Two more teachers murdered in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Education International

2009-04-03
Two more teachers murdered in Colombia

Ramiro Cuadros Roballo and Walter Escobar Marín, both members of SUTEV, a teacher union affiliated to FECODE, and two other trade-unionists were assassinated last month, as the violence against trade union activists continues to mount.

Ramiro Cuadros Roballo worked for 20 years as a teacher and was a prominent union leader. In recent years he assisted teachers in their claims for debt payments at the local administration of Tulúa, in the department of Valle del Cauca. Due to his work in the defence and promotion of trade union and human rights he received many death threats over a period of several years, peaking at the end of 2008. On 24th March at 6am he was shot dead outside his house by a group of gunmen as he set off for work.

Cuadros had filed several complaints with the regional Special Committee for Displaced and Threatened Teachers, and completed the procedure to apply for the status of threatened teacher. These mechanisms are guaranteed in a 2003 Government Decree with the aim of protecting vulnerable teachers.

Walter Escobar Marín worked at an education institution in the district of Cali, Valle del Cauca. The circumstances of his death remain unknown, since his body was found in the district of Palmira on 21st March, after a reported absence at work of 8 days.

Read more: http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=1002&theme=rights&country=colombia

[Judi Lynn]

1. Earlier: Colombian teacher trade unionist assassinations mount

Colombian teacher trade unionist assassinations mount

1 October 2007

Four more teacher trade unionists have been murdered in recent weeks in the Colombian department of Antioquia, taking to over 1,000 lives the union death toll in that department alone.
The Colombian trade union federation CUT has notified campaign organisation Justice for Colombia of the most recent assassinations of teachers - all of whom were active in the teachers' trade union FECODE.

The most recent killing, on Wednesday 19 September, was of Rosalino Palacios Mosquera an English-language teacher in the town of Bello in Antioquia department. The 39-year-old was gunned down as she walked with her brother through the town. Her brother also died during the attack.

Previously, on 12 September, Alberto Valencia Correa, the head of a small primary school in the Envigado region of Antioquia, was also assassinated. Augusto Ramirez Atehortua, a teacher in the 'La Inmaculada' school in the town of Guarne, also in Antioquia, was murdered a week earlier on 6 September.

http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2837

[Judi Lynn]

2. Earlier: Two teacher unionists murdered in 5 days

2007-11-13 Colombia: Two teacher unionists murdered in 5 days

EI deplores the murder of two teacher trade unionists within the past week

Mercedes Consuelo Restrepo Campo was shot dead outside the 'San Juan Bosco' school in the town of Cartago by two armed men on a motorcycle on 7th November the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia – CUT - reports.

Restrepo, who had been a teacher for 30 years, served on the executive board of SUTEV, a regional affiliate of EI member FECODE, in the department of Valle de Cauca.

Her murder follows that of Leonidas Silva Castro on 2nd November. He was murdered in his home in the Barrio Prados del Norte neighbourhood in the town of Villacaro. Castro had arrived home after attending a trade union event. He was an active member of ASINORT – another FECODE affiliate.

Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist. The EI Barometer found that violence against trade unionists is endemic. Union leaders are targets of attacks by armed groups for political reasons. Teachers, who make up almost one-third of the organised work force, especially so.

http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=662&theme=rights&country=colombia

[Judi Lynn]

3. Teacher murdered by shadowy hands in the town of Puerto Tejada, Cauca.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Teacher murdered by shadowy hands in the town of Puerto Tejada, Cauca.

PUBLIC DENUNCIATION

(Translated by Peter Lenny, a CSN volunteer translator)


The question we keep asking is how long we educators will have to stand for the barbarity we are subject to by this decadent State misgoverned under purported security policies, which in practice have brought nothing but desolation, displacement and death to Colombia.

