Bloglink=
http://aztlannet-news-blog.blogspot.com/2006/12/miercoles-12-13-2006-aztlan-news-report.html
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/613/613_15_LATeachers.shtml
December 15, 2006 | Page 15
10,000 LA teachers rally to demand good contract
By Randy Childs, United Teachers Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES--An estimated 10,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) mobilized on December 6 to demand a 9 percent raise, smaller class sizes and more local control of our schools.
More than 5,000 rallied outside of the downtown office of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), while nearly as many attended a simultaneous mobilization in the city’s San Fernando Valley region, according to a union press release.
UTLA hasn’t mobilized the membership on this scale since the 2000 contract campaign in which teachers won a 12 percent pay increase, but accepted concessions at the workplace. Since then, UTLA’s salary agreements have consistently lagged behind inflation, and LAUSD has succeeded in forcing LA’s already overcrowded classrooms to accept an average of two more students each.
The rally tapped into teachers’ growing anger at these conditions. Viviana Perez Sanchez came with 30 of her coworkers from Russell Elementary School in South Central LA. To the union’s chant of, “We are the union, the mighty mighty union, fighting for justice, and for education,” they added, “And for a raise, 10 percent!”
“We deserve at least that much,” Perez Sanchez explained. “Every time we settle for 2 or 3 percent, and it doesn’t even keep up with the cost of living. Hopefully this rally will send a message, but we don’t care if we have to go out on strike. Even though some of us can’t afford it right now, we have to do whatever it takes.”
UTLA President A.J. Duffy attacked the massive LAUSD bureaucracy in his speech at the rally. “How can the district give a new superintendent [retired Navy Admiral David L. Brewer III] with no teaching experience $300,000 and a 20 percent raise?” said Duffy. “We demand a decent raise and an end to top-down mismanagement. We demand an end to one-size-fits-all mandated programs that rob our students of critical thinking skills and rob the joy from teaching."
Elsewhere, dozens of teachers were heard chanting “9 percent or strike!” One teacher with a bullhorn led chants with, “When I say nine [percent], you say no! When I say 15, you say yes!”
Duffy didn’t mention a strike at the rally, and many UTLA leaders promoted the December 6 mobilizations as “the best way to avoid a strike.”
This conservative tack plays right into the hands of the district. Many teachers are indeed reluctant to go on strike, but the December 6 rallies show that a significant layer of teachers are ready to do whatever it takes to win our just demands.
UTLA needs to promote the possibility of a springtime strike as the most powerful weapon that teachers have. We won’t win a decent raise or real class-size reduction until we make the district afraid of a strike.
++++++++++++++
Gillian Russom contributed to this report.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/613/613_03_Discontent.shtml
December 15, 2006 | Page 3
WHAT WE THINK
From mass immigrant rights marches to the vote against war
A year of gathering discontent
TWO YEARS ago, George Bush was bragging about spending his “political capital” after winning re-election by 3 million votes over John Kerry. Bush vowed to privatize Social Security at home, stay the course in Iraq and expand the “war on terror” to new targets.
Today, the president who seized on the September 11, 2001 attacks to launch a new, aggressive phase of U.S. imperialism has brought the U.S. military to the brink of its greatest strategic defeat in its history. Bush is a crisis-bound lame duck, trying to cling to control of U.S. foreign policy after both voters and the political establishment repudiated his handling of the Iraq war.
This is the result of a dramatic shift in U.S. politics over the past year--a change driven by the crisis in Iraq, but also by widespread bitterness over rising social inequality and the economic uncertainty facing working people.
A process of radicalization--underway in the late 1990s, but thrown back by September 11--is again taking shape.
One central focus is, of course, the Iraq war, which has become the prism through which U.S. politics is viewed. Since Bush wasn’t on the ballot in November, voters punished his party instead. The seemingly permanent Republican “red state” majority--supposedly locked into place by gerrymandered congressional districts and rigged electronic voting machines--crumbled away.
But there were other factors that made voters determined to vote out the Republicans--from a series of corruption scandals to economic policies that squeeze workers and the poor and funnel billions to corporations and wealthy, symbolized by the abandonment of New Orleans and the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
AND LONG before the election, there were signs of the potential of an alternative to “Bush country.” The most important struggle to develop in the past year was the explosion of immigrant rights protests and organizing.
Huge rallies emerged out of nowhere in the spring, followed by spontaneous school walkouts that spread from the Southwest across the country. The demonstrations culminated with a massive mobilization of working-class immigrants for May Day that shut down a number of businesses.
The spark for these demonstrations was legislation passed a year ago by the U.S. House that would have criminalized all 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., along with anyone who aided them. The proposal was known as the Sensenbrenner bill, after its chief sponsor, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.)
The mass protests sank the Sensenbrenner bill. But within mainstream politics, there was no alternative to represent the aspirations of the millions who marched. Instead, a “compromise” proposal in the Senate merged some of Sensenbrenner’s enforcement provisions with a corporate-backed guest-worker program and a highly restrictive path to legalization for a minority of the undocumented.
When that stalled, Republicans succeeded--with the support of many Democrats--in passing bills that repackaged some elements of the original Sensenbrenner proposal, such as extending the wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. With official politics at an impasse, the media gave a platform to the anti-immigrant right, helping to fuel the growth of right-wing organizations like the vigilante Minutemen.
If the new immigrant rights movement didn’t mobilize the same massive numbers in response, it is because a gap remains between the sentiment of pride and anger displayed in the spring marches and the organization necessary to sustain any struggle over the longer term.
Nevertheless, no one should underestimate the importance of the new immigrant rights movement because it didn’t force official politics in Washington into a U-turn.
Today’s struggles face more difficulties because of the decline of the U.S. left over the past 25 years, which has left a vacuum of experience and organization--including the labor movement, which represents only 8 percent of workers in the private sector.
The low level of struggle in recent years could make it seem as if the working-class majority had acquiesced to the relentless drive to squeeze wages and undermine its standard of living. But the explosion of immigrant rights protests was a window into the anger that exists below the surface around many issues.
