After 27 months of negotiations and despite official efforts to decertify their union, tens of thousands of Puerto Rican public school teachers went on strike on Feb. 21. Public employees are barred from striking under Puerto Rican law, and the government of Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila announced that it would keep schools open. Striking teachers blocked school doors and in some cases chained them shut. Police agents beat a teacher with clubs at the entrance to the Gabriela Mistral school in San Juan on Feb. 21 and threw her to the ground. At least 12 teachers were arrested across the island on the first day.

On Feb. 7 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Puerto Rican independence activist Avelino Gonzalez Claudio, a suspected leader of the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros. According to Luis Fraticelli, who heads the FBI in Puerto Rico, the arrest was carried out without incidents in the northern town of Manati. "We don't know what condition our companero is in at this point," Alvin Couto, an attorney and spokesperson for the Socialist Front of Puerto Rico, said on Feb. 10.

Tens of thousands of public school teachers in the Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR), the country's largest union, are set to go on strike sometime after Feb. 1 in defiance of the Puerto Rican government and parts of the labor movement. Teachers have set up strike committees in schools, and some say participation is higher than during a strike in 1993. In Ponce some 600 FMPR members blocked streets in a recent pro-strike demonstration, while more 500 teachers picketed in front of school board offices in Caguas.

Several Haitian nongovernmental organizations--including the Haitian Platform for Alternative Development (PAPDA), Haitian Women's Solidarity (SOFA), Tet Kole Ti Peyizan ("Union of Small Farmers") and the National Coordinating Committee for Women's Rights (CONAP)—have written the Haitian government demanding an investigation of reports of sexual against Haitian women and minors by soldiers in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

At least 10 people were injured and 55 arrested during an 24-hour general strike Oct. 2 in the Dominican Republic called by the Alternative Social Forum (FSA), a coalition of grassroots organizations. The groups were demanding higher wages for civil service workers, police and the military; a reduction in the prices of food and medicines; a halt to evictions; and changes in the Hydrocarbon Laws.

On June 14, the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization approved by consensus a resolution calling on the US government "to assume its responsibility to expedite a process that will allow the Puerto Rican people fully to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and independence," and requesting that the UN General Assembly "consider the question of Puerto Rico comprehensively in all its aspects." The resolution, presented by Cuba and co-sponsored by Venezuela, "[r]eiterates that the Puerto Rican people constitute a Latin American and Caribbean nation that has its own unequivocal national identity." (El Nuevo Dia, San Juan, June 14; Text of Draft Resolution, June 11; UN Department of Public Information News and Media Division, June 14)

In a surprise decision, US District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso, TX, threw out all charges against right-wing Cuban militant and former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles May 8, allowing him to go free days before he was set to be tried for immigration fraud. He is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela, where is accused in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

Negroponte's comments on Cuba recall Rumsfeld's on Iraq four years ago, don't they? From AP, Jan. 17 (emphasis added):

Cuban President Fidel Castro, ailing and out of sight, has been meeting with a trickle of international guests in recent months, a U.S. government official said Tuesday.