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http://aztlannet-news-blog.blogspot.com/2006/12/12-07-2006-aztlan-news-report.html
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http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/16189877.htm
Posted on Thu, Dec. 07, 2006
Study: Illegal immigrants boost economy, drain services
By John Moritz / Star-Telegram Austin Bureau
Email= jmoritz@star-telegram.com or John Moritz, 512-476-4294
AUSTIN — Undocumented immigrants pumped nearly $18 billion into the Texas economy last year and sent $420 million more to Austin in taxes than they received in state services, a report released Thursday by the state comptroller’s office shows.
The report, believed to be the first ever to calculate the cost of illegal immigration to a U.S. state, also found that local governments pay far more to provide services to the undocumented than they recoup in taxes, fees and other revenue sources.
“I was surprised by these findings myself,” said Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who will leave office next month after two terms as the state’s top finance official. “But there is little doubt that if we took undocumented immigrants out of the work force, $17.7 billion would disappear from the Texas economy.”
Strayhorn said that Texas’ tax structure, which places levies on consumption but not on income, makes it virtually impossible for undocumented immigrants to avoid paying state taxes. And in addition to paying sales tax, undocumented immigrants also purchase lottery tickets and pay motor fuels taxes, property taxes and other government levies, the report shows.
Further, illegal immigrants do not qualify for such state-backed services as food stamps, traditional Medicaid, public housing or cash assistance, Strayhorn said.
But that does not mean that immigrants who enter Texas illegally do not receive any government services. Some can qualify for emergency Medicaid services for childbirth or life-threatening ailments. Others are treated without reimbursement by public hospitals and clinics. And still others are incarcerated in county jails and state prisons for breaking the law after entering the country illegally.
The report’s finding that undocumented immigrants are an economic plus to Texas was greeted with skepticism by Cathie Adams, who heads the Texas Eagle Forum and has urged officials at all levels of government to implement policies that would clamp down on illegal immigration.
“I believe that the preparers of that report have totally lost track of reality,” Adams said. “There is no question in my mind that illegal aliens are a burden to taxpayers, especially middle-class taxpayers. There is an immeasurable amount of spending that is taking place to provide these folks with healthcare, education and all the rest.”
Austin activist Ana Yanez Correa, who organized rallies in the spring across the state on behalf of immigrants’ rights, said the report confirms what she has been saying since the immigration issue reached a rolling boil early in the year.
“The undocumented people who are here are working, they are contributing to the economy,” she said. “They are not here getting food stamps and all these government benefits. Even if they wanted to, the law does not allow them to.”
The 21-page report said that putting an exact dollar figure on the impact of illegal immigration was difficult because of the complexities of measuring that population. But it estimates that they contribute nearly $1.6 billion in revenues to the state, while using nearly $1.2 billion in services, a difference of about $420 million.
Public schools are forbidden to ask about a student’s citizenship status, and adults do not fill out federal census reports. But the report estimated that educating undocumented students from kindergarten through high school costs $957 million last year.
Robert Earley, senior vice president for public affairs at Fort Worth’s John Peter Smith Hospital, said it was equally difficult to measure the cost of providing healthcare for undocumented immigrants.
The public hospital system that serves Tarrant County does not require proof of citizenship as a condition of care if the patient pays for the service or has insurance.
“Undocumented does not mean indigent,” Earley said.
A person must be a legal resident to receive charity care except in emergencies, he said. The hospital also provides care at no cost to people with low or no income who are pregnant or in a school-based health program. JPS is currently conducting a study to determine if the cost of treating non-citizens can be measured, Earley said.
Terry Grisham, a spokesman for the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department, said it is also difficult to determine how many undocumented immigrants cycle through the county jail because there is no verification of citizenship.
“Every day, someone from the Border Patrol comes through the jail to see who’s eligible for deportation,” Grisham said. “If they’re in for public intoxication or some other crime without an actual victim, we hand them over. But if they’re in for something like murder, we’re going to keep and put them on trial.
“They can have them after they’ve served their sentences.”
To view the full report, go to www.cpa.state.tx.us
http://www.cpa.state.tx.us/specialrpt/undocumented/undocumented.pdf
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061207/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_paramilitaries
Thu Dec 7, 2006 @6:28 PM ET
Colombian pact with militias in shambles
By Toby Muse, Associated Press Writer
Bogota, Colombia - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's peace pact with far-right militias is in shambles after the paramilitary warlords, incensed at being transferred to a maximum-security prison, broke off talks.
Critics had long called the deal with drug-trafficking militia bosses responsible for some of Colombia's worst massacres a farce, though the three-year-old pact was credited with helping bring down the country's sky-high murder rate.
The paramilitaries ended negotiations Wednesday after the government forcibly moved them from a relatively comfortable former holiday camp on Dec. 1, claiming it had information of a possible escape plot. Uribe also accused the warlords of ordering assassinations from the center.
The crisis comes as Uribe faces a widening scandal over close ties between some of his top political allies and the paramilitary groups, which were originally created by landowners and drug-traffickers to wrest control of the countryside from leftist rebels.
The Supreme Court has been grilling members of Congress this week on their alleged ties with the murderous militias. Three members of Congress and a former congresswoman are already in jail on charges of creating and bankrolling paramilitary groups.
