Monday, January 30, 2006

Asesinan a hermano de abogado del caso Gerardi

Asesinan a hermano de abogado del caso Gerardi
Por: Sonia Pérez

Guatemala, sábado 28 de enero de 2006
http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2006/enero/28/133350.html

Socorristas localizaron el cadáver de Darinel Domingo, el lunes recién pasado, en un barranco del asentamiento El Éxodo de la zona 12 capitalina.
El cadáver de Darinel Domingo Montejo, hermano de Mario Domingo Montejo, abogado de la Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado (ODHA), fue localizado el lunes recién pasado, con señales de haber sido torturado.

Familiares de Domingo Montejo, de 21 años, indicaron que éste salió la tarde del sábado recién pasado de su casa para reunirse con unos amigos. Sin embargo, ya no retornó.

La víctima era hermano del abogado de la ODHA, quien logró la sentencia condenatoria contra tres militares y un sacerdote por la muerte del obispo Juan José Gerardi.

La familia de Domingo Montejo, preocupada por su ausencia, lo empezó a buscar, y el jueves recién pasado encontró su cadáver en la morgue de Amatitlán.

Según versiones bomberiles, el cuerpo fue localizado el lunes 23 en un barranco del asentamiento El Éxodo, zona 12, y fue trasladado a la morgue, sin ser identificado.

El cadáver presentaba golpes. Además, le fueron cercenadas las manos y una pierna. En el rostro tenía heridas causadas, al parecer, con arma blanca.

Datos proporcionados por la ODHA indican que el joven vivía en el asentamiento Mario Alioto López, zona 12.

Solicita investigación

Nery Rodenas, director de la ODHA, dijo que la víctima no pertenecía a maras, no tenía tatuajes, tampoco hacia uso de drogas y que no existe información de que estuviera amenazado.


“Lo que pedimos es que se haga una investigación profunda de este crimen. No podemos descartar ninguna hipótesis; ni que es por venganza ni que es delincuencia común”, dijo Rodenas.

El abogado Mario Domingo Montejo se encontraba fuera del país cuando ocurrió el crimen. La víctima fue inhumada ayer en Jacaltenango, Huehuetenango.


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Central Americans face loss of U.S. legal status

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20060129-115905-6581r

Central Americans face loss of U.S. legal status

Published January 30, 2006


MIAMI (AP) -- Special temporary U.S. residency issued to thousands of Central Americans is due to expire in the coming months, and with the debate over immigration becoming increasingly fierce, many immigrants fear they will be sent home.
The temporary status granted to Nicaraguans and Hondurans after Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and to Salvadorans after a devastating earthquake in 2001 has been renewed repeatedly with little public debate, but opposition is growing.
Critics say that the program was never meant to be permanent and that it's time for the more than 300,000 people it protects to return home.
Immigrants and their advocates say that an expiration of the special status would devastate these people and their families, as well as the Central American countries that count on the billions of dollars the refugees earn in the United States and send home.
"We haven't seen this kind of debate in years. This is an election year, and this is a high-profile issue," said Ana Navarro, former Nicaraguan ambassador to the United Nations.
Temporary protected status (TPS) -- which is not officially a visa and does not lead to permanent legal residency -- is coming under debate as at least four bills to control immigration are circulating in Washington.
The Department of Homeland Security must decide whether to renew the TPS for Nicaraguans and Hondurans by May and for Salvadorans by July. There are 220,000 Salvadorans, 70,000 Hondurans and 3,600 Nicaraguans in the U.S. under the program. About 4,000 Africans are covered by similar permits.
Waitress Iris de la Rosa, 33, said she doesn't know what she will do if the protected status expires. She came to the United States illegally seven years ago from El Salvador because she couldn't support herself and her young daughter as a pharmacist's assistant.
She planned to stay only a few years, but took advantage of the TPS after the 2001 quake in her homeland. The permit allows immigrants who are already in the U.S., as Mrs. de la Rosa was when the earthquake hit, to stay when extraordinary conditions make it temporarily unsafe to return.
"If they take away the TPS, will they just come and deport me?" asked Mrs. de la Rosa, who now has a 2-year-old son born in Hollywood, Fla. She says her mother and daughter in El Salvador depend on the several hundred dollars she sends each month.
U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Florida Republican, said the issue goes beyond disaster victims. The rise in several South American nations of left-wing governments that often employ anti-American rhetoric makes it all the more important for Central American leaders to be able to cite the benefits of U.S. friendship.




Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.


