Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalTen Things to Understand about Latin America
MAY 7, 2021
BY LAURA WELLS
The United States — the land and people — will be a lot better off when the idea of US supremacy is dropped. Toward that end, and toward the goal of a better world, here are ten things for the US to understand about Latin America.
1. Threat of a good example. That is the main reason countries get on the “bad lists” of the US, not oil since not all maligned countries even have oil. The reason is that the countries do not “have the interest of the United States at heart” as CIA director George Tenet said during the US-backed 2002 coup against Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. The bad lists include Trump’s “Troika of Tyranny” — Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — and the 30-plus countries around the globe suffering from the deadly effects of US sanctions. The US justifies sanctions by saying they are based on matters people care about deeply, such as human rights abuses and trafficking. Meanwhile, the United Nations charter clearly prohibits “unilateral coercive measures” taken by one country against another.
2. Sovereignty YES, Sanctions NO. Latin American countries are sovereign nations. They are not a “backyard” requiring US protection or interference. They have many leaders, in government and not in government, who are very intelligent with in-depth knowledge of history. They are not, as the US government and media call them, dictators, regimes, strong-men, or tyrants. To repeat, they are sovereign nations capable of choosing their own leaders. Certainly anyone familiar with US elections can believe it is possible to find better, more easily verified electoral systems outside the US, for example, Venezuela’s system, which is computerized and has paper ballots that allow for audits.
3. Constitutions get updated. Most Latin American countries are among the more than 90 countries in the world with proportional representation. PR is the key to having multiple parties, which allow voters to actually affect their governments because they can vote for the candidates most aligned with their values, not just against the worst candidates. It is said that it’s virtually impossible to eliminate from the US constitution even the based-on-slavery Electoral College, which installed two recent presidents who lost the popular vote, both Bush and Trump.
4. Term limits are not a solution. Term limits are not the great electoral reform many people believe them to be. Nicaragua and some other “bad list” Latin American governments have dispensed with them. When Venezuela held a vote to remove term limits, there were loud cries that “Hugo Chavez wants to be dictator for life!” but significantly, those accusers did not point out that Venezuela joined other nations without term limits, like the U.K., Germany, Italy, Japan, and most Scandinavian nations. When facing term limits, elected officials tend to be less focused on their current duties and more focused on positioning themselves and their campaign contributors for their next move. Terms limits came in after FDR and stopped voters from being able to re-elect presidents they still wanted. More effective electoral reforms are proportional representation, free and fair media coverage, and open debates.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/07/ten-things-to-understand-about-latin-america/
UN Slams Deadly Brazil Police Operation in Favela
By Lisa Schlein
Updated May 09, 2021 03:22 PM
A woman raises her fist as Black movement activists protest in Sao Paulo against police violence after a deadly police operation in Rio de Janeiro's Jacarezinho slum, in Brazil, May 8, 2021. The banner reads: 'It was not an operation, it was a massacre'.
GENEVA - The U.N. human rights office is calling on the Brazilian government to conduct a thorough and impartial investigation into a deadly police operation in one of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro Thursday.
At least 25 people, including one policeman, were killed in a dawn raid in one of Rio de Janeiro’s shantytowns. The dramatic operation reportedly involved police officers on the ground and in a helicopter overhead shooting into the neighborhood, allegedly against members of a criminal organization.
U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville, says an unknown number of people were injured, including bystanders and people inside their houses.
“It appears to be the deadliest such operation in more than a decade in Rio de Janeiro and confirms a long-standing trend of unnecessary and disproportionate use of force by police in Brazil’s poor, marginalized and predominantly Afro-Brazilian neighborhoods, known as favelas," Colville said.
More:
https://www.voanews.com/americas/un-slams-deadly-brazil-police-operation-favela
Strife in Colombia has been brewing for decades. Here's why we hear so little about it.
The Flag of Colombia
For the last week, waves of civil unrest have rocked Colombia. Intense press attention has gone alongside condemnation of the government’s response from international and regional organizations. The government now appears to be facing an existential crisis. But we need to be clear that this crisis didn’t come out of nowhere.
Colombia has suffered under one of the worst set of governments in all Latin America. This raises two obvious questions. Firstly, ‘why have we heard comparatively little from the corporate-owned media about the South American country until now?’ And ‘why does Washington seemingly give Colombia a free pass when it has such flagrant human rights problems?’