Following a stormy three-hour meeting on Wednesday in the maximum-security Itagui prison, 200 kilometers (125 miles) northwest of Bogota, the 59 imprisoned paramilitary warlords confronted the government's chief peace negotiator and a leading bishop known for his closeness with the illegal militias.
The paramilitary bosses' main complaint was that the government was not honoring its agreements, the head of the Organization of American States' mission in Colombia, who attended the meeting, told The Associated Press.
"We are in the worst crisis, the hardest to resolve, of all the crises that have occurred in this peace process," said Caramagna. "At this point, the consequences of all of this are unknowable."
The paramilitaries were keen to stress that though talks have ended, the peace process, which has seen more than 30,000 fighters lay down their weapons, would continue.
"There's talk of terrorist plans or unleashing rivers of blood, but we call on the demobilized fighters to understand that the breaking off of talks does not mean the end of the peace pact" said Ernesto Baez, an incarcerated paramilitary commander who has also acted as the spokesman for the group.
The government's peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, accepted the end of talks, saying that there was nothing more to negotiate.
He said the leaders' would now appear before special tribunals where they will be judged for their actions in the course of the conflict and, according to terms of the peace pact, receive no more than eight years in prison each.
Under the pact, the paramilitary bosses must confess to their crimes and pay reparations to the thousands of victims of their terror. They must also return land they stole from hundreds of thousands of people they forced to flee in a decades-long reign of terror.
So far, few have acknowledged such holdings and it remains unclear how the reparations can proceed without their cooperation.
The warlords are also demanding the government pass a law that would outlaw their extradition to the United States, where eleven are wanted on drug-trafficking charges.
But it is unclear how much leverage the warlords now wield, given that they are behind bars and that new paramilitary organizations are springing up across Colombia, many run by their former lieutenants.
One card they hold is information about who in the political class, the security forces and the business community worked closely with them.
"Undoubtedly, the information these leaders have they are using as an instrument to threaten," said Claudia Lopez, a newspaper columnist who has researched the paramilitaries. "But this is kind of like the Cold War where both sides were assured of mutual destruction because while they have the information that could reveal high-level ties, they also fear the government's power to extradite them."
Lopez said it is in the government's best interest to appear to be an honest broker in peace talks. Otherwise, she said, it will lose credibility, especially as it continues to battle Latin America's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The scandal of links between politicians and the paramilitaries, which the United States lists as a "foreign terrorist organization," continues to grow.
Uribe has been repeatedly forced to deny allegations he worked with the paramilitaries as a congressional commission begins investigating the accusations.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-colombia7dec07,1,3436935.story?coll=la-headlines-world
December 7, 2006
Colombia militias call off disarmament pact
By Chris Kraul, Times Staff Writer
Email= chris.kraul@latimes.com
Bogota, Colombia — Militia leaders told Colombia's top peace negotiator Wednesday that they were backing out of an agreement under which thousands of right-wing paramilitary soldiers have laid down their weapons, throwing the future of the three-year process into question.
The declaration, confirmed by a spokesman for President Alvaro Uribe and an associate of Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, came during a meeting of 59 paramilitary leaders with Restrepo at the Itagui maximum-security prison near Medellin.
Interior Minister Carlos Holguin told reporters that the leaders had been moved to the prison Friday from La Ceja, a resort turned prison farm, after reports surfaced of a possible jailbreak.
The paramilitary leaders were known to have been enraged by the transfer. At La Ceja, they had been given farm labor jobs and were allowed frequent visitors and access to cellphones.
"We directly notified the peace commissioner that this process is considered over," Ernesto Baez, one of the 59 detained leaders who sometimes acts as a spokesman for the group, told Caracol Radio.
It was unclear whether the leaders might instruct some of the 31,000 disarmed fighters to take up weapons again.
If the militia leaders renege on the peace deal, it will be a severe blow to Uribe's plan to settle this country's 40-year civil war. The paramilitaries were formed as a defense against leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and other groups. But they are alleged to have killed many leftist sympathizers, human rights activists and government officials in addition to guerrillas.
Uribe hoped to neutralize the paramilitaries first, and then make peace with or militarily defeat the rebels.
Rightist militia members began laying down their arms in July 2003, when Uribe's government and leaders of dozens of the groups agreed to peace terms.
The leaders agreed to make full confessions, give up all illegally obtained assets and halt military operations.
Two dozen of the militia leaders are wanted in the United States on charges of drug trafficking or organized crime. The leaders also agreed to face criminal trials in Colombia in exchange for light sentences and a promise from the Uribe government that they would not be extradited if they held to terms of the deal.
But pressure has been mounting on Uribe to take a harder line. Allegations have surfaced that the leaders have engaged in criminal operations since disarming and that at least four Colombia congressmen and a former governor had ties to illegal paramilitary groups.
The transfer to Itagui prison came a day after Uribe threatened to extradite those proved to have continued illicit activity after signing the peace deal.
Uribe has extradited more than 400 paramilitary and drug trafficking suspects to the U.S. since 2002, but many are relatively small players.