Moreover, the demonstrations did spur the beginnings of organization that continued after the marches, and can lay the basis for further activism in the future.
THE NOVEMBER election that ousted the Republicans was a cause for celebration for anyone opposed to the Bush agenda. But the expectations of voters go far beyond the policies being put forward by the new majority party in Congress.
For example, a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 73 percent of Democrats favor new programs that would achieve universal health care--which is definitely not on the agenda of the incoming Congress.
Likewise, Congressional Democrats used the Iraq Study Group proposals of James Baker and Lee Hamilton to retreat from calls to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, but support for a rapid withdrawal continues to grow, according to a Newsweek poll taken in early December. “Sixty-two percent of Americans want the Bush administration to set a timetable for withdrawal,” the magazine reported. “And not in the distant future. Forty-eight percent of Americans want U.S. soldiers and Marines to come home now or within the next year.”
But if the U.S. were to pull out, it would abandon a central aim of the occupation in the first place--direct control of the second-largest proven oil reserves in the world and, with it, crucial leverage over the world economy. It is this imperialist drive--upheld by Republicans and Democrats alike--that is at odds with the interests and desires of the working-class majority in the U.S.
That’s why the real challenge to the war won’t come from Washington insiders, but by turning the sentiment against the war displayed in the election into active opposition.
The first step in rebuilding the antiwar movement is to organize the biggest possible mobilization for January 27 antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco. The march can give voice to the opposition of the antiwar majority--and it can be a focus for activists to organize or re-launch local groups that can be the basis of future action.
This holds true for other struggles, such as the immigrant rights movement. Activists are forming local committees to fight the so-called “no match” letters from the Social Security Administration--in which discrepancies in workers’ social security numbers are being used by employers to carry out terminations of immigrant workers. This threat was the trigger for last month’s walkout by about 1,000 workers at the huge Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C.
Even modest struggles can play the role of creating organizations that can help sustain a wider movement. There are no shortcuts in this process. But antiwar activists can take up the challenges ahead with confidence that the majority supports their efforts to bring the troops home now.
Even where the debate is more polarized--as with immigrant rights--immigrant workers have shown the potential for a long-term struggle comparable in many ways to the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
That earlier movement has lessons for today as well. While the great successes of that struggle have made it into the history books, the many setbacks and defeats the movement endured are often overlooked.
It was in the 1960s, moreover, that the antiwar and Black Power movements confronted a Democratic Congress and White House--and once they broke with the Democrats, the movements reached their most radical and powerful stage.
There is no predicting the shape of the struggles ahead. But with the U.S. ruling class increasingly divided over Iraq and the White House both dysfunctional and in denial, there’s a growing sense that genuine change is needed. It’s time to organize.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.axcessnews.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=12325
December 13, 2006
Poll: Iraq War is a Bigger Concern for Latinos Than Illegal Immigration
By Isaac Garrido
(AXcess News) Washington - The majority of the U.S. Hispanic population says the Iraq War, and not illegal immigration, is the most important problem the country faces, a new survey revealed.
The 2006 Latino National Survey, sponsored by the University of Washington's Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality, and released Dec. 7, interviewed 8,634 Latinos, both citizens and non-citizens.
Respondents were drawn from 15 states with high Hispanic populations, including the "emerging states" of Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa and North Carolina, where the Latino population has grown in recent years.
"We are trying to provide an accurate reflection of Latino political attitudes, behaviors and beliefs, so that we can understand the sample of Latinos; how they understand themselves in the United States and how we understand them," said Luis Fraga, associate professor of political science at Stanford University.
Fraga, one of poll's the six principal investigators, said it is the largest of its kind since a similar 1989 study. "We are just beginning to explore the area," he said.
According to the poll, regardless their citizenship status, about a third of Latinos considered the Iraq war the most important problem - 30 percent of Latino citizens and 33.2 percent of non-citizen Latinos.
Half of the Latinos said they oppose or strongly oppose keeping U.S. troops in Iraq to stabilize the government. Of that number, 38.8 percent were strongly opposed.
Just 14.8 percent of non-citizen Latinos said illegal immigration is the most important problem. Among Latino citizens it was 8.4 percent.
Fraga explained that this finding reveals that a great number of Latinos, especially those born in the U.S., are "feeling more comfortable" here than previous generations and tend to agree with what most Americans would have said.
However, when participants were asked about the most important problem facing the Latino community, illegal immigration topped the list, at 29.8 percent. Unemployment and jobs was next, at 12.1 percent. More than 17 percent said they didn't know or refused to answer.
Other issues that respondents identified as important problems within the Hispanic community were education, the economy and race relations.
The survey, conducted from 2005 through mid-2006, found a plurality of Latinos, 34 percent, consider themselves Democrats. Ten percent considered themselves Republicans, and 17.6 percent said they were independents. But the largest group, 37.8 percent, said they didn't know or didn't care.
Latinos make up 13 percent of the U.S. population and, according to the survey's projections, this will nearly double by 2030.
"We talk about them, but sometimes we do not have any information," Fraga said about the Latino community. He also said that, unlike other polls, which mainly provide results from Texas an California, the "multi-state" sample is more representative of the Latino population.
The poll revealed that more than half of Latinos said the main reason they came to the U.S. was to improve their economic situation.
When non-citizens were asked if they plan to become citizens, about half said no. Just over 7 percent of Latinos are currently applying for citizenship, and 38 percent said they plan to apply. Citizens made up 57 percent of the sample.
According to the survey, 23 percent of Latinos consider themselves to be white. The largest group, 67 percent, specified "other" to the open-ended question. The survey found less than 2 percent claimed to be black, American Indian/Native American, Asian Indian or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.
More than half said Latinos make up a distinctive racial group in America.
The poll also found about a third of Latin Americans prefer the term "Hispanic" to be used in referring to them, while another third has no preference between Hispanic and Latin American. The rest were divided among a preference for Latino or no preference at all.
