The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 13 Issue 9…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…February 28, 2010

Intuit's Vibe

The Falling of Freedom Fighters

By Roque Dalton

The dead are more unmanageable every day.

Before it was easy with them:

We gave flowers to the uptight ones

We gave the relatives the names on one long list:

To these we gave national borders

To those we gave remarkable peace

That one we gave a monstrous marble tomb

Then we saluted the memory of the corpses

And went to their cemetery rows

Marching to the compass of old music.

But where the dead go is different now.

Today they ask ironic questions.

And it seems to me that they fall more and more

On account of being

More and more the majority.

About Me: This poem by Roque Dalton, the Salvadoran poet, born in 1935 and executed by the People's Revolutionary Army in 1975, was translated from Spanish by Alan West.

Bit of History

Rigoberta Menchú Tum

Known mostly through the book I, Rigoberta Menchú by Elisabeth Burgos Debray (1983) a story about her life, people outside of Latin America were completely unaware of this amazing woman. Rigoberta Menchú Tum was born January 9, 1959 in Laj Chimel, El Quiché, Guatemala. Menchú is Quiché Mayan, one of 22 indigenous ethnic groups in Guatemala. Her mother Juana Tum and father Vicente Menchú were peasant farmers. The third of their five children, she attended several primary Catholic boarding schools intermittently.

Menchú lived a harsh life as a child. Her father claimed and cultivated land in the beautiful highlands of Guatemala in 1960. However, farming could not sustain the family, so they spent much of the year working on coastal coffee and cotton plantations as migrants. The landowners sold staples exorbitantly, which reduced their take home pay. Exposed to herbicides and other chemicals daily, Menchú's brother died of what was diagnosed as malnutrition. Her mother was fired and not paid when she took the day off to bury him.

Outraged, Menchú became an activist during her teens, campaigning against human rights violations by Ladino landowners and the Guatemalan army. Ladinos were white/Spanish mixed Guatemalans, whose families have held economic and political power since the Spanish conquest. Taking land, Ladinos invaded mountain communities and tricked illiterate farmers into signing titles, giving up their land.

Menchú became a reform activist, prominent in the women's rights movement. After guerillas began organizing in the mountains, her father was imprisoned and tortured. Upon release, he joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC).

Violence surged in1979; over 1,000 indigenous Mayans died a month. Menchú's father, mother, brother and sister joined those occupying Guatemala's Congress in protest over the kidnaping, torture and murder of indigenous people. Menchú's brother was arrested, tortured and killed by the army. Her father was burned alive when security forces stormed the Spanish Embassy that peasants had occupied. Shortly afterwards, her mother was arrested, tortured, raped and murdered, but Menchú continued to fight.

Following those tragedies, Menchú's radicalism increased. She took her father's place in the CUC, and by 1980, she figured prominently in organizing strikes by farm workers on the Pacific coast. She organized demonstrations in the capital with the radical 31st of January Popular Front and educated Indigenous peasants in mass action against military oppression.

Consequently late in 1981, Menchú was on the run; she sought asylum in Mexico. Exiled, Menchú traveled incognito to Nicaragua, then to the US. There she met indigenous leaders who sent her to Europe as an ambassador for indigenous people. Moving between the UN and Europe, she dictated, I, Rigoberta Menchú. She returned to Guatemala after 12 years abroad, only to be arrested. International protest prompted her release; she fled to Mexico once again.

She participated in drafting the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples presented at the UN in 1991. A second book about her, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y asi me nacio la conciencia (My Name is Rigoberta Menchú and this is how my Conscience was Born) was released and translated into 5 languages including English and French (1982).

When Guatemalan prosecutors refused to pursue crimes committed by politicians and military during the civil war, Menchú filed a complaint to have them tried in Spanish courts (1999). Spain called for the extradition of seven former members of Guatemala's government, including former military rulers Efraín Ríos Montt and Óscar Mejía on charges of genocide and torture. Spain's highest court ruled that acts of genocide committed abroad could be judged in Spain, even if no Spanish citizens were involved (12-23-06).