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Special correspondent Jenny Carolina Gonzalez contributed to this report.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061208/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/guantanamo_new_prison_4
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Guantanamo detainees going to new prison
By Michael Melia, Associated Press Writer
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba - The U.S. military transferred the first group of detainees on Thursday to a new maximum-security prison at Guantanamo Bay designed to restrict contact among the prisoners and prevent attacks on guards.
More than 40 detainees were brought to the $37 million prison perched on a plateau overlooking the Caribbean Sea from another maximum-security facility at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, said Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand.
The 178-cell prison, constructed beside another maximum-security prison built in 2004, will allow the base to phase out an older facility, Durand said.
U.N. human rights investigators and foreign governments have called on the United States to close the entire detention center because of widespread allegations of abuse of detainees by guards. The United States labels Guantanamo detainees "enemy combatants," which accords them fewer rights than other prisoners.
About 430 men are currently held at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban, including about 100 who have been cleared for release and are awaiting transfer to another country. Fewer than a dozen inmates have been charged with crimes.
The new prison was originally designed as a medium-security facility. But the military made several modifications, citing concerns raised by three suicides in June and a clash in May between guards and detainees armed with makeshift weapons.
It is now one of two facilities reserved for prisoners who are least compliant — an assessment the military says it bases on detainees' adherence to base rules rather than their cooperation with interrogators.
Detainees will be confined in individual cells with long, narrow windows overlooking areas with metal tables and stools that were meant to be shared spaces but will now be off-limits.
An open-air recreation area has been divided into smaller spaces, which will hold only one detainee at a time. Shower doors were redesigned to allow guards to shackle prisoners' hands and feet before they leave the stalls, and fencing was installed on second-tier catwalks to prevent detainees from jumping over the sides.
The new prison also has air conditioning, an onsite medical center and two rooms that will allow detainees to meet privately with their lawyers, Durand said.
Air conditioning has not been available at all the camps despite sweltering tropical heat. But the military is now installing it some prisons after detainees used broken fan blades as weapons in the melee in May.
U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kris Winter said the modifications will help make guards safer. In the last year and a half, the military has recorded more than 430 incidents in which detainees have thrown "cocktails" of bodily excretions at guards, as well as 225 physical assaults.
"As a commander, I don't like my folks being in danger every day," Winter said this week while leading journalists on a tour of the prison.
Guantanamo officials said the inability of the detainees to communicate with one another will also improve safety. Officials have said the May 18 ambush inside another facility on the base resulted from a plot hatched by detainees as word spread that guards were searching cells for contraband medication following two suicide attempts.
A defense attorney said the melee was sparked when guards tried to search prisoners' Qurans.
Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the jail, has also described June 10 suicides at a minimum-security facility at the base as a coordinated protest. Lawyers and human rights activists called the suicides an act of desperation.
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http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35763
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Thursday, December 07, 2006
MEXICO: Arrests Suffocate Oaxaca Uprising
By Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, Dec 7 (IPS) - "They have not defeated us, we are still strong and we'll soon show them," one of the leaders of the social uprising in the Mexican state of Oaxaca said Thursday. So far 20 people have died, another 50 are missing or 'disappeared' and 250 are in jail.
However, analysts say that after six months of protests and, now, a brutal crackdown, the rebellion is losing momentum.
"The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO) is alive and active, and will prove it in a gigantic demonstration" next Sunday in the state capital of the same name, Florentino López, one of the activists who is living on the run because there is a warrant out for his arrest, told IPS.
The march will be joined by human rights organisations, artistic, cultural and academic figures, and the leftwing Broad Progressive Front, made up of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the Workers' and Convergencia parties, which oppose the national government and support former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
The new government of conservative President Felipe Calderón held talks with the protesters at the beginning of the week, just hours after the arrest and imprisonment in a high-security facility of Flavio Sosa, one of the foremost leaders of APPO.
"The repression appears to have calmed things down, and even to have defeated us, but do not be fooled, as some expert politicians are who assess everything from their desks. The fuse here is still burning," López said.
"The peace they are proclaiming is deceptive," he added in a cellphone interview with IPS.
He was referring to a report by the Mexican League for the Defence of Human Rights that Oaxaca has become a police state, and that irregular armed groups are acting with complete impunity.
The uprising has been going on for six months, with the goal of removing Governor Ulises Ruiz of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Ruiz is widely accused of corruption and despotism.
However, since Calderón took over as Mexico's president on Dec. 1, Oaxaca has appeared to be relatively calm. But "It is the peace imposed by repression and the use of force," López claimed.
Edgar Cortez, secretary of the All Rights For All network , an umbrella group of local human rights organisations, told IPS that the arrests of Sosa and other leaders may drive the Oaxaca social movement to focus on their legal defence.
In his view, Calderón intends to weaken APPO and not to respond to its demands.
But observers' opinions vary. Political scientist Leo Zuckermann, of the private Centre for Economic Research and Teaching, said that Sosa's arrest was a signal from the new government that law-breakers would not be tolerated, even when they belong to movements that call for justice, like APPO.
Miguel Granados, a columnist for the magazine Proceso and the newspaper Reforma, said that Oaxaca "is in a state of emergency," with the police being the supreme power and armed civilian brigades in the streets, and that this has consolidated Governor Ruiz's position.
