Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events

[Yehuda]

Interview: Bruna Rodrigues and the fight against necropolitics

BRIAN MIER , DECEMBER 11, 2020

When we say that black lives matter we are saying that we can no longer accept the fact that 83 young black men die every day in Brazil

Interview by Brian Mier

On December 8, 2020, two members of Rio Grande do Sul’s military police entered the house of black rights movement activist Jane Beatriz Machado da Silva, a 60 year old grandmother and community leader in Porto Alegre. They entered illegally, without a search warrant. Shortly afterwards they placed her unconscious body in the trunk of a police car and drove her to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. Her death added to the anger that has been building since the murder of Joao Alberto Silveira “Beto” Freitas, a 40 year old black father of 3. His November 19 murder at the hands of Porto Alegre Carrefour security guards, one of whom was an off-duty military police officer, sparked nation wide protests.

Bruna Rodrigues, 33, is one of 5 newly elected Afro-Brazilian city councilors in Porto Alegre. Together, they comprise the first black caucus in the 247 year history of its city council. A member of the Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Communista do Brasil/PCdoB), Rodrigues is the daughter of a street sweeper, the first member of her family to go to university, and an example of a new generation of left wing politicians that is coming to power through the November 2020 municipal elections. I spoke to her on December 10 about the recent rise in racist violence in Porto Alegre and her plans for office.

Beto Freitas was brutally lynched in a Carrefour parking lot on November 19th and this sparked nationwide protests against the extermination of the Afro-Brazilian population. What has happened in Porto Alegre since then?

It’s important to speak of this in relationship to the moment we are living in. I am a student at Rio Grande do Sul Federal University. I lived in Vila Cruzeiro for nearly my whole life until I was evicted during the construction of the ring road. It is a project that was connected to the World Cup that started in 2010 and hasn’t even been finished yet. So when we talk about the social movements in Porto Alegre, we are also talking about a political project. There is a political project underway. I think this election is part of an ongoing struggle. We’ve been building this movement for a long time, this fight for political representation of black men and women from poor communities, who are living in a very undignified manner. These are people who have have to deal with school closings and lack of doctors in their health clinics – the closure of public health clinics in the middle of the pandemic. They suffer from construction projects that never end. Their access to public services is being continually reduced. It is in this context that we entered the election, speaking about the importance of representation for people like me, as part of this first black caucus in the history of Porto Alegre City Council, representing the desires of this segment of the population. It’s in this political context that the people chose the fight against racism as a central issue.

It is clear to me that this is part of an international movement. It may not have started in the US, but there is a symbol there that resonates here in Brazil. When we say that black lives matter we are saying that we can no longer accept the fact that 83 young black men die every day in Brazil. This incident on the night of November 19 here in Porto Alegre at the Carrefour, on the eve of November 20th, which is National Black Consciousness Day, is connected to what the black population goes through every day here in Porto Alegre and in Rio Grande do Sul. Only black people know what it is like to to be followed around by security guards every time they walk into a supermarket. What happened to Beto happens every day. Maybe not to that extreme level. They don’t kill us inside the supermarkets every day but they torture us inside the supermarkets every day. This killing is also connected to the death of Jane. She was a black woman who died in her community during a conflict with the military police.

Part of the construction of this social movement, which is based on the understanding that politics has to be occupied by people like us, is the understanding that society is structurally racist. Our institutions are racist. When we look at the City Council and see that we make up most of the cleaning and maintenance staff but don’t occupy any of the chairs, it’s a problem. It’s the problem of a society that went through a very cruel period of slavery. This is the legacy of slavery – that we are not part of the structures that have decision making power over our lives.

I am a woman who comes from a generation that had 100% public health coverage, who went to a 100% public school. It was these public services that helped me to decide the path I took in life and that gave me opportunities. It is the color of a young person’s skin which defines whether they will live or die in Porto Alegre, regardless of their social position. We can no longer accept that skin color defines who lives and who dies.

We have elected the first black caucus in the history of Porto Alegre’s city council but the new mayor of Porto Alegre is in direct confrontation with us. We are a young caucus of black city councilors who have no guarantee of our own existence, of our own lives. We haven’t even taken office yet and all we are talking about is death. We are defending our bodies. We can’t talk about what is happening without talking about this societal project that has been killing our people for a long time. We understand that we have to engage in a political battle or the bodies will continue falling. We will continue to confront the bullets, which are “stray” for the others but that always find our bodies. We have to confront the bullets until they fall.

Porto Alegre City Council’s newly elected black caucus

Do you think that since the event at Carrefour, state violence is increasing against the black population in Porto Alegre?

I think it is a reaction from people who cannot accept election results. It’s also a reaction against a process of transformation during which, in a short period of time we’ve entered the universities and modified our surroundings. I am the first woman in my family to enter university. University changed my life. I am the mother of a girl who is nearly 16. My enrollment in university naturalized education for her. Our increased access to public services as a whole increased our quality of life and gave us better social conditions. We don’t learn in school that we can become members of the city council. In fact, the people don’t expect someone like me to become a city councilwoman. But our insertion into these spaces has caused a violent counter reaction.

They always killed us but the difference is that now we have a voice. Now we say that we don’t tolerate this. Resistance was never an option for us – it’s a need. Black people have to resist in order to exist. We are talking about existence. So has violence increased? Of course it’s increased. This offense is an attack against our existence. People say, “violence increased because crime increased”. Those kids who died in Rio de Janeiro last week were just children. The status of child did not save their lives. We have to understand that racism is impregnated in our society. It is a social illness and we have to cure it. Racism isn’t a black person’s problem it’s society’s problem. People who are not black have to be engaged and put themselves on our side. We’ve just elected the first black group of city councilors in the history of Porto Alegre and we don’t know if we will live to the end of our terms. We need to guarantee that we do but we aren’t sure it will happen. The space we are occupying has the mark of a woman who was assassinated. My profile as a city councilwoman is that of a woman who was assassinated in a crime that is still unresolved. Yesterday marked 1000 days since Marielle Franco died and the crime hasn’t been solved. Why? Because it was a black body. That symbolizes a lot to us. It says a lot to us. So this is the scenario we are talking about, this is the violence and the political project. Because in the middle of a pandemic this genocidal project that decides who lives and who dies, this necropolitical project is killing people. It kills people when it closes health clinics, it kills people when it doesn’t allow us to live with dignity. It kills us when it allows police to come into our houses without search warrants. It kills people when it kills our sons. Black women are the ones who lose their sons the most. In fact, to be a black woman and a mother of a young man in the community today is the worst nightmare any woman could have. Your son could be an engineer but if he’s black, it doesn’t matter. If he’s black and crosses paths with the Military Police he becomes a target. We understand that the project behind this is political.

So now you have created a caucus of 5 city councilors. But if you want to get anything done in the city council you need a majority. Furthermore, the military police are controlled by the state and not the city government. I know it’s going to be hard. But what is your plan to fight the state sponsored extermination of black people in Porto Alegre?

The first step is understanding how the political system works. We elected 5 but there are 26 on the other side. The power balance has not changed. If we want to approve a project, for example, we need 19 votes. There are 5 of us. Of course there are allies. There are many people who understand that this issue is important. There are other progressives who were elected, but not enough to change the power balance. But we understand that the first step is occupying this space. 5 city councilors are not going to cause a revolution. But we understand that just being there and being able to speak about our struggle is unprecedented. To be able to leave the cleaning and maintenance department and be able to occupy seats in the city council is nearly a revolutionary process in itself.

We need to understand, first of all, that the balance of power has not changed but we were able to organize a force that made it in and that we have to keep moving forwards. There has never been a black woman elected to the Rio Grande do Sul state legislature. There is a long road ahead of us. We have a custom of revering our ancestors and saying that our steps come from way back. The obstacles are still huge. We have to reorganize our society, we have to re-enchant the people with the idea of occupying political space. There is a project behind the fact that politics has lost credibility with the people. People don’t go out and vote because they think politicians are all the same. So we have a long road ahead to help people understand that these people who only come into the community during election season are part of the political project that is killing us. It isn’t easy to convince the people that political battles are important but this is one of our responsibilities.

