Essential Afro-Latino/ Caribbean Current Events

Yehuda

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The revolutionary promise of New Year’s Day

By: New Frame
Illustrator: Anastasya Eliseeva
1 Jan 2021
Editorial


In 1804, enslaved Africans seized their freedom on the Caribbean island that became Haiti. It came at an unthinkable cost, but it remains an inspiring example of what popular commitment and organisation can achieve.

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The celebration of New Year’s Day as a moment to contemplate renewal, usually personal renewal, follows the calendar adopted by Julius Caesar in 46BC. Designed by Greek mathematicians and astrologers, its sole purpose was to attain greater mathematical accuracy in the alignment of dates to the solar year.

In recent years, Antonio Gramsci’s column that was published on 1 January 1916 in the Turin issue of Avanti! has been circulated in progressive circles on New Year’s Day. In the column, Gramsci rejected the idea that New Year’s Day should be an annual day of renewal and insisted that “I want every morning to be a New Year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself.”

There’s something to be said for the vitality of this position. But in political terms, there’s also something to be said for taking New Year’s Day as the anniversary of the cumulation of one of the most significant events in the history of the modern world.

Christopher Columbus first saw and then set foot on the Caribbean on 12 October 1492, inaugurating a regime of modern terror that, by the late 17th century, had become racialised in a manner that remains all too familiar to us today. That date opened a sequence of world history that has not yet been concluded. But it is New Year’s Day 1804 that marks the beginning of a long, brutally resisted and not yet concluded counter-sequence of direct and effective confrontation, on a world historical scale, with the domination of the planet by Europe and its settler colonies.

On this day in 1804, the French colony Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola became Haiti, the first independent Black republic in the modern world. This was not a concession granted by enlightened European elites. Enslaved African people had seized their freedom, at huge cost, by defeating the three major European powers of the time on the battlefield.

On the night of 14 August 1791, Africans enslaved on Saint-Domingue held a ceremony at Bois Caïman, the Alligator Forest, near Le Cap, a city known as the “Paris of the Antilles”. The ceremony was led by Dutty Boukman and Cécile Fatiman. Boukman had been captured and enslaved in Senegambia. It has often been suggested that his name – “bookman” – may imply that he was a Muslim, a man of the book. Fatiman had been born into slavery to an African mother on the island.

A rebellion begins

During the ceremony, people took turns to express their pain, an animal was sacrificed and an oath to rebel was taken. A transcription of the speech Boukman gave that night includes the famous injunction to “throw away the image of the God of the whites who thirsts for our tears. Listen to the liberty that speaks in all our hearts.” Within a week, 10 000 enslaved people, women and men, had joined the rebellion, 1 800 plantations had been destroyed and 1 000 slaveholders killed.

On 7 November that year, Boukman was captured by the French, decapitated and his head displayed on a spike in a town square. Fatiman would go on to marry Jean-Louis Michel Pierrot, a general in the army of formerly enslaved people that emerged from the rebellion, and live into old age.

The war for freedom raged for more than 12 years. Saint-Domingue was the wealthiest of the European colonies, a place where incredible riches for some were built on others being worked to death. Each year, around 40 000 new slaves were brought to the island to sustain the plantations that produced fabulous wealth in France. The rebellion, and then the war, were met with extraordinary brutality as the plantation owners and their backers in Europe sought to retain control of the island, the plantations and the enslaved people whose labour was the material foundation for the new wealth – and the shift that was under way towards liberalism – in Europe.

Toussaint de Breda, born into slavery on the island, took the name Loverture, the opening, and became the leading general in the revolutionary army. In 1802, after more than a decade of war, Napoleon, the most powerful man in the world, raged against “Toussaint … this gilded African … these black leaders, these ungrateful and rebellious Africans”. He declared that he would not rest until he had “torn the epaulettes off” every rebel in every colony.

After Napoleon’s army arrived in Saint-Domingue, a large part of the rebel army defected to the French. Loverture was betrayed by Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of his generals. He walked into a trap, was captured and taken to France, where he soon died in a prison in the Jura Mountains. Dessalines saw the rebel army through to its final victory.

A singular revolution

As philosopher Peter Hallward wrote in a short but brilliant essay on the bicentenary of the revolution: “Of the three great revolutions that began in the final decades of the eighteenth century – American, French and Haitian – only the third forced the unconditional application of the principle that inspired each one: affirmation of the natural, inalienable rights of all human beings. Only in Haiti was the declaration of human freedom universally consistent. Only in Haiti was this declaration sustained at all costs, in direct opposition to the social order and economic logic of the day. Only in Haiti were the consequences of this declaration – the end of slavery, of colonialism, of racial inequality – upheld in terms that directly embraced the world as a whole.”

While Loverture was dying in prison, English poet William Wordsworth wrote in honour of the general: “There’s not a breathing of the common wind/ That will forget thee.” But Wordsworth was an outlier among European intellectuals. As Haitian historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot noted in 1995, the intellects of the leading European thinkers had been so deeply deformed by racist hallucinations that, even after the defeat of the European powers by Louverture’s forces, they were not able to grasp the political agency of Africans in Saint-Domingue. This, Trouillot noted, has continued to be a feature of much of the European academy, including its radical edge, into the present.

But though the Haitian revolution was incomprehensible in the salons of Paris, news of its triumph spread across the Black world, largely through Black sailors and interactions in port cities. It inspired the 1808 slave revolt in Cape Town whose leader, Louis van Mauritius, a tailor, took great care to craft an outfit modelled on that worn by Louverture.

The Haitian Revolution had imperfect leaders, and profound political differences opened up between the leaders thrust up by the revolution and its ordinary – and now mostly anonymous – protagonists. Some of the revolution’s leaders wanted to take control of the plantations for themselves, while the rebels who had pushed the revolution from below to its triumphant conclusion wanted to destroy the plantations and restore the small-scale systems of communal farming they had known in Africa.

The hope in Haitian freedom

After its victory, the revolution was rapidly encircled by the European powers. The French, with 12 warships anchored off the island, forced Haiti to pay “compensation” for the loss of the colony and its slaves in 1825. The debt was finally paid off in 1947. The United States invaded Haiti in 1915, and since then it has denied its citizens their right to political autonomy, whether through military occupation, backing massively corrupt and authoritarian dictators, or organising coups such as the one that removed Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a hugely popular president, from office in 2004, shortly after the celebration of the bicentenary of the revolution.

The fate of the revolution shows just how far we have to go. But the fact of the revolution indicates what is possible. In a moment when political pessimism is taken as profound insight, and few intellectuals are able to articulate their thought to popular struggles and develop clear and compelling visions of an emancipatory horizon, the revolution is a lodestar.

Hallward makes a vital point about its contemporary significance: “The achievement of Haitian independence reminds us that politics need not always proceed as ‘the art of the possible’. Haitian independence brought to an end one of the most profoundly improbable sequences in all of world history. Contemporary observers were uniformly astounded. As Robin Blackburn observes, Toussaint’s forces broke the chain of colonial slavery at ‘what had been, in 1789, its strongest link’. They overcame the most crushing form of ideological prejudice ever faced by a resistance movement and defeated in turn the armies of the most powerful imperialist nations on Earth.”

The oppressed have always had, and will always have, the capacity to liberate themselves. We can and must think beyond the sad farce, imposed by the imperial donor complex, that has largely replaced the commitments to popular praxis and visions of emancipation that were widespread in the 1970s and the 1980s with the idea that a contained and largely ineffectual “social justice sector”, a set of professional organisations with no popular base or mandate, is the route to real social hope.

New Year’s Day is the anniversary of the Haitian Revolution. That’s a fact, a solid material fact, worth holding on to.

The revolutionary promise of New Year’s Day
 

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Implementation of New Monetary System Begins in Cuba

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As of January 1st, the population will have a term of 180 days to change in banks and exchange houses their convertible pesos (CUC) for Cuban pesos, according to the current rate of 1x24. | Photo: @CanalCaribeCuba

Published 1 January 2021 (23 hours 54 minutes ago)

On this first day of 2021, the implementation of the process of monetary and exchange rate unification begins in Cuba, which constitutes an unavoidable necessity and an indispensable step to move forward with the country's economic strategy.


The so-called Restructuring Task, promoted by the government, implies unifying the current exchange rates, the cessation of the circulation of the convertible peso, and a general reform of salaries and prices, with the gradual elimination of excessive subsidies and undue gratuities.

RELATED: Cuba Will Unify Its Currency and Exchange Rates on January 1st

These procedures find legal backing in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Cuba in its extraordinary edition number 68 of 2020, which includes the procedures related to the plan in the country and features eight decree-laws, three decrees and an equal number of agreements.

Marino Murillo, member of the Political Bureau of the Cuban Communist Party and head of the Commission for the Implementation of the Guidelines, explained that this is an interdisciplinary and transversal process for the Cuban economy.

It seeks, he said, to solve macroeconomic imbalances, reduce budget deficits, favor productive incentives and improve efficiency and competitiveness at international level.



As Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said, monetary and exchange rate unification is not the magic solution to economic and financial problems, "but it should lead us to increased labor productivity and a more efficient performance of the productive forces."

He reiterated the importance and significance of this step, "which will put the country in a better position to carry out the transformations demanded by the updating of our economic and social model on the basis of guaranteeing all Cubans greater equality of opportunities, rights and social justice."

Analysts agree that this is one of the most complex tasks that the country faces in the socio-economic realm, heightened by the effects of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States, the impact of COVID-19 and the international economic crisis.

Since last October, the population has received ample information on the subject through the press, and the actors involved have been trained to carry out this process, defined by the government authorities as an essential step to advance the nation's economic strategy.



Implementation of New Monetary System Begins in Cuba
 

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Afro-descendants on being excluded from having reserved seats: “Chile is becoming the most whitewashed and racist country in the region”

By: Talía Llanos Chacón | Published: December 17, 2020

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Protest against racism | Agencia Uno

“There is a double reading of what this type of law recognizes, because, ultimately, the States gives you with one hand what it takes back from you with the other”, says Isabel Araya, an anthropologist from the Chilean Network of Afro-descendant Studies.

The project of reserved seats for indigenous peoples, which will not include any seats for Afro-descendants, provoked the concern and indignation of this community, who claims “it was a very low blow” for the Afro-descendants of Chile.

