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http://aztlannet-news-blog.blogspot.com/2006/12/december-27-2006-aztlan-news-report.html
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http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/12/27/18341314.php
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Wednesday Dec 27th, 2006 9:52 AM
Report from Oaxaca
by Luciente Zamora and Nina Armand
First report from two Revolution correspondents who are now in Oaxaca as part of a delegation whose mission is to bring international attention to the situation in that southern Mexican state.
Report from Oaxaca
by Luciente Zamora and Nina Armand
This is the first report from two Revolution correspondents, Luciente Zamora, and Nina Armand, who are now in Oaxaca as part of a delegation whose mission is to bring international attention to the situation in that southern Mexican state. As the two correspondents wrote in a letter in Revolution #74: “Repression is hitting hard against a powerful struggle that has rocked Oaxaca for months and inspired many people throughout Mexico and other parts of the world. Now more than ever there is a need to hear from the people who have been fighting with such determination, to bring to light the government-inflicted terror currently unfolding, and to get a deeper understanding of how people are confronting these new challenges and what the implications of all this are for emancipatory struggle on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border.”
Watch this website and get the next issue of Revolution for further on-the-scene reports from Oaxaca.
Oaxaca, Mexico, December 18— Contrasted against the blue sky, the red noche buenas blooming throughout the city, along with the sounds of women cooking and children playing in the marketplace, make the center of town seem almost…normal. Oaxaca is not the same place it was before the people stood up in June of this year. The fact that for months the people raised their heads throughout Oaxaca—from the center region and through much of the countryside—cannot be erased. Oaxaca demanded to be heard.
* * * * *
On Sunday, December 17, 43 prisoners who had been detained in a prison in Tepic, Nayarit were released. Immediately upon their arrival back to Oaxaca City, many of the people released began sharing stories of the November 25th repression when the Federal Preventive Police (PFP)—which had been occupying the zocalo, the central city square, since October—attacked protesters demanding the ouster of Oaxaca's hated governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. More than 150 people were brutally beaten and arrested in the area around the zocalo, including many people who were coming home from work and shopping.
Magdalena was coming home from work on the afternoon of the 25th. She’s a 50-year-old widow and works as a housekeeper to support her family. She had heard of the popular movement, but didn’t really know too much about it. She remembered some of her neighbors telling her that the teachers were just troublemakers and that it was time for the authorities to bring down order. But on the 25th everything changed. She was swept up along with many others by the PFP while she was in the town center. She was hit, thrown down on the floor, had her hands tied and told—along with other women—that they were going to die and that after they were killed their bodies would be thrown in garbage cans where nobody would find them.
Magdalena saw her relatives bloodied and beat up. For the 21 days she was in prison, she and the others arrested that day had no contact with the outside world. For Magdalena, what is burned into her consciousness is the desperation of the women prisoners who don’t know where their children are and whether or not they are eating. Just as arbitrarily as she’d been grabbed off the street on the 25th, she was told that she was going home. She can’t stop thinking about the women she left behind.
Before, Magdalena hadn’t given much thought to the people’s struggle. Her experience has affected her profoundly. She says after what the government has done to her she wants to participate in the struggle however she can. She now remembers the repression against the people of Atenco, who were fighting against the government's moves to take their land, and never would have believed she’d find herself identifying with the women who were brutalized there. She is most of all driven by an urgency to free the prisoners who remain in the conditions she’s just escaped, and she says that though she can’t read or write she wants to be involved in whatever way she can. She says she doesn’t seek to be rich and live in a mansion like URO, but she demands respect and a more just world—not just for herself, but for everyone.
* * * * *
The air is still thick in Oaxaca. In the past weeks police helicopters have occasionally flown low over the city—their blades a reminder of the brute force of the state. Officially the PFP forces have withdrawn from the city, but there are still eyes and ears everywhere. Just last night Florentino Lopez, Pedro Garcia, and Macario Padilla, prominent figures in the APPO movement were detained at a stoplight and were beaten and arrested. They were released the same night—but the threat of more repression is clear, as is determination on the people’s side.
----
Support the Revolution Reporting Trip to Oaxaca
From Luciente Zamora and Nina Armand:
“To accomplish what we’re setting out to do, we need your support. Primarily and urgently, we need funds to finance all this. We also need you to spread the word—pass on our articles, send them out to your listserves and e-mail lists and arrange speaking engagements in neighborhoods, schools, bookstores, etc.
“Send donations* to:
RCP Publications
attn: Oaxaca reportage
PO Box 3486
Chicago, IL 60654”
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http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2970/
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December 27, 2006
Street Battles in Oaxaca
By John Gibler | Oaxaca City, Mexico
Oaxacan women line up in front of riot police to defend the university campus.