Interviewing Service of America completed 8,634 telephone interviews, conducted in either English or Spanish from Nov. 17, 2005, to Aug. 4, 2006. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point. The states polled California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Arizona, New Jersey, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa and the D.C. metropolitan area, covering several suburbs in Virginia and Maryland.
Source: Scripps Howard Foundation Wire
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/12/AR2006121201697.html
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A01
Army, Marine Corps To Ask for More Troops
By Ann Scott Tyson / Washington Post Staff Writer
The Army and Marine Corps are planning to ask incoming Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Congress to approve permanent increases in personnel, as senior officials in both services assert that the nation's global military strategy has outstripped their resources.
In addition, the Army will press hard for "full access" to the 346,000-strong Army National Guard and the 196,000-strong Army Reserves by asking Gates to take the politically sensitive step of easing the Pentagon restrictions on the frequency and duration of involuntary call-ups for reservists, according to two senior Army officials.
The push for more ground troops comes as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have sharply decreased the readiness of Army and Marine Corps units rotating back to the United States, compromising the ability of U.S. ground forces to respond to other potential conflicts around the world.
"The Army has configured itself to sustain the effort in Iraq and, to a lesser degree, in Afghanistan. Beyond that, you've got some problems," said one of the senior Army officials. "Right now, the strategy exceeds the capability of the Army and Marines." This official and others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the matter.
The Army, which has 507,000 active-duty soldiers, wants Congress to fund a permanent "end strength," or manpower, of at least 512,000 soldiers, the Army officials said. The Army wants the additional soldiers to be paid for not through wartime supplemental spending bills but in the defense budget, which now covers only 482,000 soldiers.
The Marine Corps, with 180,000 active-duty Marines, seeks to grow by several thousand, including the likely addition of three new infantry battalions. "We need to be bigger. The question is how big do we need to be and how do we get there," a senior Marine Corps official said.
At least two-thirds of Army units in the United States today are rated as not ready to deploy -- lacking in manpower, training and, most critically, equipment -- according to senior U.S. officials and the Iraq Study Group report. The two ground services estimate that they will need $18 billion a year to repair, replace and upgrade destroyed and worn-out equipment.
If another crisis were to erupt requiring a large number of U.S. ground troops, the Army's plan would be to freeze its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and divert to the new conflict the U.S.-based combat brigade that is first in line to deploy.
Beyond that, however, the Army would have to cobble together war-depleted units to form complete ones to dispatch to the new conflict -- at the risk of lost time, unit cohesion and preparedness, senior Army officials said. Moreover, the number of Army and Marine combat units available for an emergency would be limited to about half that of four years ago, experts said, unless the difficult decision to pull forces out of Iraq were made.
"We are concerned about gross readiness . . . and ending equipment and personnel shortfalls," said a senior Marine Corps official. The official added that Marine readiness has dropped and that the Corps is unable to fulfill many planned missions for the fight against terrorism.
Senior Pentagon officials stress that the U.S. military has ample air and naval power that could respond immediately to possible contingencies in North Korea, Iran or the Taiwan Strait.
"If you had to go fight another war someplace that somebody sprung upon us, you would keep the people who are currently employed doing what they're doing, and you would use the vast part of the U.S. armed forces that is at home station, to include the enormous strength of our Air Force and our Navy, against the new threat," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing last month.
But if the conflict were to require a significant number of ground troops -- as in some scenarios such as the disintegration of Pakistan -- Army and Marine Corps officials made clear that they would have to scramble to provide them. "Is it the way we'd want to do it? No. Would it be ugly as hell? Yes," said one of the senior Army officials. "But," he added, "we could get it done."
According to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, the Army and Marine Corps today cannot sustain even a modest increase of 20,000 troops in Iraq. U.S. commanders for Afghanistan have asked for more troops but have not received them, noted the Iraq Study Group report, which called it "critical" for the United States to provide more military support for Afghanistan.
"We are facing more operational risk than we have for many, many years," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee. He called it "shocking and scandalous" that two-thirds of Army units are rated "non-deployable." He said the country has not faced such a readiness crisis since the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
The U.S. military has more than 140,000 troops in Iraq and 20,000 in Afghanistan, including 17 of the Army's 36 available active-duty combat brigades. When Army and Marine Corps combat units return from the war zone, they immediately lose large numbers of experienced troops and leaders who either leave the force, go to school or other assignments, or switch to different units.
The depletion of returning units is so severe that the Marines refer to this phase as the "post-deployment death spiral." Army officials describe it as a process of breaking apart units and rebuilding them "just in time" to deploy again.
Training time for active-duty Army and Marine combat units is only half what it should be because they are spending about the same amount of time in war zones as at home -- in contrast to the desired ratio of spending twice as much time at home as on deployment. And the training tends to focus on counterinsurgency skills for Iraq and Afghanistan, causing an erosion in conventional land-warfare capabilities, which could be required for North Korea or Iran, officials say.
If a conflict with North Korea or Iran were to break out and demand a medium to large ground force, the Army would be forced to respond with whatever it had available.
The U.S. military today could cobble together two or three divisions in an emergency -- compared with as many as six in 2001 -- not enough to carry out major operations such as overthrowing the Iranian government. "That's the kind of extreme scenario that could cripple us," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution.
Unable to count on a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq, the Army seeks to ease the manpower strain by accelerating plans to have 70 active-duty and National Guard combat brigades available for rotations by 2011. Next year, for example, the Army intends to bring two brigades on a training mission back into rotation. It is investing $36 billion in Guard equipment in anticipation of heavier use of the Guard.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/13/AR2006121300288.html
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; 5:23 AM
Pinochet Death Renews Calls for CIA Files
By BILL CORMIER The Associated Press
SANTIAGO, Chile -- The blast rocked Washington's Embassy Row on Sept. 21, 1976, ripping through the car of one of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's most outspoken critics.
