Muerte de fiscal enturbia democracia argentina(1)

Fiscal especial Natalio Alberto Nisman.

La muerte de un fiscal que investigaba uno de los mayores misterios sin resolver de la historia de Argentina, el atentado hace más de 20 años contra un centro judío, pone a prueba una democracia inmadura, en una trama de hipótesis conspirativas y de promiscuidad entre los servicios secretos y el poder.

La víctima es Natalio Alberto Nisman, hallado muerto el domingo 18 de enero, la víspera en que debía presentar al Congreso legislativo pruebas de que la presidenta Cristina Fernández había incurrido, según su denuncia,  en el encubrimiento de cinco iraníes sospechosos del ataque contra la AMIA, el 18 de julio de 1994, que dejó 85 muertos y 300 heridos.

El escenario -de lo que fue tipificado hasta ahora como una muerte dudosa, en la que cabe investigar “si hubo algún tipo de inducción o instigación a través de amenazas”- es su departamento en el barrio de Puerto Madero, en la capital Buenos Aires.

“Este misterio se parece más al del cuento ‘Los crímenes de la calle Morgue’ que Edgar Allan Poe publicó en 1841: puertas cerradas por dentro, sin balcón, en el piso 13 de una torre inaccesible de otro modo, el cuerpo caído en el piso del baño bloqueando la puerta… un solo disparo en la sien y sin intervención de terceras personas…”, consideró el periodista Horacio Verbitsky en el diario progubernamental Página 12.

Los argentinos suelen recurrir a la novela negra para contar su propia historia.

Entre los casos reales más emblemático y nunca aclarados está el de la desaparición de las manos del cadáver embalsamado del expresidente Juan Domingo Perón, en 1987, que se atribuyó a un ritual de la logia masónica P2, a un intento de golpear la renaciente democracia, o el deseo de destruir simbólicamente el culto al exmandatario, que gobernó el país entre 1946 y 1955 y entre 1973 y 1974.

Pero en el actual contexto global y tras una no muy lejana dictadura militar (1976-1983),  que dejó 30,000 desaparecidos, la muerte del fiscal revivió en los argentinos una sensación de indefensión y “déjà vu” (ya visto), con ingredientes  policiales de los nuevos tiempos.

“Todos somos vulnerables. Hoy vinieron por él, mañana vendrán por nosotros”,  argumentó la docente Rita Vega, mientras participaba la noche del mismo lunes 19 en una protesta contra esa muerte ante la Casa Rosada, la sede de la presidencia.

La manifestación fue convocada por las redes sociales bajo el lema “Yo soy Nisman”, inspirado en el que se globalizó tras el atentado en Paris contra el semanario satírico Charlie Hebdo, el 7 de enero.

“La democracia argentina, que está entrando en su año 32, es suficientemente sólida y pacífica como para aguantar cimbronazos al estilo de la muerte del fiscal Alberto Nisman”, aseguró el analista internacional Martín Granovsky.

La muerte divide una vez más a la sociedad argentina entre quienes desde la oposición endilgan la muerte de Nisman al gobierno y quienes desde la cercanía al gobierno esgrimen que el fiscal se suicidó porque no tenía pruebas suficientes para sustentar sus acusaciones, o que fue “inducido” a matarse.

El secretario general de la Interpol, Roland Kennet, había desmentido la acusación de Nisman (basada en escuchas teléfonicas) de que la presidenta y algunos colaboradores habrían solicitado levantar las órdenes de captura internacional contra cinco iraníes sospechosos del ataque a la AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina).

Nisman acusó a Fernández el 14 de enero de supuesto encubrimiento, con el objetivo de  “acercarse al régimen iraní y restablecer relaciones comerciales plenas para aliviar la severa crisis energética argentina, mediante un intercambio de petróleo por granos”.

Lea Nisman, Página 2. 

Muerte de fiscal enturbia democracia argentina(2)

Residentes de Buenos Aires se lanzaron a las calles en pro de esclarecer la muerte del fiscal Alberto Nisman. 