Under the conviction that “a historical process is beginning that will aim to settle the historical debt of the State towards native peoples”, the Senate dispatched the Joint Committee's report that settled the consensus formula before the constitutional reform, which has the purpose of reserving 17 seats for representatives of native peoples in the integration of the constituent body that is formed for the creation of a new Constitution.

The Chamber unanimously (41 votes) approved the Joint Committee's document, supporting the agreement of 17 seats for indigenous peoples within the 155 delegates to the constitutional convention, and not supernumerarily as requested by sectors of the opposition and organizations related to the cause.

Meanwhile, the quota for Afro-descendants was voted on separately and — due to not meeting the required quorum — was rejected.

For Isabel Araya Morales, social anthropologist of the Chilean Network of Afro-descendant Studies, this decision demonstrates a double reading of the Afro-descendant reality, in relation to the supposed recognition that the State would have made of the Afro-descendant presence last year.

In April 2019, Chile legally recognized — through bill 21.151 — the Chilean Afro-descendant tribal people and their cultural identity, language, historical tradition, culture, institutions and worldview, in addition to transatlantic trafficking, or the slavery process that took place in Chile.

Likewise, the law indicates that Chilean Afro-descendants have the right to be consulted through Convention No. 169, of the International Labor Organization, on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, whenever legislative or administrative measures liable to affect them directly are expected.

For this reason, “there is a double reading of what this type of law recognizes, because, ultimately, the States gives you with one hand what it takes back from you with the other”, says Isabel Araya.

Stereotyped recognition

The anthropologist explains that Chile — on the one hand — “recognizes the presence of Afro-descendants, admits that they are established in Chilean territory, recognizes that they have a distinct culture, a distinct history, recognizes the transatlantic slave trade, which is a huge advance at the national level (...) But on the other hand, in a process as important as the Constitutional Convention, our participation was rejected”.

She concluded by saying “ultimately, the recognition made by the State is culturalist, folkloric and stereotyped. On the one hand, Afro-descendants are useful because of ther diverse and rich culture, but on the other hand they are completely excluded from participatory processes”.

Likewise, Azeneth Báez — from the Association of Rural Afro-descendant Women Daughters of Azapa — addressed the denial of the Afro-descendant reality. “From the times of slavery onwards there has been a denial of the presence and cultural contribution of the descendants of enslaved Africans”, she said.

The president of the organization explained that “we began a political work 20 years ago to raise awareness about Afro-descendants and their history, the economic and cultural contributions, and today this government, first the government and then the chambers of deputies and senators, passed the legal instruments where they wanted”.

She also reviewed the lack of pretexts for denying seats to people of African descent. “There are no compelling or legal arguments to leave us out. When they include seats reserved for indigenous peoples, immediately the same right assists us as a tribal people”, she explained.

Ignorance from politicians

“Legislators have displayed too much foolishness looking for arguments that radiate ignorance to be people prepared to be in congress”, said Báez, going over the statements of National Renewal senator Rodrigo Galilea.

“Senator Galilea, who's such an ignorant and stubborn individual, repeated ad nauseam, prior to voting for the seats, that we are not ʽnativesʼ”, she said.

According to Azeneth Báez, ILO Convention 169 does not speak of native peoples, it speaks of tribal peoples. “Origin has nothing to do with it. The problem is how both indigenous and descendants of African blacks have historically been discriminated against as a result of the colonialism that existed in America”.

Isabel Araya examines the historical discrimination in the political world, using as an example the statements of the Minister of Social Development Karla Rubilar who has mentioned “that ʽin Chile there is no data, that it is not known who (Afro-descendant people) are, how many there areʼ, as if they do not exist”.

“This is part of the ignorance from politicians and policies, not of people who are involved and obviously work supporting these types of relationships”, she said.

“It's a cause for concern”, she continued. “Right here in Arica and Parinacota, the Ministry of Social Development had a bureau with Afro-descendants, which lasted four or five years, and then the minister says she does not know who they are, that they do not know what kind of work they do (...) They are ignoring their own work in this regard”, she said.

“Minister Karla Rubilar dedicated herself to lying”, added Báez. “More than anything to lie. She lied that we did not have any statistical data in the census. Of course not, because they have denied our right to be on the census, but there is a job of 20 years, especially in Arica and Parinacota”.

“It is further proof that there is obviously racism in Chile”, said, on the other hand, the anthropologist.

“It's racism, there is no other explanation”

“There were no valid arguments to leave us out. What they did was an act of absolute gravity, with respect to international and national law”, said the president of Daughters of Azapa. “They are ignoring our rights to be included in this country's important decisions”, she said.

By all accounts, it's racism, there is no other explanation. There is no legal explanation, no political explanation. Both legal scholars and people specialized in this subject have said this”, she said.

Additionally, she indicated that prior to the voting day for reserved seats, the United Nations had sent deputies and senators a letter regarding the acceptance of quotas for Afro-descendants. “There are very important reasons why they should have included us”, she explained.

“They don't want Chile to be black. The elites of this country have always been in charge of looking for what is European, what is white, and tell the world that there are no blacks here, and hide us under the rug”, said Báez.

“Then we realize how the elitist right was the one who put the tombstone on us, because the government kills us, with all their arguments, and they put the tombstones on us”, said the Afro-descendant representative.

Lack of courage from the Opposition

“I also have a negative appreciation of the opposition. Although it is true that we obtained 82 votes from them, they did not have the courage or the strength to defend the position with clear and solid arguments”, said Azeneth Báez.

“This is the politics of this country. When they go to the kitchen, or go have a coffee, they get on the same page. ‘Nothing has happened here’, they wash their hands and reach an agreement”, she said.

That happened after the decision to vote separately on the quota for Afro-descendants, she says. “The opposition objected, but afterwards they said nothing, they agreed to make it so, knowing that they were going to leave us out. That's why the right acted that way”, she said.

The right did not want us in the new Constitution, this is racism simple and plain, there is no other explanation”, said Báez.

“Chile is becoming the most whitewashed and racist country in the region”

“It was a low blow and people are super hurt, because this means reliving a historical transgression, but on the other hand, they also have a culture of resistance and struggle, so they are also going to look for strategies to continue fighting”, said Isabel Araya.

According to Araya, there will be an extended meeting between Afro-descendants and allies of the community to discuss strategies against this. One of them could be to prosecute the constitutional process, appeal to the ILO, or submit an official list to the Constitutional Convention.

Regarding the racism that this decision demonstrates, according to the anthropologist “there is a widespread, well established idea that in Chile there is no Afro-descendant presence, and at the Latin American level we are the only country that continues in that imaginary (…) At the Latin American level, Chile is becoming the most whitewashed and racist country in the region”, she said.

Afro-descendants on being excluded from having reserved seats: “Chile is becoming the most whitewashed and racist country in the region”
 

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The map of indigenous peoples' candidacies to draft the new Constitution

By Cristian Miranda and Felipe Saleh | December 16, 2020

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Just hours after the law that will allow 10 indigenous peoples to participate in the drafting of the Founding Charter was passed by the two halls of Congress, numerous names emerged on who could represent these ethnic groups in the Constitutional Convention, whose election is scheduled for April 11. They range from celebrities, such as the mayor of Tirúa, Adoldo Millabur — who is evaluating leaving that mayor's office to run — to renowned lawyers, such as Natividad Llanquileo — who was a spokesperson in the extensive hunger strike of Mapuche prisoners in 2010. And although the peoples have concerns about the law that will grant them 17 reserved seats while leaving out Afro-descendants, most will participate, in an example of assembly democracy difficult to match, to elect their "voices." The following is a summary of the names that are available, either via seats or on party or independent lists. Review the information and choose in an express way who you are going to vote for. You should not sign any registration here. Marichiweu!

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The Aymara have two reserved seats according to the law. They are the largest community after the Mapuche, with 156,754 people who recognize themselves as belonging to this ethnic group. They share 25% of words with the Quechua language and historically they have intermarried. They are mainly located in the Chilean territory that includes the regions of Arica y Parinacota, Tarapacá and Antofagasta. Hortencia Hidalgo will be a candidate not through the reserved seats but in a quota of the Socialist Party. "The seats are for people who do not have the opportunity to go another way. The call to the parties is to open the spaces," she says. Regarding the way to elect their representatives, she affirms that "we still have not established a mechanism, but all the communities that have an interest must participate." Hidalgo recalls that "in the Bachelet government an indigenous consultation was held in which 17,000 leaders participated."

At the same time, Claudia Cortés, councilor for the Pica commune, is working so that the communities of Tarapacá elect a person to represent them. "We have to present our best charters, we have highly prepared people with a history of fighting in favor of indigenous peoples. We want a representative from Tarapacá to exist," she says, adding that they are programming a J'acha or Aymara parliament with representatives of the entire area "and it should collect the views of the Aymara people, although we know that we have an administrative deadline until January 11. If we cannot make the parliament completely face-to-face, we are going to make sure that those elected take our proposals to the new Constitution. We are traveling all over the country," she says.

Cortés admits that digital tools are remote, especially for the elderly, who culturally have an important role. She also criticizes the form of participation, because according to the law it is necessary to register in an indigenous electoral roll and self-identification was not approved. "To vote for a Chilean there is self-identification. We can vote freely for a Chilean, but not for an indigenous person. This will reduce participation, because not everyone can register," she says. Cortés will not run for mayor of Pica and will not run for re-election as councilor. Her intention is that in the internal election she can be proposed as a candidate for the Constitutional Convention. "Today we can say that we have intentions, but that we will have to decide with the elderly," she points out.

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The law approved yesterday did not include Afro-descendants, who have a law that recognized them a year ago, but curiously, up to now is no regulation for that law. They number 10,300 people who are distributed mainly in the Arica and Parinacota Region, descendants of African slaves brought to the area during the Colony.

Milene Figueroa is a leader of this tribal people and has been throughout the process, even meeting with members of parliament to inform and raise awareness about their culture, unknown to a large part of the political class. "We have seen with dread what this discussion has been in Congress. The tremendous level of ignorance on the part of the ruling legislators, the Minister of Social Development and the Undersecretary. We met three weeks ago with the Undersecretary, since the Minister has not wanted to receive us. If we are being marginalized today it is because the Ministry of Social Development did not do its job. The ruling party blocked all the doors," she says.