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, she formed the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation, a vehicle to pursue the Indigenous Initiative for Peace. She became Goodwill Ambassador at the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna 1993), at the UN's International Year of Indigenous Peoples and a Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO (1996).

Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire joined Menchú to found the Nobel Women's Initiative (2006). Representing Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North and South America, they strive to create peace with justice and equality by strengthening support for women's rights worldwide.

Menchú is also a member of PeaceJam, an organization whose mission is "to create young leaders committed to positive change in themselves, their communities and the world through the inspiration of Nobel Peace Laureates who pass on their spirit, skills, and wisdom." Today, she travels around the world speaking to youth through PeaceJam conferences. (Sources: http://nobelprize.org, http://en.wikipedia.org and www.frmt.org)

Politics Y2K10

America and Banana Republics

By John Burl Smith

Banana republic pejoratively refers to a country that is politically unstable, dependent on agriculture (e.g. bananas), and ruled by a wealthy corrupt junta. It is a "servile dictatorship" that abets or directly supports, in return for kickbacks, exploitation on large agricultural plantations. Kleptocracy describes those in positions of influence that use their time in office to maximize their own gains, while ensuring any shortfall is covered by those unfortunates who earn money rather than make it. Collusion between a "Banana republic" and kleptocracy facilitates the overweening state and favored monopolistic concerns in victimizing the public, ensuring profits are privatized and debts are socialized.

The history of the United Fruit Company (UFC) in Guatemala illustrates the foregoing definitions and sheds lights on the United States' (US) interventionist history. By 1885, the Boston Fruit Company, which became the United Fruit Company (1899), had eleven ships bringing 10 million bunches of bananas a year to the US. Its assets included more than 3.5 million acres in Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Ecuador. It employed upwards of 100,000 people, 90 % of whom were in Latin America.

A pro-democracy revolt in 1944 ushered in Juan José Arévalo, Guatemala's first freely democratically elected president. He abolished "vagrancy" laws and other forms of forced labor. The state assumed ownership of coffee plantations expropriated by Germans during WWII. Jacobo Arbenz Guzman became president in 1951 and vowed to transform Guatemala from a semi-colonial economy into an economically independent country. He passed Agrarian reform laws, which redistributed more than 100 former German coffee plantations to peasants. Those forced to sell were recompensed. Forced to sell land valued based on tax assessments, market value was low because its lands were undervalued to avoid taxation, UFC was hit hard.

Arevalo was a poison pill to United Fruit. Workers went on strike at its banana plantation and seaport. Targeted as a glaring symbol of Yankee imperialism, UFC was forced to make labor contract concessions for the first time. Arbenz enacted a modest income tax and upgraded roads and ports. Most significantly, he implemented a plan to redistribute uncultivated lands of large plantations. Between 1952 and 1954, he confiscated and gave 100,000 poor families 1.5 million acres - including some 210,000 acres of UFC holdings.

UFC went to the Eisenhower administration, which included Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, whose law firm had represented UFC , while he was a private attorney. His brother, Allen Dulles, headed the CIA and had served on UFC's board of directors for several years. The US saw Arbenz as a communist, which had been used as a convenient pretext to attack nationalist regimes. Eisenhower approved a CIA-backed plan to overthrow Arbenz in 1953.

Edward Bernays was given the job of public relations for the coup. After his death (1995), the Library of Congress made public his papers concerning UFC. Those documents paint a vivid behind-the-scenes picture of how the US toppled Arbenz's government. It also provides insight into the foreign entanglements of US corporations and US complicity in supporting coups to overthrow democratically elected governments. Bernays' propaganda war waged in Guatemala set the pattern for future interventions in Cuba and Vietnam. Today, the same process is called "regime change" in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq. In the future, US targets may well be Venezuela, Somalia and Iran.