The assassination of Orlando Letelier and his American assistant two miles from the White House prompted demands for explanations and helped expose what President Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a series of CIA officials tried for years to conceal: U.S support for a military dictatorship that was killing thousands of its own citizens.
In the wake of the former leader's Sunday death, officials at the think tank where Letelier and Ronni Moffitt worked said they are sending U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a letter asking for the release of the remaining information.
In 1998, the Clinton administration declassified more than 16,000 documents related to Chile, but withheld documents on the Letelier bombing, citing an ongoing investigation.
"With the prime suspect no longer here, there is no reason to keep those documents secret," said Sarah Anderson of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.
Former Chilean secret police chief Manuel Contreras, who served seven years in a Chilean prison for the assassination, claimed his orders came directly from Pinochet.
"The documents related to the Letelier case definitely could include embarrassing information about the relationship between the U.S. government and the Pinochet dictatorship," Anderson said. "But that shouldn't outweigh the public's right to know about that history, especially if it gives consolation to the victims' families."
Congressional investigations, CIA reports and the declassified documents have already revealed much about the relationship between Pinochet and the U.S.
Declassified transcripts portray Kissinger downplaying concern over Chile's human rights record, even as the dictatorship was torturing and killing thousands of opponents. The death toll would eventually reach at least 3,197.
Meeting with Chile's ambassador in September 1975, Kissinger joked that U.S. officials focusing on human rights violations had "a vocation for the ministry." And in a June 1976 meeting with Pinochet himself, Kissinger gently encouraged the dictator to release more prisoners while stressing that "we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here."
Peter Kornbluh, who helped win declassification of many files on Chile as a senior analyst at George Washington University's National Security Archive, said the transcripts of Kissinger's meetings "paint a pretty stunning picture of gross insensitivity to human rights atrocities."
Kornbluh believes some of the most important U.S. documents on Chile remain classified _ he's still seeking CIA cable traffic between Santiago and Washington, reports on Contreras' visits to the United States and more information about a young American, Charles Horman, who was killed shortly after the coup.
Full disclosure, Kornbluh said, would likely show how the U.S. government helped Pinochet's regime consolidate its power with overt and covert support, despite knowing of its abuses.
Documents already released indicate that U.S. officials did not directly participate in the military coup on Sept. 11, 1973 that toppled Chile's Marxist president, Salvador Allende. But the CIA said it had advance warning of the coup and had tried to foment earlier coup attempts on direct orders from Nixon and Kissinger.
A report released by the CIA in 2000 said the agency had been "aware of coup-plotting by the military, had ongoing intelligence-collection relationships with some plotters and -- because CIA did not discourage the takeover and had sought to instigate a coup in 1970 -- probably appeared to condone it."
A secret cable from the CIA deputy director of plans, Thomas Karamessines, conveyed Kissinger's orders to CIA Santiago station chief Henry Hecksher in 1970: "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup," and that the "American hand" be hidden.
Nixon's CIA director, Richard Helms, in handwritten notes said the president, intent on saving Chile from communism, ordered covert operations to "make the economy scream" under Allende.
Even U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, when asked about covert U.S. activities in Chile, acknowledged in 2004 that, "It is not a part of American history that we're proud of."
The CIA kept in regular contact with Contreras _ blamed for much of the torture and death under the dictatorship _ until 1977, though it said the relationship "was not cordial and smooth."
Indeed, public outrage over Chile's human rights record prompted the U.S. Congress to ban weapons sales in 1976, not long after Kissinger's meeting with Pinochet.
In Santiago, Juan Pablo Letelier recalled the violent deaths of his father and thousands of other victims of Pinochet's dirty war.
"Pinochet died as an old man at the age of 91, surrounded by his family, his kids, attended by top medical assistance," he said. "My father's legs were severed by a bomb and he bled to death on a street on Embassy Row in Washington. Others had been tortured and thrown into the ocean ... It makes one think."
++++++++++++++
On the Net:
National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB212/index.htm
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117955669.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
Posted: Wed., Dec. 13, 2006, 9:37am
Gabriel, Gaviria team on 'Latinos'
Pic marks departure for Colombian helmer
By JOHN HOPEWELLPINAMAR, Argentina -- Multi-prized Madrid-based helmer Enrique Gabriel is teaming with top-flight Colombian director Victor Gaviria ("The Little Rose Seller") on what looks set to be Gaviria's next directorial outing, the immigration-themed "Latinos."
Set in Spain, "Latinos" follows two Colombian teen brothers who reunite with their mother in Spain and attempt to carve out a new life. One achieves some form of integration, the other remains marginalized.
Gaviria will direct from a screenplay being written by Gabriel, Gaviria and Gabriel's sister, the screenwriter Masha Gabriel.
Gaviria will produce, while wife Lina Echeverri will take exec producer duties. Film will be produced by Gabriel and Echeverri's Madrid shingle A.T.P.I.P. Producciones in co-production with a to-be-designated Colombian production house.
"Latinos" will mark a new artistic direction for Gaviria after his high-profile Colombian trilogy turning on violence and streetkids (Cannes competish players "Rodrigo D" and "Rose Seller") and drug-trafficking ("Additions and Subtractions," which competed at San Sebastian in 2004).
It marks a creative partnership with Spanish-Argentine helmer-producer Gabriel ("Hitting Bottom," "Hidden Memories"), who has also won multiple prizes, such as best pic at Karlovy Vary in 1992 for his feature debut "Krapatchouk."
But, as in other Gaviria pics, "Latino" will use non-pro thesps and be gritty, meticulously researched and long in gestation.
The filmmakers have shot 15 hours of vid interviews with real-life immigrants in Spain, and received some 600 emails from immigrants recounting their experiences, Gabriel said at the Pantalla Pinamar fest in Argentina.
Pic is skedded to shoot December 2007.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.al.com/news/huntsvilletimes/lroop.ssf?/base/news/1166005315307800.xml&coll=1
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Shooting of 2 Hispanics raises questions
Is the death of Daniel Golden, the first police officer killed in the line of duty here since 1968, haunting the Huntsville Police Department?