If the law does not include them, the way to reach the Constitutional Convention will be through a political party or as independents. "There is interest from political parties for Afro-descendant leaders to go on their lists. Tomorrow, Wednesday, we have an extended meeting where we are going to decide whether to go on a party or raise an independent list. For us it would not be so terrible to gather the signatures," she says.

Another name that has emerged is that of Azeneth Baez, who has been fighting for a long time through her organization Women Daughters of Azapa. In fact, a year ago she read a letter outside La Moneda requesting participation in the new Magna Carta. "Afro-Chileans for a new Constitution Now." Azeneth is the aunt of Cristian Baez, who is also a leader of the Afro-descendants in Arica.

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Samuel Yupanqui is Quechua, according to his CONADI (National Corporation for Indigenous Development) registry, but he presides over an organization named Aymara, Jach 'Marka, which is based in Santiago, where — he says — it is the second city with the most Quechua people after Antofagasta. According to the administrative division, the Quechua occupy a territory between Arica and Parinacota and the Antofagasta Region. According to the Census they number 33,868 people.

As the law defines the territory of each people, it is possible that Santiago is not included in the Quechua territory. That is why he is waiting for the regulation of the law. "This logic of we are going to decide where they reside is super patriarchal and colonialist. That they should order our structures, as CONADI does. They see indigenous organizations as a neighborhood council," he says. But, unlike other members of the Quechua people, Yupanqui does not consider the law to be completely negative. "This is an opportunity to change the subsidiary, residual, welfare logic that the current institutional framework has. CONADI represents the relationship of the State with the peoples and not the other way around. There is only the idea of the territory, rather than of a nation," he underlines. Among the Quechua there is also no decided mechanism to choose a candidate and it will be submitted to internal discussion.

One of those who does want to be a candidate, but is against the process is Miguel Urrelo, a poet and writer living in Calama. "Well, if the possibility arises, yes, I am available to participate. This should be understood as a way of not neglecting the minimum spaces that are given to us. However, I do not expect much from this process agreed only between those who are responsible for the deterioration of this country's democratic institutions. The ideal would be to go as independent, but we already know the drawbacks of this, the system is meticulously designed so that no one who really wants change can intervene in the system," he says.

The choice among the Quechua will not be easy because many are against the process, such as Mirta Chambe, from the Miñe Miñe Community in Tarapacá. "As a community, we do not validate the treatment that the State and this particular Government have with our peoples and with our traditional authorities. Accepting these conditions means going back on the rights that we have achieved for decades at the national and international level, bearing in mind that for just over 10 years, our dialogue with the State in legislative or administrative matters that intervene and affect us directly is carried out through processes of Indigenous Consultations, in which we have always tried to adjust as much as possible to the standards established by Convention 169 of the ILO, as recorded in various files on indigenous consultations. During all these years the State has recognized that our representations are territorial, that we require back and forth mechanisms to dialogue with our assemblies, that after a proposal and an assembly consensus we delegate people who represent our positions, that is, we elect our representatives according to our community cultural values and according to a mandate. It has been several years since we stopped signing blank papers, a situation that is precisely what the reserved seat system wants to lead us to, ignoring the rights that we have already achieved," she said on behalf of her community in a statement.

For Ariel León, advisor to the Quechua people during the legislative discussion, "this project is destined to benefit the indigenous urban elites that belong to political parties, but, if the space is opened, the communities will fight to install their candidate. It hasn't been decided collectively, but it should be. If not, we are going to leave the decision to indigenous people who are outside the territory," he says, while ruling out the possibility of running as a candidate.

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The Chango are a people descended from fishermen whose population mostly lives in Tal Tal, but are distributed between Antofagasta and Valparaíso. According to the Census they number 4,725 people. Felipe Rivera Marín belongs to the Chañaral de Aceituno community and is part of the descendants of the last builder of sea lion skin rafts. "Today we are going to meet as a council to determine the mechanism that we are going to use to elect a constituent. This will be determined by this council, regardless of the fact that there may be other candidates outside the council. The issue is that whoever is elected will have to respond to the program requested by the council. We are preparing the proposal." Rivera does not rule out being a candidate, but he also recognizes that there are other possible people. "As an organization we have had two spokespersons: Brenda Gutiérrez, who would emerge as a good option... but we have the capacities and conditions to represent the mandate of the council. Hopefully an agreement will be reached quickly to refine proposals and define who is going to the candidate," he said.
 

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As "citizens of the Inca empire," the Qulla expanded to the Maule Region and, according to the latest Census, there are 20,744 people who are distributed, like almost all the indigenous peoples, throughout the country, including in the Region of Aysén. Sonia Neyra is from Copiapó, but lives in La Serena. She was a candidate for councilor for the Communist Party and now she does not rule out running for constituent, but always respecting the internal choice. "They will be those people who work for the content decided upon by the collective. They will respond to the agreements of the people. We are working to choose a mechanism that comes out collectively. It would be a congress, a round table or an assembly there in the territory. We have been working via Zoom. This is not my opinion, it is the opinion of all my people," says Neyra. She is also against the institutional framework on which the law was made. "The approved project does not reflect at all the proposal of the indigenous peoples and what we wanted in dignity and rights. I am not only referring to the number of seats but also to self-identification and the supernumerary issue. They try to put us in this dynamic of district quotas and they do not understand how we indigenous peoples function. We are going to have to put together pairs, but we are going to put them together within the worldview of the Qulla people," she says.

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José Domingo Rojas Piñones belongs to the Diaguita people, in which, according to the last Census, 88,474 people are identified and originally distributed between Atacama and Maule. Rojas is one of the few who is a little more satisfied with the result of the law. "I am content the 17 quotas, except for what happened to the Afro-descendants, as they should have the right. But more quotas would have been an over-representation of the Mapuche people. All the peoples have similar characteristics, we are in all the valleys," he says.

He is available to be a candidate, but he will not do it if it is not with the agreement of the majority of the community. "We have tried to reach some consensus but each valley has its own characteristics. We do not yet have a single candidate. We are going to have several candidates or candidates. I am one of the first who expressed the will to be a candidate. But I have not launched my candidacy out of respect for this process," he points out.

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They are the most numerous indigenous people, with 1,745,147 people according to the last Census. Because of this, they will have 7 reserved seats. Salvador Millaleo will be a candidate for District 12 in a quota of the Socialist Party and participated in the initial legislative proposal that recognized 24 reserved seats. He recognizes that the election will not be easy, but that it must "emanate from the communities, the candidates have to emerge from the organizations, communities or associations. It is they who have to convene and define if they want to present themselves and how to nominate candidates. There is a series of names that are heard, historical leaderships that are influential in the territories. It is essential that the representation comes from the territories themselves," he says.

Among those historical leaderships, the leader Ana Llao, the academic Elisa Loncón, the mayor of Tirúa Adolfo Millabur, and Aliwen Antileo, spokesperson for the Mapuche Political Platform, sound as possible candidates. In the coming days, Millabur could announce if he leaves the mayor's office to run to draft the new Constitution and would go representing the Lafquenche.

"Before the summer, the Walun, the communities will meet and they will probably convene before the new year and there the candidacies should rise. The seats have to be generated outside the political militancy, and the rest of us should present ourselves by the parties," says Millaleo.

Another candidate for District 12 is Sandra Huentumilla, a social worker who goes through the platform "Non-neutral Independents." "Those of us from indigenous peoples have to be on all fronts. The seats are extremely limited, so we have to consider the other possibilities. I had aspirations to run for a seat, but seeing the bill, I decided it was more limiting than for the independents. Faced with that, I gave up so that other people could occupy them. The formation of an indigenous electoral roll did not seem like it was for me. It is like forcing you to a political participation that is not what the indigenous peoples want," she says.

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According to the last Census, in 2017, a total of 9,399 people identify with the Rapa Nui people, who inhabit the Easter Island. Mayor Pedro Edmunds states that there are at least 10 people interested in occupying this reserved seat, but it's going to be an election process among the "matriarchs and patriarchs that make up the 36 families." The mayor suggests that "each family propose its pair, man and woman, and we, internally, before January 11, do a kind of primary." A possible candidate is Valeria Pakarati, secretary of the clans. "There are interested people, although they are always hesitant because they do not want anything to do with the State of Chile, because it has not met their needs in 132 years. The candidate must be someone who understands the subject, a lawyer or a lawyer," emphasizes the mayor.

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In the region of Tierra del Fuego there are the Yaghan or Yamana and in the last Census 1,600 people were identified as part of this ethnic group with a canoeing tradition. Among the candidates for the seat are María Luisa Muñoz, president of the Yaghan Community, and José González Calderón, grandson of Cristina Calderón Harban, the last native Yaghan woman to speak the language.

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Known in Spanish as "Atacameños," this indigenous community is mainly in the Antofagasta Region and, according to the latest Census, number 30,269 people. Sergio Cubillos, president of the council that groups them, says that they will initiate an "open process to choose a candidacy." Although it will be a congress scheduled for Friday where it will be decided if they will participate. Because there is also discontent about how the voting process was done. "We saw the racism and discrimination against our peoples. We feel that the seats within the 155 is a deception for the Chilean population that voted to have those conventional ones, however, by a political game of convenience they reached this formula," says Cubillos.

The map of indigenous peoples' candidacies to draft the new Constitution
 

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The Simón Bolívar Institute opens the year with the Seminar ‘From independence to MINUSTAH’

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Written by Joselyn Ariza on 08/01/2021. Posted in Noticias

To remember the historic liberation struggle of the Haitian people, as well as the consequences of the military occupation by the Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the possibilities of reparations after the strong repression, sexual abuse, spread of the cholera epidemic and persecution of opposition leaders were part of the topics to be discussed this Friday at the Seminar 'From Independence to MINUSTAH'.

The event, organized by the Simón Bolívar Institute for Peace and Solidarity among Peoples, and under the slogan “Reparations for the Haitian people now!”, served, among other things, for Camille Chalmers, from the Haitian Platform for the Promotion of Alternative Development (PAPDA), to speak about the historical context of the struggle for independence in Haiti to this day and the most recent passage of the MINUSTAH as a form of imperial occupation and militarization.

