Daily Headlines: October 26, 2012

* Brazil: Members of the Guarani-Kaiowa indigenous group have allegedly threatened with committing mass suicide in order to stop being evicted from their ancestral lands.

* Cuba: The government continued its immigration reforms by easing restrictions on Cubans who fled from the island in the early 1990s.

* Mexico: The U.S. returned 4000 pre-Columbian artifacts that had been either stolen or looted from Mexico.

* Argentina: At least five people died in Neuquen after a supermarket roof caved in on Thursday night.

Video Source – YouTube via Survival International

Online Sources- Deutsche Welle, Reuters, The Australian, AFP

Daily Headlines: April 20, 2012

* Honduras: Several thousand poor farmers occupied lands as part of a dispute with large landowners and the government while protests took place nationwide yesterday “against the high cost of living and the rapid increase of fuel prices.”

* Brazil: Finance Minister Guido Mantega presented a deal to the International Monetary Fund that would give the organization more support from the BRICS group of emerging economic countries.

* Dominican Republic: Health officials are scrambling to control a cholera outbreak that has already killed at least one person.

* Panama: The crew of a Carnival Cruise Lines ship has come under fire after ignoring calls for help from a stranded Panamanian fishing vessel.

Video Source – YouTube via teleSUR

Online Sources- BBC News, Tico Times, Reuters, USA TODAY, CBC News

Daily Headlines: March 30, 2012

* Honduras: At least 13 people are dead after a prison fire and riot in San Pedro Sula, which occurred weeks after over 350 inmates died as a result of a massive blaze in a Comayagua prison.

* Brazil: Is a new law in Bahia state banning public funding of concerts with “offensive music” insulting women and gays necessary or censorship?

* Guatemala: An estimated 10,000 indigenous demonstrators marched into Guatemala City and urged the government to help settle a series of land disputes.

* U.S.: Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio denied that he endorsed presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in order to be the former governor’s pick for vice president.

Video Source – YouTube via JoAnaProducciones

Online Sources- Huffington Post, Fox News Latino, BusinessWeek, CNN, The Latin Americanist

Daily Headlines: January 23, 2012

* U.S.: The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lower court decision that would’ve allowed for the redrawing of Texas Congressional districts based on the state’s growing Latino population.

* Cuba: Berta Soler, the head of the Ladies in White dissident group, accused the government of “murdering” prisoner Wilman Villar Mendoza who died last week after going on a hunger strike.

* Brazil: Authorities allowed families in Sao Paulo’s Pinheiros favela to return and pick up their belongings after police raided the “sprawling settlement of landless workers” yesterday.

* Chile: In a unanimous decision the Chilean Supreme Court convicted a pair of retired military generals of illegally selling weapons to Croatia in 1992.

Image Source – Flickr via jasleen_kaur (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Online Sources – Reuters, Al Jazeera English, ABC News, Chicago Tribune

Another Brazilian environmental activist slain

At least five environmental activists have been killed in Brazil over the past month with the latest killing occurring this week.

Obede Loyla Souza, described by the AP as a “landless peasant activist”, was shot dead in his residence located in the Amazon state of Para. Souza and other landless peasants helped organize a settlement in 2008 called Esperanca, (Hope in Portuguese), in an area of unclaimed farmland. They farmed on small plots of land and faced constant danger from illegal loggers in the area.

Local land rights groups suspect that Souza’s death may be linked to his work. The local Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) claimed that Souza recently received death threats after he confronted several loggers illegally chopping down trees. The CPT further denounced that on the day of his death a suspicious “van with tinted windows” entered Hope. Yet one local police official claimed that Souza’s murder was not linked to the land conflict but instead due to an “internal motive.”

The recent spike in deaths of environmental activists (including two eyewitnesses to one of the murders) has caught the attention of the federal government. According to Brazzil Magazine president Dilma Rousseff ordered this month the deployment of soldiers into several Amazon states including Para and Rondonia where the activists have been murdered. Yet it may be a short-term solution for the long-term problem of land rights in Brazil as mentioned by Amnesty International (AI):

“As Brazil’s economy continues to boom and rural land is increasingly being sought for agriculture and other development, the authorities must ensure that human rights abuses against local communities come to an end,” said (AI researcher) Patrick Wilcken.



“The authorities must complete the region’s land-reform process and bring long-term security to the threatened communities.”

