Daily Headlines: September 19, 2016

* Peru: The San Sebastian Church in Cuzco, which was built in the 16th century, was almost completely destroyed by a fire purportedly caused by a short circuit.

* Latin America: A Mexican boy’s stand at an anti-gay rights demonstration wasn’t the only image at a protest in Latin America that went viral last week.

* Venezuela: President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela said OPEC member states and non-cartel oil producing countries are “close” to agreeing to a plan to stabilize oil prices.

* Argentina: Third time could be the charm for Argentina in the Davis Cup finals after their team knocked out defending champions Great Britain in the semifinals.

YouTube Source – No Comment TV (“The historic San Sebastian church, in Cuzco, Peru has been gutted by fire. Dozens of works of art, including those by celebrated local artist Quispe Tito were destroyed in the flames.”)

Online Sources – The Washington Post, CNN, The Latin Americanist, Reuters, ESPN

Daily Headlines: August 10, 2016

* Brazil: Amid the fervor of the Rio Games, Brazil’s Senate voted in favor of holding an impeachment trial against suspended President Dilma Rousseff.

* Puerto Rico: Tourism in Puerto Rico has weakened over the past few months reportedly as a result of the Zika virus outbreak that has affected most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

* Chile: President Michelle Bachelet in a televised address proposed reforming the private pension system created under the rule of former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

* Venezuela: Opposition politicos are none too pleased with the Venezuelan electoral commission’s decision to likely hold a possible recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro in 2017 instead of later this year.

YouTube Source – AFP

Online Sources – euronews, Travel Weekly, Deutsche Welle, Yahoo News

Daily Headlines: July 14, 2016

* Chile: Survivors of Colonia Dignidad, a German enclave in Chile where dissidents where executed during the rule of strongman Augusto Pinochet, called on the area to become a memorial site instead of its current status as a tourist attraction.

* Brazil: The Brazilian government boosted security funding for the upcoming Rio Games by $24 million and added 3000 troops for the event, while French intelligence claimed they were informed of a planned attack against that country’s Olympics team.

* Nicaragua: The Contras and Sandinistas are about to battle each other again though this time it will be in the voting booths for president instead of the military battlefields.

* Colombia: Atletico Nacional is another step closer to capturing their first Copa Libertadores title in twenty-seven years after easily eliminating Sao Paulo of Brazil in the semifinals.

YouTube Source – Al Jazeera English (Video posted on November 2013).

Online Sources – Fox News Latino, UPI, BBC News, teleSUR English, Colombia Reports

Daily Headlines: January 19, 2016

* Latin America: Colombia enacted a law imposing harsher punishments against those convicted of attacking women with acid, while the Dominican opposition accused the government of doing little to combat femicides.

* U.S.: The Supreme Court accepted listening to arguments later this year over the legality of the DACA and DAPA immigration relief programs.

* Chile: Chilean prosecutors will reportedly reopen an investigation into the origins of the late dictator Augusto Pinochet's multimillion dollar fortune.

* Brazil: Another negative sign for Brazil’s economy as economists believe that inflation will rise by 7% this year.

YouTube Source – Thomson Reuters Foundation (Video uploaded on April 2015).
 
Online Sources – BBC News, Dominican Today, Fox News Latino, Bloomberg, NBC News

Daily Headlines: December 28, 2015 (Updated)

* South America: The El Niño weather phenomenon has been blamed for massive flooding in Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina as well as an elevated alert of forest fires in Colombia.

* Central America: Pope Francis called on Central American leaders to bring about a “timely solution to (the) humanitarian drama” of an estimated 5000 Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica.

Update: The SICA bloc of Central American states agreed to start a pilot program next month to help the stranded migrants travel legally northward to Mexico. (Link in Spanish).

* Haiti: The United Nations Security Council pushed Haitian officials to quickly reschedule a presidential runoff that was supposed to take place yesterday but has been indefinitely postponed.

* Chile: The Chilean government proposed eliminating a law enacted under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that provides the military with 10% of the country’s yearly copper exports.

YouTube Source – euronews

Online Sources including Update – UPI, NDTV, The Tico Times, teleSUR English, Jamaica Observe, Agencia EFE

Daily Headlines: December 14, 2015

* Brazil: Tens of thousands of protesters in scores of Brazilian cities participated yesterday in anti-government marches and called on embattled President Dilma Rousseff to resign.