Huntsville, Alabama: It's fair to wonder after police shot two Hispanic men to death Dec. 4. The cases aren't the same, but the similarities are troubling.
A Hispanic man killed Golden, 27, in the parking lot of a Hispanic restaurant in 2005. The killer advanced on Golden, firing repeatedly in a display of casual brutality that shocked police and the community. It was the sort of crime that feeds stereotypes about Latin violence and machismo.
Last week, police again confronted Hispanic men in the parking lot of a Hispanic restaurant. This time, the men were in a car and when they hit an officer with the vehicle, police guns blazed. Two officers fired into the car killing the driver and his passenger.
That's about all we know. Police have released just enough about the incident to suggest the shootings were self-defense. Chief Rex Reynolds says he will release more facts after a shooting review board's report Dec. 19. In this case, the sooner the better.
It's hard to remember a police shooting here ruled unjustified, but there is another layer of review. This case can - and probably will - go to a grand jury, where citizens not only have oversight, they have the power to indict.
Police have a split-second to respond to threats, and they face threats because they go into tough places at hours the rest of us are snug in bed. We need men and women willing to do that and they deserve our support. In return, we reserve the right to look over their shoulders.
Regardless, Reynolds faces two broader issues. He must decide if his officers' training in dealing with Hispanics is enough, and he must decide if police weapons policies need changing.
Maybe the training is sufficient. Maybe this would have played out the same if the crowd in that parking lot had been black or white.
But Hispanic men, blowing off steam after a long work week, present special cultural challenges. Many don't speak English very well. Some may be here illegally and desperate to avoid police entanglement. These men probably wanted only to get away, but why so desperately?
Understanding goes both ways. Everyone is obligated to respond to authority in the right way. When stopped by police, especially late at night, the correct response is to move slowly and keep your hands in plain sight.
The worst scenario is that officers, determined to avoid Golden's fate, have developed a conscious or subconscious attitude of "It won't happen to me" where Hispanic men are concerned.
We don't know that happened here, but we know police worry about it. At a one-year anniversary celebration of Golden's life, at least one officer said, "If it can happen to him, it can happen to me."
Two men are dead. Neither they nor the police went to that parking lot with such an outcome in mind. But it happened. Now it's up to Reynolds, a good police chief, to make sure his officers have more than one choice.
Reach Lee Roop at 532-4423 or lee.roop@htimes.com
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B4A9793B1-5CB3-4567-9CBD-78741829B6E9%7D&language=EN
December 12, 2006
Multilat Parties to Defuse Oaxaca
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
Mexico, Dec 12 (Prensa Latina) Legislators of the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) will join their colleagues from the ruling National Action (PAN) and the Institutional Revolutionary (PRI) parties to declare the elimination of powers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
PRD coordinator Carlos Navarrete said his group will ask the Government Commission to briefly meet to solve the case and rule whether to remove or not local governor Ulises Ruiz.
According to Navarrete, as Oaxaca is demanding an integral solution to the conflict, it is necessary to replace Ruiz.
Meanwhile on Monday, the Oaxaca governor admitted that nearly 80 percent of the 214 people detained on November have no links with the social movement claiming for his abdication.
Lawyers of those arrested and human rights defenders affirmed that the situation is an illegal deprivation of freedom that illustrates arbitrary detentions and irregular judicial processes.
After denunciations on human rights violations, civil observers from Spain, France and Germany are coming to Oaxaca on a working visit.
sus ymr vm mf
PL-15
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2006/12/12/new_report_says_connecticut_latinos_facing_health_crisis/
December 12, 2006
New report says Connecticut Latinos facing health crisis
By Dave Collins, Associated Press Writer
HARTFORD, Conn. --Connecticut's Latinos are facing a health crisis, suffering higher rates of major illnesses such as cancer and diabetes while being less likely to have health insurance than other ethnic groups, according to a new report by a Hispanic advocacy group.
The nonprofit Hispanic Health Council released the report Tuesday, calling it the first comprehensive look at Latino health in Connecticut.
"The Latino population in the state of Connecticut is a large group of people that are suffering disproportionately diseases that are preventable and that are treatable," said Jeannette DeJesus, president and chief executive officer of the Hartford-based council.
"With information and a profile of the health status of this group, we can begin to have discussion and conversation and we can begin to address these issues," she said.
DeJesus and other advocates for Hispanics are hoping to use the new report to prompt state lawmakers and health care providers to take action.
The report recommends establishing a universal health care system in Connecticut, increasing the number of interpreters at health care facilities, improving health care literacy among Latinos and creating more opportunities for Latinos to earn better wages.
The 96-page report describes a number of health issues affecting Latinos, who make up 9 percent of the state's population and are the largest minority group in Connecticut.
The document says Latinos:
-- Experience higher rates of certain cancers compared with non-Latino whites, including cervical, esophageal, gall bladder and stomach cancers.
-- Account for 25 percent of all AIDS cases in Connecticut.
-- Have a 60 percent higher mortality rate for diabetes and 40 percent higher mortality rate for diabetes-related illnesses than non-Latino whites in Connecticut. Latinos are also less likely to see doctors for diabetes.
-- Have higher pediatric asthma rates than non-Latino whites and blacks and are less likely to receive inhaled steroids and other asthma treatments than non-Latino whites.
-- Have higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases than non-Latino whites.
-- Have a high rate of obesity, an estimated 57 percent.
-- Have higher infant mortality rates than the general population.
The report also says that while Latinos are 9 percent of the state population, they represent 40 percent of Connecticut's more than 400,000 residents without health insurance. Researchers said Latinos are less likely to work for employers that offer health insurance programs.
When they go to doctors, 44 percent of Latino adults report that they usually, or at least sometimes, have problems because of language issues. Only about half of Latino patients who need interpreter services receive them, the report says.
Studies also show that Latinos have more oral health problems than non-Latino whites, who are twice as likely to have received a dental exam in the last year.
