Chronicle 2004: The unreported year - Latin America and Caribbean

January
MEXICO 1,500 riot police storm the town of Tlalnepantla three days after its ‘Declaration of Independence’ established a People’s Autonomous Council.
BRAZIL More than 3,000 indigenous Guartaní y Kaiwas occupy a plantation in Mato Grosso do Sul, demanding the enlargement of their village.
CUBA The ban on home-based internet access is intensified. Only those in recognized business and government offices are permitted to use the internet.
BELIZE The High Court in London (the final court of appeal) decides not to halt construction of a 50-metre hydroelectric dam. It will affect around 12,000 people and flood one of the most biologically diverse regions remaining in Central America.

February
ARGENTINA President Kirchner declares his country is no longer a ‘doormat’ after the US Department of State criticizes him for his relations with Venezuela and Cuba.
VENEZUELA Soldiers will no longer be sent to the ‘School of the Americas’, the US combat training centre which Vice-President José Vicente Rangel calls ‘a school for dictators and torturers’.
PERU Radio Órbita journalist Antonio de la Torre Echeandía is stabbed to death after broadcasting a news item accusing government bodies of corruption.

march
ARGENTINA Foreign Minister Gustavo Beliz requests the help of rich nations to trace millions of dollars allegedly placed in foreign bank accounts by former President Carlos Menem and his associates.
COLOMBIA Carlos Bernal, leader of opposition party Independent Democratic Pole and member of the Permanent Committee for Human Rights, is killed in the city of Cucuta – paramilitary militias are suspected.

april
BRAZIL The Centre for International Forestry Research reports that the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed an unprecedented rate.
LATIN AMERICA As part of the International Day of Farmers’ Struggle, protests against the World Bank’s agrarian policies and the new US-Ecuador Free Trade Agreement take place in 26 countries including Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela.

may
PANAMA Martin Torrijos – son of the military ruler who negotiated the handover of the Panama Canal from the US – wins a landslide victory in the first presidential elections without US presence. Torrijos pledges to fight ‘poverty, corruption and despair’.
HONDURAS Survivors of a prison fire which killed at least 103 inmates claim it was started deliberately and that guards took almost an hour to respond.

JUNE
ECUADOR Indigenous demonstrations during the meeting in Quito of the Organization of American States demand the rejection of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US and the resignation of President Gutiérrez.
GUATEMALA Women’s groups call on the Government to give priority to investigating a series of brutal murders of women, currently occurring at the rate of more than one a day.
EL SALVADOR Tony Saca is inaugurated as President amid protests demanding the country’s withdrawal from Iraq.
JAMAICA Brian Williamson, the only ‘out’ gay activist in the country, is murdered in Kingston in a suspected hate crime.

JULY
BRAZIL An International Labour Organization report estimates that 25,000 people are working as slave labourers, clearing the Amazon for ranchers or producing pig iron.
BOLIVIA Voters approve plans to nationalize sections of the natural gas industry while allowing increased exploitation by foreign companies, in a referendum on which President Carlos Mesa staked his political survival.

august
VENEZUELA President Hugo Chávez wins a referendum on whether he should be allowed to serve out his term.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Leonel Fernandez takes office as President, inheriting a country on the brink of bankruptcy amid mounting allegations of corruption and mismanagement against the outgoing government.

september
PANAMA The US denies any role in the pardon of four Cuban exiles by the outgoing government. Three of the exiles – convicted in connection with a plot to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro – are immediately flown to Miami.
CHILE The Supreme Court strips the former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, of his immunity from prosecution.

OCTOBER
COLOMBIA Indigenous leaders state that they would refuse any loans from the Inter-American Development Bank that were designed to promote conventional ‘economic growth’.

NOVEMBER
CHILE Government pensions and other benefits are granted to 35,000 victims of torture under Augusto Pinochet’s military regime.
ECUADOR An attempt to impeach President Gutiérrez for corruption fails. Support for him plummeted after he introduced conservative fiscal policies under pressure from the IMF.

DECEMBER
BRAZIL President Lula is weakened by the withdrawal of the Popular Socialist Party and the much larger Brazilian Democratic Movement Party from his ruling coalition. The main criticism is that he has failed to deliver on social policy.

FACE OF FEAR (accompanying photo not available for on-line publishing). Petit Goave, Haiti, 3 March. This man has been ‘arrested’ by armed citizens who suspect him of having been a multiple assassin working for the Lavalas party of exiled President Aristide. Shortly after the photo is taken they proceed to stone him and then burn him alive. At the end of February President Aristide was ousted after a rebellion led by former soldiers who had first deposed him 12 years before. Aristide was flown to the Central African Republic and later on to exile in South Africa; he claimed that he had been kidnapped and bundled out of the country by the US. The interim regime which replaced him, headed by Gérard Latortue, and the UN peacekeepers which replaced US forces in July, have presided over a worsening human rights climate – around 200 people were murdered in September and October alone. Supporters of the former President have certainly been targeted ever since his exile but are also guilty of abuses, as when Aristide loyalists decapitated three police officers in October. To add to the chaos, Haiti, already the poorest and most AIDS-ravaged country in the Americas, was hit by Hurricane Jeanne in September, leaving more than 1,000 dead and many thousands more homeless. This terrifying and depressing year in Haiti’s tortured history ironically began with a high-profile celebration of the 200th anniversary of the slave revolt which led to the country’s independence and made it a haven for escaped African slaves (see NI 365).

FRIENDLY FLAGS (accompanying photo not available for on-line publishing). The Chinese and the Cuban flags wave in the wind during a ceremony at the José Martí memorial in Havana on 23 November. Chinese President Hu Jintao was on a two-day official visit to Cuba aimed at boosting business and political links. Cuba, still led by Fidel Castro and still embattled 44 years after its revolution, was naturally grateful for the notice of an emerging world power. But the Chinese decision to make such high-profile overtures to the bogey-state on America’s doorstep was much more significant, signalling the new confidence on the world stage that Beijing has derived from its astonishing economic growth.

DIVORCE JUBILATION (accompanying photo not available for on-line publishing). Don’t be misled by the apparent fascist salutes: these are centre-left members of the Chilean Congress in Valparaíso celebrating a notable and overdue progressive victory. Until this year Chile was the last country in the Americas in which divorce was illegal. The centre-left Government has repeatedly tried for the last 10 years to get a divorce law through Congress but has been stymied by the opposition of conservatives and the Catholic Church: 11 March 2004 was the day they finally succeeded. There were other progressive victories to celebrate in Latin America, too – notably the landslide victory of the Broad Left in Uruguay in November which gave the country its first ever leftist government (for more on this see the Currents section of the main magazine).