Nisman, Página 2. 

“La causa AMIA tiene un problema originario: con Carlos Menem de presidente (1989-1999). El estado no investigó a fondo el atentado en los primeros días, y además las complicidades por negocios laterales de las fuerzas de seguridad dificultaron una pesquisa seria”, reflexionó Granovsky.

La presidenta planteó esa hipótesis, en su primer pronunciamiento sobre la muerte del fiscal, a través de Facebook, al subrayar que ocurrió “sugestivamente”, cuando está a punto de iniciarse el juicio por el encubrimiento del atentado, en el que están involucrados Menem, y un extitular de inteligencia, entre otros.

“Queremos saber qué hecho o que sector mafioso llevó al señor fiscal Nisman a tomar la determinación que tomó”, enfatizó el presidente de la Cámara de Diputados,  Julián Domínguez, del gobernante Frente para la Victoria.

“Tenemos la certeza que hay sectores de la inteligencia, último reducto donde aún no ha podido llegar la democratización, que buscan crear síntomas de inestabilidad y presionar a jueces”, continuó.

En diciembre, el gobierno destituyó como director de operaciones de la Secretaría de Inteligencia a Antonio “Jaime” Stiuso.

Eran notorios los vínculos entre Stiuso y Nisman y, según trascendidos gubernamentales, habría sido el ex-espia quien hizo volver anticipadamente, en medio del descanso judicial, al fiscal de sus vacaciones en Europa, para presentar la denuncia, que iba a detallar en el parlamento el lunes 19.

Nisman fue nombrado como fiscal especial de la causa por el fallecido presidente Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), antecesor y marido de la presidenta, recordó el diputado Néstor Pitrola, del Partido Obrero, que integra el opositor Frente de Izquierda. Pero “un giro político colocó una guerra interna en la justicia y en los aparatos de inteligencia”, dijo.

Para Pitrola la muerte del fiscal puso en evidencia un “Estado de inteligencia dentro del Estado”.

 “Tres semanas antes de esta denuncia de Nisman se descabezaron los servicios de inteligencia, en beneficio de una nueva camarilla de inteligencia, que comanda (César) Milani, un represor de la dictadura cuestionado en la justicia”, aseguró.

Atilio Borón, exsecretario del Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, opinó que esta muerte perjudica especialmente al gobierno, el principal interesado en probar la inconsistencia de las pruebas de Nisman,  en un año con elecciones presidenciales y legislativas.

“Era un hombre que estaba muy entremezclado con los servicios, gente con la cual no se juega. No se juega con la CIA (Agencia Central de Inteligencia de Estados Unidos), no se juega con la Mossad (servicio secreto israelí). Recibía instrucciones de ellos, están los cables de Wikileaks, que no han sido nunca desmentidos”, recordó.

Para Borón, tampoco hay que descartar  el contexto internacional  “de lo que algunos llaman la Gran Guerra de Occidente contra el Islam”.

En esa línea, el periodista del opositor diario Clarín, Gustavo Sierra, se refirió a “especulaciones de la inteligencia internacional”, sobre el papel que agentes iraníes o sus aliados pudieran haber tenido en la muerte “inducida” del fiscal, porque perjudicaría sus intereses.

“¿Pudo la inteligencia iraní haber inducido al suicidio de Nisman a través de la amenaza de que iban a matar a una de sus hijas que vive en Europa? ¿Tenían alguna información demasiado comprometedora que involucraba al fiscal? ¿Lograron penetrar la barrera de seguridad de la torre de Puerto Madero con algún agente que haya conseguido disimular el suicidio sin ser detectado?”, se preguntó.

La trama es demasiado compleja y ni el misterio que la originó ha sido resuelto: quién fue el responsable del atentado más grave sufrido por Argentina, en una historia que Fernández  calificó como  “demasiado larga, demasiado pesada, demasiado dura, y por sobre todas las cosas, muy sórdida”.