The idea that the people can look at City Council and see that there is a cabinet in there that they can approach is important. It’s important that when a city eviction crew arrives knocking on someone’s door – I was evicted during a construction project so I know this first hand – if a politician gets in the middle of it the eviction doesn’t happen. If nobody says that women’s liberation doesn’t exist without universal right to preschool, that security doesn’t exist without full day schooling, we’ll never be able to transform society. Because our kids are occupying the street corners, they are not occupying the schools. We will have a big challenge when this pandemic ends. We will have to bring all of these kids back into the schools. It’s not a natural process. These kids who are out on the streets today because of poverty – if we don’t work hard, they won’t come back to class. Our purpose in City Council is to talk about these issues. If we are going to win or not, if the fascist project will keep moving forwards or not, only time will tell. But our arrival has a purpose. It’s to talk about our people, to tell our story and to talk about how important it is to strengthen public policies, to show examples of how good services change lives. I always say I am an example of politics working. I come from a generation that had 100% public health, 100% public schools and I am studying in a public university. All of this is being attacked right now. The public health system is under attack. Imagine how many people would have died from Covid 19 by now if the public health system didn’t exist. We need policies to deal with hunger. Hunger is back knocking on our doors. So this is what we have arrived for. We position ourselves within this collective anguish of the people who live on the periphery. It is with this eye that we will confront this necropolitics, this fascism and this violent racism.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

We created a very beautiful movement here in Porto Alegre. Manuela d’Ávila, our candidate for mayor, spoke about a dream and won over a large part of society. She planted a seed, despite not winning the election. This seed needs nutrients to germinate and flower. And this flower will bloom if we organize the people, if they become re-enchanted with politics and if we occupy politics together with the people. We are going to bring the people with us into the City Council because if we don’t nothing will change. So we are calling out to the people to say that it is important to look at politics together and to let them know that they are not alone. If we walk alone we don’t know how the story will end. If we walk together we know that our victories will be more pronounced and will have more meaning. So that is it. Follow us on the social media, join the movement and help us germinate this seed that was planted, which is made of hope and faith and a warmer and more humane eye on our communities.

Interview: Bruna Rodrigues and the fight against necropolitics

 

[Yehuda]

Benedita da Silva’s 50 year fight for racial justice

BRIAN MIER , DECEMBER 20, 2020

The veteran congresswoman and civil rights leader speaks about her role in the 2020 municipal elections and the record number of newly elected Afro-Brazilian city councilors and mayors.

Brazil’s 2020 municipal elections were marked by huge loses for the far right, big gains for the center right and moderate gains for the left. The most positive result, however, was the large gains made by Afro-Brazilians, who make up 54% of the population at large. The fact that this happened in a climate of growing racism in Brazil is no small achievement, and one of main people who fought for this is Congresswoman Benedita da Silva from the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores/PT).

Da Silva grew up in Rio de Janeiro’s Chapéu Mangueira favela in a family with 14 brothers and sisters and began working as a street vendor when she was still a small child. She eventually became a nurses aid, then a community association leader. In 1983 she was elected to Rio de Janeiro city council, then became the first black women ever elected Senator of the Republic and the first black woman Governor of Rio de Janeiro.

1988 – da Silva successfully fought to have racism declared a crime in Brazil’s new Federal Constitution

Over the past 40 years, da Silva has been a key actor in the civil rights movement, often working behind the scenes. In August, at age 78, she scored one of her greatest victories, representing the black movement to successfully pressure the Supreme Electoral Court to force political parties to divide campaign funding up equitably with black candidates. This was important because although there was already a law in place requiring political parties to field candidates that equitably represent the population in terms of gender and race, most parties continued to give the lions share of their campaign funding and airtime to white candidates. Immediately after the Supreme Electoral Court made its ruling, representatives of the Socialism and Freedom Party (Partido de Socialismo e Liberdade/PSOL) sucessfully filed a motion to uphold the ruling with the Supreme Court, and on the eve of campaign season, the parties were obliged to comply. The rest is history. Starting this January, 44% of all city councilors and 32% of mayors in Brazil will be Afro-Brazilian.

I caught up with Congresswoman Da Silva on Wednesday, December 16th. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

After decades of struggle you scored a congressional victory in 2013 with the approval of your bill which guaranteed equal labor rights for domestic workers, who previously did not have the right to a 44 hour work week and equal benefits . The bourgeois media immediately attacked you and the law. Do you think this law triggered a backlash from the middle class that may have increased racism?

No. It’s not an issue of an increase. Racism already existed. I want to make it perfectly clear that the this issue of domestic work was built on racism, on the idea that black people have to work and shouldn’t have labor rights.

2013 – Da Silva pushes through a bill granting equal rights to domestic workers. Veja warns white people they may have to start washing their own dishes

Last month, the highest number of Afro-Brazilian mayors and city councilors was elected in Brazilian history. Many people are saying that the main reason this happened is the work that you did behind the scenes pressuring the Supreme Electoral Court. Why was its ruling so important?

Because we know that structural and institutional racism exists. Also, because many black people were not running for office simply due to lack of resources – not due to lack of knowledge or qualifications or because they didn’t want to. It’s very expensive to run for office with any electoral viability in a society such as ours so this ruling was very important. First, we developed this project and tried to incorporate it into the Electoral Reform Act, but Congress didn’t accept it. At that point I appealed to the Supreme Electoral Court. It granted the right to equal campaign support for black people in proportion to their percentage in the population a large. It guaranteed this equal support from the parties in terms of TV and radio airtime and campaign financing.

Carol Dartora has just become the first Afro-Brazilian woman elected in the history of Curitiba’s City Council and now she is receiving death threats. As someone who opened the door for a generation of Afro-Brazilian politicians when Democracy returned to Brazil, starting with your days in Rio de Janeiro’s city council, could you relate some experiences you have had with racism and explain how you overcame them?

We suffer this racist violence every day. It doesn’t matter what the time period in which we run or get elected is. Racism exists and it comes out during elections, because during that time we are competing against a narrative that political representatives should be powerful, rich, white men. A woman – especially a black women – imagine that! So we break this narrative when we enter the race and when we do this they get really scared, not just that we will be elected, but of the issues we defend. We’ve seen this with Marielle Franco and many others. So I still suffer to this day. I just finished a campaign for Mayor of Rio– a beautiful, clean, ethical campaign. I consider it to have been a didactic campaign, which had the responsibility of fighting racism, creating an anti-racist society. So, this led to verbal violence against me and physical threats on the social media – a lot of violence. There were women candidates who were assassinated during this year’s election campaign period. In other words, the female body has become a threat. So now we are creating a congressional commission to establish a mechanism to protect women politicians.

Why is our city councilwoman, Carol, passing through this experience right now? It is because of the color of her skin. Because she is a black woman, she suffers a lot more. There were other women who were elected. Why aren’t they going through this kind of experience? It’s also related to the issues she campaigned on, values I share with her. We want a city that is welcoming. I don’t want a city that separates the favelas, or as they say in São Paulo, the quebradas. I want a city that is united. We are talking about people. We want citizens. And we want people coming into the city council who will enact laws that protect and include everyone. The majority of this group of everyone is black people. So it is clear that they are seeing that we are reacting politically, and this is something that is very serious. This is making them violent. In theory it’s only threats, right? But from Marielle forwards – not just from her, there were cases before her like that of Margarida Maria Alves, who was a great leader – whenever a black woman starts leading an electoral process she has to deal with a great moment of political and electoral insecurity.

The government has to take action, because the way that the court ruled on our request, guaranteeing that we receive equal financial support and airtime, is a threat to the elite families that have been in politics for the past 200 years. Even I still have to deal with this. I am still a threat to them and they become more and more sophisticated every day. Lately this violence has transformed into constant physical threats of horrible things.

da Silva with her long-time friend Angela Davis

You have been an important actor in the fight against structural racism. You fought for years to guarantee equal labor rights for domestic workers, who were essentially working in slave-like conditions. I remember when I moved to Brazil in 1991, I met domestic workers who lived in their employers’ households full time who were only given half a day off every two weeks and earned half the minimum wage. I also know that you are one of the people who fought the hardest for Brazil’s affirmative action program, which is vastly superior to the system in place in the United States. And now you have managed to win this fight to equalize financing and airtime for Afro-Brazilian candidates. Recognizing the importance of these achievements, what do you think the big challenges are in the anti-racist struggle in Brazil today?

We are living in time in which there are high numbers of murders of of the black population. We have to work a lot on this, including judicially. There is a huge number of unemployed black people living on the streets. We are dying more from Covid due to precarious housing conditions and lack of decent public policies. I can’t tell you which of these is the most important. What I do know is that to fight racism we have to be included because there is this black intelligence of black people and we should occupy the spaces that have power to make decisions about people’s lives. It doesn’t work when the person making these decisions doesn’t understand or even want to understand us. Today, Brazil’s national political system is going down a path towards becoming a slavery regime in the sense that it is removing all labor rights of the workers – not just those of the domestic workers but of the entire working class. They are trying to privatize all of the strategic sectors of our economy and state companies like the post office, Petrobras, Electrobras, Caixa Economico Federal mortgage bank and Banco do Brasil. Day by day they are destroying the ability of Brazil to show that is is a country in development like it was during the Lula and Dilma administrations. All countries go through periods of economic crisis, but today we are seeing the results of the Coup d’Etat that was committed against the nation of Brazil. They deposed President Dilma and lied to everyone that the economy was going to improve. The majority of the working class is black and we are being excluded from everything now. They haven’t actually created anything apart from giving more attention to the banks, to the rich and of selling off our assets. The people who are suffering the most from all this are the people who comprise the majority of the Brazilian population, who are black, and another segment of the population that suffers together with us, that also suffers from discrimination and exclusion – the indigenous population.