"It is possible that some people might suppose that the Oaxacan conflict is over. And it may, in fact, have concluded in a victory for Ruiz," Granados said.
APPO's last mass demonstration was on Nov. 25, when violent clashes occurred between police and activists, and at least 15 buildings, including the courthouse, the historical Juárez Theatre and the local offices of the foreign ministry, were set ablaze.
APPO has drawn harsh criticism for supposed violence on the part of activists, allegations that the umbrella group has consistently denied and that it blames on agents provocateurs.
Shortly after the clashes, APPO dismantled its last roadblocks in the city of Oaxaca, which had brought activity to a halt from May to October. It also handed over the University radio station, which it had occupied for months.
Meanwhile, arrests of APPO members have continued apace, while divisions have cropped up among the more than 300 groups that make up the organisation.
Eight of APPO's member groups, including several local trade unions like the ones at the Benito Juárez state university and the state social security institute, complained that within APPO are violent individuals who are no longer under the control of the organisation's collective leadership.
The groups said they would continue to participate in APPO, "but cautiously."
In the streets of Oaxaca, all activity is closely observed by some 5,000 federal police who were deployed to the city by the central government in October with the aim of putting an end to the unrest.
Teachers, whose strike prompted the creation of APPO last June, returned to class weeks ago, local businesses have reopened and life has slowly returned to a semblance of normality, and Governor Ruiz has come back to his offices, as have most of his associates and officials, as well as the local judges and legislators.
"But they have not beaten us. The causes of our uprising are still there, and APPO will return in force," said López.
He said his group would hold talks with the Calderón administration "despite the repression, because we are neither intransigent nor violent, although I have to say that our central demand, the governor's removal, will not be modified or set aside."
Besides, he added, it must not be forgotten that those who have been killed, arrested and tortured belonged to APPO, and that those responsible for the violence remain at large.
Miguel Álvarez, a former member of a commission that acted as a mediator in the 1990s between the government and the indigenous Zapatista guerrillas in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, said the conflict in Oaxaca has gotten out of the hands of APPO.
"APPO no longer has the same strength or support, and the group should be purged and must come up with more proactive proposals," he said.
The PRI, which governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000, continues to control all branches of the state in Oaxaca, which it has ruled for 77 years.
APPO accuses Governor Ruiz of cracking down on dissidents and activists, governing in an authoritarian manner, and having opponents arrested and tortured.
The new government has not made it clear what position it will take towards Ruiz, but lawmakers from his conservative National Action Party (PAN) argue that he should step down. The governor even faces opposition from within his own party.
Nevertheless, PAN and PRI legislators declined to remove him when they had a chance to do so in October, and the PRI now refuses to consider the possibility of his removal.
Along with Chiapas and Guerrero, Oaxaca is one of the poorest states in Mexico, with 150 of the country's 250 poorest municipalities. (END/2006)
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http://ww4report.com/node/2884
December 6, 2006
EZLN: global mobilization for Oaxaca, Dec. 22
Submitted by WW4 Report on Wed, 12/06/2006 - 22:35.
From the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) General Command, Dec. 2:
To the people of Mexico:
To the people of the world:
Brothers and Sisters:
The attack that our brothers, the people of Oaxaca suffered and suffer cannot be ignored by those who fight for freedom, justice and democracy in all corners of the planet.
This is why, the EZLN calls on all honest people, in Mexico and the world, to initiate, starting now, continual actions of solidarity and support to the Oaxacan people, with the following demands:
For the living reappearance of the disappeared, for the freedom of the detained, for the exit of Ulises Ruiz and the federal forces from Oaxaca, for the punishment of those guilty of torture, rape and murder.
We call to those in this international campaign to tell, in all forms and in all places possible, what has occurred and what is occurring in Oaxaca, everyone in their way, time and place.
We call for these actions to come together in a worldwide mobilization for Oaxaca on December 22, 2006.
The people of Oaxaca are not alone. We have to say so and demonstrate it, to them and to everyone.
Democracy!
Freedom!
Justice!
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee - General Command of
the Zapatista Army of National Liberation
Insurgent Subcommander Marcos
Mexico, December of 2006
From APPO, Dec. 5:
The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca greets with joy the initiative that the EZLN has taken calling to a great world-wide mobilization in solidarity with our people. A great attack against the democratic forces of the mother country is planned today by the extreme right in the political class, and a symptom of that attack is the state of emergency that exists in Oaxaca, the capital of the resistance.
We salute the EZLN and the Other Campaign, so that together we may fortify the unity of all those who refuse to submit [inconformes], the destitute... those without land, with no roof, so that as a single being we can overcome our common enemy. We believe, companer@s, this is our greatest task.
Brothers and sisters of the EZLN, in Oaxaca the state government in complicity with the federal government (a complicity sealed with blood) have [carried out] untied a ferocious persecution against our people without distinction. Today our APPO does not have a place to meet, there is no street in Oaxaca where we can pronounce ourselves without later having out companer@s end up in jail. Oaxaca lives a militarized state... The APPO today is in the dark at night, knowing
that little time is left so that the luminous day arrives.
All the power to the people!
Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca.
Sources online at Chiapas95
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/chiapas95.html
See our last posts on Mexico, the EZLN and the Oaxaca struggle.
