by Juliana Birnbaum Fox

Salvadorian Assemblymember Blanca Flor A. Bonilla (in white) after meeting with El Salvador’s vice consul in SF. (photo by Marvin J. Ramirez)

A four-month long resistance by residents of Cutumay Camones, El Salvador to the illegal construction of a dump that could poison the community’s water supply has been met with increasingly violent attacks by military and police. On Nov. 22, more than 300 riot police were sent and helicopters sprayed tear gas on protesters, likely contributing to the death of 14-year-old William Alfredo Ventura, who died of respiratory complications. The use of force against demonstrators has escalated significantly since the opening of the U.S.-sponsored ILEA (International Law Enforcement Academy) in El Salvador in 2005.

Blanca Flor Bonilla, a deputy to the Legislative Assembly in El Salvador, joined activists from CISPES, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, to condemn the escalating violence. A small group gathered outside the Salvadoran consulate in San Francisco on Nov. 29 for a press conference to denounce the repression of community protest by the Salvadoran National Police under the administration of President Antonio Saca.

The conference was timed to coincide with Saca’s visit to Washington DC on the same day, where he met with President Bush and received ­a medal of honor from the International Republican Institute for “promoting freedom and democracy” in Latin America. According to White House Spokesperson Dana Perino, the leaders met to discuss “the recent initiative to enhance security cooperation with Central America.”

Assemblywoman Bonilla claimed that the medal was a reward for Saca’s policy of selling off most of El Salvador’s government-run utilities to transnational corporations.

“Thirty-nine people, including children under the age of 18, have been arrested and are under police custody,” CISPES’ statement claimed. “We stand with the people of Cutumay Camones in demanding the immediate release of all community members captured last week. We demand the end to the construction of the garbage dump. Further, we implicate the United States government for condoning, if not directly instructing, these actions by training police at the ILEA.”

The attacks in Cutumay Camones follow similar clashes in Suchitoto, where mass arrests took place against people protesting water privatization. The “Suchitoto 13” face charges of terrorism for organizing a protest and blockading a road last July to stop the president’s announcement of his plan to privatize El Salvador’s water.

“President Saca has agreed that police used excessive force, and some cops were suspended,” Bonilla said. She went on to say that the removal of single officers is insuffficient, as the military and police continue to defend private interests by repressing the community, and the construction of the garbage dump has gone forward.

Bonilla also drew attention to the plight of undocumented workers from El Salvador, who are being deported at a rate of 120 to 180 daily.

“In April we visited the detention centers in San Antonio and Nuevo Laredo – on both sides of the border – and verified that there isn’t enough consulate presence. They make them sign deportation forms in English, and then they deport them, without giving them a chance to consult with an attorney.”

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by the El Reportero news services

Evo Morales

LA PAZ – President Evo Morales fired water minister Abel Mamani after compromising photographs of Mamani were shown on national television.

Mamani is one of Morales’s most radical supporters. His forced departure weakens the radical wing of the government, just as it is squaring up to the rightwing secessionists in the east of the country.

The photos showed Mamani partially unclothed, embracing an alleged prostitute. The pictures followed allegations of corruption against the former minister.

Mamani maintained that he had been the victim of a smear campaign. He said that the photos had been faked and that on 9 November he had made a formal complaint to the special anti-crime squad (FELCC) claiming that he had been approached by four individuals seeking to extort money from him in exchange for not publishing the photos.

Volcano erupts on island in Lake Nicaragua

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – The Concepcion  volcano in Nicaragua sent huge columns of ash into the sky in eruptions that prompted a ripple of small earthquakes, local seismologists said Sunday.

The volcano, one of two on an island in the region’s largest lake, erupted Saturday night and related earthquakes continued to rattle the area on Sunday. No one was injured by the blast, Nicaragua’s Institute of Territorial Studies said in a statement.

The 1,610-meter (5,282-foot) volcano is located 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of the capital, Managua, on an island popular with adventure tourists in Lake Nicaragua, Central America’s largest lake.

Ash rained down on local communities on Sunday, as strong winds carried it to toward the capital, the institute said.

The Concepcion volcano, which shares its lake island with the dormant Maderas volcano, last erupted in 2005.

In Mexico, official says Colombian ring laundered euro45 million in drug money from Spain

­MEXICO CITY – Authorities have uncovered a large criminal ring in Colombia that has laundered euro45 million (US$67 million) in cocaine profits from Spain over the past four months, a top Colombian official said.

The network’s success relied on 16,000 “ordinary” Colombians who were willing to receive and then turn over amounts of up to euro5,000 to euro10,000 euros (US$7,430 to US$14,860) apiece, said Mario Alejandro Aranguren, an intelligence official with Colombia’s Treasury Ministry.

The participants agreed to receive the cash in Colombian pesos at currency exchange houses and then turn it over to members of the ring in exchange for a small commission, Aranguren said during a symposium on money-laundering and drug trafficking in Mexico City.

Aranguren also noted that Spain has become a major market for Colombian cocaine.

The drug is not just sold there, “it also is distributed to Spain’s interior and from there, to other European countries,” Aranguren said.

by Adolfo Flores

Anthony Miranda

Hate crimes against Hispanics reached an all-time high in 2006, according to an annual survey released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Such crimes against Latinos spiked by 10.3 percent over 2005, with Latino victims increasing by 12 percent, the FBI reported.

