By Sovereign Hager

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina- Recent increases in food prices, coupled with shortages of electricity and other outages, have led to a dramatic increase in public discontent with the government. Increases in beef prices, Argentina’s dietary staple, has led to numerous protests by farmers.

Other governmental failures allegedly include the lack of progress on poverty reduction programs for Argentina’s outlying areas. Additionally, the public is angry about charges that the President’s spouse and former president, Nestor Kirchner was involved in insider trading while buying $2 million in U.S. currency soon after the 2008 financial crisis.

“Most of the Argentine population is paying for the Kirchners’ mistakes.” said Eduardo Buzzi, head of the Argentine Agricultural Federation and an outspoken critic of the government. Farmers are worried because many producers have allegedly lost their livestock and have had to give away their cows due to drought and because “someone from the government decided what the highest prices would be and forced them to sell their cattle.”

Farmers deny the government allegation that they have been holding back on livestock sales to fatten their cattle and create a shortage of beef. Farmers say that the problem dates back to when the president’s husband ruled the country from May 2003 to December 2007. “Nestor Kirchner is responsible of endless mistakes in economic and productive matters.”

The president of one farming cooperative alleged that the government is “trying to blame someone, and attack the weakest link, in this case the farming producers.” Criticisms of the government have also reportedly come from within the government, though that has been weak due to “Kirchners’ sensitivity to any criticism.”

Close to six hundred farmers rode their tractors in a protest march in central Argentina to demand changes to government farming policies. The leader of the Agrarian Federation said that policies of the government are planned to concentrate production in a few hands. Groups are pushing to toughen the stance of the agricultural sector by “putting a stop to sales if that becomes necessary.”

There have been eight trade strikes in Argentina’s rural sector this year in protest of the government since it tried, in March 2008, to establish adjustable taxes on exports of soybeans, corn, wheat, and sunflower seeds.

For more information, please see:

Latin American Herald Tribune-Argentine Farmers Protest With Tractors-21 February 2010

Meat Trade Daily News- Argentina- Farmers Promise Drastic Measures Against Government-18 February 2010

UPI-Argentina’s Fernandez, Farmers Locked in Row Over Beer Prices-11 February 2010

By Sovereign Hager

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina-More than sixty people were injured on Monday of this week when Argentine police moved excavating equipment through a  crowd of protestors and into an open pit mine in Catamarca. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, including women and children.  Fifty people were arrested. A judge has now ordered that work on the mine stop until calm is restored to the area.

The protesters included activists from the Citizens Assembly of Andalgalá, who have been protesting the Canadian owned gold mine for two months. Members of the Citizens Assembly claim that one of them members has been missing since yesterday, after being the target of death threats and police harassment just before the protests.

The protesters argue that the “open pit” mining project, which will include gold and copper will cause pollution. Anti-mining protesters in Argentina have managed to block numerous mining developments by lobbying local government to prohibit mining in certain protected areas. Mining is Argentina’s largest industry.

Concerns about Argentine police’s treatment of the public have been raised due to the lack of reform since the dictatorship period. Over 9,000 officers in the current Argentine police force were working during the dictatorship, with over 3,000 in clandestine detention centers. Rights groups argue that nothing has been done to ensure that the police forces undergo the same democratic transition that the rest of Argentina has.

For more information, please see:

Rueters-Argentine Judge Halts Yamana Mine Works Due to Unrest-18 February 2010

Free Speech Radio-Police Fire on Anti-Mining Protestors in Argentina-16 February 2010

NACLA-Argentina:Impunity is Not Just a Memory-15 February 2010

 

By Ryan C. Kossler

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – Former dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry was sentenced to thirty years in prison on Wednesday for leading a military coup in Uruguay in 1973 and for nine forced disappearances and two homicides.  Eighty-one year old Bordaberry was sentenced by Judge Mariana Motta for violating the constitution by shutting down Congress fifteen months after taking office in early 1972 and of rights violations in the other two cases involving disappearances and murders.

Bordaberry, who was already serving a thirty year sentence under house arrest, was first arrested in 2006 for the 1976 slayings in Buenos Aires of exiled Uruguayan lawmakers Zelmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz and Uruguayan leftist militants Rosario Barredo and William Whitelaw.  Bordaberry testified that he only heard about the disappearances twenty years after his presidency and that while in office, he kept himself removed from the actions carried out by the military. 