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http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B5437F491-BCDD-4694-86B8-B2188E3C3EB5%7D)&language=EN
Ruiz Out, Only Solution in Oaxaca
Mexico, Dec 6 (Prensa Latina) The solution to the ongoing conflict in the Mexican state of Oaxaca is the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz and the satisfaction of social and education demands, legislator Santiago Creel Miranda said.
Creel, leader of senators of the governing National Action Party, warned that the elimination of powers in that southern state will be seriously analyzed at the Senate.
Meanwhile, the Secretary of Government ratified to the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca its willingness to resume talks to seek a way-out to the crisis in that territory.
In a communique issued after the first meeting between the new leaders of that federal entity and the social movement, the Secretary of Government underscored its commitment with the firm application and respect of the law.
Both parties will meet again on Friday.
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http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section_id=9&screen=news&news_id=53546
December 06, 2006
Male Hispanics responsible for disproportionate number of fatal car crashes
By Jared Allen
Email= jallen@nashvillecitypaper.com
As a percentage of Nashville’s population, male Hispanics have been responsible for a greater percentage of fatal traffic accidents this year than any other demographic, police data show.
Now, recognizing they have a very real problem on their hands, leaders of Nashville’s Hispanic community are launching the first-ever coordinated campaign to educate the Middle Tennessee Latino community about the dangers of drunk driving.
“Drinking and driving is a problem within the Latino community as within other groups of the community at large,” Conexión Américas Executive Director Jose Gonzalez wrote in a press release announcing the partnering of Conexion, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), State Farm Insurance, Metro Police, and Hispanic media to begin the awareness campaign.
But statistics show they may have their work cut out for them.
While the U.S. Census bureau estimates that Hispanics made up approximately 6.3 percent of Nashville’s population in 2004, police say they were responsible for 17 percent of the fatal car wrecks that have occurred so far in 2006.
Nashville’s approximately 93 percent of people of other races and ethnic groups combined, were responsible for the other 83 percent of this year’s fatal traffic accidents.
As of the end of last week, there have been 79 fatal traffic accidents this year, resulting in the deaths of 89 persons, police said.
Since the summer, Nashville’s Hispanic leaders have weathered a tempest caused by a number of deadly, high- profile accidents police say came at the hands of Latinos, three quarters of whom were allegedly drunk, and some who have been identified as illegal immigrants.
“As a cultural group, Hispanics are responsible for more fatal accidents then they are entitled to... based on their percentage of the population,” said Metro Police Sgt. William Keeter, supervisor of traffic analysis, hit and runs and fatal crash investigations.
From Gustavo Garcia – arrested and charged in June for DUI and the vehicular homicide of a Mt. Juliet couple – to Julio Villasana – indicted last week on charges of DUI and driving head-first into a motorcycle ridden by Gibson Guitar’s Charlie Derrington, killing him – news of the arrests of multiple Hispanics on drunk driving and vehicular homicides has created a firestorm in Nashville.
Not only did the issue become a part of the governor’s race, it prompted Nashville’s top three law enforcement officers to team up and ask the federal government for the authority to begin its own deportation proceedings on illegal aliens being booked into the Nashville jail.
Last week, Hispanic leaders decided enough was enough, and announced that they have teamed up with MADD and the police to begin educating Latinos about drunk driving.
The problem the Hispanic community has run into is a lack of awareness about the hazards of drunk driving, program organizers said.
“There’s a problem with drunk driving in this community,” said Laura Dial, MADD Tennessee’s executive director.
“We’re not reaching out to a segment of our community, and that’s the Spanish-speaking segment.”
The immigration debate has cast a spotlight on a number of fatal car accidents involving Latinos, Dial said.
“But I could rattle off a list of other crashes that have nothing to do with anyone Hispanic that are just as devastating. And there are a lot more of them,” she said.
At the same time, though, alcohol was a contributing factor in 75 percent of the fatal car crashes caused this year by Hispanics, a far higher percentage than with other groups, police said.
Keeter said the rate of alcohol-caused crashes among whites, blacks, Asians and others is usually about 40 percent.
South Precinct Commander Rick Langford said he welcomed the push by MADD and Conexion to target Hispanics about drinking and driving.
“We’ve had trouble getting into the Hispanic community because of the language barrier,” Langford said.
While MADD has started more sophisticated Spanish-language campaigns in other parts of the country, Tennessee has lagged behind, Dial said, with obvious results.
“All of our programs have been in English, focusing and targeting the English-speaking population. We have not have much outreach at all in Middle Tennessee to the Hispanic population,” she said.
Gonzalez said it was not statistics, but the media coverage of a number of Hispanic vehicular homicide cases and the onset of the holiday season that prompted him to act immediately.
“But the basic message is that drinking and driving is not okay,” Gonzalez said. “It’s an opportunity to educate the Hispanic community, and we recognize that it hasn’t been done in Middle Tennessee.”
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1205/p01s03-woam.html
December 05, 2006 edition
Latin American voters go left, but not that far left
Hugo Chávez's victory caps off the region's year of elections, but in many ways, Venezuela stands alone.