CIA-backed Gen. Carlos Castillo Armas, an exiled army officer living in Honduras, crossed the border on June 18, 1954 with only two hundred men -- recruited and trained by the CIA. Referred to as an "army of liberation" in Bernays' press reports, they quickly achieved their objective with the support of CIA air attacks -- shades of Salvador Allende 1973. A military junta took control of Guatemala and Armas was named president a week later. UFC was the most important force in toppling Arbenz, and Bernays was their most effective propagandist. A hostile and ill-informed American press helped to create an emotional public opinion -- dèjà vu Iraq.

Armas canceled the agrarian reform legislation, disenfranchised illiterates, restored the secret police, and outlawed all political parties, labor groups, and peasant organizations. Within a year and a half, Castillo Armas had driven most of the peasants off the land they had gained under Arbenz. The US intervention bred discontent, starvation and dictatorship rather than happiness, economic boon and democracy.

Castillo Armas was assassinated in 1957. The country descended into three decades of repression, violence, and terror as governmental death squads and guerilla bands roamed the countryside - a direct legacy of US intervention. The landowning elite continued to rely on cheap peasant labor, and even though many plantation owners deplored the violence and uncertainty under the repressive military regimes, they kept their land and status. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org, www.macaw.com and http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com)

Guatemala's Faces of Climate Change

John Burl Smith

Elena Gaia, a Research Analyst at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva, issued a report that reveals climate change's hidden faces. People are the cause and the victims of climate change. Thinking about climate change, one may assume that investing in renewable energies is one of the best options for saving the planet. The thought never comes to mind that "what may be good solutions for the global environment and the energy crisis (high oil prices) could cause irreversible damage to the lives of some people.

Guatemala is a case in point. Similar to most Central American and other developing countries, half of its population is indigenous (Mayan) people. Guatemalan indigenous peoples comprise 23 different linguistic ethnic groups (21 Mayan, Garifuna and Xinca); 74 % live in poverty and 40 % in extreme poverty. The roots of their problems began with the Spanish Conquest, continued (late 1800s) with exploitation under the agro-export model dominated by the United Fruit Company and compounded by 36 years of civil war (1960). Producing displacement, exploitation and discrimination, indigenous people inherited a devastated country.

Despite the Agreement on the Identity and Rights of the Indigenous Peoples - included in the Peace Agreements signed in 1996 to end the civil war - education, health, justice, public and private investments, basic infrastructure and other public services are not proportionately shared with indigenous populations. Illiteracy rates are high; indigenous children in rural areas get less than 2 years of education. Additionally, 2005 UNDP Human Development report described how daily suffering and discrimination against indigenous communities are challenges to creating an inclusive and equitable society in Guatemala.

If these challenges were not enough, Guatemala has become Central America's new 'El Dorado.' Attracting a new breed of prospectors, these '09ers are not looking for "gold." These doodlebugs are after natural resources, such as water, oil, land, bio-diversity and soil. Saviors of the world's economy from the energy crisis and the planet from global warming, they pose a real threat to the physical, cultural and moral survival of the inhabitants on these lands for millennia.

Exploitation of mines, construction of small to big hydroelectric plants for energy to be sold outside the country, uncontrolled cutting of forest, illegal exploitation and registration of plants and other collective resources under private property rights, genetically modified crops and cultivation for bio fuels are imminent threats. Such words and concepts were totally alien to indigenous peoples in the Guatemalan Highlands a few years ago. Recently, however, they bring looks of consternation and dread to faces in the most isolated and remote communities.

Global progress is facilitated by public policies that favor privatization of collective natural resources. Excluded from private commercial ventures, Guatemala's indigenous peoples are exploited once again. Construction of hydroelectric plants is leaving communities without water as rivers are channeled into pipelines. The worst scenario is people will be displaced as valleys are flooded as dams are built. Many of these ethnic groups were displaced or became refugees during the violent and repressive civil war.

Guatemalan indigenous peoples have tried to invoke Fundamental Human Rights Conventions of the International Labour Organization Convention (n. 169), which recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples to be informed and participate in the decision-making process regarding the management of the territories historically under their control. This Convention was ratified by Guatemala and became law in 1996. It was supposed to be a facelift for indigenous people. However, numerous private European and North American mining and energy companies are scouring the country using the age-old technique of "divide and conquer." Peril is magnified in the face of company dollars and community needs. Poverty swings a heavy hammer.

