by Tim Rogers

This article was first published in The Miami Herald

(Note: when this edition was going to the printer, the Supreme Electoral Council had ruled to disqualify the two main political parties in Nicaragua for which the hunger strike protest was started).

L-R: Efraín Payán, of the ALN party; Dora María Téllez, at center; and Dr. Vilma Nuñez de Escorcia, president of Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH); members of CENIDH; and reporters. (photo by trinchera de noticias)

Former Nicaraguan guerrilla commander Dora Maria Tellez, cofounder of the Sandinista Renovation Movement, sits in a hammock near the Supreme Electoral Council in Managua to protest a government move to invalidate her political party.

A veteran guerrilla leader who helped spark a revolution here 30 years ago is again putting her life on the line to protest a government she claims is returning Nicaragua to its dark, dictatorial past.

Dora María Téllez, 52, started a hunger strike this week, plopping down in downtown Managua to ‘’sound the alarm bell’’ against what she says are President Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian intentions.

The former rebel leader and ex-Minister of Health under the first Sandinista government in the 1980s says her protest is a continuation of the revolutionary struggle she started three decades ago against the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship.

In 1978, Téllez, then 22, captured the nation’s attention as the courageous ‘’Comandante 2’’ who, along with legendary guerrilla icon Edén ‘’Comandante Cero’’ Pastora, led a small band of Sandinista rebels in a daring takeover of the legislative National Palace.

That event exposed the vulnerability of the Somoza dictatorship and gave Nicaraguans hope  that revolutionary change was possible. The following year, she helped topple the Somoza dictatorship by leading the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to its first major military victories in the northern cities of León and Chinandega.

Thirty years later, the Sandinista Front has gone from a clandestine rebel movement to the government establishment, but Téllez says the threat of dictatorship remains.

‘’When we took over the National Palace we were fighting for the same thing because the politicians weren’t respecting the rights of everyone else,’’ Téllez told The Miami Herald Thursday while swinging from a nylon hammock set up under a makeshift plastic tarp where she’s camping out next to Managua’s main roundabout.

‘’Now, 30 years later, we have a group of people, a political elite, who want to (run government) as if it were a dictatorship,’’ she said.

Téllez, who is on a water and salt diet, says that Ortega and incarcerated former President Arnoldo Alemán who is still considered the ‘’maximum leader’’ of the opposition Liberal Constitutional Party — are in the process of reworking their infamous power-sharing pact to re-divide state institutions and  cut out minority parties. Political analysts have speculated that the final negotiation point of the new pact will be freedom for Alemán in exchange for constitutional reforms to allow Ortega to remain in power indefinitely.

Also upsetting to Téllez is a recent ruling by the Supreme Electoral Council, which Ortega’s party controls, to eliminate four minority parties — including Téllez’s Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) — from the ballot in municipal elections scheduled for Nov. 2. Téllez says that is further proof that the so-called pacto is still alive and well.

‘’Daniel wants to be alone on the electoral ballot; he wants to remain in power by making an arrangement with Alemán to stay in power indefinitely,’’ Téllez said, as she waved to passing cars that honked in support of her protest.

Yet some revolutionaries, even those who don’t identify with Ortega today, think it’s a mistake to compare the current government to the Somoza dictatorship.

‘’Ortega and Somoza are a thousand light years apart,’’ said Pastora, 71, who fought alongside Téllez during the takeover of the National Palace. “It is political error to say that the Ortega government is a dictatorship.’’­

Pastora, who also went on a 34-day hunger strike in 1998 to restore his Nicaraguan citizenship, said he thinks Téllez’s hunger strike is not the right move, and says the fact that she’s even allowed to protest civically against the government is proof that Nicaragua is not under a dictatorship. Pastora, who in the 1980s defected from the Sandinista Front to battle the government for being

‘’Marxists disguised as Sandinistas,’’ said the Ortega government in the 1980s was a dictatorship, and was one that Téllez and the rest of the MRS leaders supported at the time.

After the first Ortega government was voted out of power in 1990, Téllez, along with a large group of Sandinista intellectuals, led the FSLN brain drain by defecting from the party on the grounds that it had been hijacked by Ortega. The MRS, founded in 1995, currently holds three legislative seats in the National Assembly and has become a leading opposition voice from the left.

The political right is also raising concerns about Ortega’s dictatorial intentions. Eduardo Montealegre, the Liberal Party’s candidate for mayor of Managua who finished second to Ortega in the 2006 presidential elections, says he thinks Ortega is trying to ­‘’eliminate me politically.’’ The former banker says he fears Ortega’s recent public accusation that he stole $600 million in the 2000 banking-system collapse is now going to be used against him to remove him from the race.

Public opinion is also leery of Ortega. A poll released in May by M&R Consultants showed that 64 percent of those surveyed describe Ortega as an authoritarian ruler who wants to implement a dictatorship. Even self-described Sandinistas are having a hard time with the Ortega government.

‘’Like many Sandinistas, Ortega wasn’t an ideal candidate, but we saw him as an option after three neoliberal governments,’’ said Cecilia Espinoza, a social worker involved in Nicaragua’s feminist movement.

“But after assuming power, I could see that there was a great difference between Ortega’s discourse in favor of the poor and his politics that don’t respect people’s rights, especially women’s.’’

A disgruntled Téllez says she’s had enough of the Ortega government and plans to strike indefinitely, unless the CSE rules to reinstate the minority parties on the election ballot.