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Saturday, January 07, 2006

::: Misa por el Dia del Senor de Esquipulas, en New York City :::

Image hosted by Photobucket.com
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- Qué debemos hacer ante las acciones de grupos anti-inmigrantes -

¿Sabias que, este sábado 7 de Enero/06, los “minutemen Racistas” tendrán protestas en frente de las esquinas y centros de Jornaler@s en todo el país, incluyendo la Ciudad de Nueva York?

¿Qué debemos hacer los jornaleros, ante las acciones de grupos anti-inmigrantes?

Introducción
La comunidad de jornaleros se ha convertido en la cara pública de los inmigrantes en los últimos años por buscar trabajo y ganarnos la vida honradamente en las calles y otros lugares públicos y por los prejuicios de grupos o individuos cuyos corazones albergan un odio racial extremo hacia los inmigrantes.

Los “Minutemen”, que son el equivalente a los grupos “paramilitares” o de “defensa civil” en nuestros países de origen son la versión moderna de movimientos supremacistas blancos como el Ku Kux Klan, ven en nuestras esquinas o centros de trabajo, la oportunidad para enviar un mensaje contra lo que ellos llaman “inmigración ilegal” y la “contratación de Ilegales”.

Su mensaje consiste en proyectar a los inmigrantes, con o sin papeles, como criminales y terroristas que están convirtiendo al país en un basurero del tercer mundo. No ofrecen soluciones constructivas y su llamada propuesta de “reforma migratoria” consiste en la deportación inmediata de los indocumentados y sus familias, la militarización de las fronteras y medidas que hagan más difícil que los inmigrantes, con o sin papeles, puedan vivir con dignidad y respeto en nuestras comunidades.

Los “Minutemen” apoyados por políticos de diferentes niveles, tienen una campaña para intimidar al jornalero. Luchemos contra ellos pacíficamente. No nos dejemos provocar ya que ellos esperan que nos enfurezcamos y que los ataquemos verbal o físicamente para lograr sus propósitos. Resistamos su presencia pacífica y ordenadamente. Ante su lenguaje de odio y hostilidad, impongamos nuestro mensaje de paz, de co-existencia pacífica, de tolerancia y de respeto de los derechos humanos.

Este documento ofrece una orientación básica para que sepas qué hacer en caso de que tu centro o esquina sea objeto de protestas u otras acciones emprendidas por grupos de odio.

ORIENTACIONES BASICAS

• Tenga a disposición los teléfonos de las organizaciones de derecho de inmigrantes y llámeles o infórmeles sobre la presencia de estos grupos en su centro de trabajo o esquina.

• Documente todo lo que vea: Fecha, hora de llegada y retirada, placas de carro, mensaje en los letreros, número de personas que protestan, presencia de la policía etc.. tome fotos si tiene acceso a una cámara. Esto ayuda en caso que se cometa un crimen contra los jornaleros.

• Evite ser provocado, ignore los insultos, los gritos y obscenidades, Ante los gritos de odio responda con la calma. No hable con los provocadores. No les conceda entrevistas ni se involucre en argumentos estériles con ellos.

• Si una persona grita insultos y obcenidades a los “Minutemen”, retírese para que solitos se griten uno al otro. Si la policía interviene con arrestos o tickets, no más se los llevará a ellos y no a los jornaleros que necesitan trabajar para alimentar a sus seres queridos.

• No se alarme. Reúnase con sus compañeros y trate de mantener la calma o como dice el chapulín colorado “ que no panda el cúnico”

• Ante la agresión física o provocación extrema de los “Minutemen” (si hay) ceda el terreno y manténgase alejado de ellos por lo menos 20 pies de distancia. Ellos están enfermos por el odio y nos quieren contaminar. Resista, no se vaya a su casa porque es lo que ellos esperan.

• Si no desea que lo filmen o le tomen foto, simplemente dé la espalda o cúbrase la cara. Es permitido filmar o tomar fotos de cualquier persona en lugares públicos (calles, banquetas / aceras, parques etc..)

• Tenga una lista con nombres y números de algunos trabajadores que lleguen a la esquina o centro para comunicarse entre si.

• Defienda pacíficamente su lugar de trabajo, en caso que el ambiente esté muy tenso, llame a la policía y pídale protección, no argumente con la policía, obedezca sus órdenes. No dé motivo para que lo arresten.

• Si lleva letreros o pancartas, evite insultos que generen más hostilidad. Si hay personas que no son jornaleros, comuníquese con ellos y pida un apoyo pacífico, ordenado y solidario con la necesidad del trabajador jornalero. Ellos no van a regresar a la esquina o centro para ganarse la vida el siguiente día. Agradezca sus buenas intenciones y trate de obtener su información para que puedan comunicarse con ellos en el futuro.