Haiti and its historical occupation

“Haiti's situation is extremely difficult, there's a destruction caused by colonization and the result of years of US occupation which began in 1915 and has disorganized all the social and political fabric in the country”, said Chalmers at the beginning of his speech.

Likewise, he denounced that Haiti has been suffering not only an occupation, but a systematic violation of its fundamental rights for more than 15 years, and that for that reason it was imperative to feed not only the anti-imperialist consciousness of the Haitian people, but of the region and the world to identify all the manipulation that occurred in the official discourse of the supposedly humanitarian and peace missions, which have done nothing but defend their interests.

“Today the Caribbean has to rise up as a single body to demand a process of recovery of its sovereignty, of its autonomy and that shows that we do not accept the regulatory models imposed by world capitalism”, added Chalmers, while insisting that “the Caribbean must build its unity and rebel against imperialism”.

Along the same lines, Mirelle Fanon, daughter of Frantz Fanon and representative of the Frantz Fanon Foundation (France), reflected on the pending reparations and how these will not be possible if the people — Afro-descendants and Africans — do not join the Decolonial approach to condemn slavery.

Similarly, she denounced the constant attempts of foreign forces to recolonize Haiti, France's “illegal fine” on the Haitian people and the logic of the capitalist system that only reproduces death.

The importance of the Rome Statute

During her speech, Jeanvivie Williams, director of the Afro-Resistance Organization (Panama), highlighted the role of the Afro-descendant community in Haiti in relation to the conventions and agreements that protect them within the framework of the United Nations.

“It is essential that Haiti ratify the Rome Statute to hold state and non-state actors responsible for the recruitment and use of children in armed violence”, she said.

Similarly, she shared a series of testimonies from men and women affected by MINUSTAH that prove the horrors of the mission for years; and she recalled the 2004 coup d'état — sponsored by the United States and Europe — against the president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was forced to leave his country.

Challenges faced by the Haitian people

Patrice Florvilus, a Haitian human rights lawyer, was in charge of exposing the challenges in judicial matters in relation to the abuses committed by the United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti.

“The fight of the peoples of the world is fundamental, if nothing is done to demand reparations and justice for the Haitian people, it will be a very bad precedent in the jurisprudence of international law and the flagrant consolidation of the violation of the rights of the peoples”, he said during his speech.

Likewise, attorney Florvilus insisted that the fight for reparations “is the fight of the peoples of the world”, and that it is imperative that Haiti obtains justice.

Venezuela and its solidarity as a State policy

It should be noted that during the activity, Jesús Chucho García, commissioner for Afro-descendant issues and reparations (Venezuela), reiterated the vocation of solidarity — as a State policy — of Venezuela with Haiti.

“Commander Chávez, under the conviction of Petión and Bolívar, took up the idea of liberation (...) We bet on liberation so as not to create dependency, we bet on liberation so as not to create empires”, he specified during his speech.

Likewise, he assured that reparations are a sentiment of the Haitian people, who began to fight for it since the Third World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Forms of Intolerance, also known as Durban I, held in the year 2001 at the Durban International Convention Center in South Africa, under the auspices of the UN.

In the same vein, Carlos Ron, Vice Minister for North America and President of the Simón Bolívar Institute for Peace and Solidarity among Peoples, ratified the commitment of the Bolivarian Revolution with the Haitian people, which “is nothing more than the exchange of the oldest solidarity that this continent has”; and he assumed on behalf of the Venezuelan people the commitment to take Haiti's case directly to the UN Human Rights Council.

The Simón Bolívar Institute opens the year with the Seminar ‘From independence to MINUSTAH’
 
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In Puerto Rico, a mostly Black town sees its own past in the death of George Floyd

BY SYRA ORTIZ-BLANES
JULY 01, 2020 10:11 AM,
UPDATED OCTOBER 12, 2020 03:46 PM


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SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

As evening fell over Puerto Rico, hundreds gathered at a vigil for George Floyd on June 1st in Loíza, a coastal town home to one of the island’s largest Black communities.

Crowds congregated at el Ancón, a pier named after the retired barge it once housed, which crossed loiceños and their cars over the Rio Grande de Loíza and into San Juan. Loíza residents and others stood at the riverbanks to defend and affirm the right of Black people to live freely.

“When he cried ‘Mama,’ it wasn’t only to his own mom, but to all black mothers in the United States, in the Caribbean and across the world, ” Maria Reinat-Pumarejo said of Floyd, who died after a police officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes. Reinat-Pumarejo is a founding member of Colectivo Ilé. The anti-racism group was involved in planning the event along with Revista Étnica, the first magazine and multimedia platform from Puerto Rico for Afro-Latino communities.

The death of George Floyd has unearthed painful wounds for Black Puerto Ricans, bringing back memories of their own experiences with police brutality. It has also sparked debate about colorism and racism on the island, with Afro-Puerto Ricans speaking up on social media and other public forums.

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The altar at the vigil in Loíza on June 1. Courtesy of Revista Étnica
At the vigil, Bomba musicians beat their drums. Plena Combativa, a feminist plenera group, sang, “¿Cuánto más vamos a aguantar?” How much more will we have to endure? Protesters surrounding them held up hand-painted posters. The scent of incense and aromatic wood wafted through the air.

An altar to Floyd and victims of police brutality in the U.S. and Puerto Rico was erected and decorated. The shrine was set on top of African cloths with kente and mud patterns. Candles surrounded a framed picture of Floyd. Lush gingers flowers, madonna lilies and orchids adorned the backdrop.

Cages used by local fishermen to capture land crabs and blue crabs had been placed by the flowers. A traditional Loíza vejigante mask, carved out from a coconut shell and painted in black, was hung by Floyd’s photo — the color, the artist said, embodying fight and resistance, not mourning. An apple dripping in honey and a brown cigar were placed as offerings near a hand-written Yoruba invocation to ancestors.

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A woman at the vigil in Loiza dances bomba on June 1. Courtesy of Revista Étnica

Next to Floyd’s picture was a sepia image of Adolfina Villanueva-Osorio with one of her children in her arms. The 34-year-old Black loiceña was killed by Puerto Rican police in 1980. The crowds had come to the vigil to pay their respects to her too.

POLICE BRUTALITY

Loíza was one of the first places in Latin America to hold a demonstration in Floyd’s memory, along with other Puerto Rican municipalities like Ponce, Arroyo, Vieques and San Juan.

The town is located on a low-lying strip of land that borders the Atlantic Ocean and is divided by the Rio Grande de Loíza. Filled with mangroves and isolated by nature, Loíza was an ideal home for cimarrones, fugitives from slavery from Puerto Rico and the West Indies who likely settled there in the 1600s and onwards.

That heritage is evident today: Nearly 65 percent of Loíza‘s residents identified as Black in the 2010 Census. Known as “the capital of tradition,” its music, food, and art bear signs of its African roots.

It is also a poor municipality, especially compared to nearby cities like San Juan and Carolina. Almost a third of households make under $10,000 a year and its poverty rate, at 50.8 percent, is 7.7 points higher than Puerto Rico’s overall rate.

“We have always been marginalized for being a very small town where Black people predominate,’‘ said Rafael Rivera-Rivera, a leader from the Villa Cañona neighborhood in Loíza.

Residents of Loíza interviewed by the Miami Herald described police abuse in their communities. Some of these cases were documented in a 2012 report by the American Civil Liberties Union, which also found that the Puerto Rican Police Department assigned tactical units that used “excessive force as a substitute for community policing” in low-income and Black areas. Neighborhoods with many Dominicans, of which there are an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 in Puerto Rico, are also targets.

A September 2011 investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice found that the Puerto Rican Police Department had “engaged in patterns of misconduct that violate the Constitution and federal law.” It concluded that there was a pattern of excessive and deadly force, a routine of illegal search and seizures and that tactical unit officers entered low-income neighborhoods with “high caliber rifles drawn amid children, seniors, and other bystanders.”

Rivera-Rivera said that Villa Cañona was the site of a lot of police brutality in the mid-to-late 2000s and that these patterns of abuse spanned back years.

There was the 2007 case of Edgar Pizarro-Rivera, a 27-year-old Black man with a developmental disability. As he rode his bicycle, officers beat him with nightsticks and pepper-sprayed him as they hurled racial slurs. Pizarro-Rivera’s mom told the ACLU that this had occurred multiple times between 2007 and 2008, as well as in 2011. She also mentioned that she filed three complaints about these incidents to the police, but received no response to the first two and just a letter that acknowledged receipt and archival of the third. Her son, who has the mental capacity of a 5-year-old, became “terrified to play outside,” according to the ACLU report.

And in September 2010, José Ayala-Rivera, a 22-year-old Black man was shot in the head by police as he returned home from a party with his brother. Ayala-Rivera survived, but the incident left him in a wheelchair. Ayala’s brother, Luis Ayala-Rivera, told the ACLU the family had been awarded $90,000 in a civil suit they filed against the police, but that no criminal charges were brought against the officer who incapacitated his brother.

Villa Cañona’s residents publicly denounced cases of police brutality. They took their grievances to Puerto Rican media and reached out to the Puerto Rican Commission of Civil Rights and the island’s chapter of the ACLU. In June 2008, they shared their testimonies with Doudou Diène, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, at a public hearing in the neighborhood’s community center. Diène presented his findings to the United Nations Human Rights Council as part of a 2009 report on racial injustice in the United States.

Rivera-Rivera said that the police sometimes seemed to retaliate when they spoke up. On one occasion, on the same day that Rivera-Rivera and other Villa Cañona residents publicly denounced police abuse, over a hundred police officers occupied the neighborhood. They said the incursion was a way to guarantee public safety, but the timing left loiceños skeptical.

As Floyd’s death ignited global protests, Loíza community leaders and residents have discussed the town’s fraught relationship with police. They see parallels between the police brutality and racism Black Americans experience and their history. One case in particular still inhabits the collective memory of loiceños and other Puerto Ricans, decades later: the death of Adolfina Villanueva-Osorio, one of the most infamous police killings in Loíza’s history.

AN EVICTION TURNS VIOLENT

On the morning of Feb. 6, 1980, Villanueva-Osorio and her husband, Agustín Carrasquillo-Pinet, were at home in the Tocones sector of Loíza, one of the town’s poorest areas.