Latino law enforcement and civil rights authorities attribute the trend to constant and strong anti-immigrant messages promoted by the media.

Last year Latinos comprised 62.8 percent of victims of crimes motivated 5by ethnic and national origin bias.

“Two factors contribute to this’” Anthony Miranda, executive chairman of the National  Latino Officers Association, told Weekly Report. “The first is that Latinos are becoming more visible.” The second, he said, is that “people are equating anti-terrorism with anti-immigration,” and those who question the notion are viewed as anti-American or anti-establishment.

John Trasviña, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, stated, “Anti-immigrant hatred heard on the radio and cable shows reaches America’s neighborhoods with real consequences.”

Blurring the line between undocumented immigrants and terrorists, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.), a candidate in the GOP presidential primary, released a campaign ad depicting a hooded individual blowing up a shopping mall.

“There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs,” a narrator says.

In total, there were 7,722 hate-related crimes based on bias against a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/ national origin, or physical or mental disability reported nationally in 2006 Of those, 51.8 percent were racially motivated, 18.9 percent were motivated by religion, 15.5 percent by sexual orientation and 12.7 percent were motivated by an ethnic/ national origin bias.

There was a 7.3 percent increase in hate crimes in 2006 over 2005.

Of the 7~330 known offenders, 53.6 percent were white and 20.6 percent were black. Race was unknown for 12.9 percent and other races accounted for the rest of the known offenders.

“Heightened anti-immigrant sentiment has blocked immigration reform and seeks to turn local police into immigration law enforcers thus making it more difficult for victims to report crimes’” Trasviña pointed out. “The FBI report should serve as a wakeup call to our nation’s leaders to take  action on comprehensive immigration reform, reduce tensions and safeguard the basic civil rights and liber- ties of all Americans.”

Additional findings of racial-bias crimes, 66.4 percent of victims were blacks’21.0 percent whites’ 4.8 percent Asians and 1.5 percent American Indian/ Alaskan Natives.

Of sexual-orientationbias crimes~ 62.0 percent were against male homosexuals’20.9 percent general anti-homosexual bias, and 13.7 percent anti-female homosexual bias.

Of religious bias crimes, 65.4 percent were anti Jewish bias victims’ 11.9 percent  anti-Islamic’ 4.9 percen­tanti-Catholic’3.7 percent anti-Protestant’ 0.5 percent anti-Atheist Agnostic’8.4 percent other’ 5.3 percent anti-multiple religions.

The Hate Crime Statistics Act, passed by Congress on April 23,1990, requires the Attorney General to compile data about crimes born from prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and more recently, people with disabilities.

A total of 12~620 agencies participated in reporting hate crimes in 2006. They covered more than 255 million people, accounting for 85.2 percent of the country’s population.

The report is at ­www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm. Hispanic Link.­

by Ali Tabatabai

Hillary shows up in the Mission Protesters march against Hillary Clinton’s visit in the Mission to a fundriser dinner event Nov. 18 (photo by Marvin J. Ramirez)

California Pacific Medical Center executives, community members, and medical staff from St. Luke’s Hospital convened again on Tuesday, to discuss the fate of the hospital before the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

At the health commission meeting, CPMC executives said they welcomed an open dialogue with the city and outlined their plan for transferring inpatient emergency services to other hospitals in the North of Market area. However, public health officials expressed their dissatisfaction with CPMC’s prior communication with the city about such cutbacks at St. Luke’s.

“It concerns me that [CPMC] is just now developing a dialogue with the commission and the health department,” said commissioner Chatherine Dodd.

Christopher Willrich, California Pacific’s vice president of strategy and business development, said CPMC hopes to explain its long term strategy for improving San Francisco’s healthcare infrastructure and that emergency care services could be absorbed at its other hospitals, including a proposed $1.7 billion new hospital on the Cathedral Hill Hotel site.

“We want to make sure that dollars spent and invested are going to lead to the maximum benefit for the community,” Willrich said.

However, physicians and nurses at St. Luke’s remain weary about the company’s intentions, as well as its numbers used to justify the hospital’s downgrades.

According to a statement released by hospital physicians, CPMC mislead the public when they claimed that 60 percent of the inpatient beds at St. Luke’s remain empty at any given time. The physicians say the figure is based on how many beds the hospital is licensed for, not the actual beds it currently has, which are occupied at 58 percent daily average rate.

“St. Luke’s faces an imminent collapse,” said Dr. Bonita Palmer, who contributed the statement, “Sutter [Health] no longer has plans for us to exist as a hospital at all.”

CPMC, an affiliate of Sutter Health, had originally planned to cut its pediatric and neonatal intensive care unit starting Nov. 16, eventually ­eliminating all long-term emergency stays and turning St. Luke’s into an outpatient ambulatory hub by 2009.

Those plans have been delayed, however, as CPMC failed to comply with a city ordinance requiring official notice be sent to the city’s health commission before such a closure.

A public hearing will be held in accordance with the law known as Proposition Q, at the Health Commission on Tuesday, Dec. 4.