Indigenous communities need companies to propose sharing profits or include local representatives on management boards. There is potential for equity in economic development of these people's resources. For example, instead of a private company building large hydroelectric plants, smaller turbines managed by local people could generate enough clean and cheap energy for local use, which would improve local living conditions. Surplus could be sold to the national electric system, thus making it a profitable and sustainable source of income for locals. These are win-win solutions that can bring smiles to locals, changing the face of climate change.

Hood Notes

Latin America's Path to Independence

By Mark Weisbrot

Latin America took another historic step forward this week with the creation of a new regional organization of 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The United States and Canada were excluded.

The increasing independence of Latin America has been one of the most important geopolitical changes over the last decade, affecting not only the region but the rest of the world as well. For example, Brazil has publicly supported Iran's right to enrich uranium and opposed further sanctions against the country. Latin America, once under the control of the United States, is increasingly emerging as a power bloc with its own interests and agenda.

The Obama administration's continuation of former President Bush's policies in the region undoubtedly helped spur the creation of this new organization, provisionally named the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Most importantly, the Obama team's ambivalence toward the military coup that overthrew the democratic government of President Mel Zelaya in Honduras last summer provoked deep resentment and distrust throughout the region.

Although the Obama administration was officially against the coup, numerous actions from day one - including the first White House statement that failed to condemn the coup when it happened - made it clear in the diplomatic world that its real position was something different. The last straw came in November 2009 when the Obama administration brokered a deal for the return of Zelaya, and then joined the dictatorship in reneging on it. Washington then stood against the vast majority of the region in supporting the November elections for a new president under the dictatorship, which had systematically repressed the basic rights and civil liberties necessary to an electoral campaign. Arturo Valenzuela, the US state department's top official for Latin America, said that the new organization "should not be an effort that would replace the OAS [Organization of American States]".

The differences underlying the need for a new organization were clear in the statements and declarations that took place in the Unity Summit, held in Cancun from 22-23 February. The summit issued a strong statement backing Argentina in its dispute with the UK over the Malvinas (as they are called in Argentina) or Falklands Islands. The dispute, which dates back to the 19th century and led to a war in 1982, has become more prominent lately as the UK has unilaterally decided to explore for oil off the islands' shores. President Lula da Silva of Brazil called for the United Nations to take a more active role in resolving the dispute. And, the summit condemned the US embargo against Cuba.

These and other measures would be difficult or impossible to pass in the OAS. Furthermore, the OAS has long been manipulated by the United States, as from 2000 when it was used to help build support for the coup that overthrew Haiti's elected president. And most recently, the US and Canada blocked the OAS from taking stronger measures against the Honduran dictatorship last year.

Meanwhile, in Washington foreign policy circles, it is getting increasingly more difficult to maintain the worn-out fiction that the US' differences with the region are a legacy of President Bush's "lack of involvement," or to blame a few leftist trouble-makers like Bolivia, Nicaragua, and of course the dreaded Venezuela. It seems to have gone unnoticed that Brazil has taken the same positions as Venezuela and Bolivia on Iran and other foreign policy issues and has strongly supported Chávez. Perhaps the leadership of Mexico - a right-wing government that was one of the Bush administration's few allies in the region - in establishing this new organization will stimulate some rethinking.

There are structural reasons for this process of increasing independence to continue, even if - and this is not on the horizon - a new government in Washington someday moved away from its cold war redux approach to the region. The US has become increasingly less important as a trading partner for the region, especially since the recent recession as our trade deficit has shrunk. The region also increasingly has other sources of investment capital. The collapse of the IMF's creditors' cartel in the region has also eliminated the most important avenue of Washington's influence.

The new organization is sorely needed. The Honduran coup was a threat to democracy in the entire region, as it encouraged other right-wing militaries and their allies to think that they might drag Latin America back to the days when the local elite, with Washington's help, could overturn the will of the electorate. An organization without the US and Canada will be more capable of defending democracy, as well as economic and social progress in the region when it is under attack. It will also have a positive influence in helping to create a more multi-polar world internationally.