At 8 a.m. on November 2, police came to remove the last barricade. After clearing away the rubble and city buses used to block the major Cinco Señores intersection, several hundred riot police and special forces from the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) took positions along University Avenue on either side of the Autonomous State University of Oaxaca. Two groups of police forces armed with submachine guns, tear gas grenades, riot shields and batons prepared to advance, with military helicopters circling overhead and anti-riot tanks gunning their motors behind. Only the charred skeleton of an old bus, stretched across University Avenue halfway between the two police lines, remained.
The commander of the federal police, who would not give his name, said that they had no intention of invading the university campus, home to the occupied radio station that protesters from the Oaxaca Peoples’ Popular Assembly (APPO) had used for months to coordinate their civil disobedience uprising against Governor Ulises Ruíz Ortíz. “They are in their house,” the commander said, “and we did not come here to kick them out.”
The students saw otherwise.
Soon, residents from surrounding neighborhoods trickled into the streets to stand before the lines of riot police, talking, pleading and screaming at them not to advance, not to attack the university. The crowd swelled and by 10 a.m., students began to leap over the campus walls and join in, carrying junked cars, old tires and fallen telephone poles to build a new barricade only 10 feet from the federal police, and then set it on fire. The students shouted at the police, waving their sticks, rocks, slingshots and Molotov cocktails in the air.
Then one of the helicopters overhead fired tear gas grenades inside the campus, and the students unleashed a torrential volley of rocks and bottles. To the west, a morning soccer game froze in mid-play before both teams and the referees ran to gather rocks and join the defense.
It would take four hours, with thousands of students and nearby residents waging the fight, before the PFP finally retreated at 3 p.m. and the barricade of Cinco Señores was rebuilt.
The confrontation was the first open battle with police since teachers and local residents defeated state riot police in their pre-dawn raid on the striking teachers’ encampment on June 14. Created to support the teachers’ union after June’s failed police raid, the APPO had responded to armed paramilitary attacks only by organizing barricades—thousands of barricades—across Oaxaca City every night. When the PFP entered Oaxaca on October 29, the APPO called on protesters to turn and march with the police into the city rather than confront them. But state police in unmarked cars began a terror campaign, shooting, abducting, and brutally torturing university students and barricade volunteers in broad daylight.
The resulting rage catalyzed with the euphoria of victory on November 2, creating an urge for more battle. During a massive march on November 5, APPO organizers formed human chains in front of the police to keep protesters from throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails. But on November 20, after yet another, smaller march to commemorate the Mexican Revolution, four masked men threw rocks at the police lines outside of the town square. The police responded with tear gas and began to advance on the protesters, who retreated several blocks. After three hours of fighting, the APPO—blaming agitators for throwing the first rocks—gave the order to retreat and prepare a November 25 action.
The plan was to lead another massive march into the city center and peacefully surround the PFP—at a distance of a full city block—keeping them trapped in the town square for 48 hours. But the plan did not hold. When PFP agents stole a protester’s cooler of soda, young and enraged APPO members responded by throwing rocks and firing bottle rockets through plastic tubes.
The battle lasted for three hours and ended with the PFP using full force—tear gas, riot tanks, machine gun fire—to drive the protesters out of the center and surround them, beating and detaining over 140 people. That night, federal and state police pulled wounded protesters out of hospitals at gun point, raided houses and patrolled the city in convoys of pickup trucks carrying special forces officers. The campaign stretched over a week, forcing movement leaders and participants alike into hiding.
But on December 10, more than 10,000 members of the APPO reemerged to march in Oaxaca City, demanding Ruíz’s ouster and an end to the repression of the movement.
“People are moving beyond the fear,” says Fernando Soberanes, an indigenous teacher and member of the APPO who has participated in the movement from day one. “We are returning to the streets.”
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.nat27dec27,0,3642573.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
Originally published December 27, 2006
Immigration law challenged
HOUSTON // A Dallas suburb that has barred landlords from renting to illegal immigrants was sued yesterday by two civil rights groups that allege the ordinance turns property owners into immigration agents and violates federal law.
The challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund seeks to derail a new law that would require property managers to check the immigration status of apartment renters in Farmers Branch, Texas. The ordinance, approved last month, is set to take effect Jan. 12.
Farmers Branch - a city of 28,000 north of Dallas that is about 37 percent Latino - is one of dozens of municipalities around the country that, frustrated with federal government inaction, have adopted tough local measures to stem illegal immigration.
The Farmers Branch ordinance is seen as a turning point for Texas, a state that largely has avoided the kind of confrontational immigration policies commonplace elsewhere.
[ Los Angeles Times]
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http://www.workpermit.com/news/2006_12_27/us/high-tech_companies_lobby_congress.htm
27 December 2006
US high-tech companies lobbying Congress for immigration changes
Advanced technology industrial interests in the United States are lobbying members of Congress to change immigration policies toward highly skilled immigrants.
Some recent studies are being used to support the case that U.S. high-tech industries are suffering as they compete against other countries in the technology boom these past several years. These interests assert that restrictions on the number of H-1B workers available each year is hurting U.S. companies.