The Black couple had been married for 17 years and had six children. That day, Villanueva-Osorio was at home with three of them: their oldest, 12-year-old Agustín, and their youngest, toddlers César and Betsaida. Carrasquillo-Pinet, a fisherman who usually went to Dorado and Toa Baja to catch crabs, stayed back home. Dark and stormy clouds loomed over their house by the sea.

A 1985 story in El Nuevo Dia recounted that Carrasquillo-Pinet was sitting on the porch with his wife, who was chopping coconuts for the kids. At around 9 AM, police and bulldozers came to evict the family and demolish the property.

Veremundo Quiñones, a wealthy landowner, had claimed ownership in court of the plot of land, though Villanueva-Osorio’s family had lived there for over 100 years. The Archbishop of San Juan, Cardinal Luis Aponte Martínez, wanted to purchase the land from Quiñones to build a summer home.

El Nuevo Día also reported that a battalion of at least 16 police officers from the tactical operations unit and eviction officers attempted to oust the family. Carrasquillo-Pinet, now 75-years-old, and other witnesses say that the judge who had signed the eviction order and Quiñones was also there.

When Carrasquillo-Pinet asked why they had come, a police commander said: “Los vamos a sacar vivos o muertos.” We will remove you, alive, or dead.

The family had been in litigation for years. Carrasquillo-Pinet told police he and his family weren’t going to leave because they hadn’t been called to court that day, and they were supposed to have a court hearing in two weeks.

According to Carrasquillo-Pinet, police surrounded the house, knocked down the gate, threw smoke bombs, and started shooting at the home. The children, who were in the residence, started screaming in fear.

Villanueva-Osorio went to grab César and Betsaida, Carrasquillo-Pinet said in a recent interview with Primera Hora, a local newspaper. Police claimed she launched a can full of kerosene at Sargent Víctor M. Estrella, although the police’s forensic chemist later said there was no evidence of this. There were also reports that she was armed with a rusty machete, which Carrasquillo-Pinet and family have denied.

The El Nuevo Día story from 1985 said that Adolfina was shot 16 times in front of her husband and children. The bullets shattered one lung and her liver. Villanueva-Osorio was lying by the pigs’ pen when they shot Carrasquillo-Pinet in the thigh as he came to her aid. They were taken to the hospital, and Carrasquillo-Pinet only found out later that his wife had died.

The small house made of zinc and wood was demolished hours after Villanueva-Osorio’s death.

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The plot that housed the home of Adolfina Villanueva and her family still sits empty today. Courtesy of Isabel Sophia Dieppa
 

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Carrasquillo-Pinet told el Horizonte, a shuttered local newspaper, that a bulldozer would have killed the children who were still inside the residence had his mother not come to retrieve them. According to El Nuevo Día, one neighbor told the family, shortly after the incident, that police had tried to shoot at the eldest son because he was a witness.

Sergeant Estrella was charged with murder but a jury acquitted him. Still, the trial revealed gruesome details about what happened on that day, including that the ammunition cartridges police used at the eviction were for deer and buffalo hunting. No one else who was at the scene that day has ever been prosecuted for the death of Adolfina Villanueva-Osorio. No charges were ever filed for the injuries caused to Carrasquillo-Pinet.

El Nuevo Día reported that Estrella’s lawyers said at trial that Adolfina Villanueva-Osorio’s death had been an “unfortunate accident” and that the officer’s shotgun had accidentally discharged. Marta Villanueva-Osorio, her sister, disagrees.

“There were even bullets in the palm trees,” she said. She was a graduate student at the University of Puerto Rico when her sister was killed. That morning, her 77-year-old father Victoriano Villanueva visited campus to retrieve her. When her family went to the crime scene, Marta Villanueva-Osorio told the Herald, her father asked the police to retrieve the family’s belongings from the house before it was demolished.

“They put a gun to his chest and told him that they would kill him if he took another step,” she said.

Forty years later, the former plot that housed Villanueva-Osorio’s home stands empty. When the Pulitzer Center interviewed Loíza artist Samuel Lind, he said that, “when the building of the [Archbishop of San Juan’s] house began... people would come at night and dismantle the work the builders had done that day.. every night, until eventually the builders gave up.”

THE LEGACY

For Marta Villanueva-Osorio, the death of George Floyd on May 25th was like reliving the 1980 killing of her sister.

“I cried for three days,” she said. “Because if you defend yourself, they kill you. That impotence that my father felt, it’s the impotence that George Floyd’s family must have felt.”

For many in Loíza, Villanueva-Osorio is a symbol of strength and bravery. She was a Black woman and a mother who fought for her land and her home. Many of the issues she faced—poverty, housing instability, racism — continue to affect loiceños today.

‘The murder of Adolfina Villanueva is a clear racist act against a family from Loíza. They have killed us because we are black and they view us as having no value or humanity.” said Maricruz Rivera-Clemente, a Loíza community leader from Piñones, a beachfront neighborhood.

“We have to live with racism every day. It is one oppression that causes so many other oppressions: violence in the community, between our communities, amongst our young people, violence by the police,” she told the Herald. “But we resist with dignity.”

Rivera-Clemente is the founder of Corporación Piñones Se Integra, a local organization that fosters cultural initiatives to combat racism, like bomba classes that honor Puerto Rico’s Black heritage. The group is also focused on protecting Piñones, the only undeveloped coastline near the San Juan airport. Businessmen have wanted to build in the area for many years, but the organization and others have successfully fought against these plans.

Mayra Cirino-Carrasquillo is a community leader in Colobó, another of the poorest neighborhoods of Loíza. She’s also the cousin of Carrasquillo-Pinet, and was six years old when Villanueva-Osorio was killed.

“Most of us here are Black,” she said. “And since Villanueva-Osorio’s death, we have had to swallow what happens here.”

According to Cirino-Carrasquillo, government services and help often don’t reach her area. She organizes groups to clean up the streets in her neighborhood and has personally cut the grass of her elderly neighbors. Cirino-Carrasquillo has also collaborated with Rivera-Clemente to organize workshops about racism and Loíza’s history for residents of Colobó. A lot of the young people she works with become enraged when they hear the story of Villanueva-Osorio.

“They get so, so angry,” Cirino-Carrasquillo said, “and they say, “Wow! If I had been there, it would have been a totally different story.” Some residents have discussed making a mural, and others visit the abandoned plot where she died in a sort of pilgrimage.

Alicia Carrasquillo-Ortiz is a community leader in Tocones, the sector of Loíza where Villanueva-Osorio used to live. When the Herald called to interview, Carrasquillo-Ortiz was in the process of dropping off lunch to children, which she has done since the pandemic began.

“We have never been able to forget...Every day, we are targets of racism, and the community, the people, say, look at what happened with [Floyd.] The same happened to Doña Adolfina. Will they do it to us too?” said Carrasquillo-Ortiz.

RACE AND RACISM IN PUERTO RICO

Researchers have widely documented racial discrimination against Black Puerto Ricans in “national ideologies... employment, the criminal justice system, education, housing patterns, the media... to name just a few,” according to a 2017 study on perceptions of racism on the island.

But it’s still challenging to quantify racial issues in Puerto Rico. The local government does not methodically compile statistics about race, nor is it required by law to provide this data. U.S. Census data does not always account for how Puerto Ricans view themselves, which can lead Puerto Ricans of color to identify as white and other races.

“There is a denial to reclaim Black identity and African heritage in Puerto Rico.” said Dr. Bárbara Abadía-Rexach, a social anthropologist who studies Puerto Rican music and race. “The lighter you are in skin, the more access [you have.] The darker, the less access.”

Puerto Rican scholars have had to develop new ways of measuring the socioeconomic and race-related outcomes of Black Puerto Ricans. For example, some have taken to asking people to identify their skin color on their own terms. That same 2017 report found that people who described themselves as Black said they experienced significantly more racism. Among other statistics: Black people in Puerto Rico are less likely to have health insurance and experience higher levels of unemployment than lighter-skinned Puerto Ricans.

“Racism might manifest differently [than in the United States,] based on the different context,” said Abadía-Rexach. “But that doesn’t make it less violent, and it doesn’t stop it from experiencing it in our daily lives as Black people in Puerto Rico.”

The protests in Puerto Rico for Floyd have been historic, according to Dr. Hilda Lloréns, who has studied race in Puerto Rico for over two decades. But while public events for Black Lives Matter of this scope are new, anti-racism resistance and community organizing are not.

That’s evident in the efforts of community leaders like Rafael Rivera-Rivera, who has put a national spotlight on police brutality in Villa Cañona. Or that of Maricruz Rivera-Clemente, who cleans Loíza’s waterways while completing her doctoral dissertation on how the town has used cultural traditions to combat racism. Or that of Mayra Cirino-Carrasquillo, who advocates for Colobó residents to the town mayor.

Alicia Carrasquillo-Ortiz is salvaging abandoned apartments in Tocones to create more housing. The units sit at the end of the road by palm trees and oceanside, next to the plot that formerly belonged to Adolfina Villanueva-Osorio. When the apartments are finished, Carrasquillo-Ortiz hopes to rename them after the deceased loiceña who defended her home and family and lost her life in the process.

“There are many Adolfina Villanuevas here,” she said, “fighting for our community.”

In Puerto Rico, a mostly Black town sees its own past in the death of George Floyd
 

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Public pressure grows for the resignation of Haitian president; understand the mobilization

Opposition sectors and Haitian society in general give an ultimatum to President Jovenel Moïse

By: Roxana Baspineiro
Brasil de Fato | São Paulo | January 19, 2021 | 19:13


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The main demand of the Haitian people is the resignation of Moïse and the construction of a transitional government — VALERIE BAERISWYL / AFP

The Haitian opposition called for a series of protests across the country until February 7, when President Jovenel Moïse is expected to end his term. They also announced that they would step up their measures by calling for a general uprising with blockades, civil disobedience, spontaneous protests and barricades if Moïse does not leave power.

In recent weeks, Haiti has experienced new waves of protests due to the non-conformity of the Haitian people with the project presented by Moïse to hold presidential and legislative elections in 2021 and also due to the controversial constitutional referendum process to replace the current Constitution, which the opposition described as unconstitutional.