News You Use

National People's Resistance Front (FNRP)

On February 25, 2010, thousands of supporters of the National People's Resistance Front (FNRP) marched through the streets of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, Honduras to demand that the largely unrecognized government of Porfirio Lobo halt its attacks on the peaceful resistance movement. The FNRP has documented at least 254 human rights violations, including murder, kidnaping and rape, since Lobo took over.

Those murdered include FNRP supporter Claudia Larisa Brizuela Rodriguez (36), who was gunned down in her home in San Pedro Sula in front of her two young children, ages 2 and 8. Brizuela, a leader of the San Pedro Sula municipal workers union, was the daughter of Pedro Brizuela, a high-profile Resistance and former trade union leader. Pedro Brizuela also hosts the independent radio show, Radio Uno, which has consistently denounced the abuses and corruption of the post-coup government, and he has been a consistent target of threats. Other recent assassinations include those of Vanessa Zepeda and Julio Funez.

While the February 25 rally concluded in front of the National Congress building, where the march was blocked by a military cordon, the resistance continues. The FNRP is calling on its supporters and freedom-loving people worldwide to join its organizers in calling on the US State Department's Human Rights desk to demand an end to the systematic human rights violations. The United States is one of only a handful of governments that has officially recognized Lobo's administration, which is not recognized by the UN, OAS, and the vast majority of Latin America. The United States is dramatically hurting its international image and international human rights record by legitimizing the new and, what has proven to be, abusive government of Honduras.

You can join this effort by calling 202-647-4000 and ask for the Human Rights Desk at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. For more, visit the National People's Resistance Front online at http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/.

Disgruntled wants to know: Thanks to profit figures recently released by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a coalition of health advocacy and labor groups pushing for passage of the Obama administration's health care plan, we know the five largest US health insurance companies made profit records in 2009. Like the financial industry, health insurers did especially well while the rest of us were mired in the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. But, the hits for John Q. Public keep coming! While these bloodsuckers made record profits, health insurers want even more, requesting premium rate increases in the double digits. It is obscene. Alas, a lot of things happening in this country makes one wonder. For instance, President Obama conducted a health care summit in an effort to get Republicans, who do not plan to support anything out of the Obama White House, to buy into his plan or put their own on the table. Meanwhile, the federal government is hiring thousands of workers to conduct the 2010 Census that receive no health or other benefits including sick and annual leave. If the President was genuinely concerned about ensuring Americans receive health care coverage, wouldn't he make sure all federal workers, even those on temporary tours that sometimes last more than two years, receive health insurance?

Disgruntled feels: Endangered! The billboard that screamed 'ENDANGERED SPECIES' caught my attention. The species in question are black children. Understanding their plight, I instinctively agreed, until I understood the message behind the board. Funded by an anti-abortion group, these billboards are designed to get black women to buy into their single message campaign to end abortions, while doing nothing to aid black children that have already been born. In fact, most of these single issue groups, which have successfully co-oped ideas from the civil rights movement, care nothing about the plight of black children already living. Many black children go to bed hungry every night; marginalized by a society that devalues them before birth, black children are shuffled through a public school system that is a pipeline for the prison-industrial complex. Those who successfully matriculate to the private sector job market without a prison record can expect to be the last hired and first fired, even though a black man is president. Yes, black children are an endangered species, but we will have to do more than end abortion to change that situation!

Disgruntled says: At present, it is generally conceded that former President George W. Bush is the worst president in the history of this republic. Granted, Obama may end up being worse, since he has embraced many of his predecessor's ill-conceived policies, but today, Bush holds that record. Yet, I do not recall at any time during Bush's two terms in office preachers praying for his death. Correct me if I missed that mainstream news story! Had it happened, I imagine those good pastors would have been the subjects of a Limbaugh radio tirade and a FOX news unbalanced report, so I feel safe in assuming it never happened. However, Obama, who has been in office for a little over a year, has been the subject of a number of such prayers, including one on President's Day that got posted on the Internet. It called on the Almighty to make his children childless, his wife a widow and his time in office short. Basically, this 'man of God' called for Obama's assassination. I cannot imagine how this individual can claim to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. I am more inclined to view much a prayer as an entreaty to Satan.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes & Telephone Calls