High-tech companies are touting these studies to show contributions made by educated immigrants, and they want updated immigration laws to expand the number of immigrants allowed into the country each year.
Present U.S. immigration law restricts H-1B visas to 60,000 available per year, down from 195,000 per year in 2004 and 215,000 prior to that. An additional 6,000 are available, but are reserved by special treaties with specific countries. 20,000 more H1-B's are exempted each year outside the 60,000 cap for advanced degrees, such as PhD's.
In an immigration reform bill passed by the U.S. Senate in May, it was proposed that the cap be raised to 115,000. Due to political disagreements that were not resolved, the U.S. House and the Senate did not pursue negotiations on their different immigration reform bills to craft a law for 2006.
Just last week, the 110th U.S. Congress, now under a thin majority control of the liberal-leaning Democratic Party, has begun bi-partisan negotiation to create new bills. The Senate version is currently estimated to be ready for a vote in April or May of 2007, followed later in the year by a House version. Addressing changes in the H-1B program is one of many expected items in these bills.
Industry studies, such as a study by the National Venture Capital Association, conclude that immigrants were involved in almost 20% of venture-capital, public companies in the last 15 years. These are companies that started high-technology businesses and employed thousands of American workers. These companies raised over $500 billion dollars in capital since 1990.
About 40% of public high-tech companies, with Intel, Google, Yahoo, E-Bay, and Sun Microsystems included on that list, had at least one foreign-born person as a least one of the founders. In the computer and software field, foreign-born entrepreneurs are behind almost half of venture capital start up companies. The bottom line is that a very significant portion of the innovation that has kept the U.S. in the forefront of technology comes from immigrants.
For decades, "Silicon Valley" industries in California attracted the best engineers and computer programmers from around the world. Companies now say that they cannot find enough U.S.-born engineers and computer experts to fill job openings.
Solutions
U.S. Senate immigration bill that proposed to increase the quotas would have helped the backlog of jobs that companies claim are going unfilled.
Some proposed solutions would to lift the caps on certain types of high-tech jobs and also allow qualified foreign students (approximately 600,000) to remain in the U.S. and fill high-tech jobs after they graduate from school. Scotland in the United Kingdom has a similar program for graduates of its universities. It is seen as so successful that the UK government is currently crafting a program for all of Britain.
Canada is another country that is considering similar measures for graduates of its universities. A number of other countries have recognized the potential of this approach during 2006, such as Australia, New Zealand and several other European Union nations.
For the H-1B program in the United States, it might be possible to keep the current quota in place if such measures are enacted. The possibility would be to allow a number of exemption categories targeted at specific needs such as the industries are interested in. Tens of thousands of potential highly skilled workers might then be eligible for work visas, potentially exceeding the proposed quota increases from earlier this year.
Meanwhile, industry players, such as Microsoft's CEO Bill Gates, continue to maintain that many more H-1B visas for skilled workers are needed this coming year. The 110th session of Congress will address this problem and, hopefully, get past the partisan rhetoric that deadlocked last year's debate.
The incoming Speaker of the U.S. House, Nancy Pelosi, has already spoken with Bill Gates about the need for reform. Both have stated that Congress needs to encourage innovation.
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http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/16326538.htm
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Posted on Wed, Dec. 27, 2006
Latino activist Gonzales dies at 91
DANA POINT (AP) - John Gonzales, founding president of a Los Angeles council of the League of United Latin American Citizens and a longtime activist for Mexican-American rights, has died. He was 91.
Gonzales died of natural causes Dec. 6 at his home in Dana Point, said his daughter, Diane Lichterman.
''He was a fearless stalwart in the defense of Southern California Latinos in the early to mid-'40s when few dared raise their head above the crowd for fear of violent retribution,'' Edward Morga, a former national LULAC president, told the Los Angeles Times.
Gonzales helped organize the formation of new LULAC councils statewide in the 1940s. He was the organization's vice president general when the league in Orange County helped organize a class-action lawsuit against four school districts forcing Mexican children to attend schools separate from whites.
The landmark case -- Mendez v. Westminster School District of Orange County -- led to the end of segregation in California schools in 1947, nearly seven years before the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared unconstitutional the racial segregation of public schools.
Margie Aguirre, chairwoman of the California LULAC Heritage Committee, said Gonzales helped raise funds for the Orange County case and wrote an article in the LULAC News that helped bring national attention to it.
In his article, ''Calling All LULACs,'' Gonzales wrote of a time in the future ''when all persons regardless of former ancestry, color or creed shall have the right to equal educational and economic opportunities and the equal protection of our laws."
''Never in the history of LULAC has the call to arms been more urgent or for a more worthy cause, and I should like to feel that when this fight is over each of us shall have cause to be proud,'' Gonzales wrote.
