Rebelión
Recientemente y por primera vez desde 1975, cuando al abandono de España de su colonia y provincia en el Sáhara Occidental siguió la guerra de Marruecos y Mauritania contra el Frente Polisario, los medios mexicanos dedicaron algunas líneas al pueblo saharaui. Los diarios, la televisión y la radio de nuestro país cubrieron la huelga de hambre de Aminetu Haidar, defensora de los derechos humanos arbitrariamente detenida y despojada de su pasaporte por el gobierno marroquí, potencia ocupante del territorio del Sáhara Occidental. La huelga de hambre de Aminetu se prolongó durante 32 días, hasta que se atendió su legítima demanda de volver a su hogar y su familia en la ciudad de El Aaiún en el Sáhara bajo ocupación militar marroquí. Sin embargo, el sufrimiento del pueblo saharaui continúa, ya sea en los campamentos de población refugiada en el desierto más inhóspito en territorio argelino, en los territorios ocupados por Marruecos o en la soledad del exilio como única opción de vida.
La represión marroquí se ha endurecido a partir del regreso de Aminetu al Sáhara Occidental y se ha cebado con las mujeres saharauis. Aminetu se encuentra prácticamente bajo arresto domiciliario, se prohibieron las manifestaciones de alegría por su retorno y se detiene y tortura a toda persona que desee acercarse a saludarla. Además, siete activistas saharauis de derechos humanos permanecen en la cárcel de Salé, al norte de Rabat, desde el 8 de octubre de 2009 como presos de conciencia: Alí Salem Tamek, Brahim Dahane, Ahmad Anasiri, Dagja Lachgar, Yahdih Ettarrouzi, Saleh Lebayhi y Rachid Sghayar. A esta lista habría que sumar los cientos de nombres de personas detenidas o desaparecidas cuyos casos han sido documentados por la Asociación de Familiares de Presos y Desaparecidos Saharauis.
Pedimos al periodismo mexicano no hacerse cómplice del olvido al que el bloqueo mediático ha condenado al pueblo saharaui. Invitamos al pueblo de México a conocer la historia del Sáhara Occidental y a manifestar su repudio a la cobarde política española que dejó trunco el último proceso de descolonización en el África, y su repudio a la política genocida y expansionista del reino marroquí contra un pueblo que lleva 34 años confiando inútilmente en el derecho internacional y sus instituciones. Las personas interesadas pueden comunicarse a la Asociación Mexicana de Amistad con la República Árabe Saharaui (http://www.mexicoporelsahara.org).
1. Atenea Acevedo, internacionalista, traductora y escritora feminista
2. Sandra Hernández, internacionalista
3. Olivia Mora, diseñadora
4. Adriana Guadalupe Velasco Arzamendi, geógrafa, Programa Oportunidades
5. Eloína López Cano, académica, periodista y regidora del Ayuntamiento de Acapulco
6. Asela de la Vega Verduzco, periodista, directora de Cultura Municipal
7. Zoraida Vásquez Beveraggi, locutora y escritora
8. María Antonieta Ávalos Tenorio
9. Francesca Gargallo Celentani, académica y escritora
10. Helena Scully Gargallo
11. Érika Núñez Alcántar, reportera
12. Reveca Enriqueta Rivera Galicia, diseñadora
13. Yunuen Montero Salcedo
14. Yuriria Montero Salcedo
15. Joanna It-zel Becerra Ibarra, cooperante mexicana en los campamentos de población refugiada
16. Ana Georgina Negrete Salinas, antropóloga
17. Norma Salinas González, química
18. Yolanda Bello Olvera, traductora
19. July Méndez Tovar, locutora
20. Martha Mora
21. Celia Gutiérrez Reveles
22. Michelle Chantal Iturbe Mazari, estudiante
23. Isabel Salazar
24. Aída Teresa Segovia Peñúñuri, catedrática universitaria de la Universidad de Guadalajara
25. Michelle Solano
26. Beatriz Eugenia Romero Cuevas
27. Livia Olvera Snyder
28. Claudia M. Salazar Villava, académica de la UAM Xochimilco
29. Linamar Campos-Flores, editora de la Ballena de Jonás y estudiante
30. Michèle Chauveur, librepensadora por la Luz y la Paz
31. María de Lourdes Márquez Gómez, historiadora
32. Mónica Peña, estudiante, Facultad de Economía, UNAM
33. Maria Amparo Cervantes Gómez, cantante
34. Alejandra Villalpando Rentería, psicóloga
35. Diana Gutz, internacionalista
36. Adriana Acevedo Gutiérrez, empresaria pyme y comerciante
37. Elke Maria Schilling Schwerdtfeger, intérprete-traductora, voluntaria comunitaria y rescatista
38. Maritza Macín
39. Azucena Caballero Ruiz, química industrial
40. Gloria Careaga, académica de la UNAM
41. Rosario del Carmen Servin Lopez, fotógrafa y diseñadora
42. Gema Estrada Escudero
43. María Hernández Gómez, contadora pública
44. Alejandra Salgado Martínez, estudiante
45. Deyanira Pérez Hernández
46. María del Rayo Casas Ruíz, psicóloga
47. Monserrat Rojas Ortíz, estudiante
48. Noemí Luna García, periodista
49. Alejandra Ramírez Pérez, internacionalista
50. Fernanda Ytaí Cruz Pineda, estudiante de relaciones internacionales
51. Guadalupe Guerra
52. Abril Abundes, Administradora de empresas
53. Martha Maria Natalie Arrellin Rosas, Internacionalista
54. Margarita Gutiérrez
55. Jessica Pineda, comunicóloga
56. Jimena Cid del Prado García de León, diseñadora industrial
57. Zyanya Erendira López Palacios, Internacionalista
58. Mónica Hernández Ochoa, profesora de historia
59. Rosangela García Tufiño, Internacionalista
60. Asociación Vida Plena Puebla
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1/25/10
Security Fools
The Rule of Law Has Been Lost
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch
What is the greatest human achievement? Many would answer in terms of some architectural or engineering feat: The Great Pyramids, skyscrapers, a bridge span, or sending men to the moon. Others might say the subduing of some deadly disease or Einstein’s theory of relativity.
The greatest human achievement is the subordination of government to law. This was an English achievement that required eight centuries of struggle, beginning in the ninth century when King Alfred the Great codified the common law, moving forward with the Magna Carta in the thirteenth century and culminating with the Glorious Revolution in the late seventeenth century.
The success of this long struggle made law a shield of the people. As an English colony, America inherited this unique achievement that made English speaking peoples the most free in the world.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, this achievement was lost in the United States and, perhaps, in England as well.
As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000), the protective features of law in the U.S. were eroded in the twentieth century by prosecutorial abuse and by setting aside law in order to better pursue criminals. By the time of our second edition (2008), law as a shield of the people no longer existed. Respect for the Constitution and rule of law had given way to executive branch claims that during time of war government is not constrained by law or Constitution.
Government lawyers told President Bush that he did not have to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which prohibits the government from spying on citizens without a warrant, thus destroying the right to privacy. The U.S. Department of Justice ruled that the President did not have to obey U.S. law prohibiting torture or the Geneva Conventions. Habeas corpus protection, a Constitutional right, was stripped from U.S. citizens. Medieval dungeons, torture, and the windowless cells of Stalin’s Lubyanka Prison reappeared under American government auspices.
The American people’s elected representatives in Congress endorsed the executive branch’s overthrow of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Law schools and bar associations were essentially silent in the face of this overthrow of mankind’s greatest achievement. Some parts of the federal judiciary voted with the executive branch; other parts made a feeble resistance. Today in the name of “the war on terror,” the executive branch does whatever it wants. There is no accountability.
The First Amendment has been abridged and may soon be criminalized. Protests against, and criticisms of, the U.S. government’s illegal invasions of Muslim countries and war crimes against civilian populations have been construed by executive branch officials as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” As American citizens have been imprisoned for giving aid to Muslim charities that the executive branch has decreed, without proof in a court of law, to be under the control of “terrorists,” any form of opposition to the government’s wars and criminal actions can also be construed as aiding terrorists and be cause for arrest and indefinite detention.
One Obama appointee, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, advocates that the U.S. government create a cadre of covert agents to infiltrate anti-war groups and groups opposed to U.S.government policies in order to provoke them into actions or statements for which they can be discredited and even arrested.
Sunstein defines those who criticize the government’s increasingly lawless behavior as “extremists,” which, to the general public, sounds much like “terrorists.” In essence, Sunstein wants to generalize the F.B.I.’s practice of infiltrating dissidents and organizing them around a “terrorist plot” in order to arrest them. That this proposal comes from a Harvard Law School professor demonstrates the collapse of respect for law among American law professors themselves, ranging from John Yoo at Berkeley, the advocate of torture, to Sunstein at Harvard, a totalitarian who advocates war on the First Amendment.