• Si pretendemos organizar un evento o una contra protesta, le sugerimos que convoque a miembros de la comunidad religiosa, incluyendo sacerdotes, ministros, rabinos y reverendos de todas las denominaciones. La respuesta no debe promover la violencia, el odio o la discordia, debemos destacar que todos somos iguales ante la justicia y los ojos de Dios.

• Debemos enfatizar el amor al prójimo y al enemigo. Debemos de promover la paz y el entendimiento entre las culturas y razas.

• Busque o pida a las organizaciones de defensa de los derechos de los inmigrantes, la presencia de observadores legales que vigilen y documenten de cerca las acciones de los racistas y prevenir cualquier abuso de derechos humanos y civiles.


• Haga una lista por lo menos de diez personas, amigos y familiares que estén dispuestos a llegar a la esquina o al Centro en caso de emergencia.

• El centro y las esquinas son lugares sagrados de trabajo. Hay que respetarlos y cuidarlos. Recuerda: no tires basura, no consumas bebidas alcohólicas y/o drogas, debemos de hacer un buen trabajo cada vez que nos contraten no des lugar para que desaparezca la esquina o el centro de trabajo.



SI LLEGAN LOS MEDIOS DE COMUNICACIÓN, MANDEMOS A LA POBLACIÓN UN MENSAJE CLARO, ALGUNOS PUNTOS CLAVES:

• Los Jornaleros no somos criminales ni terroristas, somos personas que buscamos trabajo para mantener a nuestros seres queridos.

• Los Jornaleros hemos venido a este país a construir a ayudar a la economía con nuestra mano de obra, mantenemos los jardines verdes, las casas pintadas y limpias, construimos casas, mantenemos los restaurantes y hoteles a todo vapor, etc.

• Todos los seres humanos tenemos el derecho a buscar una vida digna y a ser tratados con respeto y dignidad. El trabajo es un derecho humano universal que nadie nos puede quitar por el simple hecho de ser personas.

• Los jornaleros queremos vivir con los vecinos bajo un ambiente de paz tolerancia y armonía.

• Los Jornaleros no somos solamente inmigrantes... antes somos seres humanos……padres, madres, hermanos, abuelos.

• Los Minutemen “Racistas” están enfermos por el odio y nos quieren contaminar. Ellos promueven una cultura de hostilidad y confrontación. Nuestros corazones no albergan los mismos sentimientos. El odio no es recíproco.




OTRAS RECOMENDACIONES PARA HACER MÁS GRANDE LA LISTA.

• Denuncie ante los medios, el racismo y el odio, desenmascare las verdaderas intenciones que hay detrás de las acciones de algunos miembros de estos grupos.

• Busque información sobre como ejercer sus derechos y evitar enfrentamientos con estos grupos.

• Organice un grupo o comité que vigile las actividades de estas personas y que estén pendientes de cualquier violación a las leyes y los derechos humanos.

• Contacte a otros grupos que ya han enfrentado estas situaciones para intercambiar experiencias.

• Colabore en organizar una coalición regional de organizaciones que defienden los derechos de los inmigrantes... trabaje para hacer una coalición nacional.

• Siguiendo el Concejo de Cesar Estrada Chávez (Gran Luchador Campesino) lo haremos todo en Paz y con Buena Fe. No a la Violencia!.

Este documento a sido elaborado por la Red Nacional de Jornaleros y La Coalición contra la intolerancia y por el respeto (Houston, TX) y el Centro de Empleo de Tonatierra (Phoenix, AZ) Para mas información llame a su organización más cercana. www.ndlon.org

EL PROYECTO DE LOS TRABAJADORES
LATINOAMERICANOS (P.T.LA.)
1080 Willoughby Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11221

www.elptla.org

(718) 628-6222 ó (917) 513-8502

Oscar Paredes y Javier Gallardo

Minutemen Mobilizes Whites Left Behind by Globalization

Far From Fringe
Minutemen Mobilizes Whites Left Behind by Globalization
By Roberto Lovato

Cross the white picket fence of the Minutemen offices in Tombstone, Ariz., and you're immediately made aware that the Federal Government denied the local media mogul his constitutional right to bear arms. And, the sign on the front door adds, Minutemen founder Chris Simcox trains his infrared scope on the border.

BEWARE of his armed bodyguard who is still exercising his second amendment rights.