How Mexicans became Americans

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/opinion/sunday/how-mexicans-became-americans.html?smid=fb-share

Obama wants community colleges nearly free for millions

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-colleges-obama-20150109-1-story.html#page=1

Parents bring 'Faith and Hope' to special youth

Participants of Faith and Hope showcase their talent each Friday at El Paseo Mall. 

By Alfredo Santana

The night’s chilling temperatures did not deter Julio Gomez, who lives with autism, from singing the lyrics of Spanish pop artist Marc Anthony’s  “Vivir mi vida”, as he has crooned this and other songs every Friday evening at El Paseo Mall in South Gate since last September.

Gomez showed his vocal prowess at a 6 to 9 p.m. outdoors gathering organized by parents of young adults and children with disabilities, in a patio dotted with metal chairs and tables near the Mexican restaurant La Mejor Deli and Market, as part of the motivational program Faith and Hope (Fe y Esperanza).

Gomez and about 30 other youth whose ages range from 15 to 25 years, tuned and sang tracks from a wide spectrum of musical genres: they sang hip-hop tunes, Whitney Houston ballads and at least one Mexican corrido.

 “The fact that they are brave enough to step up in front of the crowd, and sing with a microphone is a triumph for them,” said Maria Yolanda Hernandez, whose daughter Brenda also has a disability called hypothyroidism, which causes her body to produce less vital hormones than needed. “It’s like the theater reenactment of the birth of Jesus. The sole fact of mounting it is fabulous.”

Huddled in groups of four and five people, and armed with thick coats and wool blankets to brave 40 degrees Farenheight temperatures, about 30 parents and next of kin applauded and chanted along the artists’ lyrics, whose music blared out from a set of loudspeakers and a console controlled by Rosendo Hernandez, the night’s disk jockey.

Clad with a red and white sports jacket, Rosendo, 26, who has a mild form of autism, said he loves to cue music tracks, because he believes this event encourages youth with disabilities to unfold artistic talents they cannot try at home.

“I barely started in September my work as DJ. The parents of Faith and Hope picked me, and to tell you the truth, I am trying. I was in another program, but I’m way happier here. We want all people with different abilities to come down to listen to us, and to be part of the event,” Rosendo said.

Faith and Hope co-founder Isaura Macias said the concept to showcase special youth’s singing abilities branched out of a similar effort staged in another mall in the city of Lynwood, but parents who live near South Gate felt it was time to organize an event that would reel in more participants from nearby cities.

“The one in Lynwood has been going on for about five years. It’s been great, but we wanted to reach out to families who live near Los Angeles to be part of this event,” said Macias, whose son Daniel was diagnosed with autism.

Maria Yolanda Hernandez said Faith and Hope offers special youth an artistic platform to develop social and personal skills, and projects a positive and inclusive image for those who are in the lineup.

“We want to incorporate them in daily activities as normal and socially as possible. When they come up onstage, they reinforce their self-esteem and develop skills many of us are afraid to try, or don’t have. We also watch that some of them tune in good to what they sign, and the experience expose them to different challenges that would help them in their lives,” said Maria Yolanda.

 Jorge Garcia, a 23-year-old participant, who attended the event after he finished his work shift as UPS delivery assistant, said the doors are open for all who want to try out their hidden abilities as singers, either in English or Spanish.

“This event is good for those who want to have fun and have a good time after work, so that youth and their families come out and meet different people,” said Garcia, wearing a brown cap and shorts, as part of his uniform. “Often, my mother tags along with me.”     

Mexicans don't believe account on 43 missing(1)

Manifestantes en Sydney, Australia piden justicia para 43 estudiantes de Ayotzinapa, Guerrero. 

By Charlotte María Sáenz

 “Alive they were taken, and alive we want them back!”

That’s become the rallying cry for the 43 student teachers abducted by municipal police and handed over to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang last September in Iguala, Mexico. None have been seen since.