The U.S. Department of State has taken up Sunstein’s idea. Last month Eva Golinger reported in the Swiss newspaper, Zeit-Fragen, that the State Department plans to organize youth in “Twitter Revolutions” to destabilize countries and bring about regime change in order to achieve more American puppet states, such as the ones in Egypt, Jordan, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states, Britain, and Western and Eastern Europe.
The First Amendment is being closed down. Its place is being taken by propaganda in behalf of whatever government does. As Stratton and I wrote in the second edition of our book documenting the destruction of law in the United States:
Similar assaults on the rule of law can be observed in England. However, the British have not completely given up on accountable government. The Chilcot Inquiry is looking into how Britain was deceived into participating in the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq. President Obama, of course, has blocked any inquiry into how the U.S. was deceived into attacking Iraq in violation of law.
Much damning information has come out about Blair’s deception of the British government and people. Sir David Manning, foreign policy advisor to Blair, told the Chilcot Inquiry that Blair had promised Bush support for the invasion almost a year in advance. Blair had told his country that it was a last minute call based on proof of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Sir William Patey told the inquiry that President Bush began talking about invading Iraq six or seven months prior to September 11, 2001. A devastating official memo has come to light from Lord Goldsmith, Prime Minister Blair’s top law official, advising Blair that an invasion of Iraq would be in breach of international law.
Now a secret and personal letter to Prime Minister Blair from his Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has surfaced. In the letter, the Foreign Secretary warned the Prime Minister that his case for military invasion of Iraq was of dubious legality and was likely as false as the argument that removing Saddam Hussein would bring Iraqis a better life.
Blair himself must now testify. He has the reputation, whether deserved or not, as one of the slickest liars in the world. But some accountability seems to be heading his way. The Sunday Times (London) reported on January 17 that the latest poll indicates that 52 percent of the British people believe that Blair deliberately misled his country in order to take Britain to war for the Americans. About one quarter of the British people think Blair should be put on trial as a war criminal.
Unlike the U.S., which takes care to keep the government unaccountable to law, Britain is a member of the International Criminal Court, so Blair does stand some risk of being held accountable for the war crimes of President George W. Bush’s regime and the U.S. Congress.
In contrast, insouciant Americans are content for their government to behave illegally. A majority supports torture despite its illegality, and a McClatchy-Ipsos poll found that 51 percent of Americans agree that “it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”
As our Founding Fathers warned, fools who give up liberty for security will have neither.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. His new book, How the Economy was Lost, will be published next month by AK Press / CounterPunch. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch
What is the greatest human achievement? Many would answer in terms of some architectural or engineering feat: The Great Pyramids, skyscrapers, a bridge span, or sending men to the moon. Others might say the subduing of some deadly disease or Einstein’s theory of relativity.
The greatest human achievement is the subordination of government to law. This was an English achievement that required eight centuries of struggle, beginning in the ninth century when King Alfred the Great codified the common law, moving forward with the Magna Carta in the thirteenth century and culminating with the Glorious Revolution in the late seventeenth century.
The success of this long struggle made law a shield of the people. As an English colony, America inherited this unique achievement that made English speaking peoples the most free in the world.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, this achievement was lost in the United States and, perhaps, in England as well.
As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions (2000), the protective features of law in the U.S. were eroded in the twentieth century by prosecutorial abuse and by setting aside law in order to better pursue criminals. By the time of our second edition (2008), law as a shield of the people no longer existed. Respect for the Constitution and rule of law had given way to executive branch claims that during time of war government is not constrained by law or Constitution.
Government lawyers told President Bush that he did not have to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which prohibits the government from spying on citizens without a warrant, thus destroying the right to privacy. The U.S. Department of Justice ruled that the President did not have to obey U.S. law prohibiting torture or the Geneva Conventions. Habeas corpus protection, a Constitutional right, was stripped from U.S. citizens. Medieval dungeons, torture, and the windowless cells of Stalin’s Lubyanka Prison reappeared under American government auspices.
The American people’s elected representatives in Congress endorsed the executive branch’s overthrow of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Law schools and bar associations were essentially silent in the face of this overthrow of mankind’s greatest achievement. Some parts of the federal judiciary voted with the executive branch; other parts made a feeble resistance. Today in the name of “the war on terror,” the executive branch does whatever it wants. There is no accountability.
The First Amendment has been abridged and may soon be criminalized. Protests against, and criticisms of, the U.S. government’s illegal invasions of Muslim countries and war crimes against civilian populations have been construed by executive branch officials as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” As American citizens have been imprisoned for giving aid to Muslim charities that the executive branch has decreed, without proof in a court of law, to be under the control of “terrorists,” any form of opposition to the government’s wars and criminal actions can also be construed as aiding terrorists and be cause for arrest and indefinite detention.
One Obama appointee, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, advocates that the U.S. government create a cadre of covert agents to infiltrate anti-war groups and groups opposed to U.S.government policies in order to provoke them into actions or statements for which they can be discredited and even arrested.
Sunstein defines those who criticize the government’s increasingly lawless behavior as “extremists,” which, to the general public, sounds much like “terrorists.” In essence, Sunstein wants to generalize the F.B.I.’s practice of infiltrating dissidents and organizing them around a “terrorist plot” in order to arrest them. That this proposal comes from a Harvard Law School professor demonstrates the collapse of respect for law among American law professors themselves, ranging from John Yoo at Berkeley, the advocate of torture, to Sunstein at Harvard, a totalitarian who advocates war on the First Amendment.
The U.S. Department of State has taken up Sunstein’s idea. Last month Eva Golinger reported in the Swiss newspaper, Zeit-Fragen, that the State Department plans to organize youth in “Twitter Revolutions” to destabilize countries and bring about regime change in order to achieve more American puppet states, such as the ones in Egypt, Jordan, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, Mexico, Columbia, Ukraine, Georgia, the Baltic states, Britain, and Western and Eastern Europe.
The First Amendment is being closed down. Its place is being taken by propaganda in behalf of whatever government does. As Stratton and I wrote in the second edition of our book documenting the destruction of law in the United States:
“Never in its history have the American people faced such danger to their constitutional protections as they face today from those in the government who hold the reins of power and from elements of the legal profession and the federal judiciary that support ‘energy in the executive.’ An assertive executive backed by an aggressive U.S. Department of Justice (sic) and unobstructed by a supine Congress and an intimidated corporate media has demonstrated an ability to ignore statutory law and public opinion. The precedents that have been set during the opening years of the twenty-first century bode ill for the future of American liberty.”
Similar assaults on the rule of law can be observed in England. However, the British have not completely given up on accountable government. The Chilcot Inquiry is looking into how Britain was deceived into participating in the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq. President Obama, of course, has blocked any inquiry into how the U.S. was deceived into attacking Iraq in violation of law.
Much damning information has come out about Blair’s deception of the British government and people. Sir David Manning, foreign policy advisor to Blair, told the Chilcot Inquiry that Blair had promised Bush support for the invasion almost a year in advance. Blair had told his country that it was a last minute call based on proof of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.
Sir William Patey told the inquiry that President Bush began talking about invading Iraq six or seven months prior to September 11, 2001. A devastating official memo has come to light from Lord Goldsmith, Prime Minister Blair’s top law official, advising Blair that an invasion of Iraq would be in breach of international law.
Now a secret and personal letter to Prime Minister Blair from his Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has surfaced. In the letter, the Foreign Secretary warned the Prime Minister that his case for military invasion of Iraq was of dubious legality and was likely as false as the argument that removing Saddam Hussein would bring Iraqis a better life.
Blair himself must now testify. He has the reputation, whether deserved or not, as one of the slickest liars in the world. But some accountability seems to be heading his way. The Sunday Times (London) reported on January 17 that the latest poll indicates that 52 percent of the British people believe that Blair deliberately misled his country in order to take Britain to war for the Americans. About one quarter of the British people think Blair should be put on trial as a war criminal.
Unlike the U.S., which takes care to keep the government unaccountable to law, Britain is a member of the International Criminal Court, so Blair does stand some risk of being held accountable for the war crimes of President George W. Bush’s regime and the U.S. Congress.