"What can I do for you?" asks the wiry, nervous, yet folksy Chris Simcox, the leader and founder of the Minutemen volunteer border patrol when I visited late last summer. After my local guides let him know we were there to ask him about his Minuteman work, his jean and tee-shirtclad body, his baseball-capped head and entire being seemed suddenly to move to the beat of media personality mode; he swaggers into the tour of the home of the Tombstone Tumbleweed, one of the main papers in this former miners settlement, which he was soon to sell. These days, tourists keep their economy pumping with a fascination with the hallowed gunfight that took place just around the corner. The Tumbleweed also doubled as the command center of a movement whose members trace their gun-wielding brand of frontier justice to Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and other heroes of the OK Corral, a movement that has garnered media attention far beyond the 1,200 person circulation (Tombstone's population is 1,504) of California-born Simcox's successful newspaper.

He begins the walk-through by pointing at several snapshots on a wall of Latino immigrants tied up and looking like nervous chickens I've seen in crowded, colorful markets they left in the poorer, war-ridden parts of Mexico and Central America.

"Those are pictures of some of the illegals we caught and handed over to immigration," says Simcox, as if proudly displaying the deer heads adorning more than a few of the homes in the gun and Harleyheavy Tombstone ("The Town Too Tough to Die").

Some civil rights organizations report that the Minutemen have pistol-whipped and, perhaps, even shot, migrants they encounter.

Wanting to ignore the boyish smile that seems to taunt me as a kind of test for my reaction, I point to two inverted flags—one Mexican, one U.S.—on the white wall opposite the pictures and ask him why the flags are placed in that manner. "That's an international distress signal. It's about two governments that aren't doing anything about an urgent problem. So we are," he answers. Before I can process the surprisingly global perspective behind Simcox's statement, he yanks me back down to the dark realities of desert life only 25 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. "Did you hear about the accident this morning?" Simcox asks me. On our way to Tombstone that Saturday morning, my colleagues and I had in fact driven by the horrific 11-car pileup in which six people (James Lee, 74, and Emilia Lee, 71, of Huachuca City and four undocumented immigrants who remain nameless in local media reports with headlines like "Illegals-Smugglers Crash Kills 6"). But before we could answer, he declared, "It was serious this time: real citizens died."

At a time and environment in which "reality" defines the cutting edge television programming and post-Iraq WMD political debate, the oddly telegenic Simcox's deployment of the "real" works well for a Minutemen organization mainstreaming what was the stuff of sotto voce grumblings in the radical extremist and polite conservative corners of white America. And so does his neat splitting of Citizen and Other. Unfortunately, too many critics of the Minutemen fail to see the nuances behind the sensationalist tactics of his brand of white fear. My encounter with Simcox doesn't fit very well the rather simplistic explanations of the Minutemen as a bunch of new, gun-slinging racists; rather, what the encounter with Simcox and the Minutemen reflects is the need to use a more sophisticated lens than what has passed for critique among activists and thinkers in the civil and immigrant rights communities along with many Latino organizations.

Principal among the unnoticed characteristics of the Minutemen are: a global weltanschauung, a very nuanced media sensibility, and a very dangerous political sense that's managed to spew out onto deserts, towns and cities the subterranean sentiments that serve elite interests, elites who benefit from the racial and class conflicts and division that the Minutemen make an industry of.

The Minutemen are far from being the fringe white men with guns of much media lore; more than an armed movement, Simcox and his cohorts have converted themselves into a nimble, media savvy, network organization for whom the guns are props. Their main goal is not to "protect" the physical borders of the United States: the primary political objectives of the Minutemen have more to do with protecting the borders of white privilege and notions of citizenship being transcended by the global economic—and political—capital. In this sense, the flag waving and other symbolism (i.e., using the Minuteman brand), the perpetual need to generate controversy, the phallic deployment of arms at a time when economic and cultural (ie; women and nonwhites like Latino immigrants) globalization challenges American (especially white male) manhood all constitute a form of (para)psychological OPERATION or "psy-op."

Their tactics also serve the interests of elites like George W. Bush, military industrialists and others as they wrap themselves with, and rally much poorer people around, the flag of extreme nationalism. The corporate and political powers of the information age benefit from the Minutemen whose gunfighter antics targeting border crossers easily distract us from the elite abandonment of U.S. workers and cities (think Katrina) as well as global exploits that transfer more and more dollars into the hands of fewer and fewer people.

That the Minuteman organization is housed out of a newspaper in a tourist town whose primary theatre involves a weekly reenactment of the gunfight at OK Corral is no simple coincidence.