In 2003, Gonzales received a certificate of special congressional recognition for his work during the Mendez case. A year later, the California Assembly presented him a certificate of recognition in honor of his receiving the Patriots with Civil Rights Award from LULAC.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/world/americas/27castro.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1167195600&en=7c6bf5aa4e47df60&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin
December 27, 2006
Spanish Doctor Denies Castro Has Cancer
By James C. McKinley Jr.
MEXICO CITY, Dec. 26 — A Spanish surgeon who examined Fidel Castro last week said Tuesday that the 80-year-old Cuban president did not have cancer and could return to work after recovering from the intestinal surgery he had last summer.
“His physical activity is excellent, his intellectual activity intact,” the doctor, José Luis García Sabrido, head of surgery at Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid, said at a news conference in Madrid. “I’d say fantastic. He’s recovering from his previous operation.”
This is the first time since Mr. Castro dropped out of public view in the summer that a medical expert outside the Cuban government has commented on his health.
Cuban officials have said Mr. Castro’s condition is a state secret.
United States intelligence officials have said Mr. Castro is not long for this world, especially after he failed to appear at a weeklong celebration of his birthday, held this month.
Speculation has been rampant in Washington and among Cuban exiles in Miami that Mr. Castro, a leftist icon who has thumbed his nose at the White House for nearly five decades, has colon cancer.
The director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, told The Washington Post this month that American intelligence agencies believed that Mr. Castro was “terminally ill” and that he would be dead in “months, not years.” Other American intelligence officials have said they believe that Mr. Castro is dying of cancer.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for Mr. Negroponte, Ross Feinstein, said the director had nothing to add to his earlier assessment.
Dr. García Sabrido, who examined Mr. Castro in Cuba last week, said the intestinal bleeding that prompted the handing of power to his brother Raúl and small group of cabinet ministers in the summer did not stem from a malignancy. He added that Mr. Castro could make a full recovery, but “required muscular rehabilitation and a strict diet.”
“He does not have cancer, he has a problem with his digestive system,” Dr. García Sabrido told reporters in Madrid. “President Castro has no malign inflammation. It’s a benign process in which he has had a series of complications.”
The surgeon flew to Havana last week with medical equipment not available in Cuba to determine whether Mr. Castro needed further surgery. In keeping with Havana’s wishes, he did not say specifically what ailed Mr. Castro.
“It is not planned that he will undergo another operation for the moment,” Dr. García Sabrido said. “His condition is stable. He is recovering slowly but progressively.”
Cuban officials have steadfastly denied that Mr. Castro has cancer, although they have stopped insisting that he will return to power. On Oct. 28, video images released to the public showed that the once towering leader had become a shuffling and frail man.
A number of noncancerous ailments can cause serious intestinal bleeding. A common problem in the United States is diverticulitis. It is an inflammation of small pouchlike balloonings in the large bowel, or large intestine, and can require a number of surgical procedures. Examples of other noncancerous intestinal conditions are inflammatory bowel diseases like regional enteritis (Crohn’s) or ulcerative colitis.
Serious bleeding could also develop as a complication of surgery to correct an insufficient blood supply to the intestine. Such a condition may be caused by arteriosclerosis and is analogous to the insufficient blood supply that can lead to angina, heart attack or stroke.
To correct the problem, surgeons may have to remove a large part of the small intestine, sometimes creating a difficulty known as short bowel syndrome. That syndrome can lead to difficulty in digestion.
Besides his absence from a military parade in his honor on Dec. 2, other signs have indicated Mr. Castro’s weakened condition. On Friday, he missed the last session of the year of the National Assembly for only the second time in 30 years.
News reports last week said Mr. was too ill to receive a longtime friend, the Colombian author and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez.
Cuban officials told visiting American congressmen this month that Mr. Castro did not have a terminal illness and would make a public appearance shortly.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/world/americas/26bolivia.html?_r=1&ref=americas&oref=slogin
December 26, 2006
In Bolivia’s Affluent East, Anger at Morales Is Growing
By SIMON ROMERO
SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia, Dec. 22 — If anything captures the growing tension between La Paz, the capital, and this flourishing city in the eastern lowlands, it is an alarming photomontage people send to one another’s cellphones showing President Evo Morales with a gunshot wound to the head and the words “Viva Santa Cruz” scrawled above him in blood.
The image has become a symbol of the rift between Mr. Morales, an Aymara Indian who after one year in office is celebrating populist feats like energy nationalization and the start of an ambitious land reform plan, and the conservative political and business elite of Santa Cruz, who speak of a country on the cusp of being torn asunder.
“We’re turning into another Zimbabwe, in which economic chaos will become the norm,” said Branko Mavinkovic, the president of a cooking oil manufacturer and one of Bolivia’s richest men. “Evo wants to create a situation where we’re driven to civil war,” he said, speaking English with a light Texas twang he picked up at Southern Methodist University.