It remained the rallying cry even after federal officials announced that the missing students had most likely been executed and burnt to ashes.

Since then, Argentine forensic experts have concluded that burned remains found in Iguala do not belong to the missing young men—and so the 43 remain undead. The findings speak to a growing skepticism about the Mexican government’s competence—not only to deliver justice, but also to carry on an investigation with any kind of legitimacy or credibility.

It has become ever clearer that the state is in fact deeply implicated in the violence it claims to oppose. The student teachers were originally attacked by municipal police—allegedly at the orders of Iguala’s mayor and his wife, who were at a function with a local general when the attack took place.

Although the exact details of who ordered the attack are not yet clear, the handing over of the student teachers to a violent drug gang betrays a thorough merger of the police force, local officials, and organised crime.

This growing realization has ignited rage all over Mexico, with social media campaigns flaring up alongside massive street protests. Peaceful marches happen almost daily in Mexico City, while elsewhere there are starker signs of unrest. Some demonstrators even set fire to government buildings in the Guerrero state capital.

Meanwhile, the government has carried on an increasingly clumsy investigation, first purporting to have found the students in nearby mass graves—as The Nation reports, plenty of mass graves have turned up, but none has yet been proven to contain the missing teachers—and then claiming to have extracted confessions from the alleged killers.

In a November 2014 press conference, Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam showcased detailed video testimonies from three alleged hit men who claimed to have burned the 43 at a nearby garbage dump. Parents of the missing went to inspect the alleged site and found evidence lacking. Many doubted that a fire of such magnitude—the supposed killers claimed that they had spent 14 hours burning the bodies—could have happened due to the rain of that night.

When Argentine forensic specialists disapproved Karam’s narrative, the federal government pledged to “redouble efforts” to find the students. Now President Enrique Peña Nieto is hinting at a conspiracy against his government. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mexican officials want this issue put to rest as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, the mounting number of mass graves investigators are turning up serves as a reminder that this kind of violence has been going on for years. Police round up, detain, beat, arrest, and shoot at student activists routinely, as when state police shot and killed two Ayotzinapa students during a protest action on the highway in 2011. As with over 90 percent of such crimes in Mexico, no one has been punished.

These kinds of killings and disappearances have a long and sordid history as a practice of state violence in Mexico—and particularly in Guerrero—since the so-called Dirty War of the 1970s.

The many discrepancies in Karam’s press conference are feeding into a growing popular refusal to trust the government’s ability to investigate the disappearances independently.

Read Students, Page 2 

Mexicans don't believe account on 43 missing(2)

Manifestantes argentinos se muestra a favor de estudiantes mexicanos. 

Students, Page 2

In response to a reporter’s question about whether the parents of the missing believed him, Karam quipped that the parents are people who “make decisions together.” The question was not so much about whether the parents, as individuals, believed or disbelieved Karam’s evidence—although they have since visited the alleged crime scene and reaffirmed their skepticism.

Instead, ordinary Mexicans are increasingly employing their collective intelligence in making sense of the events and refusing to accept the state’s evidence on the grounds that the state itself is compromised. And just as importantly, they’re condemning the government’s silence about its own complicity in the probable execution of their sons.

In their increasing rejection of the Mexican narco-state’s legitimacy, the parents of the missing 43 are signaling their membership in what anthropologist Guillermo Bonfíl Batalla famously termed México Profundo—that is, the grassroots culture of indigenous Mesoamerican communities and the urban poor, which stands in stark contrast to the “Imaginary Mexico” of the elites.

Recalling the Zapatista movement, the rumblings from below in the wake of the mass abduction in Guerrero are merging with older modes of indigenous resistance to give new life to Mexico’s deep tradition of popular struggle.

Bolstered by social media, this new life is expressing itself in a number of colourful ways. Defying the government’s theatre of death, artists from all over the world are creating a “Mosaic of Life” by illustrating the faces and names of the disappeared. Mexican Twitter users have embraced the hashtag #YaMeCansé—“I am tired”—to appropriate Karam’s complaint of exhaustion after an hour of responding to questions as an expression of their own rage and resilience.

