U.S. GOVERNMENT REVIEWS BAN ON SALE OF ADVANCED WEAPONS TO LATIN AMERICA WASHINGTON, JUNE 5, 1996 S ecretary of Defense William Perry said in March that the U.S. government may modify its arms policy towards Latin America. The remark has given new hope to a defense-industry effort to open the Latin American market to U.S.-made military equipment. The current policy, first adopted during the Carter administration, prohibits military- equipment manufacturers from selling advanced weaponry, such as F-16 attack aircraft, to Latin American nations. Perry's comments, which were delivered after a visit to the U.S. display at a Chilean air show in March, reinvigorated a lobbying effort that had failed to get the issue off the State Department's back burner. While the Pentagon is believed to be in favor of lower restrictions, the State Department has thus far blocked the move on the grounds that it would lead to weapons proliferation. Shortly after Perry's statement, members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State Warren Christopher in support of relaxed restrictions. An April letter to Christopher, signed by 79 House representatives, called U.S. barri- ers "excessive and unwarranted." Several senators also wrote to the Secretary of State about what they called "anachronistic restric- tions" on U.S. arms sales. The "harmful" policy, they wrote, has allowed foreign competitors to gain "a sturdy foothold in Latin America." The defense industry has long argued that with the shift to more civilian control of the military and improved economic growth in Latin America, the time has come to lower the barriers to U.S. arms sales to the region. In addi- tion, the industry claims that U.S. manufacturers are losing deals to foreign companies because of the no-sale policy. While the current U.S. policy prevents the sale of attack jets and similar advanced equipment, not all sales are banned. Recent reports indicate that the Clinton administration is considering selling dozens of Sidewinder air- to-air missiles to Brazil and Chile. In addition, Brazil and Ecuador have inquired about pur- chasing several Blackhawk heli- copters. The United States is already the world's largest arms supplier to Latin America. According to a Congressional Research Service report published in August, 1995, U.S. companies controlled 31% of the Latin American arms mar- ket between 1991 and 1994. This represents almost a tripling of U.S. sales to the region from the previous four-year period. Russia is the next largest arms supplier, with a 26% share of the market. Opponents of lower restric- tions note that the lack of military threats in the region should pre- clude any new weapons agree- ments. Opening the floodgates of advanced fighter aircraft and other equipment, critics say, would likely tip the delicate political and military balance that has been reached by one-time adversaries. Furthermore, a new arms race would drain economic resources, possibly damaging regional development and bur- geoning trade relationships. Defense-industry officials con- cede that Latin America does not present a huge marketing oppor- tunity. But, analysts say, with the Pentagon's weapons purchases on the decline, and tougher inter- national competition, even the niche markets are worth fighting for. Insiders in the Clinton admin- istration note that the Capitol Hill missives have spurred proponents of the policy shift in the State Department to request a closer look at the present government policy. Without a clear call to sustain the current restrictions on advanced weaponry, officials point out, it will be difficult to hold off what appears to be a ground swell of support for renewed sales to the region. -Tom Cardamone AMAZON CHIEF SUES THE BODY SHOP SAO PAULO, MAY 27, 1996 he Body Shop pioneered the idea that environmental and political correctness could also be applied to soap, shampoos and skincare. Campaigns to save the Amazon rain forest and indige- nous peoples, and well-publicized ethical trading projects with countries in the Third World raised not only the company's profile, but its profits. In 1995, retail sales in the Body Shop's 1,210 stores in 45 countries totaled $800 million. Therefore, the company was badly rattled when Chief Pykati- Re of the Brazilian Kayapo indigenous group announced in February his intention of suing the Body Shop for the "unautho- rized use of my image for public- ity ends." Emissaries were hur- riedly sent to Pykati-Re's village, Pukanu, one of two Kayapo vil- lages in remote northern Brazil which supply Brazilian nut oil for a Body Shop hair conditioner, to persuade him to back down. The members of