Bolivia remains far from such a dire predicament. But pressure for more political autonomy in Santa Cruz and neighboring eastern provinces is the most pressing challenge to Mr. Morales’s government.
This city of 1.3 million people, with its beauty contests, overflowing discothèques and dynamic business culture, seems to gaze not westward toward the Andes for its inspiration but east, to the industrial powerhouse of Brazil.
Scenes of extreme poverty stand in contrast here with the construction of garish new headquarters of corporations from Brazil, Europe and the United States.
One million people flooded the main avenues here this month to protest an effort by Mr. Morales’s supporters to amend the Constitution with a simple majority vote instead of a two-thirds majority.
Protesters have painted the phrase “Evo, Chola de Chávez” which loosely translates as “Evo, Chávez’s Indian Woman,” on walls throughout this city, a reference to Mr. Morales’ tightening alliance with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
It is no surprise that many Bolivian supporters of Mr. Morales view Santa Cruz as a redoubt of racism and elitism.
After students pelted his motorcade with rocks when he visited here last month, Mr. Morales expressed his disdain for some of the region’s political and civic leaders who were on a hunger strike by saying they were doing so because they had grown “very fat.”
Venezuela’s influence in Bolivia has added to the tension. Julio Montes, Venezuela’s ambassador to Bolivia, said this month that Venezuela would consider military intervention on behalf of Mr. Morales in the event of a crisis. Mr. Montes also said Venezuela would finance 20 border posts, including 2 at major trade routes in the east — plans that inflamed Mr. Morales’s critics here.
“We do not want a Communist state shoved down our throats,” said Carlos Dabdoub, chief spokesman for the Santa Cruz civic committee and a candidate for vice president last year, explaining that eastern provinces were seeking political autonomy similar to that of certain regions in Spain.
While much attention has focused on political and cultural differences, at the heart of the dispute is control over proceeds from the extraction of natural resources like iron ore, timber, oil and, above all, natural gas. The state of Santa Cruz produces almost half of Bolivia’s tax revenues while it has about a fifth of the population.
Bolivia’s government has had a $500 million revenue windfall after exerting more government control over the energy industry this year. Most of the gas is extracted and processed in another eastern state, Tarija, and Santa Cruz.
“The east wasn’t clamoring for autonomy when the mineral wealth was in the tin mines of the Bolivian highlands,” said Jim Schultz, a political analyst in Cochabamba. “Strip away the rhetoric on both sides and this is about who controls the gas revenues.”
Autonomy advocates for Santa Cruz often say their differences with La Paz go back to the colonial era, when affairs in the highlands were managed from Lima, and the lowland plains were linked to royal representatives in Asunción.
Of course, Santa Cruz’s reality these days differs from its history. An impressive economic expansion that started 50 years ago, when Santa Cruz had just 50,000 residents, has attracted hundreds of thousands of inhabitants from throughout Bolivia, many of them indigenous migrants. Many people in Santa Cruz support Mr. Morales’s efforts to promote indigenous cultures and exert more authority over the traditional elite here.
“When the oligarchs ask for autonomy, that means they’re finally losing some of the power they’ve had for the last 180 years,” Silvestre Saisari, a prominent land rights advocate here, said in an interview.
Even Mr. Morales’s market-oriented critics acknowledge that the nationalization announced in May has gone better than expected, at least for now. Foreign energy companies from Brazil, France and Spain agreed to stay in Bolivia and cede control of operations after Argentina recently said it would purchase large amounts of gas for three times what Bolivia had been receiving for its exports.
Carlos Alberto López, an independent energy consultant, said the new arrangement would allow the companies to remain profitable in Bolivia even as the government struggled to manage the industry with a national oil company that was still short of qualified technicians and engineers. “Evo’s been very lucky when it comes to energy,” Mr. López said. “He’s been able to portray the nationalization as a political masterstroke.”
Indeed, Mr. Morales’s nationwide approval ratings have climbed to 62 percent after falling as low as 50 percent in October, when his government appeared stymied after more than a dozen miners died in clashes with the police. In Santa Cruz, his approval rating is 35 percent.
Comparisons to Zimbabwe aside, much of Mr. Morales’s popularity is tied to the strength of Bolivia’s economy, which is expected to grow more than 4 percent this year, an impressive performance for a country that remains the poorest in South America.
A write-off of Bolivia’s debt with foreign lenders and prudent management of the economy have resulted in a 6 percent budget surplus, allowing Mr. Morales to move ahead with social welfare programs like one that provides poor families with a modest stipend if their children remain in school.
“We’re witnessing the best economic conditions in Bolivia in the last 45 years,” said Gonzalo Chávez, an economist at Catholic University in La Paz. “It’s hard to envision civil war in this environment.”
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http://www.workpermit.com/news/2006_12_26/us/democratic_congress_immigration_reform_again.htm
26 December 2006
The US Congress will begin immigration reform, again
Democratic lawmakers and their Republican allies are working on measures to draft a bipartisan immigration reform bill for the United States. The Congress has generally fallen into disfavor with the American public, with the dismal failure of any significant leadership or progress on immigration reform during 2006 being one of the more prominent topics.