First of all, if they were really fringe, the Minutemen wouldn't get the far-reaching local, national and even international coverage in print and electronic media. That the first Google search of "Minutemen" by many elementary school students will lead the young people to information about Simcox's organization and not the patriots of American revolutionary fame illustrates well the very effective blurring of the "real" that decentralized, tech and media-ready organizations like today's Minutemen manufacture.

Similarly, shifting the Minuteman message— between "citizen" and "illegal alien," "patriot" and "terrorist"—reveals as much about their intentions as their physical movements around the borders of the country. The Minutemen's initial rhetoric of "civilization" versus the "savage" has given way to the more moderated rhetoric of "citizen" ("Concerned Citizens Leading the Effort to Secure our Borders.") versus "terrorist" that has been the main political currency of the Bush moment. In line with this switch, Simcox and his organization have tried to diversify the overwhelmingly white Minutemen to include Latino spokespeople.

Beyond the raw ranting of previous communication, the official Minuteman website now includes opportunistic framing of their work reflected in, for example, this recent headline about their Arizona activities: "Minutemen Civil Defense Corps starts Secure Our Borders operation early to aid Border Patrol helping with Katrina relief." Below this headline is a banner asking web surfers to donate to efforts to benefit the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Their savvy use of the web and other media, combined with the strategic use of public events, makes the Minutemen more effective than previous racist organizations. At the same time, their mixing of mainstream and old school, anti-Latino, anti-immigrant messages makes their message palatable to an audience, especially aging white males, ravaged by economic and political globalization. Unlike the previous generation of white supremacists who eschewed and even attacked the Federal government (think Oklahoma bombing or Montana militias), the Minuteman strategy complements the anti-immigrant work of local, state and national politicians like California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who regularly praises them as "heroes."

Again, transitions in Tombstone provide clues as to why the Minutemen are wellpositioned to reach an audience of abandoned workers in search of answers about why the value of their labor is cheapened. Prior to the advent of the now dominant tourist economy in Tombstone, the livelihood of most here was based on silver mining, farming and the military that protected them. Such occupations as explorer, rancher and soldier informed the sense of frontier manhood that current employment with the low wage primary businesses of the region don't. While their names harken to simpler, richer, whiter days in Tombstone and the United States, the region's biggest employers—Adobe Lodge, Best Western Lookout Lodge, William Brown Holster and Old Tombstone Historical Tours—hardly provide the economic muscle that underwrote the frontier days the Minuteman nostalgia speaks powerfully to.

Wearin' guns and cowboy outfits for a living is real different from bein' a "real cowboy"; the Minutemen provide an opportunity for some, mostly aging white men, to root their sense of themselves in the storied—and extremely violent— traditions celebrated in museums, TV shows, movies and video games. Like workers in Tombstone, most workers in American cities, towns and rural areas are reeling from the ravages of free trade agreements, deindustrialization, and other sources of corporate globalization; these trends are simplistically explained away by scapegoating.

Like blacks, Indians and Mexicans of the frontier days, Immigrant Evil Others —"illegals," "gangster thugs," rumored (but still unseen) Latino "terrorists" and other threats conjured by the imaginary of white fear—provide the necessary contrast to the good, white citizen doing his part to defend the "values," "way of life" and "civilization" that the President and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld are feverishly recruiting the children of Latino immigrants to defend. Such a situation recreates the (for some) clear cut frontier era division between "good American" and "bad Other," between "good" Latinos (soldiers, cops, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez) and "bad" Latinos (gang members, undocumented immigrants, etc.).

In a white populace devastated by the decimation of its cities, towns and job base, a populace whose citizenship is cheapened by a political system based on the transference of tax revenues to facilitate global trade and perpetual war, the workings of the Minutemen provide victims of globalization an opportunity to feel they're "doing something" about their plight. The Minutemen also offer elites an opportunity to develop a new kind of base as they inch the country deeper and deeper into the, for them, fertile soil of national security culture.

Seen from this perspective, the white picket fences and white walls of the Tombstone Tumbleweed provide an appropriate symbol of a movement taking hold in a country in where elite, global interests are gating the physical and mental borders of a populace in the throes of perpetual war.

Rather than explain the labyrinthine realities of this most complex of political and economic moments, elites stand silent while the shock troops of white fear center political—and cultural—debate around more simplistic "us versus them," "good versus bad" dichotomies that harken back to the good old days that never really existed.

Simcox's "real citizens" are wearing costumes of actors in an old, even ancient story of domination and plunder at the expense of the barbarian Other.


Roberto Lovato is a writer and member of the Public Eye editorial board.

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