the community were offered a contract recognizing their right to payment for the use of their image. An image of Pykati-Re in tradi- tional feathered headdress has been used in posters exhibited since 1990 in Body Shop stores Vol XXX, No 1 JuLY/AUG 19961 Vol XXX, No 1 JULY/AUG 1996 1NEWSBRIEFS throughout the world. In addition, his photo decorates the Body Shop's factory in England and was used in publicity to raise funds in Europe to help indige- nous peoples. He also appears alongside Anita Roddick, the Body Shop's founder and direc- tor, in an American Express advertisement. "I'm in need of money to help my community," Pykati-Re wrote in February, "and this is why I'm in a hurry to ask for compensation." His lawyer, Hildebrando Pontes Neto, is a specialist in indigenous rights. The Body Shop's defense is that the price it pays for the Brazilian nut oil is well above the "market price" and includes pay- ment for the Kayapo image. In fact, since there is no internation- al market in Brazilian nut oil, the price is fixed according to the Body Shop's own criteria. That price only came to include a pay- ment for the image after the sub- ject was raised by the Kayapo community in 1993. At that time, the Body Shop announced that it had reached the world's first cul- tural and "intellectual property" agreement between a Western company and an indigenous group. According to the Body Shop's then manager in Brazil, Saulo Petean, the Kayapos were only consulted about the agreement after it was announced, and did not understand what it meant. Saulo Petean, who worked with the rub- ber tappers' leader Chico Mendes before his murder in 1988, was fired in January after being accused of stirring up trouble. Many of Petean's allegations against the organization, howev- er, were borne out by a 1995 independent evaluation, commis- sioned by the Body Shop, of the store's "ethical trading project" with the Kayapo. Although the experts found positive aspects to the project, the Body Shop did not accept their criticisms and chose not to publish the report. After visiting the Kayapo vil- lages involved in collecting and pressing the Brazil nuts and mak- ing bead necklaces, the authors reported, "The concept of intel- lectual property rights, widely discussed internationally, is not at all understood in the villages, even by most leaders. This raises an ethical question about the use of the Kayapo image in 'market- ing' internationally." They concluded: "There is an implicit-if unanswered-ques- tion: is the Body Shop's trading link with the Kayapo 'aid' or has it been a deliberate profitable investment in marketing of the company's name?" -- Jan Rocha VENEZUELA TURNS TOWARD NEOLIBERALISM CARACAS, MAY 27, 1996 P resident Rafael Caldera, elected on a platform of oppo- sition to neoliberal economic poli- cies, announced a wide-reaching austerity package on April 15. During his first two years in office, Caldera was the only Latin American president to resist the dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The aus- terity measures mark his entry into the neoliberal fold. Under the austerity package, the price of gasoline will increase five-fold-twice as much as the government's original plan, which would have set the price at slightly above the cost of produc- tion. The government lifted con- trols on the exchange rate and on interest rates. Caldera is also Continued on page 45 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 seeking congressional approval for an increase in taxes on wholesale and "luxury" goods from 12.5 to 16.5%, a rate which is half way between the government's initial proposal of 15% and the IMF's call for 18%. On May 24, the govern- ment lifted price controls on seven basic commodities. In his about-face, Caldera was supported by his coalition partner Movement toward Socialism (MAS), the country's largest leftist party. MAS's endorsement was clinched by the president's cabinet reshuffle. Three MAS representa- tives joined the cabinet, including veteran MAS leader and theoreti- cian Teodoro Petkoff as planning minister. The MAS leadership in Congress had begun to take a defi- ant stand toward Caldera, against the advice of historical leaders like Petkoff and former MAS president Pompeyo Mirquez. The new cabi- net appointments appear to have derailed that incipient opposition. In his concerted effort to garner support among the MAS member- ship, Petkoff stressed Caldera's social program which accompanies the austerity package. For example, Caldera doubled the "family bonus" (to about US$19) granted for each child attending a shanty- town primary school. The Caldera administration has also