* Venezuela: Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes rejected the possibility of the U.S. providing oil to Petrocaribe states should Venezuela opt to end the subsidized oil program.

* Ecuador: Ecuadoran officials will allow Swedish investigators to enter the South American country’s embassy in London and question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

* Chile: Police arrested a Chilean army veteran who admitted in a call-in radio show that he took part in the murder of eighteen political detainees during military rule in the 1970s.

YouTube Source – NTN24

Online Sources – Deutsche Welle, Inside Costa Rica, Reuters, ABC News

De Musica Ligera: Victor Jara on Stage

This past Thursday marked the 42nd anniversary of the military coup d’état in Chile that toppled the democratically elected civilian government. Whether September 13, 1973 should be a date for celebration or infamy continues to be a divisive issue for Chileans to this date. For supporters of the subsequent regime like congressman Ivan Moreira, Gen. Augusto Pinochet “saved the lives of an entire generation.” Yet detractors point to the thousands of political dissidents and activists tortured, murdered and disappeared during the twenty-seven year reign under strongman who died in 2006. One of those slain days after the coup was musician and artist Gonzalo Jara who was killed on this day in 1973.

The forty-year-old figure in the socially conscious Chilean New Song movement was kidnapped by state agents one day after the coup as and taken to a soccer stadium converted into a makeshift military prison. It is believed that intelligence chief Pedro Barrientos ordered the torture of Jara and then played Russian roulette with him. Barrios then shot Jara in the back of the head at point-blank range and ordered five soldiers to fire dozens of rounds into the body before the corpse was dumped in a Santiago street.

While Pinochet died in impunity, other military commanders have been corralled by the long of arm of the law. Barrientos died last month while serving 526 years of multiple prison terms for human rights abuses. Meanwhile the site were Jara’s bullet-ridden body was found has been transformed into a memorial with a plaque in his name as well as all “of the fallen” as a result of the military junta’s crackdown.

Below the page break is a Victor Jara concert that aired on Peruvian television some two months before his death. Aside from performing some of his music, Jara discusses his background and why he sang the type of folk songs that made him famous.

YouTube Source – chelo gonzalez
 
Online Sources (English) – BBC News, The New York Times, The Guardian 
 
Online Sources (Spanish) – La Tercera

Daily Headlines: September 8, 2015

* South America: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro expanded the partial border shutdown with Colombia that he claims is needed to combat smuggling and crime but has led to the return of at least 10,000 Colombians.

* Mexico: Two Mexican intelligence agents and two prison guards have been charged regarding their alleged roles in the jailbreak last July of Sinaloa drug capo Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

* Guatemala: TV comic turned candidate Jimmy Morales won last Sunday’s Guatemalan presidential election but was unable to prevent a runoff next month.

* Chile: A Chilean court upheld the conviction of two men involved in the killings of filmmaker Charles Horman and journalist Frank Teruggi shortly after the 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. 

YouTube Source – CCTV News

Online Sources – Bloomberg, Reuters, USA TODAY, JURIST

Guatemalan Women Go on Anti-Government Hunger Strike

The hunger strike is sometimes used as a form of protest in Latin America oftentimes to denounce government policies and actions. This year alone, former Chilean dissidents imprisoned during the Pinochet military regime went on a forty-one day hunger strike while Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez ended a 30-day fast last June. Guatemala has been no exception to this trend as two women commenced their own opposition hunger strike on August 14th.

Human rights activists Bárbara Hernández and Gabriela Flores have gone at least four days fasting to call for the resignation of scandal-plagued President Otto Pérez Molina as well as the postponement of the general election scheduled for September 6th.

“We act in solidarity with the grandfathers who have had to go with their kin to the morgue and identify their grandchildren who died in the midst of this violence caused by systemic corruption,” declared Hernández to the press last Friday as they began their protest from a tent in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Guatemala City.

“We overflowed with anger...and we are seeking the immediate resignation of the president who symbolizes impunity,” admitted Hernández who is a member of the local Unidad de Protección a Defensoras y Defensores de Derechos Humanos de Guatemala. (Flores, meanwhile, is a representative of the Asociación de Jóvenes para el Desarrollo y Rescate Social).