During Nelson Mandela’s 5 day visit to Brazil in 1991

We need to develop a kind of politics that is inclusive. Real economic development will only be possible by including everyone in the process. If you don’t include the majority of the population, how can you call this development? The black population is losing all of the rights that it conquered through its fight, its struggle and through its voting for Lula and Dilma. What we are seeing today is, in fact, impoverishment. We have to invest in the people who need it the most. And the people who need it the most are precisely the black population, through scholarships, access to university study, jobs and labor rights. But unfortunately, the most sophisticated type of slave system project is underway which is led by people with pens in their hands who use fascism. This political project is a fascist exclusion of the people. We are living in a tremendous moment – who are dying the most in this country? This story of the vaccine has become a field of confusion, pranks, screaming ideology and confusion. Who do they want to die? These people who are being excluded. So we know whenever they do bring this vaccine out it won’t be given out in the penitentiaries, which are full of black people. They are the majority of the penitentiary population in our country but they aren’t going there. They also aren’t putting people with special needs into the priority group for vaccinations. What they are doing is a form of cruelty against the poor and black population.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

We are running a campaign to stop them from killing us: Black Lives Matter. This is our big campaign. It is impossible to accept the assassinations that are taking place here. Every week the police are killing another black youth. The police here are unqualified and untrained and the solution the government is offering is to buy them more guns. They just tried to remove the import tax on guns, which is absurd. This is a campaign that we need to keep working on. The constitution stipulates that the state has to protect us equally regardless of race, religious belief or gender. It is important that we join forces internationally in this struggle because they are killing black people in Brazil.

Photos of Congresswoman da Silva taken from her social media pages

Benedita da Silva’s 50 year fight for racial justice

 

[Yehuda]

Interview: Curitiba City Councilor Carol Dartora

BRIAN MIER , DECEMBER 18, 2020

“We view the state of Paraná as a laboratory for all of Bolsonaro’s worst ideas”, says Dartora, who is the first Afro-Brazilian woman elected in the 327 year history of the Curitiba City Council.

Curitiba, center of the US DOJ and FBI-backed Lava Jato investigation, has a reputation as a very conservative city.

Priding itself on its German, Italian, Ukrainian and Polish heritage, during the 1930s it was the site of the largest Nazi rally ever to take place outside of Europe, and a recent study shows that there are currently at least 66 neonazi cells operating in the state of Paraná.

An estimated 20% of its population of 1.8 million are Afro-Brazilian, but it took until October, 2020, to elect its first black woman city councilor: history teacher and union activist Carol Dartora, from the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores/PT).

This interview was conducted in person in Curitiba on December 16th.

Why do you believe your candidacy was important in Curitiba?

Curitiba needed this representation but still needs a lot more than this. The poor and black population in Curitiba is invisible. I brought this issue into the debate and the people trusted me with their votes. I understand that they needed this representation and also the discourse which I promote demonstrating that Curitiba is a city that is structurally racist. I believe this was an important factor in my election.

Do you believe that there is a difference in terms of structural racism between Curitiba and the rest of Brazil?

I think there is. Curitiba is an extremely authoritarian city. Of course racism is a structural problem in all Brazilian cities – Brazil is a racist country. But Curitiba, especially, is built on and continues to propagate this image that it is a white city and it organizes to push the poor, black population to the periphery. Curitiba has clearly eugenicist policies.

As a teacher and union activist, can you explain what the main fight underway against the state governor is?

We view the state of Paraná as a laboratory for all of Bolsonaro’s worst ideas. We have a governor, Ratinho Jr., who is allied with Bolsonaro, who is attempted to completely dismantle the education system, and devalue all the workers in the education system. They just announced layoffs of more than 9000 public school employees, who will be replaced by outsourced workers from private companies. It is a radically neoliberal policy that will destroy public education.

Since your electoral victory was announced, you have become the target of racist harassment and threats. What are you doing to protect yourself?

I filed charged in the police station. The death threats I received appear to be from the same group that other recently elected black woman city councilors are receiving in places like Belo Horizonte and Joinville. So there was already an investigation underway when I filed charges. And we see that it is a neo-nazi group that has been making these attacks for a long time. So we are fighting so that we can find out who they are and punish them to show that this is a type of violence, and that racism is a crime in Brazil.

Marielle Franco was one of the first black woman city councilors in Rio de Janeiro, and she was assassinated.

Unfortunately.

Does she inspire you?

She is, undoubtedly, a source of inspiration for all of us. I think that the raising of the tone of debate over black women’s participation in politics has come as a consequence of Marielle’s death. And now we have a network of black women elected to public office and the Marielle Franco Institute participates in it. It’s a support and protection network working so our voices are not silenced anymore, as happened with Marielle.

How do you think the world of Congresswoman Benedita da Silva (PT) behind the scenes to pressure the superior electoral court to order political party’s campaign money to be distributed equitably to Afro-Brazilian candidates influenced the elections this year?

It was fundamental in improving Brazil’s democratic mechanisms, considering the sub-representation of the black population. We know there are many barriers and economic power is one of these barriers. We don’t have economic power. So it was very important that Benedita da Silva pushed through this law, which was developed by the black movement, so that we could have our candidacies supported better.

Interview: Curitiba City Councilor Carol Dartora

 

[Yehuda]

Afro-Bolivians elect Nilo Vásquez Rey as CONAFRO's executive secretary

December 18, 2020

Bolivia Digital

Nilo Vásquez Rey was elected as executive secretary of the National Afro-Bolivian Council (Concejo Nacional Afroboliviano, CONAFRO), at the VII National Congress, held on December 12 in the city of La Paz.

Now Vásquez, along with other activists representing Afro-Bolivian communities and organizations, has the challenge of continuing to consolidate the rights of his people.

Vásquez leads a permanent struggle for the vindication, defense and promotion of the rights of Afro-Bolivians.

Afro-Bolivians elect Nilo Vásquez Rey as CONAFRO's executive secretary

 

[Yehuda]

Wendy Pérez becomes director of the Plurinational Service for Women and Depatriarchalization

November 27, 2020 10:48:23

La Paz, Nov 27 (ABI). — The Minister of Justice, Iván Lima, appointed Wendy Jahel Pérez Salinas as general director of the 'Ana María Romero' Plurinational Service for Women and Depatriarchalization (SEPMUD), with a mandate of work for a defense agenda for this sector, based on inclusion parameters and the active participation of the actors involved.

“The agenda that has been built during all this time has to be consolidated and the government's commitment is to guarantee it all the resources, all the necessary means, so that the women's cabinet and the agenda that is being built is participatory and inclusive, without ruling out any of the sectors, in order to build these public policies”, said Lima during her inauguration.

The brand new authority took office yesterday; she is an Afro-Bolivian activist and describes herself as an “inveterate defender of human rights” and “eternal fighter for the promotion and respect of women's rights”.

Previously, she served as executive secretary of the Afro-Bolivian National Council (CONAFRO), where she also served as National Secretary of Economy and Finance and, recently, as Project Manager of the 'Yabatac' Afro-Bolivian Movement organization.

Pérez, who is a technician in Educational Management, also studied Ecological and Cultural Tourism in San Antonio, Texas. In addition, she served as project manager for the Awayo Association, from where she contributed to the economic independence of Afro-Bolivian women.

Likewise, she was a contracting technician for the Ministry of Communication and host of the radio programs 'Afrontando la historia' and 'Con la Fuerza de las Mujeres'.

Pérez is part of the Alliance of Women's Social Organizations for the Democratic and Cultural Revolution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, thus becoming the face and voice of women in decision-making spaces.

Wendy Pérez becomes director of the Plurinational Service for Women and Depatriarchalization

 

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[Yehuda]

National Assembly discusses bill to guarantee rights for Afro-Ecuadorians

By Jose Robalino | December 14, 2020

The bill proposes historical and comprehensive reparations in favor of this people.

Punto Noticias. A bill that guarantees the rights of and does justice to the Afro-Ecuadorian people according to its proponent — Assemblyman José Chalá — was presented before the Assembly's Committee on Collective Rights.

The proposed regulation proposes establishing mechanisms to achieve the effective enjoyment of rights, maintaining the principles of equality and non-discrimination.

The assemblyman of the Citizen Revolution explained that the draft Organic Law of Collective Rights of the Afro-Ecuadorian People aims to guarantee — through the exercise of collective rights and public policies — historical and comprehensive reparations in favor of this ethnic group.

In Chalá's opinion, black people have been victims of crimes against humanity, experienced by Afro-descendants throughout history and, from his perspective, the very Constitution establishes historical reparations.

He insisted that the bill seeks to guarantee and ensure compliance and application of affirmative action measures; recognize, value and promote collective and individual cultural diversity; as well as prevent, punish and eradicate all forms of discrimination against Afro-Ecuadorians.

For this purpose, it reforms the Labor Code, so that the public or private employer — who has at least 25 employees — is obliged to hire at least two Afro-Ecuadorians, a number that will increase each year until reaching 7.2%, according to the 2010 census.