Paulo Henrique Campos, a member of the Landless Workers' Movement (MST)'s International Brigade in Haiti, told Brasil de Fato that “recently, the Moïse administration — with the help of the United Nations and the OAS — has proposed a constitutional referendum to be held on April 25. This referendum is actually unconstitutional because it virtually rips the Haitian Constitution apart. The current government should leave the presidency now in February because it has completed its five-year mandate; in other words, the election should have been held last year”.

Haiti's current constitution expressly prohibits a popular consultation to amend the Constitution. However, the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP), whose members were appointed by Moïse and who lack legitimacy in the eyes of the Haitian people, announced that the constitutional referendum would be held in April, while the presidential and legislative elections would be held on September 19.

“President Jovenel Moïse's initiative [the constitutional referendum] is actually part of the right and his party's strategy to stay in power and annihilate even more the few democratic achievements that were the result of much struggle by the Haitian people”, says Campos.

“His proposal goes against what the streets, the mass social movements, the people's movements and Haitian society in general propose and demand”, he said.

According to the MST brigadista, Haiti is currently a nation with no parliament, so Moïse rules as a kind of sole power, something he considers a presidential dictatorship. Additionally, the historical trajectory that carries the Caribbean country through slavery, colonialism, foreign interventions, climatic tragedies, neoliberal policies and human rights violations, among others, left Haiti in the misery of a combination of crises: political, social, economic and of insecurity.

Brasil de Fato listed some facts to understand what is going on in the Caribbean country.

What is the backdrop to the protests in Haiti?

Nearly 11 million people give life to the Caribbean nation that occupies the western third of the island known as Hispaniola, the second largest island in the Caribbean.

What is known about Haiti is perhaps more related to its misfortune explained by its natural ailments (earthquakes, droughts, hurricanes) than due to its collapse explained in its history of slavery, colonialism and more recently, neoliberal and neocolonialist policies. Much less is spoken of the resistance and strength that characterizes the Haitian people, the first country in the Caribbean and Latin America to achieve independence and abolish the system of slavery.

However, since its independence, the country has been subjected to coups d'état and dictatorships, foreign interventions and an unpayable debt that has made it economically dependent on the outside world. All of this created a devastating scenario for Haiti.

It was only in 1987 that the Haitian people managed to have their first constitution approved by the people, after the expulsion of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986. And only in 1991 did they manage to have their first free and democratic elections, where J. Bertrand Aristide was elected, being overthrown twice by US-backed coups. The last one, in 2004, led the country to camouflaged foreign military interventions such as peacekeeping and humanitarian aid missions, such as the well-known MINUSTAH, which left serious human rights violations in the country.

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Doctors and other health professionals participate in a demonstration for the resignation of President Jovenel Moise in Haiti's capital in 2019 / Valerie Baeriswyl / AFP

This long road of Haitian unrest, coupled with a totally discredited political class that has corruptly administered the country for decades favoring sectors of the bourgeoisie and commercial oligarchy, in addition to incessantly applying neoliberal policies, destroying agricultural production, privatizing public companies, making the labor market more precarious, impoverishing popular majorities and forcing the exodus of millions of young people, has fueled the depletion of the Haitian people.

In 2019, according to news agency AFP, 70% of the population was unemployed, the country had an inflation rate higher than 12% and its currency, the “gourde”, was devalued, approximately a year after the beginning of the demonstrations in 2018, due to the shortage of national fuel.

But it was the corruption and embezzlement scandal (Petrocaribe) in 2019 — which involved senior state officials and the president himself — about the misappropriation of at least $2 billion — equivalent to a quarter of the country's GDP — that was one of the main reasons why the protests in the country did not stop.

“There are successive measures, successive acts by the president that put the country in a very serious situation from the economic and social point of view”, says Campos.

“Today, the main agenda of the Haitian people — not just the social movements and political parties, but society in general — is the removal of the president; this is the immediate alternative for Haitian society [...] Secondly is the building of a transitional government [...] so that it will be possible to truly build and retake democracy in Haiti”, he says.

What the people of Haiti, according to analysts, are profound changes, after centuries of oppression, struggle and resistance.
 

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Who is Jovenel Moïse?

According to some critics, an electoral fraud in 2010 allowed the ultra-neoliberal party Tèt Kale (PHTK) to come to power, which led to the — also fraudulent — continuation of the current government of Jovenel Moïse.

Moïse, 52, is a banana businessman who came to power in November 2016 amid accusations of fraud and protests. Only 21% of citizens with voting rights went to the polls.

The Moïse administration is characterized, in Campos' opinion, by a government that favored and increased the privileges of a wealthy minority, thus abandoning the interests of the majority of its population, who were left in precarious living conditions and extreme poverty.

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The government of President Jovenel Moïse, considered illegitimate, has lost the credibility of almost the majority of Haitians / VALERIE BAERISWYL / AFP

However, one of the most striking points of the Haitian population's rejection of its government was the corruption scandals, when in 2019, Haiti's High Court of Auditors presented a report after an audit that mentioned the company Agritrans, owned by the president, received millions of dollars to develop public projects that never materialized as part of the aid sent by Venezuela in the regional program known as Petrocaribe.

“He is a president bogged down in a sea of corruption, his companies have been completely involved in the corruption scandals of Petrocaribe, which was the main economic cooperation program for social development between the Venezuelan government and the Haitian government. This program was destroyed by the numerous corruption scandals of the Moïse Jovenel government”, says the member of MST's international brigade in Haiti.

Between 2008 and 2018, Haiti was part of the Petrocaribe program, an initiative by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez that has enabled several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to purchase oil products at favorable prices. Part of the Venezuelan subsidies, which ended up canceling a debt of US $ 395 billion with Haiti, was intended to cope with the impact left by the 2010 earthquake. However, the money disappeared or was transformed into dubious projects.

Between 2008 and 2018, Haiti was part of the Petrocaribe program, an initiative by the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez that has enabled several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to purchase petroleum products at favorable prices. Part of the Venezuelan subsidies, which ended up canceling a debt of U$395 billion with Haiti, was intended to cope with the impact left by the 2010 earthquake. However, the money disappeared or was transformed into dubious projects.

Another issue that puts Moïse in the spotlight is that, since January 2020, he has been governing by decree, that is, without a parliament, since the terms of deputies and two-thirds of senators have expired, and also with the election process postponed since 2018, which has worsened the country's situation.

In addition, last December, in this scenario, he also enacted a policy related to public security, creating a controversial National Intelligence Agency (ANI) that grants legal immunity to the agents of this institution and allows them to operate anonymously, thus opening the possibility of legalizing the repression and dispense with the demands of the population, while the situation of vandalism and insecurity multiplies.

The opposition sectors have expressed their disagreement with this decision, claiming that it is a mechanism that will allow Moïse to have full control of the nation unconstitutionally, so they called for the resumption of mass protests this month to force the president to resign on February 7, something the president strongly rejects.

“This is an incompetent government that is incapable of running the country, precisely because it was not elected to do it; those were some rigged elections in 2016”, says Campos.

Meanwhile, Moïse has the support of the international community, and the United States in particular. The UN and OAS also expressed support for his administration. “They are the ones who keep him in power”, according to some political analysts.

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Children also protest in the streets demanding the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, in 2019. / VALERIE BAERISWYL / AFP

The alliance between the elite and the international community

It is public knowledge that in the Caribbean country some families hold more than 80% of the wealth, which could very well save a country as desolate as Haiti. But traditionally, political power has decided more for the ambition of a few and, consequently, has established alliances with the minority oligarchy.

Haiti's economic class is exclusive, made up of importing businessmen, most of whom are not interested in the country. It is a model implemented by and for the dominant classes, with the help of foreign powers, represented in the so-called Core Group, formed by the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Haiti, the ambassadors of Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, United States, France, the European Union and the Special Representative of the Organization of American States (OAS).

The Core Group, in the opinion of analysts, is the one who really makes the big political decisions in the country since the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown in 2004 under the pretext of an internal political crisis that served to justify the foreign military presence of the so-called United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

“The situation in Haiti had nothing to do with those that normally justify this type of initiative [intervention], as was sometimes the case in Africa. There were no competing armies here, there was no civil war, there were no crimes against humanity. Even the United Nations Charter was violated to impose this mission, which implied an outsourcing of the occupation, so that Latin American armies do the dirty work of imperialism at a lower cost”, said one of the most recognized intellectuals in the Caribbean, Camille Chalmers.

For 13 years, under the name of a humanitarian aid operation or “peace mission” sent by the UN Security Council, MINUSTAH, led by Brazilian troops, occupied Haiti, while it starred in serious (and known) sexual abuse scandals by the blue helmets and by directors of Oxfam in the country.

“More than 2,000 women, many of them minors, would have suffered this violence, conceiving around a hundred children”, according to a study by the University of Birmingham, while mission directors and workers were engaged in “sexual exploitation, abuse of power and intimidation”.

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Although the UN and Oxfam have spoken out about the violations committed by their troops against hundreds of Haitian women and girls, the case remains unpunished / VALERIE BAERISWYL / AFP

“Now, there are thousands of women with children without a father, thousands of orphans in a difficult situation”, said Chalmers, who is also the executive director of the Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA).

“It is worth remembering that the Haitian people are engaged in a reparations campaign for the victims of the United Nations mission in Haiti that the UN has so far delivered an opinion, but has not provided any reparations allowance for the victims, for the various human rights violations that have been caused by MINUSTAH”, says Campos.

The UN was also accused of introducing diseases such as cholera in 2010 after the earthquake, which caused more than 30,000 deaths and 800,000 sick people who still suffer the consequences, something the organization also later accepted, although it offered no reparations or compensation to the victims.

“It is important to deconstruct this idea of an international community. It is important to remember that Haiti has been a country that has suffered for decades, for many years, the attacks of this international institutional community that sells an idea to the world that Haiti receives support from what they call humanitarian aid for Haiti”, points out Campos.

Campos adds that “the humanitarian aid Haiti receives from this so-called international community is military interventions, economic blockades and daily interventions, mainly from the United States government”.

Therefore, it is evident that humanitarian aid did not work and does not work for Haiti and that the Caribbean country is not really a concern for the international community, especially for the UN and the OAS, and much less for the United States.

So why continue to invade a totally devastated country?