Both protesters also claimed to have “strong evidence” linking the former army commander turned president to “crimes of corruption and crimes against humanity.”
They suggested that any followers or sympathizers at home and abroad should campaign human rights groups and NGOs in their respective countries to ensure the safety of the strikers.

In an interview Hernández admitted that she and her colleague decided to go on a hunger strike after the Guatemalan Congress last week refused to strip Pérez of his presidential immunity. As we mentioned last June, Pérez is facing plenty of pressure over the corruption controversies against him and his cohorts:

Daily Headlines: July 30, 2015

* Mexico: At least 129 corpses in 60 graves have been found in Mexico since September 2014 though none belong to 43 missing Ayotzinapa students according to data from the attorney general’s office released on Monday.

* Latin America: The U.N.’s 2015 economic growth forecast for Latin America and the Caribbean was halved to 0.5%, which would be the lowest level in six years.

* Venezuela: President Nicolas Maduro called on the U.N. to mediate a border dispute with Guyana that the opposition claims is a distraction from Venezuela’s domestic problems.

* Chile: Twelve former Chilean soldiers were arrested and charged with burning to death two protesters marching against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1986.

YouTube Source – teleSUR English (“The 2011-2015 class of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers Training College graduated (on July 18th), with 43 fewer students than would have been the case had they not been forcibly disappeared 9 months ago, sparking a huge nationwide and international protest.”)

Online Sources – The Guardian, Reuters, Vice News

Daily Headlines: May 22, 2015

* El Salvador: Salvadoran ombudsman David Morales called for reopening the investigation into the 1980 murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the prosecution of “some of the people who participated in the crime.”

* South America: Chile’s ex-intelligence chief during the Pinochet regime, Manuel Contreras, was sentenced to 505 years in prison while thousands of Uruguayans marched to commemorate victims of the former military dictatorship.

* Mexico: The Mexican government cut its economic growth forecast for 2015 even though first quarter growth increased at the rate predicted by financial analysts.

* Bolivia: President Evo Morales is reportedly facing mounting opposition from his own indigenous political base.

YouTube Source – Rome Reports
 
Online Sources – Fox News Latino, SBS teleSUR English, Bloomberg, USA TODAY

The Weekender – Teruggi and Horman

“The Weekender” is our new feature where every weekend we hope to highlight a short film, movie or documentary pertaining to the Americas.

On January 28th, Chilean officials published a court ruling against two former intelligence agents involved in the murder of U.S. citizens Frank Teruggi and Charles Horman shortly after the 1973 military coup. The decision issued on earlier in the month ordered Pedro Espinoza to serve seven years behind bars while his accomplice, Pedro Espinoza, was sentenced to two years of police supervision.

According to the lengthy 276-page ruling, Chile’s intelligence considered the actions of economics student Teruggi and filmmaker Horman as “subversive” and ordered their detention. Horman was kidnapped six days after Gen. Augusto Pinochet ousted the civilian government and killed “by the Military Intelligence Battalion or the Army Intelligence Headquarters.” Teruggi became one of the thousands of people herded into the National Stadium in Santiago, tortured by the military and murdered.

The tribunal also found that a U.S. military group in Chile led by then-Navy captain Ray E. Davis helped carry out a “secret investigation” on Teruggi and Horman. Davis was indicted by a Chilean court in 2011 and ordered his extradition though it was later revealed that he was living in a nursing home in the South American country. Much like Pinochet, Davis died in impunity but questions continue to linger over U.S. involvement in the deaths of Teruggi and Horman.

“Frank, a charitable and peace-loving young man, was the victim of a calculated crime by the Chilean military, but the question of U.S. complicity remains yet to be answered,” said Teruggi’s sister, Janis Teruggi Page.

Horman’s widow, meanwhile, expressed hope that the Chilean justice system will focus on other suspected human rights abusers from the Pinochet era.

“I hope this ruling will strengthen prosecutions for these crimes and stop these types of crime,” said Joyce Horman in an interview after he ruling was made public.

“The memories are still very fresh in my mind. It’s been almost 42 years and for a longtime everyone resisted pursuing an investigation as long as possible,” she added.