It introduces changes in the Tourism Law, so that decentralized governments allocate 10% of the budget for the dissemination, maintenance, revaluation and promotion of the cultural heritages of Afro-Ecuadorian peoples, indigenous nationalities and the Montubio people.

The assemblymen of the Committee learned about the matrix of six bills that have as their nature the rights of the peoples and nationalities of Ecuador, which are under consideration: the projects of Organic Law of Exercise of the Collective Rights of the Communes, Communities, Peoples and Indigenous Nationalities; for the Protection of the Genocultural Heritage of the Communes, Communities, Indigenous and Ancestral Nationalities and the Afro-Ecuadorian and Montubio People and other Collectives of Ecuador; to Prevent and Eradicate Racial Discrimination and Ethnic and Cultural Exclusion; for the Application of Indigenous Justice in Ecuador; and Collective Rights of the Afro-Ecuadorian People.

Among the proposals are the draft Organic Law of Prior Consultation of Communes, Communities, Peoples and Nationalities, which aims to develop the content, principle and procedures of the right of prior consultation to communes, communities, peoples and nationalities, before the adoption of a legislative or administrative measure.

National Assembly discusses bill to guarantee rights for Afro-Ecuadorians

 

[Yehuda]

How the U.S. Is Quietly Undermining Colombia's Fragile Peace Process

Through its reckless war on drugs, the U.S. is escalating tension and violence.

CRUZ BONLARRON MARTÍNEZ AND EVAN KING DECEMBER 23, 2020

Thousands march in support of the Colombian government-FARC peace deal on October 7, 2016 in Medellin, Colombia.FREDY BUILES/VIEWPRESS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Colombia made an unexpected entrance into the 2020 U.S. presidential election when its far-right politicians endorsed President Trump, and Biden defended his role in crafting Plan Colombia in an op-ed in El Tiempo, one of the largest newspapers in Colombia. Even still, the role of the United States in Colombia, the fourth largest country in the Western Hemisphere, remains largely a mystery to most North Americans.

But in Colombia, the role the United States plays in the country is part of the daily news cycle — and is a topic of interest in the everyday lives of Colombians. This role has been most pronounced in the U.S. counternarcotics policy in the country for the past few decades. Under the Trump administration this policy has been mixed with animosity toward the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian Government and the country’s largest left-wing guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Entrapping Peace Negotiators

After more than 50 years of civil war, the Colombian government and the FARC agreed to put an end to a deadly armed conflict that left over 262,000 people dead and roughly 7 million internally displaced. The agreement consisted of several key points aimed at beginning the process of building real and sustainable peace. One of these points included basic conditions for the political participation of the former FARC guerrillas and their leaders. The agreement guaranteed 10 seats in Colombia’s congress to former FARC guerrilla leaders, and dedicated an entire chapter to a nationwide project to allow small-scale coca, poppy and marijuana farmers to voluntarily substitute their illicit crops in exchange for social investment and government-sponsored substitution programs.

The most direct interference of the U.S. government is still being uncovered in the form of a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) operation that involved top FARC peace negotiators and Colombian Vice President Óscar Naranjo, and even led to the tapping of then-sitting Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’ phone.

Early last month, El Espectador, one of Colombia’s largest newspapers, broke a story exposing over 24,000 secret audio recordings of a joint operation by the DEA and the Colombian attorney general’s office to entrap Ivan Márquez, who was the head of the FARC’s peace negotiation team in Havana, and Jesús Santrich, who was a also a part of the FARC’s peace negotiation team and a sitting member of Congress for the FARC Party.

Undercover DEA agents posed as members of the Sinaloa Cartel with connections to Rafael Caro Quintero, the alleged murderer of DEA agent Kiki Camarena, one of the protagonists of the Netflix show “Narcos: Mexico.” The undercover agents approached Marlon Marín, Iván Marquez’ nephew, with the aim of establishing contact with Márquez and Santrich.

The agents were eventually able to get a meeting with Santrich, a blind and eccentric former FARC guerrilla, under the pretext that they were going to publish his book of poetry in Mexico. The DEA agents then got him to agree to send over books in a meeting secretly recorded on camera by the two undercover agents and, together with the attorney general’s office, have tried to use this manufactured evidence to frame Santrich for drug-trafficking and extradite him to the U.S. by claiming that he was referring to cocaine, not books.

The attorney general’s continued attacks on Santrich over the DEA recorded video, coupled with the U.S. government’s insistence on extradition, eventually led both Santrich and Márquez to leave Congress and return to arms under the name FARC-Second Marquetalia, a new leftist guerilla group that claims to continue the war against the state and in defense of social movements while continuing to fight with other organizations for control of drug routes in various parts of the country. The new name is a not-so-subtle reference to the Marquetalia massacre, a U.S.-sponsored attack on autonomous peasant communities that led to the foundation of the FARC in 1964 and the start of the internal conflict.

This DEA mission was a clear violation of Colombian sovereignty and an open affront to the movement for peace in Colombia. The DEA’s push to entrap and extradite two of the FARC’s top peace negotiators and sitting members of Colombian Congress put the whole peace agreement at risk. In the end, the operation led to a split in the FARC leadership, pushed Márquez and Santrich back into the drug trade, and increased the levels of violence in the poorest departments of Colombia.

Despite this outcome, the U.S. embassy has defended the role that the DEA played in the operation, claiming that any accusation that the DEA did not act in accordance with Colombian law “undermines joint efforts to fight transnational crime.”

 

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Forced Eradication

Harmful intervention is also evident in the U.S. government’s support for forced Coca eradication. The National Comprehensive Program for the Substitution of Illicit Crops is one of the cornerstones of the Colombian peace agreement, aimed at putting an end to the country’s 53-year armed conflict. The substitution program is part of a broader rural development agreement aimed at alleviating the social and economic inequities that led to the armed conflict in the first place. This alternative strategy sought to work hand-in-hand with small growers and rural communities across the country to manually eradicate coca plants. The voluntary substitution program has proven far more effective than the heavy-handed, militarized approaches being pushed by the U.S. government. Despite the lack of political will by the administration of President Iván Duque Márquez, the nationwide program has already led to the voluntary eradication of over 100,000 acres of coca by families enrolled in the program, with a staggeringly low 0.4% rate of recidivism, according to a recent UN report.

But the Trump administration has taken steps to undermine this program. On September 13, 2017, the Trump administration threatened to place Colombia on a “blacklist” of countries deemed to not be doing enough to counter the global drug trade. Countries that are decertified face a range of U.S. sanctions, including the suspension of all U.S. foreign assistance not directly related to anti-narcotics programs. This would also include suspension of all assistance related to the peace accord implementation.

The threat of “de-certification” was made to put extra pressure on the right-wing Duque administration to double down on forced eradication policies, which send U.S.-trained military commandos to manually eradicate coca crops in rural areas. These kinds of operations violate the voluntary substitution pacts signed by nearly 125,000 coca-growing families. They have also led to horrific human rights violations, as happened in 2017 in Tandil, Tumaco when state security forces opened fire on demonstrators, indiscriminately killing at least eight protesters and injuring at least 50 more.

A month after his election in 2018, under pressure from the Trump administration, President Duque announced plans to go even further by reinstating aerial glyphosate fumigations. This tactic involves crop dusting entire villages with an industrial-grade weed killer known as RoundUp — a Monsanto product declared in 2015 to be “probably carcinogenic” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is part of the World Health Organization.

This is not the first time the U.S. government has encouraged aerial spraying. In 2015, U.S. ambassador to Colombia Kevin Whitaker published an op-ed in El Tiempo that declared, “The majority of reduction in coca cultivation is due to aerial spraying,” while citing the health of Colombia’s rural poor as, at best, a secondary concern. A year later, then-Colombian Attorney General Néstor Humberto Martínez, who would later resign in May of 2019 due to his alleged role in a major corruption scandal, met with then‑U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Immediately after the high-level meeting, Martínez publicly advocated for the return to aerial fumigations with glyphosate in Colombia. Martínez’s stance came despite the knowledge that securing a peace agreement with the FARC would hinge on the approval of a voluntary manual eradication program. For years, environmental NGOs, human rights groups and rural communities affected by glyphosate fumigations believed the policy amounted to chemical warfare, which makes any attempt to return to the harmful practice incompatible with a holistic approach to peace.

In 2000, the United States doubled down on its funding for the forced eradication of coca plants — one of many raw materials in cocaine — with the implementation of Plan Colombia, a multi-billion dollar aid package, 80% of which went directly to the corrupt security forces between 2000 and 2007. In addition, this plan financed widespread human rights violations, such as torture, forced disappearances and the mass killings of thousands of innocent civilians by the Colombian armed forces. It also funneled money to paramilitary death squads responsible for the conflict’s most heinous atrocities.