By Sara Miller Llana | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
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Caracas, Venezuela – The landslide victory of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela's presidential election Sunday caps off 12 elections across Latin America since November 2005 that, taken together, reveal a broad electoral shift to the left.
The triumph of President Chávez, who rails against the "imperialist" US and calls President Bush "the devil," comes on the heels of victories by former US foe Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Ecuador's Rafael Correa, who called for a "citizen's revolution."
But in many ways Venezuela stands alone. "There is no Chávismo across Latin America," says Adrian Bonilla, a political analyst at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Quito, Ecuador.
"What we have is a lot of new governments with different ideological trends. You don't have a continental leader," he says.
Indeed, analysts say that the leftist tide that appeared to be sweeping the region earlier this year has ebbed. While President Chávez led the pack in his anti-US fervor, the left comes from widely different ideologies and shares no unified front. Many seek some distance from the US, but don't shun the country. In many cases, candidates have had to moderate their images just to get elected.
There's no doubt that voters in most countries firmly rejected the "Washington consensus" and its orthodox free-trade policies this year, but they aren't necessarily seeking revolution. "The region is in great flux, and there is enormous frustration with persistent poverty. But there is no great revolutionary fervor in Latin America," says Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. "There is certainly distrust of the US, but at the same time most [leaders] want to explore areas of cooperation with the US."
Nowhere is the confrontation between Latin America and the US starker than in Venezuela. Calls for Mr. Chávez's "social revolution" abound: on banners that hang from skyscrapers, on bags of pasta at the state-run grocery stores, on T-shirts worn by residents both young and old. With 78 percent of polls counted, Chávez beat his challenger Manuel Rosales 61 percent to 38 percent, bringing a new six-year term that will likely deepen that zeal.
"Long live the socialist revolution! Destiny has been written," Chávez told supporters Sunday night. "No one should fear socialism; socialism is human. Socialism is love."
A central foreign policy goal has been to expand that fervor and provide a counterbalance to the US throughout Latin America and beyond. "He bears the mantel of anti-imperialism and anti-Yankeeism, and he is driven to build global coalitions to achieve this goal," says Jennifer McCoy, a Venezuela expert at Georgia State University. That includes joining Mercosur, the South American trade bloc, and creating energy policies throughout Latin America.
Different shades of red
Peter DeShazo, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that two basic camps of leftists have emerged recently: Those, such as Chávez, who run on authoritarian populist platforms, and those who support representative democracy. The majority, such as Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, fall into the latter group. Mr. Ortega, Mr. Correa, and Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, "are in the process of defining themselves," he says.
What unites the countries that have elected leftist presidents is the desire to change the status quo, marked by deep, longstanding inequality. That was the case in Ecuador, where Mr. Correa ran on an outsider platform and floated not a single congressional candidate.
"The people are fighting - it's a process, a wave, with the common denominator an attempt to diminish the poverty and education gap," says Oscar-Rene Vargas, an independent political analyst in Managua, Nicaragua, who says that Mr. Ortega won because the conservative presidencies in his country left the poor more impoverished. "The difference is on how to do it."
Yet candidates and presidents have had to temper their more radical stances, for political and pragmatic reasons. In Ecuador, Correa made headlines by threatening to default on the nation's debt. After he came in second place in a first round of voting Oct. 15, he changed his tactic, focusing on issues such as the nation's housing needs.
In Bolivia, Mr. Morales became the first indigenous president of Bolivia after winning 54 percent of the vote last December. He came into office pledging more state control over the country's gas reserves, and just this Sunday signed contracts giving the government control over foreign energy companies' operations, completing a process begun May 1 with the nationalization of the petroleum industry.
During his campaign, he voiced dissent over US-supported coca-eradication programs, but has since showed signs of moderating his stance. "In the last month [Morales] has been very, very open regarding antinarcotic policies," says Mr. Bonilla. "We are seeing a different kind of perspective on the part of Morales."
In Nicaragua, Ortega won in part because he lowered the percentage of votes needed to avoid a runoff - which he did by signing a pact with the former conservative president Arnoldo Aleman. "It doesn't make these labels very meaningful, what it means to be on the left or right," says Mr. Shifter.
US may have to open up to leftists
Morales's win last December provoked anxiety in Washington. But more conservative candidates - Álvaro Uribe in Colombia and Felipe Calderón in Mexico - prevailed in the past six months.
In November, US State Department Undersecretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns said that a US priority for 2007 would be its ties with Latin America. Mr. Vargas in Nicaragua says that the US will have to open up even to those leftist leaders who aren't centrist. "The US will have to accommodate to the new reality; they have no other option," he says. "In 20 years, Latin America is going to an important economic region with more equality."
The exception to expectations of a meaningful relationship might be Chávez. At a press conference before Sunday's election, the Venezuelan leader, who called Bush the devil at the United Nations in September - a move that many believe cost him a seat on the Security Council - reiterated that sentiment. "Someone has to say to the devil that he's the devil," he said.
But even in this country, his radical rhetoric - whether railing against the US or talking about land redistribution, one of the more controversial elements of his so-called "21st-Century Socialism" - is not what wins him the majority of fans, says Luis Vicente Leon, director of the polling firm Datanalisis in Caracas. Instead, it is the billions in oil revenue that he has funneled into social programs for the poor, including literacy and health-care services called "missions."