We have not yet finishing mourning three murdered teachers, our colleagues, and already we face another period of mourning for our colleague Bernarda Zúñiga. She was threatened with death in the town of Buenos Aires Cauca, and was working as a teacher in Puerto Tejada where she was tragically killed. What is especially worrying teachers in Cauca is, firstly, that all these murders have been committed against teachers who are members of our trade union; secondly, that three of the four murders were against women; and lastly, that all these cases have gone unpunished and the government has not even made any kind of pronouncement.

The Cauca teachers’ association “ASOINCA” repudiates the vile murder of the educator, our colleague, BERNARDA ZÚÑIGA IMBACHI, who worked at the “San Pedro Claver” educational institution in the town of Puerto Tejada.

On 21 May 2007, she was found murdered with a gunshot wound to the head at a deserted part of the La Ventura area of the Timba district in the municipality of Buenos Aires. She had been receiving death threats for the last year and a half, and the Committee on Death Threats had accordingly granted her official “under threat” status. What we cannot accept is that the local administration transferred her, with no protection, to a place close to where she was later killed, because hers was a very risky case. For that reason, we demand an investigation and the corresponding declaration from the authorities. This murder was perpetrated by persons unknown who took her from a party where she was talking to friends.

In her teaching career, this educator and colleague, who at the time of her death was a member or our union, won distinction for her academic qualifications which, with the greatest quality and dedication, she placed at the service of all her students at the various teaching institutions where she worked in the state. She was also a colleague who distinguished herself in the struggle for public education, for the rights of teachers, children, young people and the underprivileged generally.

More:
http://www.colombiasupport.net/news/2007/07/teacher-murdered-by-shadowy-hands-in.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. Wednesday, 1 April 2009, 3:39 pm: Violence In Colombia Continues

Violence In Colombia Continues
Wednesday, 1 April 2009, 3:39 pm
Press Release: International Trade Union Confederation

Violence In Colombia Continues

Brussels, 27 March 2009: Murders of trade union leaders and members and violence against the trade union movement are continuing, despite the Colombian authorities' assertions to the contrary. Ramiro Cuadros Roballo, Walter Escobar Marín, José Alejandro Amado Castillo and Alexander Pinto Gómez were murdered this March, bringing to nine the number of trade unionists killed in 2009.

For years, Ramiro Cuadros Roballo, a member of the Valle Teachers' Union (SUTEV), a branch of the Colombian Teachers' Federation (FECODE) in Valle del Cauca department, had been receiving threats, and these became more frequent at the end of last year. These threats were duly reported to the appropriate authorities and to the Valle Committee for Threatened and Displaced Persons, which was examining his case, since another teacher, Cuadros Robayo, had followed the procedure specified by Decree 3222 of 2003 to secure recognition as a threatened teacher. On 24 March, as he was about to drive to work, he was confronted by gunmen, who shot him and fled.

Walter Escobar worked at the José María Carbonell school, in the city of Cali in Valle del Cauca department. The circumstances surrounding his murder are not known, since his corpse was found in the city of Palmira on 21 March. He had not been at school for eight days.

José Alejandro Amado Castillo and Alexander Pinto Gómez, of the Girón Santander High and Medium Security Prison, were also murdered in March. On their way home in an official vehicle, they were killed by gunmen on motorbikes. They were both members of the Trade Union Organisation of Employees of the National Penitentiary and Prisons Institution, INPEC ASEINPEC, an affiliate of CGT (General Confederation of Labour).

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0904/S00016.htm

[The abyss]

5. Wow!

Hard to believe that these educators and unionist are such a threat to the “system” that they have to send out the death squads.

Looks to me like the “system” has less of a true grip than they once had, it must be getting rather worried!