In the following video below the page break, Joyce talks with journalist Bob Herbert about receiving harassment prior to the coup, reacting to her husband’s disappearance and seeking for justice in the deaths of Teruggi and Horman.

Daily Headlines: November 20, 2014

* Chile: A Chilean court ruled that the state should pay around $7.5 million to the families of thirty ex-political prisoners incarcerated on a remote island during the military rule of Augusto Pinochet.

* Venezuela: President Nicolás Maduro decreed twenty-eight laws this week including ones that would raise taxes on luxury items and increase international reserves.

* Mexico: President Enrique Peña Nieto will reportedly release details of his personal wealth following the controversy over first lady Angelica Rivera’s ownership of a $7 million mansion.

* Colombia: An agreement was reportedly reached for the liberation of a Colombian army general and four others captured by the FARC, and whose kidnapping led to the suspension of peace talks between the government and the rebels.

Video Source – YouTube user comunaburguesa (Footage circa 1973 of detainees at the prison on Chile’s Dawson Island, which was located near the southernmost tip of South America).

Online Sources – BBC News; Bloomberg; ABC News; The Guardian

Chile Gov’t to Propose Eliminating Amnesty Law

Chile’s government will reportedly propose overturning an amnesty law protecting former senior members of the country’s authoritarian military regime.

According to the Chilean media, the plan will be presented later today on the forty-first anniversary of the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet against the democratically elected government headed by President Salvador Allende.

The amnesty law has been in the books since Pinochet decreed it nearly five years following the September 11, 1973 coup that brought him into power.  Although some judicial decisions have circumvented the law and helped convict 260 people to prison for human rights abuses, only sixty have been sentenced due to protections offered by the amnesty law.

An estimated 1300 disappearances and 30,000 tortures took place during the seventeen years under Pinochet’s rule.  Most of them are believed to have taken place prior to the now-late ruler’s 1978 amnesty decree.

“Enough with the painful waiting and unjust silence...It is time to come together for the truth,” declared President Michelle Bachelet at an event this morning to as part of the commemorations of the 1973 golpe.

“Forty-one years have passed and the survivors and victims who saved their lives…are elderly people.  Most of them have died waiting for justice while others have kept silence,” added the president who was tortured at imprisoned and tortured at the infamous Villa Grimaldi detention center in 1975 and before fleeing into exile.

Chile: Gov’t Blames “Terrorists” for Bombing (Updated)

Chilean officials believe that an explosion in the Santiago subway system on Monday was a terrorist attack.

“This is an act that has all the hallmarks of a terrorist deed,” declared government spokesman Alvaro Elizalde regarding the incident that has left at least eight people injured including two in serious condition.

“There is no doubt. And it has been carried out with the intention of hurting innocent people,” he added.

 “I was having lunch, I felt the noise and we went out to see and we saw a lot of smoke, people running and shouting,” said Joanna Magneti, an eyewitness to the explosion that occurred at a fast food restaurant by the Military Academy metro station.

First responder Fernando Zapata told the press that among the wounded was a cleaning woman who lost several fingers due to the explosion.

Update: President Michelle Bachelet urged her countrymen to remain calm in light of the bombing on Monday.

"This is a cowardly act because it has as its objective to hurt people, create fear and even kill innocent people," said Bachelet to the press after she visited some of the injured at a Santiago medical clinic.

"We're going to use all the weight of the law, including the anti-terrorist law, because those responsible for these acts have to pay," she added.

Daily Headlines: September 8, 2014

* Argentina: Several thousand fans of Gustavo Cerati lined the streets of Buenos Aires on Friday to view the funeral procession of the late Argentine rock musician.

* Nicaragua: Officials claimed that a meteorite most likely caused a blast that left a forty foot wide crater in Managua on Saturday night.

* Chile: Police in Santiago clashed with vandals following a largely peaceful protest yesterday to commemorate the victims of human rights abuses during the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

* El Salvador: Ex-President Francisco Flores is under house arrest after he turned himself in to face corruption charges stemming from his alleged misappropriation of $15 million.