Juan A. Figueroa, president of the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, said his group will lobby the legislature over the next several months to approve a universal health care system for the state. He said the new report will be a key in the effort.
"These documents, they have great information," he said. "It does give us an opportunity to mobilize and work with people around the state on these issues of health care."
DeJesus said the Hispanic Health Council will be distributing the report to lawmakers, health care providers and community groups in an effort to improve the well-being of Connecticut's Latinos.
"The message of the report is also to the Latinos of Connecticut and it says, 'It's time for you to be engaged in improving your health and your social well-being. And we're going to hold you accountable for that,'" she said.
----------
On the Web:
Hispanic Health Council: http://www.hispanichealth.com
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1212noguadalupe.html
Dec. 12, 2006 12:00 AM
Protestant Latinos put faith in Jesus, not Virgin
Yvonne Wingett / The Arizona Republic
It may not be a famine, but today's Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe has lost some weight.
Thousands of Hispanic Catholics in the Valley will celebrate the Virgin's appearance five centuries ago in Mexico with processions and prayers, Masses and mariachis.
But thousands of Latino former Catholics will skip the celebrations. To these Protestant converts who once prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe for protection, prosperity and love, she is now just a commercialized image used to market everything from religion to bus companies and mouse pads.
"Evangelicals regard any icon or symbol other than Jesus himself . . . to be simply not allowable," said Tony Zavaleta, a professor of anthropology and border culture at the University of Texas-Brownsville. "The Virgin of Guadalupe, as the mother of God, is the person whom (Latino Catholics) turn to."
The Virgin of Guadalupe is the central symbol of faith for Hispanic Catholicism and is the cultural icon of Mexico. For millions of Latinos worldwide, today's feast for their beloved Mexican mother is as big as Christmas and Easter.
Twice a day, Jose Gonzalez used to pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe. But when he turned away from Catholicism, he let her go. Now, the Phoenix pastor speaks directly to Jesus.
"Traditionally, Mexican people believe that the Virgin of Guadalupe is a mediator between God and the people," said Gonzalez, 55, of Nuevo Nacimiento Church on 27th Avenue near Van Buren Street.
"We pray only to God, through Jesus Christ," he said. "The Virgin of Guadalupe plays no role. Not at all."
An icon is born
The story of Mexico's mother began in 1531. She is said to have appeared before dawn to Juan Diego, an Indian peasant. Speaking in his native Nahuatl language, she told him to build a church on a hill in what today is Mexico City.
As the story is told, Diego delivered her message to the bishop of Mexico City, who demanded proof of the apparition. Guadalupe caused roses to grow out of season and instructed Diego to gather them in his cloak and return to the bishop.
When Diego unrolled the cloak before the bishop, the roses spilled out, and the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, surrounded by glowing light and a turquoise wrap, remained. Today, her cloak is on display in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, to which millions of believers make pilgrimages. In 1999, Pope John Paul II crowned her the patron saint and evangelizer of the entire continent.
Hispanic Catholics believe the Virgin of Guadalupe guides them to God, one priest said. "Through her, we believe in Christ," said Father Carlos A. Gómez of Saint Augustine's in west Phoenix. "When we see Our Lady, what we see is Mexico, our roots, our grounds, our earth, our essence as humans."
For most of his life, Arturo López, 38, was one of Guadalupe's faithful. Growing up in Hermosillo, Sonora, he prayed to her for his family, his health and his sins. But six years ago, the Phoenix man "found Jesus." He joined a Baptist church and prays only to Jesus and God.
"I believed in the Virgin of Guadalupe, it was my culture," López said. "Now, I don't believe in her. She does not exist. She cannot take my sins away."
Evangelical surge
Evangelicalism is on the rise with Latinos in the U.S. and throughout Latin America, though Catholicism remains strong.
About 23 percent, or 9.5 million of 41 million Latinos in the U.S. in 2004, identified themselves as Protestants or other Christians, according to statistics compiled in Latino Religions and Civic Activism in the United States, co-edited by Gastón Espinosa, an assistant professor of religious studies at Claremont McKenna College.
About 29 million Latinos identified themselves as Catholic, according to the book, an all-time high. Each year, as many as 600,000 U.S. Latinos leave the Catholic Church for other Christian denominations, Espinosa said.
8 percent in Mexico
In Mexico, meanwhile, Protestants accounted for 8 percent of the country's believers in the 2000 census, up from 2.3 percent in 1970. Their numbers are growing at 3.7 percent each year, twice as fast as the Catholic population, according to Mexico's National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information Processing.
As a child, Esmeralda Madrigal prayed to the Virgin to cure her mom's kidney failure. Madrigal said that when she learned that Guadalupe isn't in the Bible, she gave her up.
"La Virgin of Guadalupe, she is not the mother of Jesus," said Madrigal, 33, who is now a hemodialysis technician. "She's just an image made of man. She's just an idol. The mother of Jesus is Mary."
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec06/Santos12.htm
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
December 12, 2006
Apocalypto: The Cinematic Logic of Genocide
by Juan Santos
Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is not a mere adventure tale, it’s not just another excruciatingly brutal portrayal of apocalyptic violence for its own sake, and the Village Voice is dead wrong when it says that unlike Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto is “unburdened by nationalist or religious piety,” -- that it's “pure, amoral sensationalism.”
Despite its extreme brutality Apocalypto isn’t just Gibson’s latest snuff film with a religious theme. The film is a morality play, and there are only two things one needs to remember to get a hint of the ugly moral intent behind Mel Gibson’s depiction of the Maya.
The first is that, despite Gibson’s vile portrayal of the Maya as a macabre cult of deranged killers straight out of Apocalypse Now!, there is no evidence that the Mayan people ever practiced widespread human sacrifice, and they certainly didn’t target the innocent hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists Gibson chooses to portray as the victims of a Mayan death cult.
Gibson knows better. He studied the terrain in depth and had no practical limit to the funds he could expend on research. His portrayal is a conscious lie, one he uses to justify the premise that the Mayan city-states collapsed because they deserved to collapse, and that they deserved to be replaced by a “superior” culture in the genocide known as the Conquest.