[Judi Lynn]

6. Just found this: "Civil war 'kills one teacher a week' "

I just found something I've never heard before: there is a push on in Colombia to PRIVATIZE the schools there. This is beyond my ability to grasp. Killing teachers to force the issue of privatization? I'll have to learn more about it. My God.

~~~~~~~~~~
Civil war 'kills one teacher a week'

One teacher or lecturer in Colombia has been killed every week so far this year according to Fecode, the country's teachers' union. The Times Higher Education Supplement reported that the death toll has increased sharply each year since 1999, when it stood at 27. Officials last month told a visiting delegation, including UK lecturers and education trade unionists, that 83 teachers were murdered in 2002 as a result of Colombia's civil war.

Development charity War on Want and campaign group Justice for Colombia took delegates from UK trade unions, including the Association of University Teachers, Natfhe and Unison HE, to witness first-hand the daily risks run by educators, students and union members.
It is estimated that 95 per cent of human rights abuses are carried out by paramilitary death squads - rightwing militias that have documented links to the official armed forces and the authorities. The delegation was told of one such group, "Death to Trades Unionists", that, in a letter seen by the delegation, made death threats against ten lecturers at the University of Southern Colombia, branding them "military targets".

Angela Roger, senior lecturer in education at the University of Dundee and vice-president of the AUT, was a member of the delegation. "We heard numerous accounts of killings and kidnappings, including a university porter being gunned down by two assassins on motorbikes and the shooting of an ordinary teacher while driving home with his wife."

Students are also prime targets for terror: up to 70 student leaders have disappeared in the past five years.
Gerard Kelly, president of Natfhe and a law lecturer at the Manchester College of Arts and Technology, said: "We were told of students at the Universidad del Atlantico in Antioquia province being killed in front of a classroom (of students) where they were being taught."

There has been a long-running campaign by students and lecturers against government plans to privatise higher education. Students at the Universidad del Valle in Cali recently demonstrated against police raids on campus.

They organised a peaceful weekend protest, but the police were called to shut the university. When the students turned up for class the following Monday, they found the gates locked and blocked by riot police and two tanks.

Across Colombia, students are targets. In Cúcuta, paramilitaries imposed a 10.30pm curfew on young people, and female students were banned from wearing tight tops and jeans. The delegation heard that those unfortunate enough to attract the attentions of the paramilitary groups were punished with acid attacks.

Private companies are being brought into the education sector under government policies to privatise higher education. In 1990, about 90 per cent of university workers were on permanent contracts. In 2003, that figure had fallen to about 10 per cent.

More:
http://www.nearinternational.org/alert-detail.asp?alertid=37

[AndyTiedye]

7. What Kind of Nation Murders its Teachers?

A failed one, like Colombia and Afghanistan.

[Judi Lynn]

8. Colombia: more teachers murdered

2008-04-11 Colombia: more teachers murdered

Educators around the world are condemning the latest brutal assassinations of teacher trade unionists in Colombia. On 1 April, Emerson Ivan Herrera Ruales and Luz Mariela Diaz Lopez lost their lives at the hands of unknown gunmen who shot them as they made their way to work in the morning.

Both were teachers at a rural school in Valle del Guamez, in the department of Putumayo. Compounding the atrocity of the crime is the fact that Diaz Lopez was seven months pregnant at the time she was murdered.

The Human Rights Commission has issued a statement from the Colombian Federation of Educators (FECODE) calling on the government to investigate their deaths and bring the killers to justice.

"FECODE rejects these abhorrent recent crimes and demands once again that the national authorities urgently conduct all necessary and decisive investigations in order to break the chain of impunity that regularly characterises the assassinations of teachers," it said. "We find that the only response from the education authorities is the opposite of solidarity, negligence and administrative contempt."

The union federation also exhorted the departmental authorities to guarantee and respect the fundamental rights of all educators in Putumayo, who face daily threats due to the actions of different players in the ongoing civil conflict in Colombia.

Education International is also calling on the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to abide by its obligations under international law to guarantee the fundamental right to freedom of association, including the safety and security of all trade unionists in Colombia.

