to this movement toward justice. “Human rights groups in Peru and family members of the victims killed in a 1992 massacre are celebrating now that four members of a paramilitary group will spend between 15 and 35 years in prison” (LivinginPeru.com).

In recent months, there have been accounts of political kidnappings and murders which could be an indication of the recrudescence of the Shining Path. Other reports have told of police forces closing in on them. Shining Path is rumored to be financing their reviving terrorist activities by charging for protecting drug-traffickers and intertwining the organization with coca production and distribution networks. Consequently, Peruvians may soon find themselves dealing with an increase in drug violence, a growing insurgency and an increase in government repression.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Waynee Lucero
May 6th, 2008

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