Video Source – YouTube user CadenaTres Espectáculos
 
Online Sources – The Telegraph; Reuters; The Latin Americanist; BBC News

Daily Headlines: August 18, 2014

* U.S.: A recent study concluded that Latino characters were represented in a scant 4.9% of movies released between 2007 and 2013 and “Latinos are the most likely to be sexualized on screen, with both male and female actors more apt to be asked to be partially or fully naked.”

* Brazil: The first poll since the death last Wednesday of presidential candidate Eduardo Campos showed incumbent Dilma Rousseff in a statistical tie in a hypothetical runoff against Campos' probable replacement, environmentalist Marina Silva.

* Ecuador: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced today that he plans to “soon” leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has resided in for the past two years.

* Chile: Ricardo Izurieta, the military general who succeeded the dictatorial rule of the late Augusto Pinochet, died Sunday at age 71.

Video Source – YouTube user MOVIECLIPS  (Scene from the 2011 ALMA Award-winning film "A Better Life").

Online Sources – The A.V. Club; NBC News; The Latin Americanist; The Huffington Post; Miami Herald

Daily Headlines: November 6, 2013

Note: Before we get to Wednesday’s headlines we would like to apologize for the inexcusable lateness of this post.

* Cuba: William Potts said that he would return to the U.S. twenty-nine years after he hijacked a commercial airliner and forced it to land in Cuba.

* Chile: The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Chilean government to pay $32,000 to an exiled man who was tortured during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

* Colombia: Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Holguin sent a note of protest to Russia regarding the alleged incursion of a pair of Russian jets into Colombian airspace last week.

* Mexico: U.S. officials have offered a $5 million reward for the capture of recently freed Mexican drug capo Rafael Caro Quintero.

Video Source – YouTube via Associated Press

Online Sources- Fox News Latino; UPI; The Guardian; ABC News

Daily Headlines: September 27, 2013

* Latin America: The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime found that Peru surpassed Colombia as the world’s top producer of coca, while Guatemalan Otto Perez Molina called for reforming global drug policy during his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.

* Chile: Chilean President Sebastian Piñera ordered the shutdown of a “luxury prison” where ten ex-senior officials who served under the late dictator Augusto Pinochet are serving sentences for human rights violations.

* U.S.: The National Association of Hispanic Journalists denounced a recent Fox News headline referring to U.S. citizens with undocumented parents as “children of the corn.”

* El Salvador: Two members of the Uighur Muslim ethnic minority who were released from the Guantanamo prison in April 2012 to El Salvador have reportedly left the Central American country.

Video Source – YouTube via user JewishNewsOne

Online Sources- Miami Herald; Huffington Post; Reuters; CSMonitor.com; Al Jazeera America

Chile: Widow of Charles Horman Seeks Justice

The widow of slain U.S. journalist Charles Horman said that she is continuing to seek for justice in his death that occurred days after the 1973 military coup d’état in Chile.

“(Charles Harmon’s) story is just as relevant today as it was 40 years ago, and makes the cases against those responsible just as pressing,” wrote Joyce Horman in an article published in The Guardian on the fortieth anniversary of the coup.

She described how she “feared the worst” when she discovered that her husband disappeared on September 17, 1973 and the frustration against who hindered her efforts to locate her husband.

“In the days and weeks that followed, Charles' father, Ed Horman, and I sought the help of American officials. Rather than aiding our search, however, they inquired about our social circles, and asked if we had been "annoying" the Chileans… Charles was transformed from an American citizen who was entitled to protection, to a vulnerable and disposable threat to powerful forces” by U.S. officials,” claimed Joyce.

One month after he was kidnapped, Joyce was informed that Charles was executed by the military and was buried in the walls of the national stadium in Santiago.
 
The Horman case became the inspiration for the award-winning 1982 film “Missing” by the director Costa-Gavras.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government would deny any involvement in Horman’s death until 1999 when a declassified 1976 State Department memo admitted, “U.S. intelligence may have played an unfortunate part.”  These and other documents were instrumental in the 2011 indictment in a Chilean court of ex-U.S. Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis.  Davis was accused of providing Chilean military intelligence agents with information on Horman and Frank Teruggi, another U.S. citizen killed in Chile in 1973.

Chilean officials last year approved the extradition from the U.S. of Davis but thus far it hasn’t been served.

“If and when that happens, it would set an important precedent for a US military officer to be charged by another country for the death of American citizens,” Joyce mentioned.