"We Venezuelans reject his radical offers, but not all of the people reject Chávez because a majority thinks he is a good leader spending money," says Mr. Leon. "Every time his speeches are more radical, he loses popularity."
Rosa Cadiz, a lawyer who voted for Chávez, stands downtown where hawkers sell Chávez and Fidel Castro keychains and T-shirts with the words "Fantastic revolutionaries."
But such rhetoric is irrelevant to her. "I wish he were more diplomatic with the US, but in the end it doesn't affect us," she says. "What I care about is that he follows through on his promises to the poor here. You have to clean your own house first."
• Ms. Llana is Latin America correspondent for the Monitor and USA Today.
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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1206/p09s02-cojh.html
December 06, 2006 edition
What's next for Cuba - and Latin America - after Castro?
Chávez may succeed Castro as champion for the socialist cause in Latin America.
By John Hughes
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Salt Lake City – While President Bush is understandably preoccupied with the far-off Middle East, there is uncertainty, and perhaps mischief brewing, in America's own backyard.
This past weekend marked the eclipse of Fidel Castro, who spent a lifetime trying to convert Latin America to anti-American socialism. The weekend also saw the consolidation of power by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Mr. Chávez seeks to assume Mr. Castro's mantle and inject even more virulent anti- Americanism into a leftward drift like we are witnessing in such countries as Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and even Mexico, where leftists showed surprising strength in recent elections.
Evidence of Castro's fading in Cuba was his absence from celebrations of his 80th birthday in Havana this past weekend. The celebrations had already been postponed from Aug. 13, his actual birthday, because of ill health. Apart from a few photographs in which he has appeared drawn and frail, Castro has been out of public view for months following surgery for an undisclosed ailment. The official explanation of the postponement of his August birthday celebration was to give him time to recuperate so that he could appear in person this past weekend. Clearly he was unable to do that. Written messages, purportedly drafted by Castro, have been read. But this has only fueled speculation that Castro is now too weak even to speak into a tape recorder.
During his illness, Castro transferred power to his brother Raúl. But Raúl is himself elderly and lacks the energy and charisma that would enable him to deliver the four- and five-hour speeches with which his brother was able to galvanize the Cuban populace.
So the question now is whether Raúl Castro, and the elderly Cuban generals around him, will continue to pursue the same narrow economic policies favored by Fidel Castro. These policies have kept many Cubans impoverished, but have enabled the top ranks of the military to live grandly. The generals have been placed in charge of state-run agencies that control agriculture, hotels, mining, the allocation of oil leases, and other sections of the economy.
Raúl Castro has indicated some interest in the current Chinese model of government that frees up the economy to private development, but retains the reins of political power in the hands of the communist regime.
Cuba must decide whether it is to continue the Fidel model, or perhaps the Fidel model somewhat moderated by the ideas of Raúl, or whether it is to embrace the free-market system that most economists outside Cuba believe would set Cuba on the path to prosperity. The risk to that is that it might trigger a parallel demand for political liberalization threatening the present ruling regime.
The Army, and an intelligence system that currently keeps tabs on dissidents, probably effectively neutralizes any serious reform movement that would change the existing regime. But some US experts on Cuba speculate that there may be a "Mister X," such as a lieutenant colonel in the Cuban Army, disgusted by corruption at higher levels, who could spearhead a movement for reform.
Meanwhile, Venezuela's Chávez confidently won a new six-year presidential term this past weekend, and says he will seek a change in his country's Constitution that would enable him to rule indefinitely.
As part of a campaign to impose his leftist views on Latin America, Chávez has vigorously courted Fidel Castro and subsidizes vital oil shipments from Venezuela to Cuba to a tune of about $2 billion a year. Whereas Cuba's economy is in disrepair and has failed, Venezuela profits hugely from the export of oil from its considerable reserves. With such a stream of revenue, Chávez has been spending large sums on arms and military aircraft. These are not considered a direct threat to the US, but they could be used to destabilize countries in Latin America unyielding to Chávez's socialist blandishments. More serious, they could be used to arm terrorists hostile to the US in regions elsewhere.
Chávez's tasteless attack on President Bush at the recent meeting of the UN General Assembly may have played a role in thwarting his attempt to secure a seat for Venezuela on the Security Council. But Chávez clearly is undaunted in his ambition to succeed Fidel Castro as a significant figure from Latin America who proudly waves the socialist banner and taunts the US.
Despite America's diverse involvements elsewhere around the globe, Chávez's is a campaign the US would be well advised to watch carefully.
• John Hughes, a former editor of the Monitor, is editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret Morning News.
Comment: Senor Hughes is coming from a reactionary mind-set, but it is smart to be aware of different kinds of propaganda. For sure, big changes are brewing in Latin America that will impact on global powers, forces and resources. ~Peta.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061207/wl_nm/chavez_usa_brazil_dc
Wed Dec 6, 2006 @8:19 PM ET
Chavez douses hopes of U.S. dialogue
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Wednesday the U.S. government was decadent and less important than Brazil's, further dashing hopes of a new dialogue with Washington after his re-election on Sunday.