The U.S.-led push for increased forced eradication and a return to aerial glyphosate fumigations jeopardizes a successful program intended to assist the more than 230,000 Colombian families who depend on coca to gradually move towards other forms of sustainable agriculture. It also endangers the implementation of reforms in the peace agreement that are aimed at addressing one of the main causes of the decades-long conflict, access to land.

According to a 2017 Oxfam report, Colombia remains the most unequal country in Latin America in terms of land distribution, with less than 1% of the population controlling more than 80% of the land. In fact, this trend towards greater land concentration was aided by the multi-billion dollar U.S. escalation of the conflict in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the percentage of large landholdings (over 1,200 acres) more than doubling, going from 25.6% of total land ownership in 1997 to 66% in 2014.

Colombia Returns to War

As the United States undergoes a presidential transition, Colombia is experiencing a transition from an unstable peace to a new localized war with many more actors. In addition to Second Marquetalia, there are various groups of FARC dissidents, the National Liberation Army, and right-wing paramilitaries that act in coordination with elements of the state, fighting for control of territories that have been abandoned by the government, leaving the people that live in those territories in the middle. Just this year alone, Colombia has seen 84 massacres and 292 killings of social leaders, the most recent of whom was Freiner Lemus, an indigenous leader who was assassinated on December 13. U.S. intervention in Colombia’s internal affairs will continue to exacerbate this violence until there is a serious rectification of the country’s legacy in the region.

A recent report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee took some steps toward acknowledging the failure of the drug war and policies like Plan Colombia. But the report’s emphasis on reducing “the foreign supply of illicit drugs,” providing law enforcement assistance, and imposing sanctions suggests a lighter version of the same militaristic policies that it is reportedly criticizing. And it fails to address the root cause of the problem: the lack of real alternatives for drug producing communities.

The incoming Biden administration has the chance to change this legacy and support a lasting peace in Colombia by withdrawing DEA agents and U.S. military advisors from the country, supporting the implementation of the peace accords, and decriminalizing coca cultivation. Time will tell whether President-elect Biden chooses a new direction or repeats the failures of the long history of U.S. intervention in Colombia.

The authors of this piece are affiliated with Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective, which provides physical and political accompaniment to movements for justice and environmental sustainability in the Americas.

How the U.S. Is Quietly Undermining Colombia's Fragile Peace Process

 

[Yehuda]

The Evolution of U.S.-Backed Death Squads in Honduras

The Pathology of U.S. Foreign Policy

DECEMBER 20, 2020 | BY T.J. COLES

Photo Source Capt. Thomas Cieslak – CC BY 2.0

U.S. intelligence agencies and corporations have pushed back against the so-called Pink Tide, the coming to power of socialistic governments in Central and South America. Examples include: the slow-burning attempt to overthrow Venezuela’s President; Nicolás Maduro; the initially successful soft coup in Bolivia against President Evo Morales; and the constitutional crises that removed Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.

In 2009, the Obama administration (2009-17) backed a coup against President Manuel Zelaya. Since then, Honduras has endured a decline in its living standards and democratic institutions. The return of 1980s-style death squads operating against working people in the interests of U.S. corporations has contributed to the refugee-migrant flow to the United States and to the rise of racist politics.

EMPIRES: FROM THE SPANISH TO THE AMERICAN

Honduras (pop. 9.5 million) is surrounded by Guatemala and Belize in the north, El Salvador in the west, and Nicaragua in the south. It has a small western coast on the Pacific Ocean and an extensive coastline on the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic. Nine out of 10 Hondurans are Indo-European (mestizo). GDP is <$25bn and over 60 percent of the people live in poverty: one in five in extreme poverty.

Honduras gained independence from Spain in 1821, before being annexed to the Mexican Empire. Hondurans have endured some 300 rebellions, civil wars, and/or changes of government; more than half of which occurred in the 20th century. Writing in 1998, the Clinton White House acknowledged that Honduras’s “agriculturally based economy came to be dominated by U.S. companies that established vast banana plantations along the north coast.”

The significant U.S. military presence began in the 1930s, with the establishment of an air force and military assistance program. The Clinton White House also noted that the founder of the National Party, Tiburcio Carías Andino (1876-1969), had “ties to dictators in neighboring countries and to U.S. banana companies [which] helped him maintain power until 1948.”

The C.I.A. notes that dictator Carías’s repression of Liberals would make those Liberals “turn to conspiracy and [provoke] attempts to foment revolution, which would render them much more susceptible to Communist infiltration and control.” The Agency said that in so-called emerging democracies: “The opportunities for Communist penetration of a repressed and conspiratorial organization are much greater than in a freely functioning political party.” So, for certain C.I.A. analysts, “liberal democracy” is a buffer against dictatorships that legitimize genuinely left-wing oppositional groups. The C.I.A. cites the case of Guatemala in which “a strong dictatorship prior to 1944 did not prevent Communist activity which led after the dictator’s fall, to the establishment of a pro-Communist government.”

REDS UNDER THE BED

To understand the thinking behind the U.S.-backed death squads, it is worth looking at some partly-declassified C.I.A. material on early-Cold War planning. The paranoia was such that each plantation laborer was potentially a Soviet asset hiding in the fruit field. These subversives could be ready, at any moment, to strike against U.S. companies and the nascent American Empire.

In line with some strategists’ conditional preferences for “liberal democracies,” Honduras has the façade of voter choice, with two main parties controlled by the military. After the Second World War, U.S. policy exploited Honduras as a giant military base from which left-wing or suspected “communist” movements in neighboring countries could be countered. In 1954, for instance, Honduras was used as a base for the C.I.A.’s operation PBSuccess to overthrow Guatemala’s President, Jacobo Árbenz (1913-71).

Writing in ‘54, the C.I.A. said that the Liberal Party of Honduras “has the support of the majority of the Honduran voters. Much of its support comes from the lower classes.” The Agency also believed that the banned Communist Party of Honduras planned to infiltrate the Liberals to nudge them further left. But an Agency document notes that “there may be fewer than 100” militant Communists in Honduras and there were “perhaps another 300 sympathizers.”

The document also notes: “The organization of a Honduran Communist Party has never been conclusively established,” though the C.I.A. thought that the small Revolutionary Democratic Party of Honduras “might have been a front.” The Agency also believed that Communists were behind the Workers’ Coordinating Committee that led strikes of 40,000 laborers against the U.S.-owned United Fruit and Standard Fruit Companies, which the Agency acknowledges “dominate[d] the economy of the region.” In the same breath, the C.I.A. also says that the Communists “lost control of the workers,” post-strike.

A PROXY AGAINST NICARAGUA

A U.S. military report states that “[c]onducting joint exercises with the Honduran military has a long history dating back to 1965.” By 1975, U.S. military helicopters operating in Honduras at Catacamas, a village in the east, assisted “logistical support of counterinsurgency operations,” according to the CIA. These machines aided the Honduran forces in their skirmishes against pro-Castro elements from Nicaragua operating along the Patuca River in the south of Honduras. By the mid-1990s, there were at least 30 helicopters operating in Honduras.

In 1979, the National Sandinista Liberation Front (Sandinistas) came to power in Nicaragua, deposing and later assassinating the U.S.-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1925-80). For the Reagan administration (1981-89), Honduras was a proxy against the defiant Nicaragua.

The U.S. Army War College wrote at the time: “President Reagan has clearly expressed our national commitment to combating low intensity conflict in developing countries.” It says that “The responsibility now falls upon the Department of State and the Department of Defense to develop plans and doctrine for meeting this requirement.” The same document confirms that the U.S. Army Special Operations Forces (SOF), the 18th Airborne Corps, was sent to Honduras. “Mobile Training Teams (MTT) were dispatched to train Honduran soldiers in small unit tactics, helicopter maintenance and air operations, and to establish the Regional Military Training Center near Trujillo and Puerto Castilla,” both on the eastern coast.

A SOUTHCOM document dates significant U.S. military assistance to Honduras to the 1980s. It notes the effect of public pressure on U.S. policy, highlighting: “a general lack of appetite among the American public to see U.S. forces committed in the wake of the Vietnam War [which] resulted in strict parameters that limited the scope of military involvement in Central America.”

According to SOUTHCOM, the Regional Military Training Center was designed “to train friendly countries in basic counterinsurgency tactics.” President Reagan wanted to smash the Sandinistas, but “the executive branch’s hands were tied by the 1984 passage of the Boland Amendment [to the Defense Appropriations Act], banning the use of U.S. military aid to be given to the Contras,” the anti-Sandinista forces in Nicaragua. As a result, “the strong and sudden focus instead on training, and arguably by proxy, the establishment of [Joint Task Force-Bravo],” an elite military unit assigned a “counter-communist mission.”

The Green Berets trained the contras from bases in Honduras, “accompanying them on missions into Nicaragua.” The North American Congress on Latin America noted at the time that “Military planes flying out of Honduras are coordinated by a laser navigation system, and contras operating inside Nicaragua are receiving night supply drops from C-130s using the Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System,” first used in Vietnam and operational only to a few personnel. “The CIA, operating out of Air Force bases in the United States, hires pilots for the hazardous sorties at $30,000 per mission.” The report notes that troops from El Salvador “were undergoing U.S. training every day of the year, in Honduras, the United States and the new basic training center at La Union,” in the north.