The left leaning Democratic Party was highly critical of many major points of the right-wing Republican Party's proposals and bills introduced this year. Having secured a thin majority control of the Congress in the November elections, there is pressure for them to show progress on highly visible issues.
At the same time, one of the greatest disasters for the Republicans this year was a failure to pass any meaningful reform, despite holding full power over both the White House and the Congress. Their failure was two-fold on immigration: first they proposed several bills that were largely viewed as mean-spirited by many mainstream Americans, and second they created a very visible media event over immigration during the year, hoping to use it for the elections this past fall.
In the end, the Democratic Party resisted the more extreme measures, preventing the bills from being negotiated into laws. Also, many Republicans could not stomach some of the measures proposed by their more right-wing colleagues, and so support for the bills, especially the House of Representatives bill passed last December, waned and the issue was left to die on the vine.
For the Republicans, it was too late. Having created such a visible issue for the election, most Americans remembered very clearly that this was supposed to be a keystone reform year for U.S. immigration only six months ago. Combined with other issues in the American political landscape, failure to achieve any level of immigration reform was one key issue that the Republicans were punished viciously for at election time.
However, at this time in America, the entire Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, is at one of the lowest approval ratings in U.S. history, with some polls placing approval of the Congress at approximately 20% or under.
The Democrats see an opportunity to raise that approval rating and to take credit for it. And, immigration reform is a wide-reaching issue that they can demonstrate clear success on.
What might reform look like?
With the new Democratic majority in Congress, Democratic lawmakers and some key center-leaning Republican allies are working on measures that could place millions of illegal immigrants on a more direct path to citizenship. In May, the Senate passed a bill that was much more centrist than the radically right-wing bill passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives at the end of 2005.
The new efforts in both houses of Congress are likely to look more like the Senate bill, and in many cases be much more humane and liberal-leaning.
This is in direct response to public support by Americans that felt some of the measures went too far in punishing immigrants, while giving a free pass to businesses that were in greater violation of existing laws.
Being a nation of immigrants, most Americans want to welcome newcomers to the United States. The trick is to balance between security of the country, stability of the economy and the society, and simple humanity toward other people.
Accordingly, lawmakers are considering abandoning a requirement in the Senate bill that would compel several million illegal immigrants to leave the United States before becoming eligible to apply for citizenship.
The lawmakers are also considering denying financing for 700 miles of fencing along the border with Mexico, a law championed by Republicans. The original $6 billion to $10 billion estimate has increased to a $36 billion estimate, and may take longer than a decade to complete.
Details of the bill, which would be introduced early next year, are being drafted. Key points include tougher border security and a guest worker plan. The lawmakers, who hope for bipartisan support, will almost certainly face pressure to compromise on the issues from some Republicans and conservative Democrats.
Political shift and security
The proposals reflect significant shifts since the November elections, as well as critical support from the Homeland Security Department.
The Senate plans to introduce its immigration bill next month with an eye toward passage in March or April, officials said. The House is expected to consider its version later.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the incoming chairman of the Senate Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship Subcommittee said "I'm very hopeful about this, both in terms of the substance and the politics of it."
Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that there would be hurdles. However, he and other lawmakers say Republicans and Democrats are now more likely to work together to repair a system widely considered as broken.
House Republicans blocked consideration of the bill that passed the Senate this year, saying it amounted to an amnesty for lawbreakers and voicing confidence that a tough stance would touch off a groundswell of support in the Congressional elections. The strategy is largely considered to be a resounding failure now.
Hispanic voters, a swing constituency that Republicans covet, abandoned the party in large numbers. Support for Republicans plunged from 44% to 29% in the months before the election, and a number of Republican hardliners lost their seats by margins less than that.
After the dismal showing, House Republicans denied F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, the departing chairman of the Judiciary Committee and an architect of the House immigration approach, a senior position on any major committee in the new Congress.
Domestic security officials have voiced support for important elements of the framework under consideration. The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly raised doubts about the effectiveness of border fencing in remote desert areas. Mr. Bush signed the fence bill this year, but Congress did not appropriate enough money for it.
The plan under consideration would allow 10 million or 11 million illegal immigrants to become eligible to apply for citizenship without returning home, up from 7 million in the original Senate bill. To be granted citizenship, they would have to remain employed, pass background checks, pay fines and back taxes, and enroll in English classes as needed.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/25/world/americas/25argentina.html?ref=americas
December 25, 2006
A Widening Gap Erodes Argentina’s Egalitarian Image
By LARRY ROHTER
BUENOS AIRES — Five years after the collapse that ushered in the worst economic crisis in its modern history, Argentina has largely recovered. Since 2003, the economy here has grown faster than any other in South America, expanding on average by more than 8 percent annually.