Colombians take to the streets en masse
On April 28, Colombians took to the streets to protest a government austerity measure aimed at closing budgetary gaps stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. Called the “law of sustainable solidarity”, it became instantly unpopular for putting most of burden on ordinary people. The measure imposed a regressive sales tax on essential items such as milk. There was also a tax increase on utilities such as water and electricity. Compounding the harm was a law passed in 2019 that provided generous tax benefits to the finance, oil, and mining sectors.
The right-wing government of Ivan Duque has responded with heavy-handed measures. It sent in the military to several of Colombia’s major cities, which has led to multiple deaths and disappearances as well as reports of sexual violence toward demonstrators. As this article went to press, the death toll stood at at least 30 along with scores more injuries and many still missing. Under pressure from what quickly turned into a nationwide strike, Duque’s government back-peddled and withdrew the “sustainable solidarity” measure. But by then, the protests had morphed into a wider movement against his government. Protesters, for instance, point to Duque’s poor handling of the coronavirus crisis. Colombia currently has the third-highest coronavirus death toll in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico.
But, Colombia’s social, economic, and political pathologies long predate the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Colombia, for example, holds the dubious distinction of being the second most unequal country in Latin America, which is itself the most unequal region in the world. Over 60% of the population, meanwhile, works in the informal economy. Many of these workers have access only to substandard public services. For example, though Colombia’s healthcare system has been described as “near-universal”, it has nevertheless been “widely criticized for providing dramatically inferior care to the less affluent”.
As a result of the decades-long armed conflict and fallout from the ongoing ‘War on Drugs’, Colombia is also one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Though security has improved in recent years, what is often left unsaid is that this came about through a massive increase in the presence and power of state security forces that has entailed a sharp increase in human rights abuses. Colombia, for example, is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a journalist or social activist. Among the latter, trade union activists are some of the most at risk. Over the last decade the country has often been the number one most dangerous country to be a trade unionist.
More:
https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2021/05/09/strife-in-colombia-has-been-brewing-for-decades-heres-why-we-hear-so-little-about-it/
A Deadly Police Raid in Rio Show How Bolsonaro's Policies Are Wreaking Havoc in Brazil
BY DAVID MIRANDA MAY 8, 2021 1:49 PM EDT
Miranda is a congressman for Rio de Janeiro state from Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party
When Jair Bolsonaro successfully campaigned for the Brazilian presidency in 2018, one of his central promises was to unleash the police in the favelas (slums) which are home to most of the nation’s poor and largely Black citizens. The long-time far-right Congressman, on the campaign trail, vowed greater violence in the name of fighting drug gangs and promised to provide even stronger legal immunities to police officers who kill innocents.
On Thursday, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilians once again witnessed the horrific and savage consequences of that approach, one that strongly echoes that of Filipino strongman Rogerio Duterte. Duterte has become globally notorious (and domestically popular) for championing extra-judicial police slaughter that kills drug dealers and law-abiding, working-class residents alike. Bolsonaro, an admirer of authoritarianism wherever it emerges, has for years been eager to import that model to Brazil.
In Jacarezinho—one of Rio’s largest favelas where I grew up and my family still lives—police entered at dawn on May 6 with the stated goal of arresting drug traffickers. The invading force resembled more an army at war than a conventional police operation. They used armored helicopters, tank-like vehicles, and around two hundred heavily armed officers.
By the time they left nine hours later, at least twenty-nine people were dead. One of the dead was a police officer, the rest lived in the favela. Bolsonaro’s Vice President, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, immediately claimed, without presenting any evidence, that all the dead were “gang members.”
It was the deadliest police operation in the city’s history. Two people riding a nearby subway were wounded by stray bullets. Many of Jacarezinho’s 40,000 residents spent the day locked in their homes utterly terrorized by police forces claiming to bring security to their lives as they invaded a home of a family unrelated to the drug trade, and shot in front of their 9-year-old daughter an unarmed man who had fled into the house.
More:
https://time.com/6047032/jair-bolsonaro-crime-policies-brazils-favelas/
Trial hearings begin on Salvadoran massacre U.S. may have known about
May 6, 2021
by Rhina Guidos, Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON — An expert witness testified to the "illegal" presence of a high-ranking U.S. military adviser who may have known about the plot to kill nearly 1,000 civilians who perished in El Mozote, El Salvador, nearly 40 years ago.