SPECIAL UNITS AND ANTI-COMMUNISTS

The U.S. also launched psychological operations against domestic leftism in Honduras. This involved morphing a special police unit into a military intelligence squad guilty of kidnap, torture, and murder: Battalion 316. Inducing a climate of fear in workers, union leaders, intellectuals, and human rights lawyers is way of ensuring that progressive ideas like good healthcare, free education, and decent living standards don’t take root.

In 1963, the Fuerza de Seguridad Pública (FUSEP, Public Security Force) was set up as a branch of the military. During the early-‘80s, FUSEP commanded the National Directorate of Investigations, regular national police units, and National Special Units, “which provided technical support to the arms interdiction program,” according to the CIA, in which “material from Nicaragua passed through Honduras to guerrillas in El Salvador.” The National Directorate of Investigations ran the secret Honduran Anti-Communist Liberation Army (ELACH, 1980-84), described by the C.I.A. as “a rightist paramilitary organization which conducted operations against Honduran leftists.”

The C.I.A. repeats allegations that “ELACH’s operations included surveillance, kidnappings, interrogation under duress, and execution of prisoners who were Honduran revolutionaries.” ELACH worked in cooperation with the Special Unit of FUSEP. “The mission of the Unit was essentially … to combat both domestic and regional subversive movements operating in and through Honduras.” The C.I.A. also notes that “this included penetrating various organizations such as the Honduran Communist Party, the Central American Regional Trotskyite Party, and the Popular Revolutionary Forces-Lorenzo Zelaya (FPR-LZ) Marxist terrorist organization.”

Gustavo Adolfo Álvarez (1937-89), future head of the Honduran Armed Forces, told U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s Honduras Ambassador, Jack Binns, that their forces would use “extra-legal means” to destroy communists. Binns wrote in a confidential cable: “I am deeply concerned at increasing evidence of officially sponsored/sanctioned assassinations of political and criminal targets, which clearly indicate [Government of Honduras] repression has built up a head of steam much faster than we had anticipated.” But U.S. doctrine shifted under President Reagan. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Thomas O. Enders, told Binns not to send such material to the State Department for fear of leakage. Enders himself said of human rights in Honduras: “the Reagan administration had broader interests.”

Under Reagan, John Negroponte replaced Binns at the U.S. Embassy in the capital Tegucigalpa, from where many C.I.A. agents operated. In 1981, secret briefings informed Negroponte that “[Government of Honduras] security forces have begun to resort to extralegal tactics — disappearances and, apparently, physical eliminations to control a perceived subversive threat.” Rick Chidster, a junior political officer at the U.S. Embassy was ordered by superiors in 1982 to remove references to Honduran military abuses from his annual human rights report prepared for Congress.

 

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THE MAKING OF BATTALION-316

In March 1981, Reagan authorized the expansion of covert operations to “provide all forms of training, equipment, and related assistance to cooperating governments throughout Central America in order counter foreign-sponsored subversion and terrorism.” Documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun the reveal that from 1981, the U.S. provided funds for Argentine counterinsurgency experts to train anti-Communists in Honduras; many of whom had, themselves, been trained by the U.S. in earlier years. At a camp in Lepaterique, in western Honduras, Argentine killers under U.S. supervision trained their Honduran counterparts.

Oscar Álvarez, a former Honduran Special Forces officer and diplomat trained by the U.S., said: “The Argentines came in first, and they taught how to disappear people.” With training and equipment, such as hidden cameras and phone bugging technology, U.S. agents “made them more efficient.” The U.S.-trained Chief of Staff, Gen. José Bueso Rosa, says: “We were not specialists in intelligence, in gathering information, so the United States offered to help us organize a special unit.” Between 1982 and 1984, the aforementioned Gen. Álvarez headed the Armed Forces. In 1983, Reagan awarded him the Legion of Merit for “encouraging the success of democratic processes in Honduras.” When C.I.A. Station Chief, Donald Winters, adopted a child, he asked Álvarez to be the godfather.

After WWII, the U.S. Army established, in the Panama Canal Zone, a Latin American Training Center-Ground Division at Fort Amador, later renamed the U.S. Army School of the Americas and moved to Fort Benning, Georgia. Now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the C.I.A.’s Phoenix Program in Vietnam and its MK-ULTRA mind-torture programs influenced the Honduras curriculum at the School.

In 1983, the U.S. military participated in Strategic Military Seminar with the Honduran Armed Forces, at which it was decided that FUSEP would be transformed from a police force into a military intelligence unit. “The purpose of this change,” says the C.I.A., “was to improve coordination and improve control.” It also aimed “To make available greater personnel, resources, and to integrate the intel production.” In 1984, the Special Unit was placed under the command of the Military Intelligence Division and renamed the 316th Battalion, at which point “it continued to provide technical support to the arms interdiction program” in neighboring countries.

A C.I.A. officer based in the U.S. Embassy is known to have visited the Military Industries jail: one of Battalion 316’s torture chambers in which victims were bound, beaten, electrocuted, raped, and poisoned. Battalion torturer, José Barrera, says: “They always asked to be killed … Torture is worse than death.” Battalion 316 officer, José Valle, explained surveillance methods: “We would follow a person for four to six days. See their daily routes from the moment they leave the house. What kind of transportation they use. The streets they go on.” Men in black ski masks would bundle the victim into a vehicle with dark-tinted windows and no license plates.

Under Lt. Col. Alonso Villeda, the Battalion was disbanded and replaced in 1987 with a Counterintelligence Division of the Honduran Armed Forces. Led by the Chief of Staff for Intelligence (C-2), it absorbed the Battalion’s personnel, units, analysis centers, and functions.

In 1988, Richard Stolz, then-U.S. Deputy Director for Operations, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in secret hearings that C.I.A. officers ran courses and taught psychological torture. “The course consisted of three weeks of classroom instruction followed by two weeks of practical exercises, which included the questioning of actual prisoners by the students.” Former Ambassador Binns says: “I think it is an example of the pathology of foreign policy.” In response to the allegations, which he denied, former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Elliott Abrams, replied: “A human rights policy is not supposed to make you feel good.”

Between 1982 and 1993, the U.S. taxpayer gave half a billion dollars in military “aid” to Honduras. By 1990, 184 people had “disappeared,” according to President Manuel Zelaya, who in 2008 intimated that he would reopen cases of the disappeared.

 

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THE ZELAYA COUP

After centuries of struggle, Hondurans elected a President who raised living standards through wealth redistribution. Winner of the 2005 Presidential elections, Manuel Zelaya of the Liberal Party’s Movimiento Esperanza Liberal faction increased the minimum wage, provided free education to children, subsidised small farmers, and provided free electricity to the country’s poorest. Zelaya countered media monopoly propaganda by imposing minimum airtime for government broadcasts and allied with America’s regional enemies via the proposed ALBA trading bloc.

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported at the time that “analysts” reckoned Zelaya’s move “runs the risk of jeopardizing the traditionally close state of relations with the United States.” The CRS also bemoaned Zelaya delaying the accreditation of the U.S. Ambassador, Hugo Llorens, “to show solidarity with Bolivia in its diplomatic spat with the United States in which Bolivia expelled the U.S. Ambassador.”

Because Zeyala did not have enough Congressional representatives to agree to his plan, he attempted to expand democracy by holding a referendum on constitutional changes. Both the lower and Supreme Courts agreed to the opposition parties blocking the referendum. In defiance of the courts, Zelaya ordered the military to help with election logistics, an order refused by the head of the Armed Forces, Gen. Romeo Vásquez, who later claimed that Zelaya had dismissed him, which Zelaya denies. Using pro-Zelaya demonstrations as a pretext for taking to the streets, the military mobilized and, in June 2009, the Supreme Court authorized Zelaya’s capture, after which he was exiled to Costa Rica.

In the book Hard Choices, then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s ghostwriters, with her approval, refer to Latin America as the U.S.’s “backyard” and to Zelaya as “a throwback to the caricature of a Central American strongman, with his white cowboy hat, dark black mustache, and fondness for Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro” (p. 222). The publishers omitted from the paperback edition Clinton’s role in the coup: “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras” (plus the usual boilerplate about democracy promotion.)

Decree PCM-M-030-2009 ordered the election be held during a state of emergency. The peaceful, pro-Zelaya groups, La Resistencia and Frente Hondureña de Resistencia Popular, were targeted under Anti-Terror Laws. The right-wing Porfirio Lobo was elected with over 50 percent of the vote in a fake 60 percent turnout (later revised to 49 percent). U.S. President Obama described this as “a restoration of democratic practices and a commitment to reconciliation that gives us great hope.” Hope and change for Honduras came in the form of economic changes benefitting U.S. corporations:

The U.S. State Department notes: “Many of the approximately 200 U.S. companies that operate in Honduras take advantage of protections available in the Central American and Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement.” Note the inadvertent acknowledgement that “free trade” is actually protection for U.S. corporations. The State Department also notes: “The Honduran government is generally open to foreign investment. Low labor costs, proximity to the U.S. market, and the large Caribbean port of Puerto Cortes make Honduras attractive to investors.”