Analysts say that although Haiti is one of the continent's most depressed countries, it has abundant mineral resources (gold, copper and bauxite), and has a cheap workforce that benefits transnational companies, mainly from the United States and Canada; the country depends to some extent on remittances that benefit financial capital and illicit economies. Furthermore, from a geopolitical point of view, Haiti is in the middle of two countries that are the target of attacks and sanctions by the United States: Cuba and Venezuela, and also because the nation is considered a key station for drug trafficking (which has some internal interests).

“Haiti is a totally dependent country, a country that is tutored by the United States and a country that needs to develop from the point of its autonomy”, says Campos.

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Thousands of Haitians took to the streets in 2019 after the corruption scandal (Petrocaribe) involving President Jovenel Moïse; since then the protests have increased / Photo: Hector Retamal / AFP

The solution can only come from struggle

The men and women of Haiti are tired. Not only tired of facing the economic crisis, insecurity, corruption and now also the Covid-19 pandemic, but tired of the privileges enjoyed by the political power, the business elite, the bourgeois minority, as well as the dehumanizing interference of international organizations. That is why the Haitian people are rising.

According to Campos, one of the key points in Haiti's struggle for its democracy and sovereignty is the support of the progressive international community from around the world, pointing out that “it is necessary to carry out a campaign to denounce at the international level what is happening in Haiti, a country in which the United States intervenes daily, a country completely submitted to its economic political sovereignty and its interests; this needs to be denounced to the world”.

“Another initiative of the role of popular progressive organizations around the world would be this permanent solidarity with the Haitian people, a people who permanently fight against the social vulnerabilities that aggravate the country's misery [...] but also [it is worth remembering that] it is a people that constantly fight against the imperialist aggressions they suffer daily, especially from the government of the United States”, he highlights.

Editing: Luiza Mançano

Public pressure grows for the resignation of Haitian president; understand the mobilization
 

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Remembering Commander Yesenia

Commander Yesenia was killed nine years ago in combat. Pablo Beltrán shares reflections on her life and her impressive years in struggle

January 19, 2021 by Peoples Dispatch

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Yesenia of the Ernesto Guevara Guerrilla Front in Chocó gave herself the name after Commander Yesenia killed in 2011. Image: Brasil de Fato

On the 9th anniversary of the killing of Yesenia, an Afro-Colombian woman and commander of the National Liberation Army, Commander Pablo Beltrán shared his reflections about her struggle and her story, one that is shared by many Colombians who are victims of state and paramilitary violence.

December 20 marked the ninth anniversary of the physical disappearance of Commander Yesenia, an unforgettable revolutionary fighter from the Serranía de San Lucas, where the Central Cordillera ends, stopped by the union of the great Magdalena and Cauca Rivers.

“You don’t know how difficult it is to move forward in life, having to drag along three shackles: that of being a woman, poor and black,” Yesenia told us in confidence, during Christmas 2002, when she had just turned 30 and was attending the National Liberation Army’s Cadre School, which took place in the village of Las Nutrias de San Francisco, Antioquia.

I had met her in 1992, when she was in charge of a guerrilla commission responsible for political and organizational work around Cerro Mujeres in Remedios, a task she was carrying out despite being in an advanced state of pregnancy. From then on, I was struck by the fact that she had been a member of the Maria Cano Front (FMC) of the ELN for three years, after the Fourth Front of the FARC had unjustly taken the life of her young husband.

Caliche, the ELN leader who had incorporated her, had to talk to her at length to get her out of her resistance towards the guerrilla struggle, which had begun after the murder of her partner.

In the first talks I had with her, it was clear to me that she was harshly critical of her comrade’s murder, although I never sensed resentment or hatred towards the FARC. Indeed, she managed to develop good levels of friendship with the Fariano commanders in that region, including Pastor Alape.

Exodus

A few very turbulent years followed the dissolution of the “Socialist Camp” in 1991, the demobilization of part of the Simón Bolívar Guerrilla Coordination (CGSB), and the failed Peace Dialogues between the Gaviria Government (1990-1994) and the CGSB that took place in Caracas and in Mexico between 1991 and 1992.

In the area of the María Cano Front, covering the whole of northeast Antioquia and southern Bolívar, the Colombian army’s punitive operations lasted for the better part of 1994, as part of the “Comprehensive War” strategy decreed by then-president Carlos Gaviria. In these counter-insurgency operations, Yesenia had to face the newly created First Mobile Brigade, the regime’s elite counter-guerrilla unit.

The worst would come soon, as the strategic planners of the war added covert or paramilitary operations to the over-used open military operations. By the end of Ernesto Samper’s mandate (1994-1998), Colombia suffered a strategic leap in the war, through the proliferation of massacres and selective assassinations executed against left-wing leaders and communities.

In Yesenia’s homeland, the strip of land located between the Ité River and the road that comes from Puerto Berrío and ends in Yondó, Antioquia, Yesenia saw how paramilitary gangs occupied the villages that had a greater level of social organization to indiscriminately massacre their people and terrorize them, as they did in 1997 in the massacres of San Luis and San Francisco. The killers, after martyring and assassinating the main social leaders, proceeded to, in public, fry and eat their viscera; demonic imagery they wanted to burn into the collective memory of the population.

Escaping from the narco-paramilitary terror, hundreds of families took refuge in the last corners of the jungles of this region, among them the parents and little daughters of Yesenia. They were fleeing from being massacred and also from being kidnapped by the Castaño Gil clan gangs (powerful paramilitary leaders), experts in kidnapping and killing the relatives of the revolutionary leaders.

This would only be a second exile because their roots were still in Chocó, the land where Yesenia wanted to go as a guerrilla, a dream that was dashed.

Leadership

In 1984 the brothers René and Julián, had arrived at the José Antonio Galán Guerrilla Front (FJAG) from Itagüí, south of Medellín, fleeing from Pablo Escobar’s cocaine cartel. They had dared to confront the fearsome Galeano gangs, in which the infamous paramilitary commander, Don Berna, imprisoned in the United States since 2008, was wounded and crippled.

Although René and Julián were part of a small Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group called La Estrella, due to their confrontation with Escobar’s henchmen, they decided to leave Itagüí and ask to join the ranks of the ELN. After the First Congress in 1986, René left the FJAG to join the leadership of the newly created Maria Cano Guerrilla Front (FMC).

It was on October 18, 1998, the day of the tragic accident in Machuca, a township in Segovia, Antioquia, where dozens of humble people died, most of them Afro-descendants, due to the explosion that unleashed a blast on the Central Oil Pipeline. The ELN recognized its responsibility in this tragic error, apologized for it and called on the brother Julián to be accountable. At the time, he was the first leader of the FJAG, whose guerrilla units that had carried out the sabotage attack.

It was only after a guerrilla assembly in mid-2000 that the National Leadership was able to conclude the disciplinary procedure that established responsibility for the tragedy caused in Machuca. The decisions taken were not accepted by the Estrella brothers, who opted to leave the ELN and later joined the FARC.

Since 1997, Yesenia had served as the First Commander of the FMC Directorate and from that moment on was promoted to the position of First Commander of the FJAG, a position she held until December 2001, when she became a member of the Directorate of the Darío Ramírez Castro War Front (FGDRC), a strategic structure that groups together all the ELN fronts in the Northeast, North and Lower Cauca of Antioquia, together with those in Southern Bolivar.

Between 1998 and 2004, in this region the combat against narco-paramilitary groups commanded by Macaco and Julián Bolívar, was conducted jointly by the FARC and the ELN. This combat inflicted a strategic defeat on them that cost them 3,000 members. This battle left more than half a thousand guerrillas dead in the ELN alone.

During this period Yesenia passed the toughest tests as a guerrilla commander, as the prevailing machismo always imposed an additional effort on her to be recognized as a commander, what hurt her most was not receiving the determined support of the other guerrilla fighters.

Commitment

To participate in the guerrilla struggle means to make sacrifices, but for women these sacrifices are doubly difficult, since it means delegating the upbringing and education of their children to other families different from their own.

The work of cementing consciousness and revolutionary commitment to be unwavering in the cause of the impoverished and excluded, allows guerrillas like Yesenia to be mothers, to delegate the care of their children and to continue contributing to the guerrilla ranks.

Another challenge that the guerrillas face when they take on leadership roles, is that when establishing stable relationships with their partners, they have to be attentive to their partner’s location and tasks. Challenges that Yesenia faced and knew how to overcome, since for her it was always a priority to fulfill her leadership duties, rather than attend to her personal affairs; a dedication not always well appreciated by those close to her.

The eagerness to excel that characterized Yesenia led her to rise above the few years of primary school she attended, to a very strong intellectual and spiritual height, which founded her natural critical thinking, with which she won the respect of the commanders and fighters with whom she shared the revolutionary struggle.

As it always happens, Yesenia trusted more than she should have in the ones closest to her heart. This was what killed her when she had just turned 39 years old. One of her assistants brought her a portable power plant that had a locator chip embedded in it, which guided the US-made bombs to her camp on the banks of La Honda ravine in Morales, Sur de Bolivar, on December 20, 2011.

Few women have had to face so many challenges as Yesenia did. Yesenia’s life and struggle was an uphill battle wherein she had to overcome countless obstacles one by one. She knew how to be a woman and not let herself be oppressed by it. She lived her Black identity with joy. She did not let herself be reduced to the corner of poverty. She overcame her condition of victim, and overcoming innumerable resistances. She exercised the functions of leadership and command that the revolutionary cause entrusted to her.

Remembering Commander Yesenia
 

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ALBA–TCP builds a new model to face the pandemic

January 21, 2021, 9:45 am.

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Exchange of successful experiences and the creation of a vaccine fund for the ALBA–TCP countries underpinned the issues addressed by the regional axis that seeks to confront the existing inequality in access to supplies at the global level (Photo: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry)

Last Tuesday 19, the Social Council of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – Peoples' Trade Treaty (ALBA–TCP) met to coordinate efforts to guarantee massive and free access to the vaccine against COVID-19 and other medicines to the peoples of the member countries.

Headed by its new executive secretary, Bolivian Sacha Llorenti, the meeting responded to the proposal of the current presidents of Venezuela and Cuba, Nicolás Maduro Moros and Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, respectively, on the creation of a vaccine fund for the countries of ALBA–TCP.