"Education International and its members around the world are speaking with one voice. This killing has got to stop! Impunity for murder of trade unionists cannot be allowed. Those responsible for these heinous crimes must be brought to justice," said EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen.

The murders of Herrera and Diaz are only the latest in a horrendous death toll of Colombian trade unionists so far this year. Statistics issued before their deaths include the latest report from the respected Colombian NGO, Escuela Sindical Nacional, which notes the assassination of 17 workers since the beginning of 2008. According to the British NGO, Justice For Colombia, nine trade unionists were killed in the month of March alone.

Among the dead are the following teachers, who were activists in FECODE member organisations:

* Ramiro de Jesús Pérez Zapata, killed on 12 January in San Jeronimo in Antioquia department.

* Maria del Carmen Mesa Pasachoa, killed on 8 February in Tame in Arauca department.

* Carmen Cecilia Carvajal, killed on 4 March in the town of Ocaña in Norte de Santander department.

* Gildardo Antonio Gomez Alzate, killed on 7 March in the city of Medellín in Antioquia department.

* Victor Manuel Muñoz, killed on 12 March in the town of Codazzi in Cesar department.

* Emerson Ivan Herrera Ruales, killed on 1 April in the town of Valle del Guamez in Putumayo department.

* Luz Mariela Diaz Lopez, also killed on 1 April in Valle del Guamez in Putumayo department.

Unfortunately, as is typical in such cases, no one has been arrested or charged in connection with any of these murders.

http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=759&theme=rights&country=colombia

[The abyss]

9. Judi were you able to pop anything more on the “privatization” issue?

I dug around but didn’t locate anything.

Very strange series of “unfortunate events”.

I agree nothing here makes much sense. Reminds me of sponsored death squad tactics.

[Judi Lynn]

11. I'm away for most of the night, will look for more on this later on this evening.

Very curious about the whole thing, anything more learned would be completely worthwhile, considering the effort being made to keep us all in the dark, and our tax dollars flowing to these murderous a-holes.

I'll look some more in a few hours. :hi:

[Judi Lynn]

13. Here's something worth noting. This is really grim:

EDUCATORS FIGHT AGAINST PRIVATISATION

The exclusive model of education rules in Colombia. More than 3 million children and young people are outside the school system and now, with new legislation known as Law 012, the education budget will be cut even more. The expected result is that there will be 1,416,000 less school places.

One important factor in being able to combat the privatisation policy is the unity of the teachers, parents, workers and other sectors of the population. Only in this way will we be able to make full use of our forces and make it possible to win this fight, which in the end is a class struggle. It is important also to clarify what differentiates the United Kingdom and Colombia. In the UK, public education is free. Colombians have to pay school fees. At primary level these are about £10 to £15 for annual matriculation, and at secondary schools the fees are £17 annually to matriculate plus another £17 a month. These charges go up every year. Other factors such as unemployment have triggered a reduction in school attendance of some 45%. And this is without taking private education into account, where schools have had to do promotions where the matriculation fee is not paid, just the monthly fee. The government argues that there is a fiscal crisis. The real cause of this is the application of the neoliberal model and the imperialist policy called the "Economic Opening". So now they are trying to hive off the regional budgets for education and health.

The first privatisation wave

This is not the first wave of trying to privatise the education sector. Privatisation as a government policy started to impose itself on the regions in the 1980s, principally in public services, health and education. In the Cauca Valley, and in particular in Yumbo, where through fierce resistance from the trade union and with the support of the population in general, we managed to defeat the privatisation of education after 10 months of hard struggle. We combined marches, demonstrations, non-violent occupations, hunger strikes and work stoppages. Sadly of those of us leading this struggle, some have been assassinated, others have been obliged to move away to another part of the country or outside it, and yet others have joined up with the armed struggle.

I remember that in just 3 months (January, February, March) in 1992, 250 teachers were assassinated in Colombia, the majority of them in the Cauca Valley. Many of them were assassinated while they were in the classroom teaching. From that time (the first occasion that I left my country for security reasons) up to now there have been innumerable educators assassinated and disappeared, let alone displaced.