Four years into Zelaya’s overthrow, unemployment jumped from 35.5 percent to 56.4 percent. In 2014, Honduras signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a $189m loan. The Center for Economic and Policy Research states: “Honduran authorities agreed to implement fiscal consolidation… including privatizations, pension reforms and public sector layoffs.” The Congressional Research Service states: “President Juan Orlando Hernández of the conservative National Party was inaugurated to a second four-year term in January 2018. He lacks legitimacy among many Hondurans, however, due to allegations that his 2017 reelection was unconstitutional and marred by fraud.”

RETURN OF THE DEATH SQUADS

Since the coup, the U.S. has expanded its military bases in Honduras from 10 to 13. U.S. “aid” funds the Honduran National Police, whose long-time Director, Juan Carlos Bonilla, was trained at the School of the Americas. Atrocities against Hondurans increased under the U.S. favorite, President Hernández, who vowed to “put a soldier on every corner.” SOUTHCOM worked under Obama’s Central America Regional Security Initiative, which supported Operation Morazán: a program to integrate Honduras’s Armed Forces with its domestic policing units. With SOUTHCOM funding, the 250-person Special Response Security Unit (TIGRES) was established near Lepaterique. The TIGRES are trained by the U.S. Green Berets or 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) and described by the U.S. Army War College as a “paramilitary police force.”

The cover for setting up a military police force is countering narco- and human-traffickers, but the record shows that left-wing civilians are targeted for death and intimidation. To crush the pro-Zelaya, pro-democracy movements Operation Morazán, according to the U.S. Army War College, included the creation of the Military Police of Public Order (PMOP), whose members must have served at least one year in the Armed Forces. By January 2018, the PMOP consisted of 4,500 personnel in 10 battalions across every region of Honduras, and had murdered at least 21 street protestors.

Berta Cáceres co-founded the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. One of the Organization’s missions was resisting the Desarrollos Energéticos (DESA) corporation’s Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River, which is sacred to the Lenca people. DESA hired a gang, later convicted of murdering Cáceres. They included the U.S.-trained Maj. Mariano Díaz Chávez and Lt. Douglas Geovanny Bustillo, himself head of security at DESA. The company’s director, David Castillo, also a U.S.-trained ex-military intelligence officer, is alleged to have colluded with the killers. The TIGRE forces oversaw the dam’s construction site.

Between 2010 and 2016, as U.S. “aid” and training continued to flow, over 120 environmental activists were murdered by hitmen, gangs, police, and the military for opposing illegal logging and mining. Others have been intimidated. In 2014, for instance, a year after the murder of three Matute people by gangs linked to a mining operation, the children of the indigenous Tolupan leader, Santos Córdoba, were threatened at gunpoint by the U.S.-trained, ex-Army General, Filánder Uclés, and his bodyguards.

Home to the Regional Military Training Center, Bajo Aguán is a low-lying region in the east, whose farmers have battled land privatization since the early-1990s. After Zelaya was deposed, crimes against the peoples of the region increased. Rights groups signed a letter to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who facilitated U.S. aid to Honduras, stating: “Forty-five people associated with peasant organizations have been killed” between September 2009 and February 2012. A joint military-police project, Operation Xatruch II in 2012, led to the deaths of “nine peasant organization members, including two principal leaders.” One 17-year-old son of a peasant organizer was kidnapped, tortured, and threatened with being burned alive. Lawfare is also used, with over 160 small farmers in the area subject to frivolous legal proceedings.

“BACK TO THE PAST”

In the 1980s, Tomás Nativí, co-founder of the People’s Revolutionary Union, was “disappeared” by U.S.-backed death squads. Nativí’s wife, Bertha Oliva, founded of the Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras to fight for justice for those murdered between 1979 and 1989. She told The Intercept that the recent killings and restructuring of the so-called security state is “like going back to the past.”

The iron-fist of Empire in the service of capitalism never loosens its grip. The names and command structures of U.S.-backed military units in Honduras have changed over the last four decades, but their goal remains the same.

T. J. Coles is director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research and the author of several books, including Voices for Peace (with Noam Chomsky and others) and Fire and Fury: How the US Isolates North Korea, Encircles China and Risks Nuclear War in Asia (both Clairview Books).

The Evolution of U.S.-Backed Death Squads in Honduras

 

[Yehuda]

The armed conflict the black people of Colombia have had to resist

By the ¡Pacifista! Staff — December 12, 2020

Photos: Truth Commission

In addition to the clashes between armed groups, this people have endured racism, rejection and neglect. Their leaders recounted how they resisted the war at a Truth Commission meeting.

On May 2, 2002, 18 years ago, the former FARC and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia clashed in the head of the municipality of Bojayá (Chocó). The population was left in the middle of that confrontation. Frightened by the bullets, the Bojaseños sought refuge in the church. The FARC believed that the paramilitaries were hiding there and indiscriminately dropped cylinder bombs. In that attack, 79 people died and at least a hundred were injured. All of them were black.

This tragedy, one of the most violent episodes in the recent history of Colombia, serves to explain how the armed conflict entered the black territories and put them in the middle of the war. According to the Victims Unit, as of October of this year, 1,144,486 people who identify themselves as Afro-Colombians, Palenqueros and Raizales are registered as victims of the conflict. This means that one in three Afro-Colombians was affected by the war in some way.

“If what I experienced was because of an armed group, it would hurt me a lot if my son also fell victim to an armed group, whatever it may be. Because I think and say: we don't give birth to children for war”: testimony of a woman from Buenos Aires, Cauca.

Last Friday the event Recognition of the truth of the black, Afro-Colombian, Palenquero and Raizal people: facts and impacts of the armed conflict, contributions to the construction of peace and nation took place, organized by the Truth Commission. The event, which was held at the Historical Museum of Cartagena, was led by the social leader and commissioner of Truth Leyner Palacios. “Today it is commendable and necessary to make a stop along the way to recognize the great pain and suffering of that armed conflict, which has been marked by racism and discrimination”.

The difficult years that Black communities have suffered as a result of the armed conflict made them a key player in the Havana negotiations. Afro-descendant organizations participated in the creation of the ethnic chapter of the Peace Agreement.

Racism and discrimination intensified violence against black people, although they are not phenomena that appeared with the armed conflict. Let us remember that the rejection of this people has been going on for centuries. Even when slavery was abolished in Colombia, after Independence, the slaveholders received compensation for freeing their slaves. In contrast, the Afro-descendants received no money.

The president of the Commission, Father Francisco de Roux, recognized this systematic and historical racism. “Their [black people's] word has been considered less important and they have broken their promises because they think that what is discussed with you is discussed with inferior beings, with second-class citizens”, he said.

Armed groups entered Afro-descendant territories in the mid-sixties of the last century. But the impact was more noticeable in the 1990s, when they settled in the territories. In 1996 the FARC arrived in Tumaco and Barbacoas, in Nariño, and took over those towns. A year later, the paramilitaries settled in the Pacific region. The presence of these groups came in the company of drug trafficking, thus disrespecting the traditions and ways of life of the communities.

On the other hand, since colonial times, black people have sought vindication and autonomy. The precedent was set by the maroons, who, in 1691, achieved the autonomy of San Basilio de Palenque by royal decree. Centuries later, in the 1930s, the Democratic Action Movement was formed in Chocó and in the 1940s there were student mobilizations seeking historical reparations for this people. Currently, one of the main resistance movements is the Maroon Guard.

In 1990, black leaders organized the Preconstitutive Congress of Black Communities and a year later they participated in the elaboration of the 1991 Constituent. Four years later, in 1995, Decree 1745 was issued, by means of which Chapter III of Law 70 of 1993 is regulated. That is, their right to collective ownership of their land was recognized. However, and as is often the case with many laws in the country, compliance has not been guaranteed.

Among the episodes of violence that targeted black people, the Commission highlighted Operation Genesis in Cacarica, Chocó, which took place in February 1997. There the Army allied with paramilitaries and assassinated Marino López, a leader of that municipality. This crime generated the forced displacement of hundreds of people who lived on the banks of the Cacarica River. Years later, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the Colombian State for this act.

With the demobilization processes of various armed groups in recent years, mainly the FARC and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, black territories saw an opportunity to finally live in peace. However, residual and dissident groups are now fighting for control of those territories.

As with the FARC, the governments had initiated processes to surrender of weapons and reincorporation with the paramilitaries. However, in the absence of the State in the territories, particularly where the black communities are settled, armed groups and dissidents of the demobilized groups have strengthened in recent years. For this reason, the conflict against the black population is still a current reality. In 2017 alone, the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement reported 77 murdered Afro-descendant leaders.