Image- Reuters via The Guardian (“Confiscated illegally logged timber floats down the Guam river delta in Pará, Brazil.”)
Online Sources- Brazzil Magazine, Amnesty International, MSNBC, InSight Crime, Folha.com, BBC News

Paraguayans protest “Moonie” land control

One of the biggest problems in the impoverished country of Paraguay is the concentration of land in the hands of a few. (According to the BBC, less than "2% of landowners are said to control 70% of the arable land.”) It is therefore no surprise that land reform is a hot topic in the landlocked state and often the reason for frequent demonstrations.

Last week, about 2000 protestors blocked the national highway and called for the distribution of land owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. The protest led to a brief yet massive bottleneck on the road connecting the capital city of Asuncion to the rest of Paraguay. The demonstrators- mostly peasants from the western part of the country- demanded to meet with President Fernando Lugo or else they would march into Asuncion.

The land in question- about 128,000 acres- had been expropriated in 2005 for residents of Puerto Casado yet a high court two years later ordered the return of that land to a firm owned by Moon. That company pledged to give a little over half that land to the peasants, yet the protestors claimed that the land is sparse and would divide their community.

The land claimed by the demonstrators is a drop in the bucket compared to the vast land holdings controlled by Moon:

The Unification Church owns more than 600,000 hectares (1.48 million acres) in northern Paraguay, near other holdings in Brazil.

The cult acquired the land in 2000 for an environmental and tourism project…

The Unification Church, founded in 1954 by Moon, has been accused of human rights violations and questionable financial dealings in several countries.

The church has extensive property holdings around the world, including businesses and land.

Image- ultimahora.com
Online Sources- ultimahora.com, univision.com, LAHT, BBC News, IPS

Bachelet Addresses Indigenous Clash

President Michelle Bachelet addressed Chileans yesterday following the death of Fabian Facundo Mendoza Collio in the La Araucania region on Wednesday.

Mendoza, a Mapuche Indian, was killed after he resisted eviction from an estate known as La Laguna by the Chilean police. Eight Mapuche and three police officers were injured in the clash that broke out following Mendoza's death. Additionally, an agriculture warehouse in the area was set on fire, causing approximately $1 million in damages.

“Nothing justifies violence in La Araucania," Bachelet remarked. She sent her condolences to Mendoza's family. "It must be understood that the only way to resolve the legitimate historical demands of the Mapuche people is through dialogue,” she stated. The police officer who killed Mendoza was detained pending an investigation into the incident. The government also announced plans to send a special delegation to the area to "work with people on the ground", as well as to ensure a more "profound" implementation of the government's indigenous policy.

The Mapuche have vowed to continue to seize land in Southern Chile that they say is rightfully theirs.

Online sources- Associated Press, Latin American Herald Tribune
Image- Latin American Herald Tribune

Honduras: Nine killed over land dispute

Nine people were killed in the northern Honduran town of Colon during a clash between farmers and landowners. The incident- which occurred yesterday- involved 79-acre farm cooperative which had been occupied by about 400 families. Investigators are looking into the deadly dispute.

According to a campesino leader, there may be as many as fourteen dead from yesterday’s incident, and a local policeman has been blamed as the “chief instigator”:

On Sunday, armed men firing guns stormed into a farming cooperative at Silin. The cooperative's members chased the men into a home and lit it on fire, burning six people to death, leftist lawmaker Rafael Alegria said.

It was unclear if the home's occupants were among those dead. Three men were also found stabbed along a nearby road.

Reuters claims that “conflicts between peasants and landowners are frequent” in Honduras; in 2006, a human rights group claimed that one community leader was forced to sign over lands after being threatened at gunpoint.

Image- fao.org

Sources (English)- MSNBC, Human Rights First, Reuters UK

Sources (Spanish)- Milenio

Daily Headlines: June 26, 2008

* Brazil: According to Merrill Lynch there are more millionaires in Brazil than in any other Latin American country.

* Mexico: First it was people crossing the border into Mexico in ordered to buy cheap gasoline. Now it’s Texan real estate firms trying to beat the housing slump by selling property to Mexicans.

* U.S.: Police in a South Carolina town are investigating who set fire to a Puerto Rican flag that hung off a private house.

* Cuba: The country’s first ever Gay Pride parade was abruptly canceled after it did not receive the green light from the island’s government.