Chavez had briefly entertained an overture from Washington to open dialogue. While he doubted the U.S. government's sincerity, he would accept "if they wanted to talk as equals," the Venezuelan official news agency ABN reported him as saying on Tuesday.
But at the beginning of a 24-hour official visit to Brazil on Wednesday night he used a tougher tone against the United States.
"For us a government that is going, that is gone, is not at all a priority. It is a decadent government," he said in response to a question on the chances of a new dialogue with the United States.
"To me Brasilia is more important (than Washington) and that is why I am here," the combative anti-U.S. Chavez told journalists at the airport in the capital Brasilia.
The former coup leader said that the real priority was to forge South American unity against Washington "so they respect us."
Chavez was to hold meetings with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to discuss energy integration projects between the two countries.
The Venezuelan leader also said Cuba's Castro was in good health. "I haven't spoken (to him) but they tell me he is doing fine," said Chavez, who has close ties to Castro.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061206/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_dissident_4
Wed Dec 6, 2006 @6:47 PM ET
Cuban dissident released from prison
By Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA - Hector Palacios, a well-known Cuban dissident jailed in a government crackdown on the opposition three years ago, was released from prison Wednesday for health reasons.
Palacios told journalists he received the news "with happiness, to be able to be in my house."
The 65-year-old leader of an outlawed opposition group said although he felt physically "destroyed," he remained "morally strong" in his opposition to the Cuban government.
It was the first high-profile release of a political prisoner since 80-year-old leader Fidel Castro announced in July that he had undergone surgery for intestinal bleeding and provisionally ceded his powers to his brother, Raul.
Palacios, who suffers from heart and respiratory problems, said he was released early from a 25-year sentence for medical reasons, not as a goodwill gesture from the government.
Leading democracy activist Oswaldo Paya, among well-wishers who rushed to greet Palacios at his home, called his colleague's early release "an act of justice."
"They should release all of them," added Paya, the key promoter of the Varela Project campaign to gather signatures demanding a referendum on civil rights such as freedom of speech and business ownership.
"This is good news, but we need 300 more good stories," said veteran rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, referring to the more than 300 political prisoners he says are still held on the island.
Sanchez is among Cuba's most veteran activists and his group's summary of political prisoners is used by numerous international human rights groups.
Palacios' wife, Gisela Delgado, is a member of the Ladies in White, a group of women who hold a weekly silent march to demand the release of relatives imprisoned for political reasons.
Palacios was among 75 dissidents rounded up in March 2003 on charges they were U.S. mercenaries working to undermine Cuba's communist system — accusations the activists and Washington denied. All 75 were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to 28 years.
The crackdown was protested by governments and rights organizations the world over.
With Palacios, 16 of the original 75 have now been released early for health reasons. Several, including writers Raul Rivero and Manuel Vazquez Portal, have left Cuba.
The 15th in the group to be freed was Mario Enrique Mayo Hernandez, an activist from the central-eastern province of Camaguey, who was released in December 2005.
The Cuban government says it holds no prisoners of conscience, only common criminals, and typically characterizes political opponents as mercenaries and traitors.
In a human rights report in June, the Foreign Ministry said those arrested in the 2003 crackdown were "mercenaries" who were "tried and sanctioned by competent and independent courts in accordance with the laws adopted by their parliament."
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061207/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_elian_gonzalez_1
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Raul Castro stands in at Gonzalez party
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA - Acting President Raul Castro sat in for his ailing brother Fidel Wednesday at the 13th birthday celebration for Elian Gonzalez, the boy at the center of an international custody dispute nearly seven years ago.
Dressed in an olive-green uniform, Raul Castro sat in the front row of the auditorium in Elian's hometown of Cardenas, a coastal city about 85 miles east of Havana, for the event featuring a children's choir and dance troupe. He did not address the gathering.
In past years, it has been Fidel Castro who has traditionally attended the annual birthday celebration for the boy, who was just 5 years old when a pair of fishermen found him floating on an inner tube in the ocean off Florida's southern coast.
But Raul Castro, 75, has been increasingly taking on his brother's public duties amid persistent questions about when — or if — Fidel will ever return to power. Fidel Castro has not been seen in public in the more than four months since he temporarily ceded power to his brother after undergoing intestinal surgery. His medical condition remains a state secret.
Elian's parents were divorced when his mother decided to take him by boat to the United States in November 1999. She died after the boat, filled with a dozen would-be migrants, capsized in a storm. Elian was among three survivors.
A high-profile custody battle ensued between Elian's relatives in Miami and his father in Cuba. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans took to the streets in a government-led campaign to demand Elian's return to the island. The battle ended with the boy's dramatic seizure by armed U.S. federal agents from the home of his Miami relatives and he returned to Cuba with his father in the summer of 2000.
Now a teenager, Elian remains a living symbol of Castro's victory against his enemies in exile. He is a household name on the island, where his face was emblazoned on T-shirts and posters during the battle for his return to Cuba. Although he is said to live as normal a life as possible in his hometown, the boy is still seen with his family at major political events several times a year.
Elian reportedly refers to the Cuban leader as "Grandfather Fidel" and sent a get-well card that was published in state media after the man who ruled Cuba for 47 years suddenly fell ill in July.
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