In contrast, insouciant Americans are content for their government to behave illegally. A majority supports torture despite its illegality, and a McClatchy-Ipsos poll found that 51 percent of Americans agree that “it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”
As our Founding Fathers warned, fools who give up liberty for security will have neither.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. His new book, How the Economy was Lost, will be published next month by AK Press / CounterPunch. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Veteranos de guerra luchan contra deportación
Líos con la ley hacen de indocumentados víctimas de norma migratoria en EEUU
Pilar Marrero
La Opinión
Ni el servicio militar más honroso y condecorado sirve para proteger a veteranos de guerra de Estados Unidos de la implacable ley de inmigración, que considera una larga lista delitos no violentos como causa de deportación.
Cada vez surgen a la luz más casos de veteranos que, habiendo servido en las Fuerzas Armadas de este país y en conflictos armados, se meten en problemas con la ley a su regreso y terminan en proceso de deportación.
De acuerdo con activistas, varios cientos de veteranos, quizá miles, ya han sido deportados. No hay una cifra oficial porque todas las deportaciones se cuentan juntas y el servicio militar no afecta el proceso, ni para bien ni para mal, según indicaron abogados.
Héctor López, quien ahora reside en Rosarito, Baja California, es uno de ellos.
"Luego que volví del servicio me involucré en drogas y alcohol. Me arrestaron varias veces por esa razón, por tener botellas abiertas en el carro, o drogas", comenta López en entrevista telefónica desde México. "Nunca me metí en delitos violentos, ni soy un terrorista. Pero mi servicio no importó. Me deportaron".
Para algunos, es una situación que los tomó desprevenidos después de muchos años de residencia y servicio.
Es el caso de Louie Álvarez, quien llegó de México a los 4 años de edad y a los 17, en los años 70, se enlistó en los Marines porque se sentía totalmente estadounidense. "Crecí con las películas de John Wayne y de Jimmy Stewart", apunta.
Álvarez sirvió en Vietnam, y a su regreso comenzó a andar con personas de su barrio que tomaban drogas, y a consumirlas a su vez él mismo. Lo arrestaron varias veces por posesión simple de drogas y fue a la cárcel por poco tiempo. Luego de varios años lo volvieron a arrestar con una "pequeña cantidad de marihuana en el carro". Fue a prisión, y tras cumplir su condena pasó a manos de las autoridades de inmigración para ser deportado.
Tras muchos intentos, Álvarez logró salir en libertad bajo fianza. Actualmente está en su tercer intento de apelación ante el Noveno Circuito. Pero sabe que va a perder la apelación.
"Estoy tratando de ganar tiempo", comenta Álvarez, quien vive con su familia en Aliso Viejo, en el condado de Orange. Cuando estaba detenido por la Oficina de Control de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE), en El Centro, solicitó la naturalización para ver si se la otorgaban. Después de todo, los soldados reciben actualmente un proceso acelerado y generoso de naturalización, incluso si no son residentes, sobre todo cuando han servido en tiempos de guerra.
Su caso no ha sido negado, pero tampoco aprobado. Pero lo más probable es que no se la otorguen. Una de las condiciones que los veteranos sí deben cumplir —a pesar de que se les exime de varias otras— es la "buena conducta moral". Es decir, no haber cometido delitos.
Es más facil decirlo que hacerlo, señala Robyn Sword, quien junto con algunos de los soldados fundó el grupo Veteranos Desterrados, que busca difundir su situación.
Sword es la novia de Rohan Coombs, un veterano jamaiquino que sirvió en la primera guerra del Golfo y regresó sufriendo de PTSD (Síndrome de Estrés Postraumático), un desorden mental que no se tomó en serio hasta hace pocos años y que muchos soldados sufren al regresar de conflictos.
"Él sufría de PSTD sin saberlo, y luego su esposa murió poco antes de Navidad, y el problema creció. Comenzó a caer en picada, empezó a usar marihuana y a tomar para tratar de paliar los sentimientos que tenía. Se metió en problemas varias veces y fue convicto en tres ocasiones por delitos de droga", comenta Sword.
Aparte de la incidencia de PSTD, los problemas de drogas y alcohol no son inusuales en veteranos de guerra. Por ejemplo, un estudio del Departamento de Salud y Servicios Sociales halló que una tercera parte de los veteranos muestran problemas mentales o sicosociales y un 20% son diagnosticados con un problema de alcohol o drogas.
Muchos, alega Sword, ni siquiera saben que tienen un problema y por eso terminan en conflictos con la ley.
Coombs está en un centro de detención de ICE desde hace más de un año y tiene que ir a la corte en marzo. "Sabemos que será deportado y apelaremos el caso. Lo único que queda es que la secretaria de Seguridad Interna [Janet Napolitano] dé una orden de parar la deportación de estos veteranos… o que cambie la ley", agrega.
Si estos soldados hubieran sido ciudadanos estadounidenses al salir del servicio, nada de esto estaría pasando, explica Heather Boxeth, abogada de San Diego que ha representado, gratis, a varios de los veteranos. Un ciudadano, no importa cuántos delitos cometa, no puede ser deportado. Pero un extranjero, un residente permanente que no sea aún ciudadano, es deportable a partir de una larga lista de delitos tipificados desde la reforma migratoria de 1996 como "felonías agravadas", aunque muchos de ellos ni siquiera son delitos mayores bajo el código penal.
"Hay muchos de ellos, más de los que uno se imagina", afirma Boxeth. "El martes pasado acabo de perder otro caso, un veterano de Vietnam deportado. El juez no quería hacerlo, me lo dijo después de la audiencia. Pero no tenía opción bajo la ley".
Boxeth, la organización National Lawyers Guild y otros abogados y activistas afirman que los veteranos deberían ser considerados "nacionales" de Estados Unidos porque cuando se enlistan en las Fuerzas Armadas hacen un juramento de lealtad casi exactamente igual que el de la toma de juramento de naturalización.
"No estamos diciendo que tengan que hacerlos ciudadanos, sino que son nacionales por servir en las Fuerzas Armadas. Los tribunales me niegan ese argumento, la ley necesita cambiar", señala Boxeth.
Es una gran contradicción, dice la abogada. La ley permite la naturalización póstuma de soldados que fallecen en la guerra, pero al mismo tiempo deporta "a quienes sobrevivieron, sirvieron honradamente y luego se metieron en problemas, en muchos casos, debido a ese mismo servicio".
Algunos legisladores en Washington se han mostrado favorables a sus casos. El congresista de California, Bob Fillner, y el senador Patrick Leahy, de Vermont, han expresado su solidaridad y han hablado en beneficio de su causa.
Pero la mayoría de los legisladores "piensa que como han cometido delitos, no pueden defenderlos políticamente", señala Sword.
Justo hace unos días, el Departamento de Seguridad Interna terminó los reglamentos que facilitan la ciudadanía a los veteranos de las Fuerzas Armadas. En la actualidad, un inmigrante puede convertirse en ciudadano tan sólo con servir un día en la guerra, incluso sin ser residente permanente.
Pero la ley actual no permite a los soldados inmigrantes, por muy honorable que sea su servicio, naturalizarse si han tenido algún problema serio con la ley. Tampoco impide su deportación.
"A pesar de lo agradecidos que debemos de estar por ese servicio, eso no quiere decir que cuando la gente comete delitos no pagará las ramificaciones de los mismos. Si eres residente y cometes ciertos delitos, puedes ser deportado. Y muchos de esos delitos también probablemente dificulten la ciudadanía", afirma Chris Bentley, portavoz del DHS.
Héctor López, quien tras ser deportado a México —donde no vivía desde hacía más de 30 años— tuvo que aprender español, no entiende cómo su país puede haberlo abandonado de esa manera.
"Es muy dificil. Yo me considero un estadounidense, aquí no hay trabajos, los que hay pagan 60 pesos al día. Es cierto que cometí errores, pero tengo razones para vivir. Ahora estoy limpio de drogas, estoy saludable, esto no es justo. No soy un terrorista ni puse una bomba en ninguna parte. Yo quiero volver a mi país".
Pilar Marrero
La Opinión
Ni el servicio militar más honroso y condecorado sirve para proteger a veteranos de guerra de Estados Unidos de la implacable ley de inmigración, que considera una larga lista delitos no violentos como causa de deportación.
Cada vez surgen a la luz más casos de veteranos que, habiendo servido en las Fuerzas Armadas de este país y en conflictos armados, se meten en problemas con la ley a su regreso y terminan en proceso de deportación.
De acuerdo con activistas, varios cientos de veteranos, quizá miles, ya han sido deportados. No hay una cifra oficial porque todas las deportaciones se cuentan juntas y el servicio militar no afecta el proceso, ni para bien ni para mal, según indicaron abogados.
Héctor López, quien ahora reside en Rosarito, Baja California, es uno de ellos.