Image- New York Times (“Inside the Daslu department store in São Paulo, Brazil, where the wealthy gather to mingle and consume.”)

Sources- GreenvilleOnline.com, Queerty, People’s Daily Online, Bloomberg, The Latin Americanist

Brazil: Jury overturns verdict in nun murder

A Brazilian jury acquitted a rancher who was convicted last year in the killing of nun/activist Dorothy Stang. Vitalmiro Vastos de Moura was sent to twenty years in jail along with Rayfran das Neves for killing Stang. Yet de Moura was set free with testimony from das Neves who claimed that de Moura did not give him the gun used to murder Stang in 2005.

Stang’s family was understandably disappointed with the court’s decision:

Sister Dorothy's sister Marguerite Hohm had watched the two-day long trial from her home in the US via a live internet feed.

"I saw the judge shaking hands with the defendants and I didn't understand what was going on," Ms Hohm told the Associated Press news agency. "We're very saddened."

Stang had allegedly been the target of Brazilian ranchers who disliked her opposition to the exploitation of poor and indigenous peoples by large landowners.

Sources- The Latin Americanist, Los Angeles Times, Guardian UK, BBC News, earthtimes

Image- MSNBC

Daily Headlines: January 23, 2008

* Commuting Mexico City women tired of being goosed and ogled now have a new option – female-only buses.

* Venezuela’s government is on alert to combat food smuggling across the border into Colombia.

* Landless framers in Brazil invaded a ranch formerly owned by a drug baron.

* United Nations soldiers should not withdraw early from Haiti according to a U.N. official.

Sources- Monsters & Critics, International Herald Tribune, Reuters

Image- MSNBC (“A bus with a sign reading "service exclusive for women" drives through the streets of Mexico City last week.”)

Daily Headlines: November 28, 2007

* Puerto Rican singer Noelia said in an interview that she has become a stronger person after a sex tape scandal broke out months ago.

* Bolivia’s Water Minister was fired after photos revealed him supposedly in the embraces of a prostitute.

* Seven people were killed, forty were injured, and thirty continue missing after an Ecuadorian mine explosion.

* Mexican officials have received a request from the U.S. to extradite recently captured drug smuggler Sandra Avila.

* Brazil's petroleum agency headquarters were entered by a land right’s group upset at the auctioning of oil exploration blocks.

Sources (English)- Latin Gossip, Xinhua, Reuters, Bloomberg

Sources (Spanish)- Voy Music, El Diario/La Prensa

Image- moldova.org

Brazil: 27 years prison for U.S. nun killer

A Brazilian jury upheld the conviction of the gunmen who murdered nun and activist Dorothy Stang in 2005. Rayfran das Neves argued in his retrial that he shot Stang in self-defense, yet prosecutor Edson Cardoso said that das Neves’ alibi was a weak attempt to absolve the intellectual masterminds behind her death:

"No half-way intelligent person is going to believe that an elderly person -- and (das Neves) confessed she reached into her bag for a bible -- could have threatened him," said Cardoso.

Stang spent the previous four decades of her life defending the rights of poor settlers in Brazil’s rainforest area from wealthy landowners. Prosecutors have linked two ranchers who paid das Neves $25,000 to kill Stang yet it's believed that there was a wider conspiracy against her.

Sources- BBC News, ABC News, Associated Press, The Latin Americanist, Reuters

Image- BBC News

Brazil: Protests escalate over indigenous communities and land reform

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took a break from burying the hatchet with Hugo Chavez in order to promise helping indigenous people and landless Brazilians who have increased their protests against the government.

Approximately 1500 indigenous Brazilians camped out in front of the Congress building in Brasilia in order to protests against infrastructure projects that they feel are hurting them. “How would you feel about a gas pipeline or a road through your back yard,” said one indigenous leader against the government’s policy.

Meanwhile, hundreds of activists clamoring for land reform invaded the National Agrarian Reform Institute building while others took over farms in several Brazilian provinces. According to a statement from the Landless Rural Workers' Movement:

“The movement demands the federal government meet its obligation to settle 150,000 families living under plastic sheets throughout the country in the name of the struggle for agrarian reform.”

Links- Reuters AlertNet, Guardian UK, UPI, International Herald Tribune, Monsters & Critics

Image- BBC News