Terry Karl, a Stanford University professor and expert witness who has reviewed thousands of documents on the Dec. 11, 1981, massacre, said during the late-April and early May hearings in El Salvador that the presence of U.S. Sgt. Maj. Allen Bruce Hazelwood near the scene of the massacre was not only illegal, but knowledge of it would have brought U.S. military aid to the Central American nation to a halt.
In the 1980s, the U.S. largely funded the Salvadoran government's involvement — to the tune of almost $1 million a day — in the war against armed-leftist rebels because it feared the formation of a communist bloc close to the United States.
U.S. Catholic leaders were vocal opponents of the aid, often lobbying Congress or protesting in Washington.
Officially, the war began in 1980 and ended with peace accords in 1992, although political strife had been brewing in El Salvador since the 1970s because of large-scale socioeconomic disparities.
. . .
The hearing also revealed that the United States knew Salvadoran forces used napalm against the population, even though the incendiary gel, which burns the skin, was banned for use against civilians by the United Nations in 1980.
More:
https://www.ncronline.org/news/world/trial-hearings-begin-salvadoran-massacre-us-may-have-known-about
Armed Groups Attacking Protesters in Colombia
Concentration in support of the Colombian people held this Thursday in the Retiro Park, in Madrid. | Photo: EFE
Published 6 May 2021
The most recent attack occurred on Wednesday in Pereira, capital of the department of Risaralda, in the Eje Cafetero, where three young people were seriously wounded by unknown assailants who shot them from a vehicle.
Colombian social organizations and citizens have denounced that armed groups have attacked participants in protests against the Government. They demand an end to police brutality and measures to improve living conditions.
In several parts of the country, there have been reports of intimidation of demonstrators by armed men allegedly opposed to vandalism, and in some, they have even been shot at.
"Right now there are expressions of violence that completely aggravate the situation because we don't know who are the ones threatening, who are persecuting, who are shooting and who are killing," analyst Jairo Libreros, professor at the School of Government of the Externado University of Colombia, told EFE.
The most recent attack occurred on Wednesday in Pereira, capital of the department of Risaralda, in the Eje Cafetero, where three young people were seriously wounded by unknown assailants who shot them from a vehicle.
More:
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Armed-Groups-Attacking-Protesters-in-Colombia-20210506-0016.html
(Geez, you'd almost think there have been paramilitary groups operating in Colombia for decades, handling grotesque acts of terrorism against the people, allied closely to the right-wing military and right-wing politicians, called "paramilitaries" or more truthfully, "death squads." You'd almost remember learning sometimes they even act in tandem with the military, handling vicious tasks the military doesn't want to be associated with.)
Son of the soil Pedro Castillo promises a presidency for Peru's poor
Son of the soil Pedro Castillo promises a presidency for Peru’s poor
Dan Collyns in Chugur
@yachay_dc
Wed 5 May 2021 06.30 EDT
Next month’s runoff election pits the 51-year-old teacher against the far-right daughter of the country’s 90s autocrat
By law, any president of Peru must be born on Peruvian soil. But few of the country’s past leaders know that soil like the frontrunning candidate in the current electoral race – the son of Andean peasant farmers, who grew up in poverty.
On a recent morning, Pedro Castillo wore a woollen poncho, sandals made from old car tyres and a traditional wide-brimmed straw hat as he tended to his cows on his farm in Chugur, a tiny hamlet seven hours’ drive from the city of Cajamarca.
“When you see that your children wear the same clothes, sleep in the same clothes, wake up and go to school again in the same clothes, you realise the political class has been using you,” he told the Guardian, using the homely language that chimes with rural Peruvians who feel left behind by the country’s two decades of economic growth.
That gap between rural and urban Peru has only been widened by the country’s brutal Covid-19 outbreak which has left 1.8m officially confirmed cases, more than 61,000 deaths, and a healthcare system on its knees. Rising death rates have recently forced the return of the restrictions which made millions destitute at the outbreak of the pandemic.
. . .