Email www.ap.com ....Costa Rica elects 1st woman president in landslide....By Marianela Jimenez....Costa Ricans elected their first woman president as the ruling party candidate won in a landslide after campaigning to continue free market policies in Central America's most stable nation. Laura Chinchilla held a 22-point lead over her closest rival. The 50-year-old protégé of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias promised to pursue his economic policies. Chinchilla is the fifth Latin American woman elected president; she takes office in May. Critics of the Arias government, in which Chinchilla served as vice president, contend its policies catered to big developers to boost the economy at the cost of the nation's fragile ecosystems. But most Costa Ricans were reluctant to shake up the status quo in a country with relatively high salaries, the longest life expectancy in Latin America, a thriving eco-tourism industry and near-universal literacy.

Email http://news.xinhuanet.com...Bolivia refuses to be U.S. slave: VP... In an interview with Radio Erbol, Bolivia's national radio, Bolivia's Vice President Alvaro Garcia said, "We do not want a market in exchange for them (Americans) telling us who must be the master. We do not want tax preference in exchange for them telling us what must be our economic policy, because that will make us become a slave and a colony again." According to Garcia, U.S. President Barack Obama, like his predecessor George W. Bush, had a "strong war policy" which did not allow ties between the two countries to improve. "When he (Obama) learns to recognize that the world is a community of sovereign states, which voluntarily are independent, we will have better ties with the United States." However, he added that Bolivia was open to establishing ties with all the countries in the world based on mutual respect of sovereignty. Bolivian-U.S. ties have been frozen since September 2008, when La Paz expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg for allegedly interfering with internal affairs, and Washington took the same retaliatory measure. This incident also had consequences in the commercial area, as the Obama administration decided to extend Bolivia's suspension from tax benefits of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act. Former U.S. President Bush suspended Bolivia's benefits because he said the South American country was not sufficiently helping the fight against drug trafficking.

Email www.ww4report.com...Colombia: ex-para names US banana companies in murder of trade unionists..Dole Food Company and Chiquita Brands International paid a Colombian terrorist organization to perform protection services that included murdering trade unionists, demobilized paramilitary José Gregorio Mongones said in an affidavit released Dec. 6. The testimony is the centerpiece of two civil lawsuits against Chiquita and Dole filed by family members of victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia. Both lawsuits accuse the companies of funding the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), the country's largest paramilitary organization, formally demobilized in 2006. Mongones, better known by his alias "Carlos Tijeras," assumed the command of the AUC's William Rivas Front in the banana-growing department of Magdalena in March 2002, inheriting a protection arrangement in which Chiquita paid the group "three cents on the dollar per box of bananas shipped from Colombia," according to his affidavit. Dole paid the paramilitaries a tax of 70,000 pesos per hectare of land in the Front's area of control in the Department of Magdalena, the statement said. In return, Mongones said, the William Rivas Front protected the companies from threats posed by groups including leftist guerrillas, hostile unions, and common thieves. Chiquita pled guilty in 2007 to paying over $1.7 million to the AUC, a State Department-designated terrorist group since 2001, and the company paid $25 million in fines. Heirs to the victims of paramilitary violence filed a civil suit against Chiquita shortly thereafter. Current U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder defended Chiquita in the Justice Department suit that ended in 2007.

Email www.legitgov.org ...Breaking: Huge 8.8-magnitude quake hits Chile - A massive magnitude-8.8 earthquake struck near the coast of south-central Chile early on Saturday, shaking buildings and causing blackouts in parts of the capital Santiago, 200 miles away. Soon after, the U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had generated a tsunami that may have been destructive along the Chilean coast near the epicenter. The USGS said the earthquake struck 56 miles northeast of the city of Concepcion at a depth of 34 miles at 3:34 a.m./1:34 EST.