But another problem has come with that revival, vexing Argentines and challenging their image of themselves and their society. The fruits of the rapid expansion of commerce, construction, corporate profits and exports are not being shared by all, and as a result, economic and social inequality have intensified.
Historically, this has been a country that prided itself on its egalitarianism. An Argentine factory worker, for instance, could reasonably aspire to live in a comfortable apartment (often with professionals as neighbors), eat meat every day, get competent medical care and, through his union, enjoy a couple of weeks of vacation each year at the beach.
Argentines scorned what they saw as the individualistic dog-eat-dog, every-man-for-himself character of American capitalism and the chasm between rich and poor in nearby countries like Brazil, Chile and Peru. If there was a model Argentines admired, it was France’s manifesto of “liberty, equality and fraternity.”
Those ideals of solidarity help to explain the rise of Peronism and its continuing appeal here. But the reality on which that vision is based has eroded as a result of the wrenching transformation of Argentina’s economy and society since the start of the 1990s — and especially since the crisis that erupted in December 2001.
“In the past, Argentina really was more like Europe than the rest of Latin America,” said Bernardo Kosacoff, the Argentine representative of the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. “Parents had the perception that their children would live better than they did, because workers had well-paying jobs in the formal sector, their own houses and access to good education. But now the process of social ascent is much more complicated.”
Statistics clearly make that point. In the mid-1970s, the most affluent 10 percent of Argentina’s population had an income 12 times that of the poorest 10 percent. By the mid-1990s, that figure had grown to 18 times the income of the poor, and by 2002, the peak of the crisis, the income of the richest segment was 43 times that of the poorest. The situation has improved only slightly since then.
The economic crisis, which built through the 1990s, peaked when the government froze bank accounts and declared its largest foreign debt default ever. The peso’s value collapsed, millions of Argentines lost part or all of their savings and the economy contracted by more than 11 percent the next year.
Despite the recovery, barely 5 percent of Argentine families are now saving money, according to a study conducted in April by the Market Foundation, a research group. That compares with nearly 30 percent at the end of the 1990s. At the crisis’s peak, nearly 60 percent of Argentines had incomes below the poverty line.
“The breach between the rich and the poor continues to grow even though the number of people living in poverty is declining,” said María Laura Alzúa, an economist at Mediterranean Foundation, a research group here. “There is growth, but more of it is going to those at the top of the pyramid than any other sector, and so the Argentine dream of social mobility is disappearing.”
The gap can perhaps be most easily perceived in the suburbs north of the capital, where beneficiaries of the economic rebound live in gated communities, known here by the English word “countries.”
Many of the poor, both new and old, live just outside the walls, jammed into slums called “villas miserias,” or misery settlements. Often, they work for their affluent neighbors as gardeners, maids or handymen, the only work they can find, and that is off the books.
“That is the new model of social segmentation,” said Agustín Salvia, a sociologist at the Catholic University of Argentina. “This used to be a society that was relatively homogeneous, but now there are two Argentinas, marching in different directions and at different speeds.”
Gen. Juan Domingo Perón, who came to power in 1946, ruled in the name of the so-called “shirtless ones” until he was overthrown in a coup in 1955; he returned to power in 1973 and died in 1974. His movement, Justicialismo, was proscribed under most of the military and civilian governments that followed, but they dared not dismantle the network of social benefits that he had erected.
“There really was a state of well-being, and everyone had access to goods and services,” said Jorge Colina, an economist at the Argentine Institute for Social Development, a research institution here.
Mr. Colina cited his own history as an example. He is the son of a bus driver, but in the 1960s, “the school I went to was the same one the sons of the rich and the local congressman attended, and they even fed us there,” he recalled. “If it were not for Peronism, I would not be here.”
Economists now say that system encouraged Argentina to live beyond its means and discouraged investment and production. Nevertheless, many Argentines remember those years as a golden age of equality, opportunity and well-being.
“Things were different back then, much better, I’d say,” said María Chazareta, 67. “You could live, and reasonably well, on what you earned. Prices weren’t in the clouds, and the medical care was good and cheap.”
That view is shared by young people, too, like Enrique Rolón, 26, a laborer who is a neighbor of Ms. Chazareta’s in La Cava, a villa miseria that abuts a well-to-do gated community in the northern suburbs here.
“We were nine kids, but things weren’t so tight back when I was a little guy,” he recalled. “Dad was a bricklayer, but he always managed to feed and clothe us all, and have a bit left over. I can’t do that, even though I only have three children.”
Asked if he resented the prosperity of those who live on the other side of the wall, Mr. Rolón said no. “They got it through their own effort,” he said. “What bothers me is that the wealth I see is not being shared equally. Before, it was different.”
Except for a two-year interlude that led up to the economic collapse in December 2001, Argentina has been governed since 1990 by Peronists. Though President Néstor Kirchner, who is up for re-election in 2007, has sought to alleviate some of the disparity with work programs that pay about $150 a month, experts say resentment of income inequality remains widespread.