"Luego que volví del servicio me involucré en drogas y alcohol. Me arrestaron varias veces por esa razón, por tener botellas abiertas en el carro, o drogas", comenta López en entrevista telefónica desde México. "Nunca me metí en delitos violentos, ni soy un terrorista. Pero mi servicio no importó. Me deportaron".
Para algunos, es una situación que los tomó desprevenidos después de muchos años de residencia y servicio.
Es el caso de Louie Álvarez, quien llegó de México a los 4 años de edad y a los 17, en los años 70, se enlistó en los Marines porque se sentía totalmente estadounidense. "Crecí con las películas de John Wayne y de Jimmy Stewart", apunta.
Álvarez sirvió en Vietnam, y a su regreso comenzó a andar con personas de su barrio que tomaban drogas, y a consumirlas a su vez él mismo. Lo arrestaron varias veces por posesión simple de drogas y fue a la cárcel por poco tiempo. Luego de varios años lo volvieron a arrestar con una "pequeña cantidad de marihuana en el carro". Fue a prisión, y tras cumplir su condena pasó a manos de las autoridades de inmigración para ser deportado.
Tras muchos intentos, Álvarez logró salir en libertad bajo fianza. Actualmente está en su tercer intento de apelación ante el Noveno Circuito. Pero sabe que va a perder la apelación.
"Estoy tratando de ganar tiempo", comenta Álvarez, quien vive con su familia en Aliso Viejo, en el condado de Orange. Cuando estaba detenido por la Oficina de Control de Inmigración y Aduanas (ICE), en El Centro, solicitó la naturalización para ver si se la otorgaban. Después de todo, los soldados reciben actualmente un proceso acelerado y generoso de naturalización, incluso si no son residentes, sobre todo cuando han servido en tiempos de guerra.
Su caso no ha sido negado, pero tampoco aprobado. Pero lo más probable es que no se la otorguen. Una de las condiciones que los veteranos sí deben cumplir —a pesar de que se les exime de varias otras— es la "buena conducta moral". Es decir, no haber cometido delitos.
Es más facil decirlo que hacerlo, señala Robyn Sword, quien junto con algunos de los soldados fundó el grupo Veteranos Desterrados, que busca difundir su situación.
Sword es la novia de Rohan Coombs, un veterano jamaiquino que sirvió en la primera guerra del Golfo y regresó sufriendo de PTSD (Síndrome de Estrés Postraumático), un desorden mental que no se tomó en serio hasta hace pocos años y que muchos soldados sufren al regresar de conflictos.
"Él sufría de PSTD sin saberlo, y luego su esposa murió poco antes de Navidad, y el problema creció. Comenzó a caer en picada, empezó a usar marihuana y a tomar para tratar de paliar los sentimientos que tenía. Se metió en problemas varias veces y fue convicto en tres ocasiones por delitos de droga", comenta Sword.
Aparte de la incidencia de PSTD, los problemas de drogas y alcohol no son inusuales en veteranos de guerra. Por ejemplo, un estudio del Departamento de Salud y Servicios Sociales halló que una tercera parte de los veteranos muestran problemas mentales o sicosociales y un 20% son diagnosticados con un problema de alcohol o drogas.
Muchos, alega Sword, ni siquiera saben que tienen un problema y por eso terminan en conflictos con la ley.
Coombs está en un centro de detención de ICE desde hace más de un año y tiene que ir a la corte en marzo. "Sabemos que será deportado y apelaremos el caso. Lo único que queda es que la secretaria de Seguridad Interna [Janet Napolitano] dé una orden de parar la deportación de estos veteranos… o que cambie la ley", agrega.
Si estos soldados hubieran sido ciudadanos estadounidenses al salir del servicio, nada de esto estaría pasando, explica Heather Boxeth, abogada de San Diego que ha representado, gratis, a varios de los veteranos. Un ciudadano, no importa cuántos delitos cometa, no puede ser deportado. Pero un extranjero, un residente permanente que no sea aún ciudadano, es deportable a partir de una larga lista de delitos tipificados desde la reforma migratoria de 1996 como "felonías agravadas", aunque muchos de ellos ni siquiera son delitos mayores bajo el código penal.
"Hay muchos de ellos, más de los que uno se imagina", afirma Boxeth. "El martes pasado acabo de perder otro caso, un veterano de Vietnam deportado. El juez no quería hacerlo, me lo dijo después de la audiencia. Pero no tenía opción bajo la ley".
Boxeth, la organización National Lawyers Guild y otros abogados y activistas afirman que los veteranos deberían ser considerados "nacionales" de Estados Unidos porque cuando se enlistan en las Fuerzas Armadas hacen un juramento de lealtad casi exactamente igual que el de la toma de juramento de naturalización.
"No estamos diciendo que tengan que hacerlos ciudadanos, sino que son nacionales por servir en las Fuerzas Armadas. Los tribunales me niegan ese argumento, la ley necesita cambiar", señala Boxeth.
Es una gran contradicción, dice la abogada. La ley permite la naturalización póstuma de soldados que fallecen en la guerra, pero al mismo tiempo deporta "a quienes sobrevivieron, sirvieron honradamente y luego se metieron en problemas, en muchos casos, debido a ese mismo servicio".
Algunos legisladores en Washington se han mostrado favorables a sus casos. El congresista de California, Bob Fillner, y el senador Patrick Leahy, de Vermont, han expresado su solidaridad y han hablado en beneficio de su causa.
Pero la mayoría de los legisladores "piensa que como han cometido delitos, no pueden defenderlos políticamente", señala Sword.
Justo hace unos días, el Departamento de Seguridad Interna terminó los reglamentos que facilitan la ciudadanía a los veteranos de las Fuerzas Armadas. En la actualidad, un inmigrante puede convertirse en ciudadano tan sólo con servir un día en la guerra, incluso sin ser residente permanente.
Pero la ley actual no permite a los soldados inmigrantes, por muy honorable que sea su servicio, naturalizarse si han tenido algún problema serio con la ley. Tampoco impide su deportación.
"A pesar de lo agradecidos que debemos de estar por ese servicio, eso no quiere decir que cuando la gente comete delitos no pagará las ramificaciones de los mismos. Si eres residente y cometes ciertos delitos, puedes ser deportado. Y muchos de esos delitos también probablemente dificulten la ciudadanía", afirma Chris Bentley, portavoz del DHS.
Héctor López, quien tras ser deportado a México —donde no vivía desde hacía más de 30 años— tuvo que aprender español, no entiende cómo su país puede haberlo abandonado de esa manera.
"Es muy dificil. Yo me considero un estadounidense, aquí no hay trabajos, los que hay pagan 60 pesos al día. Es cierto que cometí errores, pero tengo razones para vivir. Ahora estoy limpio de drogas, estoy saludable, esto no es justo. No soy un terrorista ni puse una bomba en ninguna parte. Yo quiero volver a mi país".
U.S. War Veterans Fight Deportation
La Opinión
Not even the most decorated and honorable military service can protect U.S. war veterans from ruthless immigration laws, which consider a long list of non-violent crimes as grounds for deportation.
More and more cases have come to light of veterans who, after serving in this country’s Armed Forces and armed conflicts, get in trouble with the law when they come home and end up in deportation proceedings.
According to activists, hundreds of veterans – perhaps even thousands – have already been deported. There are no official figures because all deportations are counted together and military service has no effect, positive or negative, on the process, immigration lawyers say.
Héctor López, who now lives in Rosarito, Baja California, is one of them.
"When I came home from the service I got involved in drugs and alcohol. I was arrested a few times for that, for having open bottles in the car, or drugs,” says López in a phone interview from Mexico. "I never got involved in violent crimes, and I’m not a terrorist. But my service didn’t matter. I was deported."
For some, it’s a situation that took them by surprise after many years of residence and service.
That’s what happened to Louie Álvarez, who came here from Mexico when he was four years old. When he was 17, in the 1970s, he joined the Marines because, he says, he felt totally American. "I grew up with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart movies," he says.
Álvarez served in Vietnam, and when he came home he started hanging out with people in his neighborhood who did drugs, and he started doing drugs himself. He was arrested several times for possession and went to jail for a short time. A few years later he was arrested again with a “small quantity of marijuana in the car.” He went to prison, and after serving his time he was handed over to immigration authorities to be deported.
After many attempts, Álvarez was released on bond. He is now in his third appeal before the Ninth Circuit. But he knows he’s going to lose.
"I'm trying to buy time," said Alvarez, who lives with his family in the town of Aliso Viejo, in Orange County, Calif. When he was detained by the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in El Centro, he applied for naturalization to see if they would grant it to him. After all, soldiers currently receive an accelerated and generous process of naturalization, even if they are not residents, especially when they have served in times of war.