This item was also part of the topics addressed during the visit to Cuba by the Venezuelan Executive Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, who developed an intense work agenda with the Cuban authorities.

During an assessment of the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in Venezuela last Sunday, President Maduro stressed the necessity to meet the needs for medicines of the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, given the existing inequality in access to those inputs globally.

The president recalled that the project emerged during the 18th Summit of ALBA–TCP held in December, as a way to curve the “unjust and unequal” monopoly held by a reduced group of governments in the aquisition of the majority of vaccine doses to address the health emergency in their respective countries.

This bloc of countries originated in December 14, 2004 in Havana when the then-presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, signed the Joint Declaration for the creation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) inspired in the ideas of Bolívar and Martí.

More than a slogan: “United against COVID-19”

Although it seems like it's just a slogan filled with good vibes, the act of standing together against the most important scourge the world has experienced this century is exceptional, most importantly in a region such as Latin America, where the neoliberal wave that has swept the governments of several countries has disfisgured many initiatives of regional integration that were proposed in previous years.

Governments such as those of Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Honduras, Paraguay, Ecuador and the defeated coup in Bolivia have left their people abandoned in the face of a pandemic that reveals every day the fragility in which they live. The market-centered policies applied by those governments drive the alarming numbers presented by Latin America and the Caribbean in the face of the pandemic.

In this regard, Llorenti made revised the situation of COVID-19 in America and the world, focusing on the lethality of said disease. He stressed that, on average, more than 11,900 people die in a day, that is, a death every 8 seconds.



He highlighted that, although international institutions such as the World Health Organization have said that only solidarity can guarantee the success in the fight against COVID-19, the neoliberal system intends to face the pandemic according to market rules.

In addition, he said that this can be seen with special rawness with regard to the vaccines that have already been made available to the international community. He described how “95% of the vaccines are in the hands of ten countries (...) The wealthiest countries are accumulating the vaccines, up to nine times the number of their citizens. Who decides where the vaccines go to? The market is who is deciding”.



Llorenti outlined the examples of Cuba and Venezuela against the way neoliberal countries are acting. Both countries have supported numerous peoples in all regions of the world with their personnel and resources.

Other statements:

  • “Whoever pays the most gets vaccinated first. The wealthiest get vaccinated first. The people who can pay for it get vaccinated”, he said while indicating that this demonstrates how neoliberalism works.
  • “Not even the most vulnerable, the health workers could be vaccinated first”, he said while criticizing how basic services have been converted into commodities or privileges for those with more money.
  • “Aren't the countries accumulating vaccines the same ones who attack the World Health Organization?”, he asked while noting that multilateralism is in crisis and under permanent threat of being destructed.
  • For this reason, he assured that only “a strong State, a strengthened multilateral system, with public services understood as human rights, will succeed”.

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Sacha Llorenti, executive secretary of ALBA–TCP (Photo: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry)

It is worth nothing that the United Nations (UN) blamed the presidents of a group of wealthy countries for ignoring the necessities of less-developed nations and competing to buy anti-COVID-19 vaccine batches. “Now we see how the vaccines rapidly got to the wealthy countries and the poor ones were left without them”, said its secretary-general, António Guterres, who called for solidarity and joint global efforts to overcome the pandemic.

Visible hands of solidarity: Experiences, achievements and challenges

Afterwards, the member countries shared their experiences, achievements and challenges, among which they highlighted the health management and control strategies focused on community participation, technological advances focused on the socioeconomic rights of the population, the dispatch of international brigades to countries that have requested them to help the fight against the pandemic and the international cooperation mechanisms in which a multipolar vision has prevailed.

The Venezuelan Government, in the voice of its Minister for Health, Carlos Alvarado, shared how early care, drastic and rapid measures (confinement, use of a mask), biosecurity protocols and the creation of sentinel hospitals have defined the success which is reflected in the low infection and mortality numbers. He stated that “it is important to overcome the blockade; Venezuela has more than 30 billion dollars in international banking which we cannot use even for access to the vaccine”, referring to the unilateral coercive measures that the United States and the European Union maintain against Venezuela and that were amplified during the first nine months of the pandemic. Alvarado concluded by saying that ALBA–TCP “must be an example of how a common threat should be faced”.

For their part, the Cuban health authorities expressed their desire for integration by stating: “we have not renounced the principle of solidarity, 56 Henry Reeve brigades have been deployed in the world; despite the blockade, we are committed to bringing health to the peoples”. Likewise, they highlighted the surveillance at the country's entry points, compliance with the health protocols established by the WHO, as well as health centers and posts prepared for the detection and care of COVID-19 cases.

The Nicaraguan representation pointed out that its model has been based on the protagonism of the family and the organized community, while that of Bolivia said it was working hard to acquire medicines, equipment and vaccines for the care of patients against such a contagious disease.

Raúl Li Causi, president of the ALBA Bank, recognized and congratulated the decisions that the governments of the region have taken that have allowed to keep the pandemic under control, while announcing that the financial institution will help the member states to purchase vaccines. He added that “we at the ALBA Bank in coordination with the Venezuelan airline Conviasa will offer an airbridge for the transfer of vaccines or treatments”.

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Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza was present at the ALBA–TCP Social Meeting (Photo: Venezuelan Foreign Ministry)

In this way, the bloc actively seeks a way to make tools available to the peoples to overcome the pitfall of a pandemic that has exacerbated contradictions and myths such as the “invisible hand of the market”.
 

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Agreements that are strategic steps

The agreements reached during this special meeting are not only decisions to address the conjuncture of the global pandemic, but they are also strategic steps to advance solidly against a world order imposed by plutocracy. It is an effort to prevent the collapse of strong states in the region, which has served global elites to intensify looting and dispossession and allows them to revive a decaying system.

As a key decision, the creation of a Humanitarian Fund, financed with two million dollars initially, was determined to form a Bank of Medicines and Vaccines that contributes to improving access to medical supplies, rapid tests and PCR tests, vital elements for the battle against pandemic. This mobilization of resources would be directed especially to the countries of the Eastern Caribbean.

Other agreements:

  • Facilitate the exchange of good practices to combat COVID-19, which allows the sharing of experiences according to the measures and treatments implemented by the health systems of the member countries.
  • Strengthen the participation of ALBA–TCP countries in the negotiation processes already in place for the development of a more efficient and effective device for joint purchases of vaccines and drugs against the disease.
  • Promote the search for greater financial and human resources to fight the pandemic, as well as promote the transfer of technology and the dissemination of scientific and technical information among ALBA–TCP countries.
  • Reinforce the coordination between Health and Higher Education for the management of Training Programs for professionals in various fields of clinical and public health.
  • Boost the response capacity of hospital services (...) with the rehabilitation of the infrastructure of the hospital networks, reorganization and extension of services related to COVID-19.
  • Advance in the universal and comprehensive coverage of case care services with COVID-19, focused on early detection, rapid diagnosis, immediate isolation and timely treatment.
  • Ensure financing and resource allocation mechanisms to carry out plans and projects related to the pandemic situation, under the principles of fair exchange, complementarity, integration and solidarity.



The need for the imperative support of the WHO so that ALBA–TCP member states have equitable access to the vaccine was also reiterated as well as the relevance of building an inventory with the information from public laboratories and biological producers in Latin America and the Caribbean to learn about technical capacities for vaccine research and production.

Strategic steps that are key to multipolarism

The Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jorge Arreaza, assured that a joint negotiation will be established with the member countries of the bloc, stating that “it must be remembered that our alliance is based on solidarity, which is based on the most sensitive principles of union that may exist” and highlighting the need to create “a multilateral Government that provides the greatest amount of happiness to our peoples. We hope to see the results of this meeting very soon”.

The diplomat continued to call on the private sector to join the airlift that will be established with Conviasa for the transfer of vaccines, treatments, patients and other supplies. In addition, he insisted on promoting the search for greater financial and human resources to fight the pandemic, highlighting the urgency of promoting both the transfer of technology and scientific and technical information among ALBA–TCP countries.

The exchange of experiences would allow, as indicated by the Samuel Robinson Institute for Original Thought, the projection of the regional bloc as the only international organization with its own model for containing the virus, driven by the successful Venezuelan formula of controlled flexibility, primary care and case detection using Big Data tools (Sistema Patria), as well as the advancement of the four candidate vaccines from Cuba.

It should be remembered that this bloc was partially destroyed by the global right when its governments dismantled the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) based on ideological contrivances. In 2018, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Paraguay decided to withdraw from the group, like Ecuador in 2019 and Uruguay in 2020, driven by plutocratic pressures.

UNASUR is a South American integration body founded in 2008 to “build a South American indentity and citizenship and develop an integrated regional space”, but it has maintained its participation suspensed since April 2018 due to submission of some of its member states to the extremist diplomacy of the defunct Trump administration. Currently only four countries remain members.

In its internal conception, UNASUR comprised different structures such as the South American Institute of Government in Health (ISAGS), which sought to agree on positions, carry out research, and permanently advise the health authorities of the twelve member countries.

The sunrise of other possible geopolitics

ALBA–TCP brings together the countries with the best performance in containing the pandemic on a hemispheric scale, consolidating step by step a joint work model with global resonance, the Samuel Robinson Institute also indicates. This contrasts with the performance of other Latin American governments that began to take asynchronous and heterogeneous measures in each territory, each based on their own epidemiological experiences, on research from other continents, or simply by applying measures in an improvised manner.

The result is in plain sight: Brazil has become the second country in the world with the most infections (after the United States), with more than three million cases of the disease. Sanctioned Venezuela extended its support to a health crisis in the city of Manaus caused by the lack of oxygen in the hospital network, which provoked the angry sarcasm of Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro.

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Trucks with oxygen from Venezuela cross the border to Manaus (Brazil) (Photo: AFP)

In addition, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Peru and Bolivia live dramatic scenes in the face of precarious public health systems and private health services that take advantage of the disease to profit from the lives of the most vulnerable.

“A meeting such as that of the Social Council also strengthens the spirit of action in a bloc with which ALBA–TCP was born in 2004, whose foundation lies in strengthening the power and negotiation capacities of the region in the face of the geopolitical reordering of Western powers, where currently the vaccine issue has become a strategic battlefield”, says the Venezuelan think tank.

ALBA–TCP builds a new model to face the pandemic
 
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