implement- ed a gasoline subsidy for public transportation which is clearly designed to avert the need for fare increases. Such increases in 1989 triggered a week of mass rioting, which resulted in an estimated thousand deaths. The announcement of the auster- ity package delighted neoliberals who had been prophesying eco- nomic disaster for Venezuela since Caldera's election in December, 1993. Despite their elation, howev- er, many argued that Caldera's "shock treatment" does not go far enough. They are calling for "struc- tural changes" to guarantee true economic transformation: privati- zation of the steel and aluminum industries as well as several banks which the government recently took over; sharp reductions in state spending; and the dismantling of the system of worker severance payments. His neoliberal critics would also like to see Caldera open up the oil industry to further foreign invest- ment. In February, the administra- tion granted oil-exploitation rights at ten sites to mixed-ownership firms with heavy foreign participa- tion. The neoliberals are now call- ing for the sale of 15 to 30% of the stock in the state oil company PDVSA. In the wake of Caldera's conver- sion to the neoliberal model, the IMF, the World Bank and other multilateral financial institutions have promised $7 billion in loans to Venezuela. This infusion of cash will no doubt reactivate the econo- my in the short run, but will exacer- bate the long-term problem of the country's enormous foreign debt. -Steve Ellner COMMUNITY RADIO UNDER ATTACK IN EL SALVADOR JUNE 3, 1996 Community radio stations in El Salvador are struggling to sur- vive in the face of concerted efforts by the right-wing ARENA govern- ment to shut them down. The coun- try's 11 community radios were formed in the wake of the January, 1991 peace accords that resolved the country's civil war. While the accords legalized the two guerrilla radios, Radio Venceremos and Radio Farabundo Marti (now RV and FF), the community radio sta- tions were not granted legal status. This lack of legal recognition has given the opposition a crucial foothold. Owned and operated by local, non-profit groups, El Salvador's community radio stations are a cru- cial means of communication in rural areas that lack basic infrastruc- ture such as telephones, mail service, newspapers or paved roads. The low- power broadcasters transmit local and national news, community-edu- cation programs, announcements from government agencies, notices of community meetings, music from salsa to rock, and emergency messages. The Telecommunications Admin- istration of El Salvador (ANTEL), the government agency charged with regulating broadcasting, has led the attack against the community radio stations. The situation came to a head on December 4, 1995, when Juan Jos6 Domenech, the head of the ruling ARENA party and then president of ANTEL, ordered the police to close down the stations and seize their equipment. Domenech charged that the stations were illegal and part of a plot by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) to influence the 1997 elec- tions. (The stations are, in fact, not affiliated with any political party.) In Guarjila, Chalatenango, a thou- sand local residents blocked the roads with stone barricades to pre- vent the police from carting off the equipment. The other ten stations, however, were forced off the air for over two months. The stations turned for redress to the Supreme Court. They argued that the government's action violat- ed the Constitution, particularly Article 6 which guarantees the right of freedom of expression and for- bids the seizure of communication media. In late January, the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling in favor of the stations. ANTEL inter- preted the decision narrowly to mean that the government had to return the seized equipment. By contrast, the Association of Parti- cipatory Radios and Programs of El Salvador (ARPAS) argued that the Court had recognized their right to broadcast. In March, the Court affirmed its earlier ruling, but said that it could not issue broadcast licences-a decision that has left the legal status of the stations once again up in the air. Negotiations over technical and legal issues began in January between ARPAS and ANTEL. By that time, businessman Juan Jos6 Daboud had replaced Domenech, who had left ANTEL to devote more time to his duties as head of ARENA. The technical team con- cluded that El Salvador's radio spectrum had enough frequencies to accommodate the community radio stations. The legal team, however, made little progress on the crucial issue of legal status. The talks, which were