Amid mudslinging on both sides, Castillo has been labelled a “terrorist” but responds that the “real terrorists are hunger, misery, neglect, inequality, injustice”.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/may/05/pedro-castillo-peru-presidential-candidate
European retailers urge Brazil to drop Amazon squatters bill
Dozens of companies are threatening to stop using Brazilian produce amid concerns that the proposed law could accelerate deforestation.
Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest last year reached its highest level since 2008
. . .
What is the controversial proposed law?
The bill is an expansion of a 2009 law that granted land rights to so-called "land-grabbers" living in the Amazon rainforest.
Critics of the proposed legislation have warned that it would undermine anti-deforestation efforts by rewarding squatters in the Amazon.
On the other hand, proponents argue that the bill could force such properties to comply with deforestation laws by bringing the settlers into the legal system.
Land-grabbers in the rainforest — who occupy properties illegally — typically cut down areas for agricultural use.
. . .
Bolsonaro has also repeatedly pledged to increase agricultural activity in the region.
More:
https://www.dw.com/en/european-retailers-urge-brazil-to-drop-amazon-squatters-bill/a-57431273
Supermarkets threaten Brazilian boycott over Amazon destruction
By Harry Holmes
5 May 2021
2 min read
Conservation groups have warned a potential new Brazilian law will legitimise illegal land grabs
British supermarkets have threatened to boycott Brazilian products if the national congress passes a bill to increase the speed of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
Nearly 40 food companies have signed an open letter calling on Brazil’s legislature to reject a bill which would allow farmers legal rights over land occupied without authorisation.
Conservation groups have warned the new law will legitimise illegal land grabs and pave the way for more forests to be burned for agriculture such as beef and soy.
The same group of companies – including Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Aldi, Lidl, M&S, Co-op and Waitrose – made a similar threat last year but withdrew it after the Brazilian government removed the bill.
Moy Park and Pilgrim’s UK – both owned by Brazilian meat giant JBS – are also signatories. Activists have pressured supermarkets to drop JBS as a supplier after numerous alleged links to Amazonian destruction.
More:
https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/sourcing/supermarkets-threaten-brazilian-boycott-over-amazon-destruction/655749.article
Human Rights, Bolivia, and the Best of Harvard Law
By The Crimson Editorial Board
This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board.
4 hours ago
In the last few months alone, we’ve seen several high-profile Harvard Law School graduates grace the news with unseemly headlines: vacationing during a massively impactful crisis, distorting the truth through non-stop falsities, or engaging in inappropriate use of governmental resources. The trend makes it tempting to view Harvard’s legal education as a corrupting force.
But it isn’t, or at least it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes our Law School can make us proud, with brave alumni who showcase the very best of our ideals and ambitions — the very best of Harvard, even.
Last month was such an occasion. After over a decade’s worth of litigation, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic secured a landmark victory: A federal judge upheld a 2018 ruling that sentenced former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and former Bolivian defense minister José Carlos Sánchez Berzaín to $10 million in compensatory damages for their role in the 2003 massacre of Indigenous Bolivians.
The decision brings some closure to a dark chapter of Bolivian history, a tiny but long overdue slice of justice to the families of the victims of state-organized violence. It offers some solace to those who, in the aftermath of massive protests against a government plan to export natural gas through Chile, witnessed how their own government instructed the military to turn violently against its own citizens.
The original suit, filed in 2007 by HLS’s International Human Rights Clinic at the insistence of then second-year student Thomas B. Becker, charged Bolivia’s former officials with ordering the killings of 67 civilians. The two officials had fled Bolivia for the United States, but Becker believed that justice could follow them here and he found a way to make it happen. This case marked the first time that a former head of state sat before his accusers in a U.S. human rights trial.
More:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/5/5/best-of-harvard-law/
~ ~ ~
Earlier article, worth reading for information. If you feel moved, pleases read the press release which gives a much deeper view of what happened in this outrageous assault in Aymara citizens ordered by a US-educated and supported monster who has fled to and found refuge, anlong with his defense minister in the US after his atrocities.
February 20, 2018
Clinic’s case against former Bolivian president for role in 2003 massacre to proceed to trial
Posted by Susan Farbstein and Tyler Giannini
We’ve got thrilling news today: After more than 10 years of litigation, our case, Mamani et al. v. Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzaín, is finally headed to trial. This is an historic event. It’s the first time a former head of state will stand trial in the U.S. for human rights abuses.