Gradually, a movement calling itself “43 x 43”—representing the exponential impact of the 43 disappeared—is rising up to greet the undead, along with the more than 100,000 others killed or disappeared since the start of this drug war in 2006 under former President Felipe Calderón. This refusal of the dead to remain dead made for a particularly poignant Dia de Muertos celebration on Nov. 2.

This form of resistance recalls what happened last May in the autonomous Zapatista municipality of el Caracol de la Realidad in the state of Chiapas, where a teacher known as Galeano was murdered by paramilitary forces. At the pre-dawn ceremony held there in Galeano’s honor on May 25, putative Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos announced that he, Marcos, would cease to exist.

After Marcos disappeared into the night, the assembled then heard a disembodied voice address them: “Good dawn, compañeras and compañeros. My name is Galeano, Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano. Does anybody else respond to this name?”

In response, hundreds of voices affirmed, “Yes, we are all Galeano!” And so Galeano came back to life collectively, in all of those assembled.

And now 43 disappeared student teachers have multiplied into thousands demanding justice from the state and greater autonomy for local communities, which are already building alternative healthcare, education, justice, and governmental systems. 

In Mexico’s unraveling, there is an opportunity for the rest of the world to witness—and support—the emergence of more direct and collective forms of democracy. As the now “deceased” Marcos said: “They wanted to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.”

Charlotte María Sáenz teaches Global Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

Gated Buenos Aires communities add to floods(1)

A satellite image of Parana River, which runs its waters off on the Atlantic Ocean.

The construction of gated communities on wetlands and floodplains in Greater Buenos Aires has modified fragile ecosystems and water cycles and has aggravated flooding, especially in poor surrounding neighorhoods.

In the 1990s a high-end property boom led to the construction of private neighborhoods in vital ecosystems, and the emergence of barriers – actual walls – between social classes in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.

In the first week of November, the “sudestada” or strong southeast wind left 19 municipalities in and around Buenos Aires under water.

The sudestada is a phenomenon that affects the Rio de la Plata basin. It consists of a sudden rotation of cold southern winds to the southeast, bringing strong winds and heavy rain. In the first week of November the wind gusts reached over 70 km an hour and more rain fell in two days than the total forecast for two months. Rivers overflowed their banks, large areas were flooded and cut off, and more than 5,000 people were evacuated.

Jorge Capitanich, President Cristina Fernández’s cabinet chief, attributed the floods to “a combination of sudestada, heavy rains, and the saturation of the water basins.”

But Patricia Pintos of the University de la Plata’s Center of Geographic Research said this confluence of factors was aggravated by the growing urbanisation and the proliferation of “barrios náuticos” – closed private neighbourhoods built on the water.

These gated communities are built near or on artificial or natural bodies of water, said Pintos, a geographer who is co-author of the book ”La privatopía sacrílega. Efectos del urbanismo privado en la cuenca baja del río Luján” (Sacrilegious privatopia: Effects of private urbanism on the lower Luján river basin).

Many of these wealthy private neighborhoods have been built on floodplains and wetlands, ecosystems that are vital to water drainage.

The new urban developments have advanced on areas that play a crucial role in managing floods, she said.

“Wetlands are getting stopped up by housing developments that ironically promote a lifestyle associated with enjoying water and nature,” said Laila Robledo, an urban planner at the General Sarmiento National University.

Four of the municipalities in the lower stretch of the Luján river basin most affected by the growth of high-end neighborhoods on floodplains and wetlands are Pilar, Campana, Escobar and Tigre, which cover more than 7,000 hectares.

 “The emergence of 65 housing developments of this kind modified the terrain at the mouth of the river and blocked drainage during weather events like the ones we experienced this month,” Pintos said.

These neighborhoods, which the expert described as “polderized closed housing developments” – a reference to polders or low-lying tracts of land enclosed by dikes – “entail major modifications of the natural topographical characteristics, not only to raise the level of the ground in order to build housing but also to create new bodies of water.”