“There is a sense of frustration, of being deceived,” said Mr. Salvia, the sociologist. “The feeling is that there was a promise, a contract, and it has been violated.”
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6199641.stm
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Published: 2006/12/24 01:30:18 GMT
Latin America looks to 2007
By Nick Caistor
Latin America analyst
Latin America enters 2007 with renewed political leadership and generally booming economic prospects.
New governments, especially in the Andean countries, are looking for different options to neo-liberalism and the free market approach that has dominated economic and political thinking in the region for years. But the largest countries have voted for stability in a year of a dozen presidential elections.
In Brazil, President Lula comfortably won a second term in office, despite major political scandals in his Workers' Party.
In Colombia and Venezuela, two very contrasting leaders, Alvaro Uribe and Hugo Chavez, were also rewarded with second terms in office, while it seems likely that in Argentina, President Nestor Kirchner will also be given another four years in power in 2007.
Such presidential continuity is new to the region - many of the countries have only recently changed their constitutions to allow the president to stand a second time.
New chance
The challenge for the incumbents is to make good on promises that have often eluded them in their first period in office.
In Brazil, Lula will need to make real inroads in the fight against poverty. He came to power in 2002 promising to make hunger a thing of the past in his country, but so far has been unable to make much progress.
Similarly, Mr Uribe in Colombia argued that his "democratic security" could end the vicious civil conflict that has claimed thousands of lives over many years.
So far the conservative president's attempts to disarm the right-wing paramilitaries and cajole the left-wing guerrilla groups into peace talks have met with limited success.
He now has another four years to see if he can achieve something that has been beyond the grasp of his predecessors.
In Venezuela, President Chavez has vowed to use his new six-year term to deepen his "Bolivarian Revolution", his socialist movement named after Simon Bolivar, the 19th Century independence hero.
Observers say this means that he must make greater attempts to make structural changes to the Venezuelan economy rather than using buoyant oil revenues for programmes - described by critics as paternalistic - to help those most in need.
Reform plans
While Mr Chavez is busy dispensing largesse at home, some see him trying to spread anti-US sentiment throughout Latin America.
But the three recently-elected left-wing leaders most likely to back him in that face very different challenges of their own.
In Nicaragua, the once-revolutionary Daniel Ortega will, like Brazil's Lula, be trying to reduce poverty and bring some semblance of justice and equity to an impoverished country where the situation has been made even worse by corrupt politicians.
In Ecuador meanwhile, Rafael Correa faces the task of ruling without any political party directly behind him, as he attempts to resolve the split between Congress and the presidency which has made the country almost ungovernable in recent years.
Political reform is also high on the agenda in Bolivia, where Evo Morales has fulfilled his election promise to bring the oil and gas industry back under national control.
President Morales now has to build on that, and make sure he uses his past as a union leader to take a majority of Bolivians with him, avoiding the risk of this Andean country splintering, especially when a constituent assembly begins its deliberations in the coming months.
Monolithic symbols
But if Latin American countries are likely to be too busy setting their own affairs to rights to form a coherent challenge to the United States and the perceived neo-liberal model it promotes in the region, Washington does have two major concerns.
In Mexico, the July 2006 elections saw more political continuity, with conservative Felipe Calderon, the candidate from President Vicente Fox's PAN (National Action Party) elected for the next six years.
But the margin of his victory over left-winger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was so slender that the defeated candidate has been mounting a noisy and occasionally massive campaign against the result.
This could combine with other destabilising factors, from local disputes in Oaxaca to drug violence in the state of Michoacan, to give Washington a headache.
But the greatest uncertainty in 2007 for the United States, Latin America, and the rest of the world, lies in the future of Cuba.
The year 2006 saw the death of two monolithic symbols of past authoritarian rule in the region. Paraguay's former President Alfredo Stroessner died in exile in August.
In Chile, former military ruler Augusto Pinochet died at the age of 91.
Although he had not held power for 16 years, his presence still cast a shadow over political life there, which should now return fully to its democratic ways.
After Fidel
But in Cuba, President Fidel Castro is still there.
After 47 years as undisputed leader of the Cuban revolution, ill-health has meant him handing over power to his younger brother Raul since July.
There has been little sign of political change or unrest during this period, but when Mr Castro dies, it will be the end of an era for Cuba, the whole of Latin America, and for the United States.
Washington has already been trying to make provision for what it calls "a transition to democracy".
Its worst fear is that the end of the Castro regime could create violence that would provoke a mass exodus from Cuba and the heavy involvement of Cuban Americans in any political upheaval that followed.
Perhaps the new-found political stability and maturity of Latin America could lead it to play a decisive role in ensuring that whatever comes after Fidel Castro is the genuine expression of the Cuban people's political aspirations.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6199641.stm
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