During the meeting, in recognition acts, Wilson Antonio Chaverra, who was mayor of Vigía del Fuerte (Antioquia) between 1995 and 1997, participated. At least 90 percent of the inhabitants of that municipality are Afro-Colombians. Chaverra said that he asked the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia for help to get rid of the FARC in that territory, this due to the weak presence of the State. In 2018, the Prosecutor's Office charged him with a conspiracy to commit a crime for having financed paramilitary groups. “That remedy was worse than the disease”.

On the part of the FARC, Pastor Alape spoke, who asked for forgiveness on behalf of the former guerrilla for the atrocities in Bojayá. Rodrigo Londoño joined in that forgiveness and acknowledged that there was disrespect for the ethnic authorities. “We thought all we had to do was keep on going straight ahead, trying to destroy the State. But we forgot those communities, their culture, their customs and their very position”.

Former paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso spoke out on the crimes of the Self-Defense Forces in Mampuján, a municipality in the Montes de María region. In March 2000, armed men with lists in hand asked for some people and when they did not find them, they began to kill civilians. 12 innocents were killed. Mancuso acknowledged that “the crimes that the Self-Defense Forces committed under my command are crimes of the State”.



The armed conflict the black people of Colombia have had to resist

 

[Yehuda]

UN adopts resolution proposed by Costa Rica to declare August 31 as International Day of Afro-descendants

By Elpais.Cr — December 16, 2020 — In Nacionales

Epsy Campbell Barr, Vice President of Costa Rica

San José, Dec 16 (Elpaís.cr) .— The General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), adopted by acclamation this Wednesday a resolution presented by Costa Rica and co-sponsored by 52 countries, to declare August 31 as the International Day of People of African Descent.

Announced by Vice President Epsy Campbell Barr on national television last August to commemorate the Historic Month of Afro-descendants in Costa Rica, the initiative aims to recognize the contributions of Afro-descendants around the world and their struggles to combat all forms of racism and racial discrimination.

In August 1920 the First International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World was held in New York and as a result of discussions, led by Marcus Garvey with thousands of delegates from different countries, the “Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World” was adopted.

Said declaration “was one of the most notable of the 20th century, by making explicit the rights to racial justice, equality before the law, the right to self-determination, freedom of the press, freedom of religious worship, the right to a unlimited education, as well as the right to peace, long before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, said Vice President Campbell.

“This proposal presented by Costa Rica and which has had the support of the UN General Assembly seeks to do justice to the struggles, hopes and resistance of Afro-descendant people around the world, bringing to light this milestone in a context of growing mobilization for racial justice, equality and non-discrimination”, she said.

For his part, the Minister of Foreign Relations and Worship, Rodolfo Solano Quirós, thanked the countries for their active involvement and support during the negotiation process.

Foreign Minister Solano highlighted that the adoption of this resolution “reflects the leadership that Costa Rica maintains in the area of Human Rights. It is a resolution not only historic, but also robust in its content, which reaffirms the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is based on the Durban Declaration and Program of Action, and in the International Decade for People of African Descent”.

Meanwhile, the Presidential Commissioner for Afro-descendant Affairs, Enrique Joseph, asserted that the celebration of the International Day of Afro-descendants “will contribute to honoring and preserving historical memory, promoting greater knowledge and respect for human diversity”.

Broad support

The resolution adopted this Wednesday had to pass before the approval of the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, where it received the co-sponsorship of Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, the Bahamas, Belize, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Gambia, Gabon, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Guyana, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Mali, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, the Dominican Republic, Tanzania, Russia, Saint Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Suriname, East Timor, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine and Venezuela.

The preparation and negotiation of the text implied permanent coordination between the Office of the First Vice Presidency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship through the Department of Human Rights and International Rights, and the Permanent Mission of Costa Rica to the United Nations, led by the Ambassador Rodrigo Alberto Carazo, as well as the Office of the Presidential Commissioner for Afro-descendant Affairs.

In a statement last November, the Inter-American Network of High Authorities on Policies for the Afro-descendant Population (RIAFRO) of the Organization of American States (OAS) had urged the UN member states to strongly support Costa Rica's proposal to celebrate for the first time in 2021 on the International Day of People of African Descent.

UN adopts resolution proposed by Costa Rica to declare August 31 as International Day of Afro-descendants

 

[Yehuda]

Agarradinho, melôs, radiola and the “supreme mystery” of how reggae arrived in Maranhão

Among the key aspects of negritude in São Luís, Maranhão, the Jamaican rhythm has been in the Northeast for almost 50 years with no one knowing how it got there

By Adrielly Marcelino
July 24, 2020 16:30

Inauguration party of the Reggae Museum in São Luis (MA) in 2018 — Photo: Ingrid Barros/Sobre o Tatame

The city of São Luís, in Maranhão, is known as the reggae capital of Brazil, or simply as the “Brazilian Jamaica”. The rhythm is so important for Maranhenses, that in October 2002 a law instituted the Municipal Day of the Regueiro, celebrated on September 5.

Reggae from Maranhão is full of particularities, such as radiolas, the name given to the “mountains” of speakers, similar to Jamaican sound systems.

Unlike the rest of the world, the people in Maranhão enjoy dancing reggae holding each other close, known as agarradinho. And the big hits, known as “gemstones”, were renamed melôs, short for melodias (melodies).

The famous agarradinho and in the background the radiolas adapted from the Jamaican sound system; pictured: inauguration of the Maranhão Reggae Museum / Photo: Ingrid Barros/Sobre o Tatame

The similarity between Jamaica and Maranhão is also in the African origins of the population. Many of the enslaved people who disembarked at the port of São Luís in the 18th century embarked on Costa da Mina, on what is now known as Côte d'Ivoire. At the same time, more than 500,000 enslaved people from the Gold Coast — present-day Ghana — landed in Jamaican territory.

In pre-colonial times, there was the Ashanti Empire in that region, which stretched from central Ghana to modern-day Togo and Côte d'Ivoire. Therefore, it may be that modern-day Maranhenses and Jamaicans descend from people of the same African empire.

Arrival

There are several theories about how reggae reached Maranhão. According to reports from Maranhão, in the 1970s the rhythm came through the waves of Caribbean radio stations that also brought genres such as calypso and zouk.

Another theory is that sailors who disembarked at the port of São Luís used reggae LPs as a bargaining chip. That is what Franck Rabelo, better known as DJ Franck Wailer, says.

“Some people say that the sailors would bring some records and among them reggae records. And here they would swap them for drinks and even for individual leisure.”

But for Ademar Danilo, curator of the Reggae Museum in Maranhão, the explanation of how the rhythm arrived is a mystery that does not need an answer.

“We do not know who, when, how or even why reggae got here. We only know where, and that is here. There are several legends, several attempts to explain it. I personally believe that there's no problem in not being certain about this. Culture is not mathematics, it does not need to be exact. What we do know, is that we are on the verge of celebrating 50 years of reggae in Maranhão. And this supreme mystery is part of our reggae culture in São Luís”.

Reggae in Maranhão has always been attached to the negritude movement in the state; pictured: inauguration party of the Maranhão Reggae Museum / Photo: Ingrid Barros/Sobre o Tatame

In the 1970s, parties with the slow-paced rhythm became popular in the city's periphery. In the 1990s, reggae began to dominate Maranhense radio. The highest rated show in the state was about the rhythm and presented by Fauzi Beydoun, lead singer of the band Tribo de Jah.

It was at parties on the periphery that Ademar got to know the genre and adopted it for his entire life:

“When I was between 13 and 14 I started going to clubs in my neighborhood, in the periphery of São Luís. They already played reggae (...) Since then I have been deeply immersed in this culture which preaches peace, love and harmony, but also shows that only through struggle can we achieve love, peace and harmony (...) I was a pioneer of reggae on TV and the internet. I developed some researches and at the height of my peaks, I was invited by the Bob Marley Museum to give reggae lectures to Jamaicans, in Jamaica, with Bob Marley's family waiting for me at the Museum's door to show me the place.”

The reggae movement in Maranhão is a story of resistance. For many years, regueiros were the target of prejudice and repressed by the state, as Ademar reports:

“For more than 40 years the government repressed the movement and discriminated against it. Now, with the change in political orientation in the state and the open mind of Governor Flávio Dino (Communist Party of Brazil), the government recognizes, respects and encourages reggae culture in our state.”

And so? With so many peculiarities, is the rhythm from Jamaica or is it from São Luís? Where is reggae from?

“Actually, reggae is global now. In 2018, UNESCO gave the genre the title of Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Bob Marley prophesised one day: reggae will cover the earth just as the waters cover the seas. No sooner said than done. Reggae is the only rhythm present on the entire planet. From Alaska to the Sahara Desert, from Japan to São Luís do Maranhão.”

*Under the supervision of Lucas Weber

Editing: Lucas Weber

Agarradinho, melôs, radiola and the “supreme mystery” of how reggae arrived in Maranhão