NVA in the Americas - 2009 April 7

Sunday, 12 April 2009

Lifting ban on travel to Cuba protects our rights
By: Jackie Bueno Sousa, Cuba Study Group, April 6, 2009
It's easy to see why anyone would think that a recent U.S. Senate bill to end the ban on Americans traveling to Cuba is a guise to loosen the embargo against the island. It's true that the measure is more than what it seems, but not for the reasons one might think. Instead, its hidden depth says more about us as a nation than it could ever say about Cuba.
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US: Farm workers' rights, 70 years overdue
By: NY Times, April 5, 2009
It is more than bank failures and rising unemployment that give these troubled times echoes of the 1930s. An unfinished labor battle from the New Deal is being waged again. The goal is to win basic rights that farm and domestic workers were denied more than 70 years ago, when the Roosevelt administration won major reforms protecting other workers in areas like overtime and disability pay, days of rest and union organizing.
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"As a punishment for my blog, I may not leave Cuba"
By: Yoani Sanchez, Huffington Post, April 4, 2009
For the third time, in just a year, I've been denied permission to leave Cuba to travel abroad. In the Office of Immigration and Emigration in my municipality, a uniformed lady told me I was not "authorized to travel." I demanded that this functionary give me an explanation, but she was only the wall of contention between my demands and her hidden bosses. Like small children, who need permission to leave the house, so are we, the eleven million inhabitants of this Island.
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Guatemala: Students criticize government in traditional parade
By: Summer Harlow, Miami Herald, April 4, 2009
Wearing face masks and brightly colored hoods and robes, thousands of university students carrying banners ridiculing the government paraded through this capital city's downtown district Friday, protesting Guatemala's escalating violence and leaving a trail of graffiti in their wake. The annual Parade of Ridicule is the culmination of the Huelga de Dolores, or Strike of Sorrows, started in 1898 by students from the public University of San Carlos to protest the corrupt regime of then-dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera.
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Political opponent of Hugo Chávez arrested in Venezuela
By: Phil Gunson, Miami Herald, April 3, 2009
Former Venezuelan Defense Minister Raúl Isaías Baduel, a prominent political adversary of President Hugo Chávez, was arrested at gunpoint Thursday, reportedly by agents of military intelligence. The country's military prosecutor, Ernesto Cedeño, confirmed in statements to reporters that the general's arrest was connected to charges of embezzlement during his 2006-2007 tenure as defense minister.
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Colombian activist waits in prison limbo
By: Chris Kraul, LA Times, April 2, 2009
Community organizer Carmelo Agamez has spent five months in jail and still has not seen the evidence against him, been told who his accuser is or been notified of a trial date. Welcome to justice, Colombia style. Facing what he says is a laughable charge of consorting with right-wing paramilitary leaders, the lifelong socialist says he has been thrown arbitrarily into the maw of Colombian justice.
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US: Chicago "A New Way Forward" protest two weeks away
By: Josh Kalven, Progress Illinois, March 28, 2009
The "New Way Forward" (ANWF) anti-bailout protests scheduled for April 11 are brilliant in their lack of institutional organization. One of the main drags on widespread involvement in public demonstrations is that they're often sponsored by groups that engender suspicion or who push an agenda that is broader than the motivating concern -- an agenda that deters potential participants who don't share the organizers' views.
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