from Weekly News Update on the Americas

On Dec. 23, with 99.7% of the votes counted from the Dec. 18 general elections, Bolivia's National Electoral Court (CNE) announced that Evo Morales Ayma of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) had won the presidency with nearly 54% of the valid votes cast. Morales got more than 1.5 million votes; turnout was an unprecedented 84.52% of the country's 3,670,971 registered voters. He will be inaugurated on Jan. 22 for a five-year term, taking over from interim president Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze, the former Supreme Court president who became president of Bolivia last June 9 after popular protests forced out the previous president, Carlos Mesa Gisbert.

by Kathryn Ledebur and Julia Dietz

Over two years have passed since Bolivian security forces killed 59 and left over 200 people seriously injured during widespread demonstrations protesting the management of Bolivia's gas reserves in September and October of 2003. As in other social conflicts in Bolivia, there have not been legal consequences for the human rights violations committed during the "Gas War."

By the time President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada resigned, the armed forces and police had killed almost as many people during his fourteen-month presidency as during the seven years of the Hugo Banzer dictatorship (1971-1978), considered one of Bolivia's bloodiest military governments since the 1952 revolution. The military's systematic refusal to cooperate in a meaningful way with investigations—although ordered to do so by the Bolivian Supreme court—and the delay of the United States government to deliver subpoenas to Sánchez de Lozada and two former cabinet ministers living in the U.S. have impeded attempts to seek justice for the victims and stem future human rights violations in a politically tenuous climate.

Part Three in a Troubling Series

by Michael I. Niman

Remember Fallujah? It's the Iraqi city of 300,000 that we had to destroy in order to save back in April of 2004. Over 30 Americans died and over 400 American troops were wounded and airlifted away. And at least 1,200 Iraqis were killed. A Red Cross official reported that American forces used cluster bombs and chemical phosphorous weapons inside the city. The target of the U.S. assault, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, along with up to 80 percent of his fighters, managed to slip out of town, leaving the Fallujans to catch the brunt of the American attack. In the end, some 10,000 homes in the city were completely leveled, and an estimated 150,000 residents displaced.

An Interview with Gilbert Achcar

by Bill Weinberg

Gilbert Achcar is the author of The Clash of Barbarisms: September 11 and the Making of the New World Disorder (Monthly Review Press, 2002) and Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror (Monthly Review Press, 2004). A native of Lebanon, he teaches international relations at the University of Paris, and is a frequent contributor to Le Monde diplomatique. On Nov. 3, he spoke in New York City at an event organized by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy entitled "The Case For Immediate Withdrawal: Wrestling with the Hard Questions." The following day, he spoke with WW4 REPORT's Bill Weinberg at his apartment in Lower Manhattan.

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

COSTA RICA: MARCH AGAINST DR-CAFTA

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Some 10,000 indigenous people from throughout Ecuador gathered in the capital, Quito, Nov. 16-18 to demand that President Alfredo Palacio not sign a free trade treaty (TLC) with the US. The protesters are also demanding that the Palacio government cancel its contract with the US oil company Occidental (Oxy), and that a national constitutional assembly be convened to rewrite the country's Constitution. In addition, the indigenous movement is demanding that the government end its cooperation with "Plan Colombia," the US-backed military program which is intensifying the war in Colombia and spreading it across the border into Ecuador.

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

OIL DEAL FOR U.S. POOR

The Houston-based oil company CITGO, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), is set to supply 9 million gallons of discounted home heating oil to 45,000 low-income families in Massachusetts in December, and another 3 million gallons to local charities. The deal—arranged by Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA), the Boston-based nonprofit energy corporation Citizens Energy and left-populist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez Frias—provides the oil at a 40% discount. CITGO and Citizens Energy, which is headed by former US representative Joseph Kennedy II, were scheduled to sign a contract on Nov. 22.

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

CAUCA: ONE KILLED IN EVICTION

On the morning of Nov. 9 some 500 Colombian police agents attempted the forcible removal of 400 members of Paez (Nasa) indigenous communities from the El Japio farm, in Caloto municipality in the southwestern department of Cauca, which they had been occupying since Oct. 12. A 16-year old indigenous youth—Belisario Camallo Guetoto, according to the Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), and Belisario Tamayo, according to most media reports—was killed by a shot to the head. At least 36 indigenous people and 10 police agents were reportedly wounded during fighting which continued through Nov. 10. At least one anti-riot vehicle was set on fire.