According to the prosecutor, Ana Maria Tellechea, this does not appear to be the case.  Tellechea said, “it has been clearly shown that in the period from the coup until Bordaberry was removed by the military there were hundreds of disappearances and torture-related deaths carried out by those at the head of [Bordaberry’s] dictatorial process.”

Attorney Hebe Martines Burle, who filed the charges against Bordaberry, said that even though the sentences will not affect Bordaberry’s status in terms of years in detention, it has enormous symbolic importance for Uruguay.  Burle said “This doesn’t change the time of reclusion at all and that’s not our concern.  The issue for us is emblematic, symbolic, that when someone violates the constitution, when a coup occurs, eventually you’re going to pay.”

Bordaberry is the second Uruguayan dictator sentenced to a lengthy prison term in the last four months.  Gregorio Alvarez was jailed for twenty-five years last October for murder and rights violations during his 1981-1985 rule.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Former Uruguay Dictator Bordaberry gets ‘30yrs Jail – 11 February 2010

America’s Quarterly – Former Uruguayan Dictator Sentenced – 11 February 2010

Latin American Herald Tribune – Former Uruguayan Dictator Gets 30-Year Prison Sentence for Coup  – 11 February 2010

By Sovereign Hager

Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

RIO DE JANIERO, Brazil-Brazil’s police are being criticized for their response to a violent incident in a slum that left eight people dead. During a routine patrol in the city’s northern zone the police called in reinforcements after they came under fire.

The police response led to what is considered to be one of the worst outbreaks of violence since October, when drug traffickers shot down a police helicopter. Forty people were killed in the police response. Brazil’s bid for the 2016 Olympics was accepted just one week later.

The state governor ordered a police crackdown on gangs in the slums in mid-2007. Officers are accused of heavy handed tactics and of fueling the violence by forming off-duty vigilante squads that extort slum residents. The United Nations and human rights groups criticized Brazil’s aggressive policing.

Three people are killed in Brazil’s slums each day on average. Officials defend their methods, arguing that they are going up against heavily armed gangs with assault rifles, grenades, and even anti-aircraft weapons.  Last week, police found the body of the leader of a local non-profit organization that offers young people living in the slum theater training. Fred Pinheiro’s throat was slit and he had been missing for two days.

In the past nine years, 10,216 people have been killed in police clashes in Rio. The majority took place in the city’s nine hundred and eighty slums.

For more information, please see:

AP-Shootout in Rio Slum Ahead of Carnival; 8 Dead-11 February 2010

The Washington Post-Eight Killed in Pre-Carnival Violence-11 February 2010

AFP-Eight Dead in Police Clash with Drug Gang in Rio Slang: Officials-11 February 2010

PARÁ, Brazil-The landowner accused of ordering the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang in the Amazon in 2005 has been ordered back to jail.  Sister Dorothy Stang worked on behalf of the indigenous community and for rainforest preservation. Vitalmiro Bastos Moura “Bida” was originally convicted for the killing in 2007. The verdict was overturned a year later and he is now facing a retrial.

Sister Dorothy Stang was seventy-three and had lived in Brazil for thirty years when she was shot six times as she walked along a muddy rainforest trail. She was left to die in the mud.

The thirty year sentence is the maximum in Brazil and  legislation requires a second trial to confirm the sentence. At the second trial, Bida was found not guilty. Yesterday an appellate court ordered him back to jail, with a majority of the judges agreeing with a lawsuit filed by government attorneys, which annulled the second trial.

The man who is believed to have ordered and paid for the murder is another landowning farmer, Regivaldo Pereira Galvao, also known as Taradao (“Big Pervert”), has been indicted but never tried.

Estimates are that hundreds of people have been killed in land disputes in the state of Pará in the last few decades, with few prosecutions. Despite the international outrage, missionaries who campaign on behalf of the poor in the Amazon region face death threats and reportedly need police protection to do their work.

For more information, please see:

AP-Suspect in Slaying of U.S. Nun in Brazil is Back in Jail, New Trial Expected This Year-7 February 2010

BBC-Brazil Man Accused of Nun Murder Back in Jail-7 February 2010

Sydney Morning Herald-Brazilian Linked to Nun’s Death Jailed-7 February 2010