"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within," is how Gibson puts it. In other words the Conquest was not genocide but a moral comeuppance; the civilization didn’t fall, in the final analysis, from climate change or inadvertent soil depletion or even war -- it was conquered in god’s wrath against the forces of evil. And Gibson’s made sure you see the ancient Maya as a force of profound evil.
Here’s a taste of the standards Gibson used in conjuring his image of the Maya. The LA Times quotes production designer Tom Sanders:
"We had an archeologist, Dr. Richard Hansen, onboard," said Sanders. "It was really fun to say, 'Is there any proof they didn't do this?' When he said, 'There is no proof they didn't do that,' that gives you some license to play.” And “play” they did. Rex Reed calls the racist portrayal of the Maya Gibson’s “huge cast of spear-carriers from the Oom-Gawah-Bwana School of Dramatic Art.”
In a stunning interview with Chris Garcia of the Austin American Statesman, Julia Guernsey, an expert on Mayan culture at the University of Texas says of Gibson’s agenda, “‘We got the Jews last time (in 'The Passion of the Christ'), now we'll get the Maya.’ And to highlight that point there's a lot of really offensive racial stereotyping. They're shown as these extremely barbaric people, when in fact, the Maya were a very sophisticated culture… I hate it. I despise it. I think it's despicable. It's offensive to Maya people. It's offensive to those of us who try to teach cultural sensitivity…”
The other hint you might need to remember is this. No matter what happens in this film, the Spanish don’t show up at the end, at the collapse of the Mayan civilization, to “save” anything at all.
Hundreds of years would pass between the collapse of the Mayan city states and the American Holocaust. For the sake of empire the Spanish would sacrifice 95% of the population in Mexico, a horror they would achieve in a mere 100 years. Hitler’s holocaust, with its 20 million dead, pales: the Conquest of the Americas by Europe would claim 100 million lives. There is no more savage genocide in the history of civilization.
But if you’re looking for savagery, the holocaust against the Mayan people doesn’t stop there. The most recent wave ended a mere decade ago. A quarter of a million innocent Maya were slaughtered in Guatemala by a death squad regime backed by the Gibson’s cohorts on the Christian Right, including Ronald Reagan and apocalyptic fanatics like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. It’s called “The Silent Holocaust” by those who know of it.
The Maya have suffered a modern apocalypse more brutal than anything in Gibson’s sadistic imagination, more brutal than even he would dare bring to the screen. It’s a tale he would refuse: its demons aren’t “savage” Mayans in horror movie drag, they’re Christian death squads backed by fundamentalist leaders using old school Spanish methods. A British anti-war organization writes:
“Working methodically across the Mayan region, the army and its paramilitary teams, including 'civil patrols' of forcibly conscripted local men, attacked 626 villages. Each community was rounded up, or seized when gathered already for a celebration or a market day. The villagers, if they didn't escape to become hunted refugees, were then brutally murdered; others were forced to watch, and sometimes to take part. Buildings were vandalized and demolished, and a 'scorched earth' policy applied: the killers destroyed crops, slaughtered livestock, fouled water supplies, and violated sacred places and cultural symbols.
“Children were often beaten against walls, or thrown alive into pits where the bodies of adults were later thrown; they were also tortured and raped. Victims of all ages often had their limbs amputated, or were impaled and left to die slowly. Others were doused in petrol and set alight, or disemboweled while still alive. Yet others were shot repeatedly, or tortured and shut up alone to die in pain. The wombs of pregnant women were cut open. Women were routinely raped while being tortured. Women -- now widows -- who lived could scarcely survive the trauma: The presence of sexual violence in the social memory of the communities has become a source of collective shame.”
Gibson hasn’t told the story of the hunted refugees fleeing Christian death squads a decade ago. His ancient hunters are nothing more than figments of his imagination, racist stereotypes of ancient Mayans who existed nowhere but in his own delirium tremens. They are his own demons chasing his imaginary hero/victim/alter ego, Jaguar Paw, through a “savage” jungle.
The framework of the story is deeply embedded in Gibson’s extreme right wing religious and political views. He casts Mayan priests and leaders as demonically malevolent at a time when interest is growing world wide in Mayan politics -- the Zaptistas -- and in Mayan spirituality and prophecy. The subtext of the film and its social context involve the Mayan prophecies of the end of an age of destruction, and the beginning of another around 2012 C.E., an age that can lead to harmony between humanity and the Earth.
The biblical counter-vision is of a righteous world destruction carried out by a vengeful god who destroys all living creatures, a vision embedded in the Apocalypse of Saint John, the Book of Revelations, which was the inspiration for the film’s title.
The Maya who survived the killing in Guatemala and elsewhere kept their spiritual traditions alive -- including their prophecies of the end of this age -- despite 500 years of intensive efforts to eradicate them. Right wing Christians see hell-driven New Age plots at every turn, and understand attacking other culture’s spiritual traditions not as cultural genocide but as legitimate “spiritual warfare” at a time of approaching apocalypse.
Gibson brought Apocalypto to life on the propaganda front of a spiritual war, a deadly serious culture war between those who would protect and defend the Earth’s ability to live and those on the Christian Right who want to “bring on” Armageddon.
The stakes are the future of life on planet Earth in a time when the industrial civilization of the West is seen by many as on the brink of collapse and when the world’s most respected scientists see Earth as on the verge of ecological destruction, a sentiment that is deeply shared by the living Mayan wisdom keepers whose indigenous spiritual tradition Gibson has chosen to paint as evil.
The survivors of the most recent wave of genocide haven’t seen Apocalypto yet -- no Maya has, not even those who had the bit parts Gibson reserved for them, or who worked as extras and maids.