mediated by the UN and the national human rights office, broke down in March when ANTEL walked out. Since then, the community radio stations have suffered acts of van- dalism and intimidation, apparently in an effort to force them to back down. A radio antenna was sabo- taged at one station, and armed gun- men appeared at another facility associated with community radio demanding that the radio equipment be handed over. -Diana Agosta TENSIONS RUN HIGH IN CHIAPAS MEXICO CITY, JUNE 7, 1996 T he dialogue between the Mexican government and the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has been put on hold pend- ing the return of a more stable polit- ical atmosphere. Tensions have been raised by heavy government troop movements around areas con- trolled by the EZLN, by stiff sen- tences handed down to "presumed Zapatistas," and by the increased activity of paramilitary groups in northern Chiapas. Assailing the current climate of "persecution" in the country, the EZLN denounced the "absurd" six- year jail sentence given in late May by a judge in the state of Vera Cruz to "presumed Zapatista" Francisco Santiago Garcia for "sabotage." The sabotage in question was never proven, and Garcia claims he was tortured to confess to political activity he never engaged in. The sentence handed down to Garcia follows two sentences given a month earlier in Chiapas to a 35- year-old television correspondent, Javier Elorriaga, and an 18-year- old Tzeltal campesino, Sebastian Entzin. Elorriaga was sentenced to 13 years and Entzin to seven for "rebellion, terrorism and conspira- cy," after they had served as mes- sengers between the guerrillas and the government in the early days of the uprising. On June 6, a Chiapas state judge suspended the sentences of Elorriaga and Entzin on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The move has been universally seen as a peace gesture from the federal government, since judicial autonomy is believed here--espe- cially by the Zapatistas--to be gen- erally honored in the breach. Eighteen "presumed Zapatistas," including the two just released, have been detained for over a year. Most of them were rounded up dur- ing a government offensive in February, 1995, two months before a non-retroactive amnesty was declared for all members of the EZLN. The EZLN maintains that the prisoners are being held as gov- ernment bargaining chips. In a June 2 statement, Sub- comandante Marcos said that the negotiations had "become hostage to power struggles" within the gov- ernment. Marcos told reporters that certain forces in the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), acting contrary to the wishes of President Ernesto Zedillo, were trying to provoke the EZLN to abandon dialogue and to resort once again to arms. Meanwhile, paramilitary activity in Chiapas is on the rise, especially in the northern part of the state. Jesuit priests working with indige- nous groups in the area have received death threats from PRI- affiliated paramilitary groups with names like "Peace and Justice," and "The Youth Group." Social tensions exploded in mid- April in the Chiapas village of Bachaj6n--a village still organized as a communal ejido, within the jurisdiction of a municipality called Chil6n-when the village assembly elected a member of the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) as ejidal (agrarian) commis- sioner. In response, a rival PRI-affil- iated (mostly mestizo) group called the "Chinchulines," led by Jer6nimo G6mez Guzmdn, seized the munici- pality buildings, and drove Chil6n's PRD mayor and many of Bachaj6n's indigenous residents into hiding or exile. On May 5, a group of indigenous PRD members, armed with machetes and rifles, killed G6mez and burned his house to the ground. Groups of Chinchulines then retali- ated. By the end of the day, six peo- ple-four Chinchulines and two PRD members-were dead, and dozens of houses were burned to the ground. Sources Tom Cardamone is director of the Conventional Arms Transfer Project for the Council For A Livable World Education Fund in Washington, DC. Jan Rocha is a British journalist based in Sao Paulo. Steve Ellner teaches at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela. An updated version of his book Organized Labor in Venezuela, 1958-1991: Behavior and Concerns in a Democratic Setting (Scholarly Resources, 1993) was recently published in Spanish by Editorial Tropykos. Diana Agosta is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the City University of New York (CUNY), and works in commu- nity television. Fred Rosen is on leave from NACLA. He is working for the Mexico City newspaper, El Financiero International.