‘’The role of a revolutionary in Nicaragua is to oppose attempts to install a dictatorship,’’ Téllez said. “If I were born again, I would choose the same path in life.’’

by David Usborne World News

Hugo Chávez

The armed revolutionary has no place in modern Latin America, the Venezuelan President has declared. Catching his critics off guard, Hugo Chavez called on the Marxist rebel army in neighbouring Colombia to lay down its arms and release its hostages, declaring that guerrilla armies are now “out of place”.

Adopting the mantle of international statesman, the Venezuelan President appeared to be stepping forward finally to turn a page of history for a continent that for decades has been blighted by eruptions of insurgent violence, not just in Colombia but also Nicaragua and El Salvador. As most of those conflicts have come to an end, Colombia has been alone in failing to end its own internal strife.

“At this moment in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of place,” Chavez said. “The guerrilla war is history,” he asserted in his weekly television address, prompting expressions of both surprise and welcome among government leaders in Colombia. They have recently accused Venezuela of running a clandestine campaign of support for the Marxist rebels.

Chavez is no stranger to the revolutionary mantle. In 1992 his Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement – inspired by the 19th century independence guerrilla Simon Bolivar – made a doomed attempt to overthrow the government. Even now, having made the transition from rebel to politician, Chavez is still the staunchest of supporters of the world’s most famous revolutionary, Fidel Castro. Whether his latest comments represent a profound change of heart or not, they may help open a path to long-term peace in Colombia after 40 years of bloodshed.

It is a time of deepening difficulties for Farc, the Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which recently confirmed that its founder and top commander, Manuel Marulanda, also known as “Sureshot”, had died of a heart attack at a jungle base in March. It has lost several other members of its top leadership in recent months.

“I think the time has come for the Farc to free everyone they have in the mountains. It would be a great, humanitarian gesture in exchange for nothing. That is what I propose to the new [Farc] leader.”

Parapolitical reform dies in Colombia

On 10 June the reform aimed at purging congress of politicians and parties with links to paramilitaries collapsed. Until recently congress considered the reform as the only opportunity to restore its credibility in the wake of the parapolitical scandal. However, the legislature’s commitment to the reform has since waned considerably, largely because President Alvaro Uribe turned against the bill. It is likely that Uribe’s change of heart is linked to his increasingly obvious ambitions to run for a third term.

­by Alex Meneses Miyashita

State legislatures have introduced more than 1,100 bills related to immigration this year, confirmed by a National Conference of State Legislatures tally.

The council identified 1,106 bills in 44 states during the first quarter of 2008. The level of state activity on immigration continues a trend that surged last year when more than 1,500 bills were introduced. So far 26 states have passed 44 of these bills, along with 38 resolutions.

“This is an unprecedented level of activity at the state level,” said Dirk Hegen, NCSL policy associate.

“We believe that we will see similar activity as last year. Some legislatures Between then and 2004, these fluctuated annually from 50to 100. In 2005, there were 300, in 2006 there were 570, and last year 1,562.

States with large Hispanic populations, particularly California, Florida, New York and Arizona, were classified as “high activity states,” having introduced at least 21 bills related to immigration. Texas did not hold a legislative session this year.

Immigration experts from both sides of the debate attribute the rising trend to the lack of federal action to pass reforms.

“It’s emblematic of the frustration that states are feeling with respect to the federal government’s failure to solve this problem,” assessed Marshall Fitz, American Immigration Lawyers Association advocacy director. AILA supports a comprehensive solution that addresses security and regularizing the status of the undocumented.

Bryan Griffith, spokesperson for the Center for Immigration Studies, agreed that a “unified federal response would be the best way to approach this policy issue.

“Anytime there’s a federal void, and state and local politicians are hearing that their constituents are complaining about an issue, they’re going to try to solve it,” he said.

The center supports enforcement policies that would gradually reduce the size of the undocumented population. Griffith added that so long as the federal government does not act, states are making the right decision by taking up the issue.

AlLA’s Fitz said it is a “disastrous way to approach it.” He noted that a number of “very punitive and counterproductive measures” have already passed and been enacted.

Recently the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID law which Latino advocates say will disenfranchise large segments of voters.

In Pennsylvania, a state legislator introduced a similar bill this month.

The Louisiana House passed bills that criminalize transporting and harboring undocumented immigrants.

The county of Suffolk, N.Y., passed a law that requires all contractors to verify the immigration status of employees.

In Missouri, the state legislature approved legislation May 16 that will require proof of citizenship or legal status in order to access state benefits.

The legislation also punishes employers for hiring undocumented workers and requires state highway patrol officers to seek immigration training.

The state’s governor supports the bill, and had earlier threatened to call a special session if the legislature did not wrap up work on the issue before it adjourned.

In Arizona, House legislators tried unsuccessfully to override a veto by the governor to require police to get involved in immigration law enforcement.

Fitz said “most of the states and localities that have undertaken these efforts are finding that it is extremely costly, it’s extremely painful and divisive.”

The NCSL does not classify these bills as either “restrictive” or “expansive.

The most common policy areas identified by the conference that are tackled by states in relation to immigration are law enforcement, employment and identification documents.

While many of the bills address undocumented immigration, others address the integration of immigrant communities.

Hegen, from the NCSL, said that states have always been active in offering services and addressing the needs of new immigrants, adding that “it’s only lately in the absence of a federal solution that states are looking at other policy arenas, like law enforcement and most notably maybe the employment arena.

Experts predict active state involvement with immigration matters will continue in the foreseeable future.

“We certainly hope the federal government steps up to the plate in 2009,” Hegen said. Hispanic Link.