The Current Scene, Imposition of Law 012...

Territorial transfers are the taxes collected by the Municipalites, which are then in turn passed onto to the national state for redistribution to the different regions, according to their population. Through Legislative Act 012 these transfers will be modified, increasing the percentage that goes to the Armed Forces (Plan Colombia) and cutting the percentage for Education and Health.

Educators through their professional union FECODE (Colombia Educators Federation) responded with a 48-hour stoppage on 9th and 10th of May, and again from the 15th May to 19th June when the nefarious law was approved. The only amendment was a minor increase from 9.2 billion pesos to 10.3 billion for the regions.

~snip~
Reinforced by Law 60

The government's hard blow against education goes beyond Law 012. It has initiated a debate to dismantle the Teachers Statute, trying to change its essence in fundamental ways for teachers, such as:

# Modification of the Teachers Scale, reducing the categories from 14 down to 3: i) Elementary Teachers, trained in teachers colleges ii) Graduate Teachers, from universities iii) PostgraduateTeachers, with a postgraduate award.
# With this new system teachers salaries will be diminished and they will lose employment rights.
# Head teachers will be appointed by local mayors (not for their capacities) for a 4-year period, and these will appoint their teaching staff.
# Teacher appointments will be for a fixed term of 10 months, at the end of which their contract will be confirmed or they will be sacked.
# An Integral Salary will be implemented, but this will not follow the cost of living.

They are trying to do away with the gains that teachers made through arduous struggles, and with the fixed term contract system they are going to break collective agreements. On the other hand when the economic funds are exhausted, neither the national government nor the local mayors are going to back education, and it will be the teachers and the parents who will have to carry the costs of educating their children.

When they lose their rights as workers, the teachers who call for civil disobedience will be sacked or their contracts will not be renewed. Or the new Security Statute will be applied to them, and they will be judged by the military.

More:
http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/content/view/347/54/

[Judi Lynn]

10. US Fuels Colombia's Dirty War Against Unions

US Fuels Colombia's Dirty War Against Unions
— David Bacon

In mid-March, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita were riding the company bus from their jobs at the Loma coal mine in northern Colombia. Locarno and Orcasita were chairman and vice-chairman of the union at the mine.

The bus was stopped by 15 gunmen, some in military uniforms. They began checking the workers' identification, and when they found the two union leaders, pulled them off the bus.

One of the gunmen shot Locarno in the face, as his fellow workers watched in horror. Orcasita was taken off into the woods at the side of the road. There he was tortured. When his body was later found, his fingernails had been torn off.

Locarno and Orcasita had made repeated pleas to their employer, Drummond Co. of Birmingham, Alabama, for protection. Just a week before the assassinations, the union demanded that Drummond provide security for its workers and abide by a previous agreement allowing them to sleep overnight at the mine. The company refused to allow the men to stay.

Protesting the deaths, 1,200 miners at Loma stopped work. In Colombia, labor activism is often punished with death. By mid-May, 44 union leaders had been violently murdered this year alone. Last year assassinations cost the lives of 129 others. The National Labor School reports that 1,500 have been killed in the past decade. Out of every five unionists killed in the world, three are Colombian, according to a recent U.S. union report.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

The wave of violence is made possible by growing U.S. aid to the Colombian armed forces. Under "Plan Colombia," the U.S. has funneled over $1 billion into the country, almost entirely in the form of military assistance. Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world. Both Colombian and U.S. unions say this money funds a dirty war against all critics of the Colombian social and economic order, including unionists. This spring, the United Steel Workers sent a delegation to Colombia in the wake of the murders of Locarno Rodriguez and Orcasita.

The delegation met with leaders of the main Colombian labor federation, the CUT. Leo Gerard, USW president, warned the U.S. government that "we are strongly opposed to the amount of military aid being sent to the Colombian Army when unionists and innocent people are being killed by the very military forces we are financing."