That involves, for example, excavating to build artificial lakes and using the dirt to fill in low-lying areas.

Read Floods, Page 2

Gated Buenos Aires communities add to floods(2)

The U.S. company Energy Efficient has designed houses in Buenos Aires' gated communities.

Floods, Page 2

And because these housing developments are in flood-prone areas, embankments six to 10 meters high are built around them to keep water out.

“They protect these developments but they work as dikes that contribute to flooding in surrounding neighborhoods…What protects them hurts those who are outside,” Pintos said.

Ten percent of the 350,000 inhabitants of Tigre live in gated communities, which cover half of the municipality’s land area, said Martín Gianella, the municipal general secretary.

“This is what we call a model of socio-territorial segregation,” he said. “Walls are dividing the territory and society.”

Gianella said that Tigre, on the north side of Greater Buenos Aires, has historically suffered from flooding during the sudestadas.

“But in the last five years we have seen a new phenomenon: flooding from rainfall, and it’s no coincidence that it happens mainly in neighborhoods located next to gated communities built over the last decade,” he added.

The official urged the municipal government to oversee and regulate the construction of private neighborhoods “and to levy a special tax on these mega-developments, to invest in the necessary hydrological works.”

Robledo, the urban planner, stressed that changes in the hydrologic regimes don’t only affect the areas near the gated communities, because Buenos Aires was built on a plain crisscrossed by rivers.

“The city is part of an urban metabolism – what happens in one place affects the rest,” she explained. That is why solutions must be “interjurisdictional,” she added.

According to Robledo, the construction of these gated communities “favors the privatization of the city and real estate speculation, to the detriment of the rest of the population.”

Driven by the profit motive, “the companies buy up historically cheap land prone to flooding, fill it in to make it inhabitable, and earn extraordinary profits,” she said.

Pintos said “this is the result of the growth of a model of urban development followed by municipalities that are prone to favoring big investment flows.”

Pintos and Robledo agreed that while regulations and maps of socio-environmental risks posed by this kind of housing development exist, they are not enforced.

Big real estate entrepreneurs in the province of Buenos Aires, like Gonzalo Monarca, the president of the Grupo Monarca, deny that they are responsible for the problems, which they blame on climate change.

“That’s a fallacious argument,” Robledo said. “Climate change is happening at a global level, but the consequences are stronger or weaker depending on the way cities have been built and inhabited.”

“If we build in a drainage basin that receives overflow when the water level in the river goes up, it’s obvious that the water is going to run off into other areas,” she said.

Robledo stated that if this kind of housing development is not banned or regulated, cities will be flooded more frequently and for longer periods of time, even when the rainfall is not particularly heavy.

Pintos went even further, calling for solutions that are “not very popular” in political terms, and which may be complex and burdensome, but which she said should not be ruled out if the problem continues to grow.

As an example, she cited the relocation of families from the banks of the Mississippi river in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Other intermediate solutions, she said, would be to prohibit the construction of new private neighborhoods in fragile ecosystems, and a review of the permits already granted.

She also said companies should assume the costs of remediation of environmental problems, although such works would be a “bandaid in the face of a critical situation that could have been avoided if rationality had prevailed.”

Leandro Silva, the head of environment at the Defensoría del Pueblo de la Nación – Argentina’s ombudsperson’s office – pointed out  that in 2010 his office warned the municipalities of Zárate, Campana, Escobar, Tigre and San Fernando about the risks posed by the expansion of gated communities in the ecosystem of the Paraná river delta, and urged them to respect environmental impact studies and to impose strict controls.

“The recurrent flooding and the impact on the most vulnerable segments of society make it necessary to reinforce these mechanisms and proactively exercise prevention, implementing in the watersheds all of the environmental management instruments required by our legislation: environmental impact assessments, citizen participation, environmental zoning and access to public information,” he said.