His case wasn’t rejected, but it wasn’t approved wither. But most likely it will not be granted. One of the conditions that veterans have to meet – despite being exempt from many others – is having “good moral conduct.” In other words, they can’t have committed any crimes.
That’s easier said than done, according to Robyn Sword, who along with some soldiers founded the group Exiled Veterans, which seeks to bring attention to their situation.
Sword is the girlfriend of Rohan Coombs, a Jamaican veteran who served in the first Gulf War and returned with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a mental disorder that was not taken seriously until recently that many returning soldiers suffer from.
"He was suffering from PTSD without knowing it, and then his wife died right before Christmas, and the problem got worse. He started to fall into a downward spiral, he started using marijuana and drinking to try to alleviate the feelings he had, He got into trouble a few times and he was convicted three times for drug offenses,” said Sword.
In addition to the incidence of PTSD, drug and alcohol problems are not uncommon in war veterans. For example, a study by the Department of Health and Human Services found that one third of veterans demonstrate mental or psychosocial problems, and 20 percent have been diagnosed with an alcohol or drug problem.
Sword claims that many don’t even know they have a problem and end up in trouble with the law.
Coombs has been in an ICE detention center for more than a year and has a trial date set for March. "We know he will be deported and will appeal the case. The only thing left is for the Secretary of Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano) to give an order to stop the deportation of these veterans ... or to change the law," she added.
If these soldiers had been U.S. citizens when they got out of the service, none of this would have happened, explained Heather Boxeth, a San Diego lawyer who has represented several veterans pro bono.
A citizen cannot be deported, no matter how many crimes he or she committed, she explained. But a foreigner, a permanent resident who is not a citizen, can be deported for committing various offenses outlined in the 1996 immigration reform act as “aggravated felonies” -- even many of them are not actually felonies under the criminal code.
"There are many more than you can imagine," said Boxeth. "Last Tuesday I lost another case, a Vietnam veteran who was deported. The judge told me after the hearing that he did not want to (deport him). But he had no choice under the law."
Boxeth, the National Lawyers Guild and other lawyers and activists argue that veterans should be considered U.S. "nationals" because when they enlist in the military, they have to take an oath of loyalty almost exactly like the oath people take to become naturalized citizens.
"We're not saying they have to make them citizens, but nationals for serving in the Armed Forces. If the courts reject that argument, the law needs to change," says Boxeth.
It is very contradictory, Boxeth says, that the law allows for the posthumous naturalization of soldiers who die in war, and yet deports "those who survived, who served honorably and then got into trouble, in many cases, because of their service."
Some lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have shown sympathy for these cases. California Congressman Bob Filner, D-Calif., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, have expressed their solidarity and spoken out on behalf of the veterans facing deportation.
But most lawmakers "think that since they have committed crimes, they can’t be defended politically," said Sword.
A few days ago, the Department of Homeland Security ended regulations that facilitated citizenship for veterans of the Armed Forces. Currently, an immigrant can become a citizen after serving only one day in a war, even if he or she is not a permanent resident.
But current law does not allow immigrant soldiers to become citizens -- regardless of how honorable their service was -- if they have had any serious problems with the law. It doesn’t prevent their deportations either.
"Even though we should be grateful for their service, that doesn’t mean that when people commit crimes they don’t pay the consequences. If you are a resident and you commit certain crimes, you can be deported. And many of these crimes also probably complicate the path to citizenship,” says Chris Bentley, spokesman for DHS.
Hector Lopez, who was deported to Mexico--where he hadn’t lived for more than 30 years, had to learn Spanish. He doesn’t understand how his country can abandon him like this.
"It is very difficult. I consider myself an American. There are no jobs here, they pay 60 pesos a day. Certainly I made mistakes, but I have reasons to live. Now I am clean, I'm healthy, this isn’t fair. I’m not a terrorist, I didn’t bomb anything. I want to return to my country. "
Not even the most decorated and honorable military service can protect U.S. war veterans from ruthless immigration laws, which consider a long list of non-violent crimes as grounds for deportation.
More and more cases have come to light of veterans who, after serving in this country’s Armed Forces and armed conflicts, get in trouble with the law when they come home and end up in deportation proceedings.
According to activists, hundreds of veterans – perhaps even thousands – have already been deported. There are no official figures because all deportations are counted together and military service has no effect, positive or negative, on the process, immigration lawyers say.
Héctor López, who now lives in Rosarito, Baja California, is one of them.
"When I came home from the service I got involved in drugs and alcohol. I was arrested a few times for that, for having open bottles in the car, or drugs,” says López in a phone interview from Mexico. "I never got involved in violent crimes, and I’m not a terrorist. But my service didn’t matter. I was deported."
For some, it’s a situation that took them by surprise after many years of residence and service.
That’s what happened to Louie Álvarez, who came here from Mexico when he was four years old. When he was 17, in the 1970s, he joined the Marines because, he says, he felt totally American. "I grew up with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart movies," he says.
Álvarez served in Vietnam, and when he came home he started hanging out with people in his neighborhood who did drugs, and he started doing drugs himself. He was arrested several times for possession and went to jail for a short time. A few years later he was arrested again with a “small quantity of marijuana in the car.” He went to prison, and after serving his time he was handed over to immigration authorities to be deported.
After many attempts, Álvarez was released on bond. He is now in his third appeal before the Ninth Circuit. But he knows he’s going to lose.
"I'm trying to buy time," said Alvarez, who lives with his family in the town of Aliso Viejo, in Orange County, Calif. When he was detained by the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in El Centro, he applied for naturalization to see if they would grant it to him. After all, soldiers currently receive an accelerated and generous process of naturalization, even if they are not residents, especially when they have served in times of war.
His case wasn’t rejected, but it wasn’t approved wither. But most likely it will not be granted. One of the conditions that veterans have to meet – despite being exempt from many others – is having “good moral conduct.” In other words, they can’t have committed any crimes.
That’s easier said than done, according to Robyn Sword, who along with some soldiers founded the group Exiled Veterans, which seeks to bring attention to their situation.
Sword is the girlfriend of Rohan Coombs, a Jamaican veteran who served in the first Gulf War and returned with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a mental disorder that was not taken seriously until recently that many returning soldiers suffer from.
"He was suffering from PTSD without knowing it, and then his wife died right before Christmas, and the problem got worse. He started to fall into a downward spiral, he started using marijuana and drinking to try to alleviate the feelings he had, He got into trouble a few times and he was convicted three times for drug offenses,” said Sword.
In addition to the incidence of PTSD, drug and alcohol problems are not uncommon in war veterans. For example, a study by the Department of Health and Human Services found that one third of veterans demonstrate mental or psychosocial problems, and 20 percent have been diagnosed with an alcohol or drug problem.
Sword claims that many don’t even know they have a problem and end up in trouble with the law.
Coombs has been in an ICE detention center for more than a year and has a trial date set for March. "We know he will be deported and will appeal the case. The only thing left is for the Secretary of Homeland Security (Janet Napolitano) to give an order to stop the deportation of these veterans ... or to change the law," she added.
If these soldiers had been U.S. citizens when they got out of the service, none of this would have happened, explained Heather Boxeth, a San Diego lawyer who has represented several veterans pro bono.
A citizen cannot be deported, no matter how many crimes he or she committed, she explained. But a foreigner, a permanent resident who is not a citizen, can be deported for committing various offenses outlined in the 1996 immigration reform act as “aggravated felonies” -- even many of them are not actually felonies under the criminal code.
"There are many more than you can imagine," said Boxeth. "Last Tuesday I lost another case, a Vietnam veteran who was deported. The judge told me after the hearing that he did not want to (deport him). But he had no choice under the law."
Boxeth, the National Lawyers Guild and other lawyers and activists argue that veterans should be considered U.S. "nationals" because when they enlist in the military, they have to take an oath of loyalty almost exactly like the oath people take to become naturalized citizens.
"We're not saying they have to make them citizens, but nationals for serving in the Armed Forces. If the courts reject that argument, the law needs to change," says Boxeth.
It is very contradictory, Boxeth says, that the law allows for the posthumous naturalization of soldiers who die in war, and yet deports "those who survived, who served honorably and then got into trouble, in many cases, because of their service."
Some lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have shown sympathy for these cases. California Congressman Bob Filner, D-Calif., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, have expressed their solidarity and spoken out on behalf of the veterans facing deportation.
But most lawmakers "think that since they have committed crimes, they can’t be defended politically," said Sword.