In less than two weeks, on March 5, the former President and Minister of Defense of Bolivia will stand trial in Federal District Court in Florida for their roles in a 2003 civilian massacre in Bolivia. And our clients will be in the courtroom to see it, and to testify.
Plaintiffs Eloy Rojas Mamani and Etelvina
Ramos Mamani and their children, Rosalia
Rojas Ramos, Heide Sonia Rojas Ramos,
Nancy Rojas Ramos, Maruja Rojas Ramos,
and Marlene Rojas Ramos (named after her
sister who died), with Thomas Becker, JD ’08,
at top right.
We would not be here without the work of our partners, listed below, and dozens of clinical students who have contributed over the years, from fact-finding to drafting briefs to thinking strategically about how to move the case forward. Foremost among those students is Thomas Becker, JD ’08. This case started as a seed of an idea in his mind, and he has been working tirelessly on it ever since.
Most importantly, we want to thank our clients, who have kept their wounds open so this case could move forward on behalf of those they lost, and the many other Bolivians whose lives were irrevocably damaged by the actions of these defendants. They inspire us every day with the extraordinary courage and dedication they have shown at every step of this journey.
Please see below for the press release in English and Spanish.
More:
https://hrp.law.harvard.edu/alien-tort-statute/clinics-case-against-former-bolivian-president-for-role-in-2003-massacre-to-proceed-to-trial/
former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, nicknamed "Goni".
~ ~ ~
Goni on Trial
U.S. economic and political intervention defined the political career of former Bolivian president Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada. Now, in an unprecedented move, the U.S. is putting him on trial.
Jacquelyn Kovarik
March 22, 2018
Gonzalo "Goni" Sánchez de Lozada, ex-president of Bolivia (From the documentary "Un Minuto de Silencio" )
Former Bolivian president Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada and his one-time defense minister Jose Carlos Sánchez Berzain took the defendants’ stand on Tuesday March 6 in a United States civil trial in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. This marks the first time in U.S. history that any former head of state has been put on trial before his accusers in a U.S. court. Tracing Goni’s decades-long relationship with U.S. politicians, economists, and political consultants makes this case all the more surprising—and emphasizes the importance of confronting U.S. intervention in modern Bolivian politics as this case unfolds in the following weeks.
The case against Goni alleges that the Bolivian military massacred over 60 citizens in October 2003 in El Alto, a case commonly referred to as “Black” or “Red” October. This violence marked the culmination of the Bolivian Gas War, when El Alto neighborhood organizations, Indigenous Aymara peasants, and citizens across various sectors of Bolivian society rose up to protest the privatization of natural gas reserves under Goni’s government. The bloody clashes between protesters and the Bolivian army would eventually lead to Goni’s forced resignation, two other short-lived presidencies, and finally the election of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president Evo Morales, who is of Aymara descent and remains president of Bolivia today.
On the first day of the trial, Goni and Berzaín sat quietly as they listened to various Aymara survivors testify about the repression and violence that they and their families endured almost 15 years ago. “This trial will offer Indigenous Aymara people, who have historically been excluded from justice, a chance to testify about events that led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries,” said Beth Stephens of the Center of Constitutional Rights, one of the attorneys of the eight families presenting the case against Goni, in a press release. The U.S. court’s decision to try Goni is an enormous victory for human rights activists, and especially for Indigenous peoples of Bolivia.
The trial results from a case that has been in various stages of litigation for over a decade. Bolivian plaintiffs were able to file Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA) suits against Goni and Berzaín in the United States. This was possible due to a U.S. federal law that grants its federal courts jurisdiction to hear lawsuits filed by non-U.S. citizens for crimes that violate international law—in this case, the crime of state-led extrajudicial killings.
That Goni is being tried in a U.S. court is not only unprecedented, but incredible, considering the context of the case. The October Massacre was the end result of years of boiling tensions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples over privatization—of natural resources and of elements of the Bolivian government—tensions that are deeply intertwined with the long history of U.S. presence in Bolivia. The series of events prior to the Gas War, the massacre itself, and the subsequent protection of Goni in the United States for almost 15 years before his trial all point to the United States’ ever-present hand in Bolivian politics. The significance of Goni being tried in a U.S. court, given these facts, is difficult to overstate.
More:
https://nacla.org/news/2018/03/22/goni-trial
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