One can’t help but wonder how Apocalypto will play to Guatemalan audiences, but one thing is a sure bet: Mayans will be deeply disturbed to see their culture portrayed as a madhouse of killing, while those who supported the death squad regime of the Christian fascist Efraín Ríos Montt will take solace: their view of the Maya as subhuman will be “justified” by the film, and so will their genocidal reign of terror.
Racist stereotypes, after all, serve one function and one function only -- they serve as a story, a script that justifies the use of violence against a targeted group, whether the weapons of the oppressor are the sword and cannon, the gas chamber, the M16, a lynch mob’s rope, or a camera.
One viewer understood and embraced Gibson’s intent in its entirety, saying of Apocalypto:
Pretty much precisely describes the whole point of the civilizations of such “noble savages” as the Mayans, if you ask us. There isn’t one, there wasn’t one, and there never will be one. Those bloodthirsty mongrels and many others before and after them were brutal, savage, cruel and entirely without redeeming qualities, and the best thing that ever happened to this planet was when they were wiped out, never to be heard of again.
In fact, we owe the Spanish Conquistadores an eternal debt of gratitude for having wiped that bloodcurdlingly bestial, brutal blight upon humanity off the face of the planet because, had they not done it, we would have had to do so ourselves.
The son of a Holocaust denier, Gibson defended his father in a 2004 interview, and, in the wake of his recent drunken tirades against Jews, Gibson can ill afford charges of propagating racism against Indians. The film’s PR campaign has carefully skirted potential opposition and negative exposure. Despite that effort, Mayan activists who’ve seen nothing more than the film’s trailer denounced the film the day before it opened.
Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation, said "Gibson replays, in glorious, big budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact needed, rescue."
The Indians who’ve seen the film itself have been a carefully chosen crew; Apocalypto, for all its epic pretensions, premiered in an Oklahoma casino, and certainly not for an audience of American Indian Movement activists. The initial Latino audience was chosen just as carefully. A Beverly Hills-based PR man arranged screenings of the film for the Los Angeles Latin Business Association -- not for Mexican and Central American migrants who know the Maya, not for indigenous minded Chicanos, and certainly not for LA’s substantial community of Mayan refugees.
The Latin Business Association obligingly gave Gibson their "Visionary” Award. But it’s too late for Gibson to hide behind such contrived “honors.” Even the LA Times pointedly noted, “ it's one thing to acknowledge a work's… merits and quite another to proclaim Gibson a ‘visionary,’ especially at a time when the immigration debate has reminded Latinos that virulent racism is only a few drinks away.”
Genocide is even closer than that. Ask the Spanish. Ask the death squads. Ask Mel, behind the camera or a behind small glass. It’s just a shot away.
Juan Santos is a Los Angeles based writer and editor. His essays from 2006 can be found at: http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/
He can be reached at: JuanSantos@Mexica.net
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/10/america/LA_GEN_Mexico_Oaxaca_Unrest.php
Published: December 10, 2006
Mexican leftist leader joins thousands marching against Oaxaca governor
The Associated Press
OAXACA, Mexico: A leader of Mexico's largest leftist party led thousands of protesters in a march to the center of this historic city on Sunday, demanding the resignation of the state governor and the withdrawal of thousands of federal police.
Shouting "Freedom for political prisoners!" the demonstrators also called for the release of more than 200 people who have been arrested on charges such as kidnapping and vandalism during a six-month long conflict in Oaxaca that has shattered the local economy and left at least nine dead.
Leonel Cota, president of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party or PRD, marched at the front of the demonstration alongside his party's lawmakers and Oaxacan protest leaders.
The PRD has become increasingly involved in the Oaxaca conflict after keeping its distance for months. Last week party leaders took up the cause of protest leader Flavio Sosa, who was arrested in Mexico City, calling him the first political prisoner of recently sworn-in President Felipe Calderon
The PRD claims Calderon's victory over its candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in July was fraudulent and refuses to recognize him as president.
The Oaxaca protesters — a broad front of leftists, students and Indian groups — accuse Gov. Ulises Ruiz of rigging his own election in 2004 and of sending armed thugs against his opponents. The protesters took over the center of Oaxaca for five months until thousands of federal police drove them off in clashes in October and November.
Most of the nine victims of the Oaxaca violence have been protesters who were shot by armed gangs, and activists blame local police for many of those killings.
Federal police raided the offices of the Oaxaca state police on Friday, and seized their guns to determine whether any were used in shootings of demonstrators.
The conflict has shattered the tourist industry in the city, which is famous for its colonial architecture and spicy cuisine. Although police have regained control of the city center, most foreign visitors continue to stay away.
Human rights groups have asked U.N. officials to intervene on behalf of the Oaxaca prisoners, alleging they have been tortured, sexually abused and taken to prisons thousands of miles (kilometers) away.
On Sunday, Ruiz announced that he had signed an agreement for more than 100 prisoners to be transferred from penitentiaries in the north of Mexico to installations close to their families in Oaxaca.
Meanwhile, about 200 demonstrators marched through Mexico City in solidarity with the Oaxaca march.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
Full HTML version of stories may include photos, graphics, and related links
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
Liberation Now!!
+Peta-de-Aztlan+
Email= sacranative@yahoo.com
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<><>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
http://picasaweb.google.com/peta.aztlan/Aztlannet_News_ALBUM
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzapata
Key Links=
* http://www.amlo.org.mx/
* http://www.aztlanelectronicnews.net/
* http://www.centralamericanews.com/
* http://www.eco.utexas.edu/%7Ehmcleave/chiapas95.html
* http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/
* http://hispanictips.com/index.php
* http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/
* http://www.treatycouncil.org/
* http://www.mexicodaily.com/
* http://www.mylatinonews.com/
* http://www.southamericadaily.com/
* http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/
* http://www.vidaenelvalle.com/front/v-english/
* http://vivirlatino.com/
<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>+<>
JOIN UP! Aztlannet_News Yahoo Group
COMMENT!
Aztlannet_News Blog
CLICK!
Aztlannet Website
No comments:
Post a Comment
Be for real! Love La Raza Cosmca! Venceremos!