A few days ago, the Department of Homeland Security ended regulations that facilitated citizenship for veterans of the Armed Forces. Currently, an immigrant can become a citizen after serving only one day in a war, even if he or she is not a permanent resident.
But current law does not allow immigrant soldiers to become citizens -- regardless of how honorable their service was -- if they have had any serious problems with the law. It doesn’t prevent their deportations either.
"Even though we should be grateful for their service, that doesn’t mean that when people commit crimes they don’t pay the consequences. If you are a resident and you commit certain crimes, you can be deported. And many of these crimes also probably complicate the path to citizenship,” says Chris Bentley, spokesman for DHS.
Hector Lopez, who was deported to Mexico--where he hadn’t lived for more than 30 years, had to learn Spanish. He doesn’t understand how his country can abandon him like this.
"It is very difficult. I consider myself an American. There are no jobs here, they pay 60 pesos a day. Certainly I made mistakes, but I have reasons to live. Now I am clean, I'm healthy, this isn’t fair. I’m not a terrorist, I didn’t bomb anything. I want to return to my country. "
1/13/10
XI Encuentro Indígena y Cultural de las Américas
Por la Unidad de los Pueblos Indígenas
Pukara
En Colorado, Estados Unidos, del 3 al 8 de diciembre de 2009 tuvo lugar el XI Encuentro Indígena y Cultural de las Américas. Este undécimo encuentro es consecuencia de un esfuerzo iniciado el año de 1998 en la Universidad de Puerto Rico, en Río Piedras, cuando a iniciativa del actual coordinador internacional de este Encuentro, Ramón Nenadich Ph.D., se conformó un cuerpo de trabajo que se ha ido consolidando desde entonces.
En la actualidad, esta iniciativa cuenta con grupos, organizaciones y personas que han participado en todos o en varios de los encuentros. Este XI Encuentro agrupó a delegaciones de varias naciones indígenas de Norte América, en especial de los pueblos Dakota y de los pueblos indígenas de Alaska. Estuvieron presentes también delegados de organizaciones indígenas procedentes de los actuales estados de Panamá, Costa Rica, México, Guatemala, Brasil, Ecuador, Bolivia y Chile. El encuentro se realizó en La Universidad del Estado de Colorado y en sitios ceremoniales de las Montañas Rocallosas de Colorado, en inmediaciones del pueblo de Carbondale.
Este encuentro significó un hito importante en el crecimiento y fortalecimiento de esta iniciativa, concretizándose en cuatro principales decisiones: La constitución de una Fundación Internacional, la cuestión del perdón indígena a Cristobal Colón, la confirmación de una alianza con sectores de las sociedades no indígenas comprometidos con la salvaguarda de la naturaleza y la decisión sobre la sede del XII Encuentro Indígena de las Américas.
Carbondale será la sede de la Fundación Internacional para el Avance de los Pueblos Indígenas, a través de la cual será posible la realización de distintos proyectos educativos, culturales, espirituales, sociales, políticos y económicos que permitan avanzar en el mejoramiento de la calidad de vida de nuestros pueblos y en la protección de nuestras tierras y demás derechos humanos y naturales. Además, a través de la Fundación se promoverá la unidad de todos los pueblos indígenas, para que juntos y con los aliados que se pueda allegar, se superen las diversas situaciones de explotación, marginación, pobreza y discriminación en la que actualmente se debaten nuestros pueblos.
Un tema importante que salió en las discusiones fue el perdón indígena a Cristobal Colón. Según la opinión de varios participantes, la energía liberadora indígena está implicada en su efectividad por el trauma de la invasión. Este trauma, que de alguna manera genera evidentemente una memoria histórica necesaria para una práctica liberadora, origina también sentimientos de rencor y encono que sin la adecuada práctica emancipadora resultan perjudiciales a los objetivos descolonizadores indígenas, explicando quizás el inmovilismo ante los poderes opresores que marca la situación de muchos de nuestros pueblos. De ahí que varios delegados sugirieron perdonar a la persona de Cristobal Colón, con un perdón que no signifique anuencia al proceso colonizador sino la liberación positiva de las energías y potencialidades para que estas se encaminen decididamente hacia el logro histórico de los objetivos indígenas. Es mérito de este Encuentro haber planteado este tema, que por sus implicaciones políticas e históricas es todavía asunto de debate y definición.
Este XI Encuentro significó también la discusión de la naturaleza de las alianzas de los pueblos indígenas. En el mundo contemporáneo existen sectores que se aproximan a los objetivos de los pueblos originarios y que se manifiestan en ensayos cada vez más importantes por poner en marcha formas económicas alternativas; grupos de más en más importantes preocupados por la salvaguarda de la naturaleza y por dar un nuevo sentido a la relación de esta con el ser humano; comunidades humanas interesadas en definir el significado ideológico y espiritual de los cambios que vivimos… Estos sectores, entre otros, pueden ser aliados naturales de la causa indígena. Un logro de este Encuentro es haber discutido la obligatoriedad de que se efectuen aproximaciones a estos aliados que no estén mediatizadas por las organizaciones políticas o sociales de los estados colonizadores, sino por las propias organizaciones indígenas.
Finalmente, es importante recalcar la decisión de que en marzo de 2010 se realice el XII Encuentro Indígena de las Américas en Ecuador, en la Comunidad de Cayambe. La delegación indígena Cayambe presente en este Encuentro asumió, en nombre de su pueblo, la responsabilidad de organizar este nuevo Encuentro.
El próximo Encuentro Indígena y Cultural de las Américas
El XII Encuentro Indígena y Cultural de las Américas de se realizará en Sudamérica, en Ecuador. La sede será el territorio de la Confederación del pueblo Kichwa Kayambi, ubicado al norte de la región sierra ecuatoriana.
Este encuentro se realizará del 18 al 22 de marzo de 2010.
Habrá conferencias, mesas temáticas y exposiciones. Todo el programa estará relacionado con la descolonización, la soberanía y la autonomía de los pueblos indígenas de las Américas.
Se coordinará con programas de música y bailes autóctonos. Habrá una feria gastronómica nativa y una feria exposición de semillas y artesanías ancestrales. Habrá proyección de documentales sobre la lucha de los pueblos indígenas de las Américas.
Este XII Encuentro cuenta con el apoyo del Municipio de Cayambe. Cayambe es un cantón de la provincia de Pichincha. La localida de Cayambe se halla a 78 Km al norte de Quito. Tiene una temperatura que varía en el día entre 12 y 23 grados centígrados.
El 21 de marzo se celebrará con amawt’as y líderes espirituales la ceremonia del Muskuk Nina, o Fuego Nuevo, en el templo sagrado de los Kayambis, la pirámide de Puntiatzil.
Pukara
En Colorado, Estados Unidos, del 3 al 8 de diciembre de 2009 tuvo lugar el XI Encuentro Indígena y Cultural de las Américas. Este undécimo encuentro es consecuencia de un esfuerzo iniciado el año de 1998 en la Universidad de Puerto Rico, en Río Piedras, cuando a iniciativa del actual coordinador internacional de este Encuentro, Ramón Nenadich Ph.D., se conformó un cuerpo de trabajo que se ha ido consolidando desde entonces.
En la actualidad, esta iniciativa cuenta con grupos, organizaciones y personas que han participado en todos o en varios de los encuentros. Este XI Encuentro agrupó a delegaciones de varias naciones indígenas de Norte América, en especial de los pueblos Dakota y de los pueblos indígenas de Alaska. Estuvieron presentes también delegados de organizaciones indígenas procedentes de los actuales estados de Panamá, Costa Rica, México, Guatemala, Brasil, Ecuador, Bolivia y Chile. El encuentro se realizó en La Universidad del Estado de Colorado y en sitios ceremoniales de las Montañas Rocallosas de Colorado, en inmediaciones del pueblo de Carbondale.
Este encuentro significó un hito importante en el crecimiento y fortalecimiento de esta iniciativa, concretizándose en cuatro principales decisiones: La constitución de una Fundación Internacional, la cuestión del perdón indígena a Cristobal Colón, la confirmación de una alianza con sectores de las sociedades no indígenas comprometidos con la salvaguarda de la naturaleza y la decisión sobre la sede del XII Encuentro Indígena de las Américas.
Carbondale será la sede de la Fundación Internacional para el Avance de los Pueblos Indígenas, a través de la cual será posible la realización de distintos proyectos educativos, culturales, espirituales, sociales, políticos y económicos que permitan avanzar en el mejoramiento de la calidad de vida de nuestros pueblos y en la protección de nuestras tierras y demás derechos humanos y naturales. Además, a través de la Fundación se promoverá la unidad de todos los pueblos indígenas, para que juntos y con los aliados que se pueda allegar, se superen las diversas situaciones de explotación, marginación, pobreza y discriminación en la que actualmente se debaten nuestros pueblos.