The police commander for Cesar Province blamed Colombia's rightist paramilitaries, the United Defense Groups (AUC), for the two murders. But the paramilitaries are closely linked to the Colombian armed forces, says Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch. "The Colombian military and intelligence apparatus...look at unionists as subversives," says Kirk.

Roberto Molino of the Colombian Commission of Jurists told a delegation of U.S. unionists that "in the case of the paramilitaries, you cannot underestimate the collaboration of government forces."

The AUC is also backed by some elements of the business and economic elite behind the scenes. "There are powerful economic interests that support the paramilitaries," says Kirk, "and they do target unionists."

OTHER UNIONISTS SHOT

Coal union leaders are not the only targets.

Just days after the Loma murders, two leaders of the electrical workers union, Andres Granados and Jaime Sanchez, were gunned down. In mid-March, Eugenio Sanchez Diaz, a union activist in the oil town of Barrancabermeja, was dragged from his home and shot in the street. On the last day of March, Jaime Alberto Duque Castro, leader of a cement workers union, was kidnapped by armed gunmen. Amnesty International accused the AUC.

Ricardo Orozco, vice president of the Hospital Workers' Union, appeared on a list of 50 union leaders in Barranquilla circulated by the paramilitary death squads. He was shot in April, and his death was followed by two days of national labor protest.

Unionists hold the AUC responsible for almost all the union assassinations. The violence against unionists is part of a larger context of violence against community leaders, human rights activists, and advocates for social change generally.

According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, 6,000 Colombians were killed as the result of social and political violence in 2000. The CCJ attributes 80 percent of the cases to the paramilitaries, 5 percent directly to the government, and 15 percent to leftwing guerillas.

UNIONS DEFY IMF

The Colombian government views union activity as a threat because it challenges economic policies. The restructuring pushed by the International Monetary Fund in Colombia is inciting a wave of labor resistance that is being met by violent repression.

Colombia is under pressure from the IMF and World Bank to cut the public sector budget, causing mass terminations. In January the government announced measures that would close many state agencies, laying off 42,000 workers. The money would be used to pay the country's debt to foreign banks and lending institutions.

In March, the General Confederation of Democratic Workers organized a 24-hour strike of 700,000 workers, including 300,000 teachers and education employees, protesting mass layoffs.

The Colombian Federation of Educators (FECODE) struck again on May 15 for 48 hours, over a proposal to cut the education budget by $340 million. Health care workers also joined the strike. On June 7, tens of thousands of Colombian workers took to the streets in marches across the country, opposing the IMF.

Being a teacher union activist in Colombia is as dangerous as being a coal mine leader. Since 1986, 418 educators have been murdered. In May two teachers union activists and a university union activist were killed.

Another IMF mandate, privatization, has been just as bitterly resisted. The union at the government corporation EMCALI, which provides garbage, water and electricity to Cali city residents, has fought the company's sell-off. One of the union's activists, Carlos Eliecer Prado, was killed in May.

More:
http://labornotes.org/node/1752

[Judi Lynn]

12. Conditions confronting Colombian teachers:

Education International Barometer of Human & Trade Union Rights in Education

~snip~
Academic Freedom

Academic freedom is not legally restricted, but paramilitary groups and guerrillas maintain a presence on university campuses. National tests and standards are reported as obstacles to academic freedom. Control of private universities is also seen as a deterrent to academic freedom. Educators and their students at all levels have been victimised by all sides in the conflict. Guerrillas murder, threaten and kidnap academics and their family members for financial and political reasons.

Teachers have been targeted because of their opposition to forced recruitment of children and their community leadership. They have been accused of dissemination of political propaganda in the classroom. Threats and harassment have caused many professors, teachers and students to avoid discussing controversial topics. Many academics are in voluntary exile. The leadership of FECODE has been targeted by para-military groups for many years. EI and its member organisations have assisted colleagues who have gone into exile and have assisted internally displaced teachers through FECODE. EI supported the work of FECODE and the Ministry of Education to establish a programme for at-risk teachers. Efforts are made to relocate such teachers and their families and provide employment for them as educators within the country.

~snip~
Trade Union Rights