Un tema importante que salió en las discusiones fue el perdón indígena a Cristobal Colón. Según la opinión de varios participantes, la energía liberadora indígena está implicada en su efectividad por el trauma de la invasión. Este trauma, que de alguna manera genera evidentemente una memoria histórica necesaria para una práctica liberadora, origina también sentimientos de rencor y encono que sin la adecuada práctica emancipadora resultan perjudiciales a los objetivos descolonizadores indígenas, explicando quizás el inmovilismo ante los poderes opresores que marca la situación de muchos de nuestros pueblos. De ahí que varios delegados sugirieron perdonar a la persona de Cristobal Colón, con un perdón que no signifique anuencia al proceso colonizador sino la liberación positiva de las energías y potencialidades para que estas se encaminen decididamente hacia el logro histórico de los objetivos indígenas. Es mérito de este Encuentro haber planteado este tema, que por sus implicaciones políticas e históricas es todavía asunto de debate y definición.
Este XI Encuentro significó también la discusión de la naturaleza de las alianzas de los pueblos indígenas. En el mundo contemporáneo existen sectores que se aproximan a los objetivos de los pueblos originarios y que se manifiestan en ensayos cada vez más importantes por poner en marcha formas económicas alternativas; grupos de más en más importantes preocupados por la salvaguarda de la naturaleza y por dar un nuevo sentido a la relación de esta con el ser humano; comunidades humanas interesadas en definir el significado ideológico y espiritual de los cambios que vivimos… Estos sectores, entre otros, pueden ser aliados naturales de la causa indígena. Un logro de este Encuentro es haber discutido la obligatoriedad de que se efectuen aproximaciones a estos aliados que no estén mediatizadas por las organizaciones políticas o sociales de los estados colonizadores, sino por las propias organizaciones indígenas.
Finalmente, es importante recalcar la decisión de que en marzo de 2010 se realice el XII Encuentro Indígena de las Américas en Ecuador, en la Comunidad de Cayambe. La delegación indígena Cayambe presente en este Encuentro asumió, en nombre de su pueblo, la responsabilidad de organizar este nuevo Encuentro.
El próximo Encuentro Indígena y Cultural de las Américas
El XII Encuentro Indígena y Cultural de las Américas de se realizará en Sudamérica, en Ecuador. La sede será el territorio de la Confederación del pueblo Kichwa Kayambi, ubicado al norte de la región sierra ecuatoriana.
Este encuentro se realizará del 18 al 22 de marzo de 2010.
Habrá conferencias, mesas temáticas y exposiciones. Todo el programa estará relacionado con la descolonización, la soberanía y la autonomía de los pueblos indígenas de las Américas.
Se coordinará con programas de música y bailes autóctonos. Habrá una feria gastronómica nativa y una feria exposición de semillas y artesanías ancestrales. Habrá proyección de documentales sobre la lucha de los pueblos indígenas de las Américas.
Este XII Encuentro cuenta con el apoyo del Municipio de Cayambe. Cayambe es un cantón de la provincia de Pichincha. La localida de Cayambe se halla a 78 Km al norte de Quito. Tiene una temperatura que varía en el día entre 12 y 23 grados centígrados.
El 21 de marzo se celebrará con amawt’as y líderes espirituales la ceremonia del Muskuk Nina, o Fuego Nuevo, en el templo sagrado de los Kayambis, la pirámide de Puntiatzil.
Only Fools Rush Into Yemen
Three Guns for Every Person
By PATRICK COCKBURN
CounterPunch
Protestors are walking confidently down a street a street in the southern Yemeni port of Aden when there is a rattle of gunfire as the security services shoot into the crowd and people run panic-stricken seeking cover. A man in a check shirt is left lying face down in the dust in the empty street, a stream of blood flowing from a bullet wound in his head.
In northern Yemen government tanks and artillery pound the mountains as they try to dislodge Shia rebels holding positions among the mountain crags. Plumes of white smoke rise from exploding shells. Tribesmen not in uniform fighting on the government side sit behind their heavy machine guns and spray the hillsides with fire. A few miles away on a dusty piece of flat ground thousands of refugees driven from their homes by the war cower in small over-crowded tents.
Nobody paid much attention in the West to violent incidents like these in Yemen last year, though both of those described above were recorded on film. The mounting crisis in the country only attracted notice when a Nigerian student is revealed to have been “trained” in Yemen by al-Qa’ida to detonate explosives in his underpants on plane heading for Detroit. But this botched attack has led to the US and Britain starting to become entangled in one of the more violent countries in the world. The problems of Yemen are social, economic and political, and stretch back to the civil war in Yemen in the 1960s, but Gordon Brown believes solutions can be found by holding a one day summit on Yemen to “tackle extremism.”
Al-Qa’ida in Yemen is small, its active members numbering only 200-300 lightly armed militants in a country of 22 million people who are estimated to own no less than 60 million weapons. Al-Qa’ida has room to operate because central government authority barely extends outside the cities and because it can ally itself with the many opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in office since the 1970s.
The power of al-Qa’ida is not its military expertise or sinister training camps in the mountains of Yemen. Its strength is rather its ability to lure the US and Britain into commitments in dangerous countries like Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq, where the state is weak and its rule contested. It can do this because in the wake of 9/11 the US instinctively over-reacts to the most amateur and unsuccessful attack on the homeland.
Al-Qa’ida has always had some activists in Yemen. In 2000 they rammed The USS Cole in Aden port with a boat packed with explosives and ripped a hole in its hull, killing 17 American sailors. The Yemeni government made a secret truce with the group under whose term it would not be pursued if it carried out no more attacks. In 2006 al Qa’ida began to reorganize when 23 of its militants escaped from Sanaa jail. As al-Qa’ida members came under greater pressure in Saudi Arabia some fled to Yemen and set up a joint Saudi-Yemeni movement, al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
It is easy to see why AQAP finds Yemen an hospitable place to be. It is not a country where the state expects to have a monopoly of violence or authority. Long before 9/11 I used to be intrigued by the Yemeni authorities’ attitude to personal weapons as exemplified by security measures at Sanaa airport. These were very strict with all luggage X-rayed before it was even allowed into the airport building and X-rayed again at each stage of the suitcase’s journey to the plane. Passengers were given frequent body searches until they reached the departure lounge. This, as in most airports, had many shops selling local handicrafts and curios to travellers. The difference in Sanaa airport was that many of these items turned out to be swords and long curved knives. Discovering to their horror that many of passengers were carrying such weapons western airlines had to get their own flight crews to ask Yemenis, as they boarded the plane, if they were armed. Yemenis found it a strange question but dutifully handed over their daggers to be placed in plastic bags in the hold of the aircraft.
The US and Britain are about to increase their support for a government which is highly unpopular and engaged in a series of actual or potential civil wars. The heaviest fighting so far has been with the Zaydi Shia insurgents just south of the border with Saudi Arabia. They contest that they fighting discrimination and are responding to President Saleh’s dependence on Saudi Arabia and its extreme Sunni Wahhabism. President Saleh, for his part, has been portraying the Shia rebels as pawns of Iran, though his government has produced no evidence for this.
The dilemma for the US and Britain is that as they become more openly supportive of the Yemeni government they will be targeted as its sponsor by its many enemies. The south of the country, independent until 1990 and defeated in a civil war in 1994, is seething with rebellion. Government forces shoot at protestors. There have been many shootings, arrests and torture is endemic. “They can make a zebra say it is a gazelle,” is a chilling Yemeni saying of the government’s interrogation methods.
Southern newspapers have been shut down including al-Ayyam, which is the most widely read. Hisham Bashraheel, its 66-year-old editor, was arrested last Wednesday at his newspaper office in the Crater district of Aden after a protest against its closure last May when the paper was accused of supporting separatism. Some 30 protestors and 20 guards had fought a battle with the police in which one policeman and one guard were killed. They later gave themselves up.
I met Mr Bashraheel in the cluttered office of al-Ayyam some years ago when he was already engaged in daily skirmishes with the authorities. Sitting on a chair in his office was a man called Abdul Hakim Mahyub, with a long scar down the side of his face, to whom Mr Bashraheel introduced me. He said Mr Mahyub’s story of how he came by the scar explained a lot about current tensions between north and south in Yemen.
Mr Mahyub said he was a teacher in Aden and several weeks earlier he had an argument with a man laying pipes outside his school. As is common in Yemen the pipe-layer had a knife in his belt. In the course of the argument he drew it and stabbed Mr Mahyub in the face, cutting through his cheek and into his tongue. His speech was affected and he found it difficult to do his job teaching, but the reason he had come to al-Ayyam to complain was that he had just heard that the man who stabbed him, who came from Marib in northern Yemen, had been released by an official from the same province.
Mr Bashraheel said that favouritism towards northerners was becoming very common but for publishing Mr Mahyub’s story he risked being accused of “separatism” and stirring up hostility between north and south.
The US and Britain will face a similar difficulty in Yemen as they already do in Afghanistan. They will be supporting an unpopular and corrupt government. It is not that al-Qa’ida is very strong but that it will be swimming in sympathetic waters because the government is very weak.
The government itself can see the danger being labelled as an American pawn if it is too openly welcoming to foreign military aid. “Any intervention or direct military action by the United States could strengthen the al-Qa’ida network not weaken it,” said the deputy prime minister for defense and security affairs Rasheed al-Aleemi last week. The government would have liked to take all the aid it could get but without telling anybody about it.
All this sounds very like Afghanistan. And there is a further way in which the two countries resemble each other. Just as Pakistan believes it is crucially affected by what happens in Afghanistan so Saudi Arabia regards the future of Yemen as a vital interest. Saudi Arabia is by far the most important foreign power in Yemen, providing $2 billion in budget support, but its interest has always been in a weak government in Sanaa and one over which it can exercise some control.
The only way that the US and Britain could entirely squeeze out al-Qa’ida from Yemen is by strengthening its armed forces to the point at which the central government could take over parts of the country it has not ruled for decades. But this would provoke tribes and communities which exist in a state of semi-independence from the state. As in Afghanistan foreign intervention in Yemen soon begins to create a counter-reaction of which al-Qa’ida would be able to take advantage.
Patrick Cockburn is the Ihe author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq."
By PATRICK COCKBURN
CounterPunch
Protestors are walking confidently down a street a street in the southern Yemeni port of Aden when there is a rattle of gunfire as the security services shoot into the crowd and people run panic-stricken seeking cover. A man in a check shirt is left lying face down in the dust in the empty street, a stream of blood flowing from a bullet wound in his head.
In northern Yemen government tanks and artillery pound the mountains as they try to dislodge Shia rebels holding positions among the mountain crags. Plumes of white smoke rise from exploding shells. Tribesmen not in uniform fighting on the government side sit behind their heavy machine guns and spray the hillsides with fire. A few miles away on a dusty piece of flat ground thousands of refugees driven from their homes by the war cower in small over-crowded tents.
Nobody paid much attention in the West to violent incidents like these in Yemen last year, though both of those described above were recorded on film. The mounting crisis in the country only attracted notice when a Nigerian student is revealed to have been “trained” in Yemen by al-Qa’ida to detonate explosives in his underpants on plane heading for Detroit. But this botched attack has led to the US and Britain starting to become entangled in one of the more violent countries in the world. The problems of Yemen are social, economic and political, and stretch back to the civil war in Yemen in the 1960s, but Gordon Brown believes solutions can be found by holding a one day summit on Yemen to “tackle extremism.”
Al-Qa’ida in Yemen is small, its active members numbering only 200-300 lightly armed militants in a country of 22 million people who are estimated to own no less than 60 million weapons. Al-Qa’ida has room to operate because central government authority barely extends outside the cities and because it can ally itself with the many opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in office since the 1970s.
The power of al-Qa’ida is not its military expertise or sinister training camps in the mountains of Yemen. Its strength is rather its ability to lure the US and Britain into commitments in dangerous countries like Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq, where the state is weak and its rule contested. It can do this because in the wake of 9/11 the US instinctively over-reacts to the most amateur and unsuccessful attack on the homeland.
Al-Qa’ida has always had some activists in Yemen. In 2000 they rammed The USS Cole in Aden port with a boat packed with explosives and ripped a hole in its hull, killing 17 American sailors. The Yemeni government made a secret truce with the group under whose term it would not be pursued if it carried out no more attacks. In 2006 al Qa’ida began to reorganize when 23 of its militants escaped from Sanaa jail. As al-Qa’ida members came under greater pressure in Saudi Arabia some fled to Yemen and set up a joint Saudi-Yemeni movement, al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
It is easy to see why AQAP finds Yemen an hospitable place to be. It is not a country where the state expects to have a monopoly of violence or authority. Long before 9/11 I used to be intrigued by the Yemeni authorities’ attitude to personal weapons as exemplified by security measures at Sanaa airport. These were very strict with all luggage X-rayed before it was even allowed into the airport building and X-rayed again at each stage of the suitcase’s journey to the plane. Passengers were given frequent body searches until they reached the departure lounge. This, as in most airports, had many shops selling local handicrafts and curios to travellers. The difference in Sanaa airport was that many of these items turned out to be swords and long curved knives. Discovering to their horror that many of passengers were carrying such weapons western airlines had to get their own flight crews to ask Yemenis, as they boarded the plane, if they were armed. Yemenis found it a strange question but dutifully handed over their daggers to be placed in plastic bags in the hold of the aircraft.
The US and Britain are about to increase their support for a government which is highly unpopular and engaged in a series of actual or potential civil wars. The heaviest fighting so far has been with the Zaydi Shia insurgents just south of the border with Saudi Arabia. They contest that they fighting discrimination and are responding to President Saleh’s dependence on Saudi Arabia and its extreme Sunni Wahhabism. President Saleh, for his part, has been portraying the Shia rebels as pawns of Iran, though his government has produced no evidence for this.
The dilemma for the US and Britain is that as they become more openly supportive of the Yemeni government they will be targeted as its sponsor by its many enemies. The south of the country, independent until 1990 and defeated in a civil war in 1994, is seething with rebellion. Government forces shoot at protestors. There have been many shootings, arrests and torture is endemic. “They can make a zebra say it is a gazelle,” is a chilling Yemeni saying of the government’s interrogation methods.
Southern newspapers have been shut down including al-Ayyam, which is the most widely read. Hisham Bashraheel, its 66-year-old editor, was arrested last Wednesday at his newspaper office in the Crater district of Aden after a protest against its closure last May when the paper was accused of supporting separatism. Some 30 protestors and 20 guards had fought a battle with the police in which one policeman and one guard were killed. They later gave themselves up.
I met Mr Bashraheel in the cluttered office of al-Ayyam some years ago when he was already engaged in daily skirmishes with the authorities. Sitting on a chair in his office was a man called Abdul Hakim Mahyub, with a long scar down the side of his face, to whom Mr Bashraheel introduced me. He said Mr Mahyub’s story of how he came by the scar explained a lot about current tensions between north and south in Yemen.
Mr Mahyub said he was a teacher in Aden and several weeks earlier he had an argument with a man laying pipes outside his school. As is common in Yemen the pipe-layer had a knife in his belt. In the course of the argument he drew it and stabbed Mr Mahyub in the face, cutting through his cheek and into his tongue. His speech was affected and he found it difficult to do his job teaching, but the reason he had come to al-Ayyam to complain was that he had just heard that the man who stabbed him, who came from Marib in northern Yemen, had been released by an official from the same province.
Mr Bashraheel said that favouritism towards northerners was becoming very common but for publishing Mr Mahyub’s story he risked being accused of “separatism” and stirring up hostility between north and south.
The US and Britain will face a similar difficulty in Yemen as they already do in Afghanistan. They will be supporting an unpopular and corrupt government. It is not that al-Qa’ida is very strong but that it will be swimming in sympathetic waters because the government is very weak.
The government itself can see the danger being labelled as an American pawn if it is too openly welcoming to foreign military aid. “Any intervention or direct military action by the United States could strengthen the al-Qa’ida network not weaken it,” said the deputy prime minister for defense and security affairs Rasheed al-Aleemi last week. The government would have liked to take all the aid it could get but without telling anybody about it.
All this sounds very like Afghanistan. And there is a further way in which the two countries resemble each other. Just as Pakistan believes it is crucially affected by what happens in Afghanistan so Saudi Arabia regards the future of Yemen as a vital interest. Saudi Arabia is by far the most important foreign power in Yemen, providing $2 billion in budget support, but its interest has always been in a weak government in Sanaa and one over which it can exercise some control.
The only way that the US and Britain could entirely squeeze out al-Qa’ida from Yemen is by strengthening its armed forces to the point at which the central government could take over parts of the country it has not ruled for decades. But this would provoke tribes and communities which exist in a state of semi-independence from the state. As in Afghanistan foreign intervention in Yemen soon begins to create a counter-reaction of which al-Qa’ida would be able to take advantage.
Patrick Cockburn is the Ihe author of "Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq."
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