Workers may form and join trade unions, except members of the armed forces and police and persons performing essential public services. About 4% of the labour force is organised, with 2,357 registered unions representing 856,099 members. Violence against trade unionists is endemic. Union leaders are targets of attacks by armed groups for political reasons. Members of unions affiliated with the CUT, the country's largest confederation, have been targeted, and the murder of trade unionists is strongly linked to their labour activism.

The ILO Committee of Experts noted that a climate of violence pervades the country. Teachers, who make up almost one-third of the organised work force, are special targets. During the first 8 months of 2005, 20 teachers were killed and 254 received death threats. Paramilitaries are said to be responsible for 97% of the violence, and perpetrators operate with impunity. The government is accused of marginalising trade unions by arresting members on suspicion of engaging in terrorist activity. Charges against the leaders tend to be dismissed for lack of evidence. Leaders of 4 FECODE affiliates have had union permits revoked, as have a number of public sector unions.

FECODE presented their concerns to an ILO mission, highlighting violation of union rights in the education sector. Some programmes have been implemented to provide protection to threatened unionists, including a programme to relocate at-risk teachers. The ILO has criticised the requirement that government officials have to be present at meetings convened to take a strike vote and the prohibition of strikes in a wide range of non-essential public services.

More:
http://www.ei-ie.org/barometer/en/profiles_detail.php?country=colombia

[EFerrari]

14. So someone remind me why Uribe is in good standing with State but Chavez and Morales

are not?

[Judi Lynn]

15. Maybe they aren't doing their share killing off union workers, winning over the right-wing here.

Once they turn their back on the poor, sell off their countries resources in sweetheart deals which allow multinationals to plunder them, and let their nations revert to feudal states, they will be welcomed like the Biblical Prodigal Son.

[Mika]

16. This is the tried and true methodology of thugs. Same thing went on in Cuba, pre 1959.

When the Cuban Revolution kicked out the blood soaked US backed Batista regime the killings of teachers and organizers virtually stopped - until Cuban exile mercs started killing the young teachers the Revolution inspired to go out and reduce Cuba's illiteracy to near zero within a few years.

http://www.theliteracyproject.org/cuban_lit.htm

[Judi Lynn]

18. Wonderful seeing that clip you've found, Mika. First time to ever see any of those brave young

teachers who actually took their lives in their own hands by going throughout the country, into the most remote areas, among the sugar cane workers, carrying their little latterns China gave them, and working with the Cubans after they got home from work, by lantern light, teaching them to read, and write, starting with writing their own names as adults.

It's not something the Cuban "exiles" in the United States seem so proud to boast about, unlike their bravura when they announce, like Rodolfo Frómeta, of the mercenaries Commandos C-4 who goes to Cuba to kill political enemies and returns to Florida, the fact they sent in people to stalk and kill these young Cuban teachers in their attempt to thwart the success of the new Cuban government. That's damned low.

It was great seeing moving images of people carrying around these giant mock pencils they used to symbolize the transformation going on among illiterate Cuban citizens who never went to school under previous regimes, who were FINALLY learning to read as adults, after a lifetime of assuming it was their fate to be illiterate.

http://www.communitytechnology.org.nyud.net:8090/cuba/thumbnails/cubaphotos-540lit.jpg http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/04Jubp2a9pana/340x.jpg

[Mika]

19. They are the heroes of Cuba. Legends in Cuban history.

Amazing thing. It was.

[The abyss]

17. Recommend – for some amazing information.

I always learn something new on one of these threads.

Thank you Judi

[Judi Lynn]

20. Anorther teacher killing: Teachers Union Leader Killed in Colombia

Teachers Union Leader Killed in Colombia

BOGOTA – A teachers union leader in northwestern Colombia was gunned down and his teenage daughter wounded over the weekend, police said.

Hernan Polo Barrera, president of the Sitraenal teachers union in Cordoba province, was killed in front of his house on Saturday night.

Two unidentified individuals arrived at Polo Barrera’s house and shot him several times, police spokesmen in Monteria, the capital of Cordoba, said.

The gunmen fled on a motorcycle after killing Polo Barrera.

The union leader’s 16-year-old daughter, Listeh, was taken to a hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound, but she is expected to live, doctors said.

More:
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=331320&CategoryId=12393