30,000 people march in Bolivia
More than 30,000 workers hit the streets of La Paz March 27
demanding pay hikes and protesting government plans to sell
off the state-owned oil company and other industries. Oil
workers, miners, and health-care workers joined tens of
thousands of striking government employees in the
demonstration in the Bolivian capital. One worker was killed
when riot cops attacked an earlier protest on March 25.
The Bolivian Workers Confederation led the march as part of a two-week-old strike it has organized, shutting down public schools and universities. "We are one of the poorest countries in the world, and now they want to sell one of the last remaining resources we have - oil," Lucia Morales, a public health worker, told the New York Times.
Brazilian bank bailed out
The Brazilian government announced March 23 it will pour
$8.2 billion into the Banco do Brasil, the largest bank in
Latin America, to stanch its financial hemorrhaging. The bank
had just announced on March 20 a $4.3 billion loss - the
largest in its history and an amount greater than its net
worth.
The bailout was the third major rescue of a large Brazilian bank in less than a year. In August 1995, the Brazilian government seized the assets of Banco Economico and a few months later it pumped $6 billion into Banco Nacional.
Cease-fire called in Guatemala
Guatemalan president Alvaro Arzu directed the military on
March 21 to honor a truce called by guerrillas of the
Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity a day earlier. It was
the fourth cease-fire in Guatemala's 35-year-old civil war
where more than 120,000 people have been slaughtered - largely
during brutal government crackdowns during the 1980s.
The civil war started as peasants struggled against wealthy landowners in a country where more than 60 percent of the 10.7 million inhabitants live in poverty. The Commission for Human Rights in Guatemala recently reported the March 21 execution and torture of José Luis Ramos, coordinator of the Pro-Land Committee in the village of La Esperanza del Mar, Izabal.
Military raids in Puerto Rico
Some 800 National Guard soldiers and cops stormed the
largest housing project in Puerto Rico, home to 40,000
residents, March 19 under the pretext of searching for illegal
drugs. Helicopters hovered overhead while soldiers occupied
the streets, arresting an undisclosed number of people.
Civil liberties groups charged the military with brutality and searching homes without warrants. New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal applauded Puerto Rican governor Pedro Rosselló's armed assault in San Juan and the military occupations as a "top priority" in the so-called "war on drugs."
Italian airline facing bankruptcy
Alitalia, the state-owned airline in Italy with a debt of
$2.2 billion, lost $175 million in the latest quarter, more
than in all of 1995. Domenico Cempella, an Alitalia executive
appointed in February to salvage the company, asked for
cooperation from union officials in working out a rescue plan.
In 1995 Alitalia, which employs 18,000 people, was beset by
184 hours of strikes.
U.S. renews leases in Okinawa
Japan's prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto signed documents on
March 28 forcing the renewal of leases for U.S. military bases
in Okinawa. This followed a court ruling in Okinawa's capital
that the governor must renew the leases there. Some 32,000
people in Okinawa are compelled to lease land for the bases,
where 30,000 U.S. soldiers are stationed. Nearly 3,000
Okinawans are resisting efforts to force them to surrender
their plots of land for Washington's military operations.
Massive protests demanding U.S. troops leave the island were organized after a schoolgirl was raped by U.S. GIs. Reflecting this sentiment, Okinawa governor Masahide Ota refused to sign the lease agreement. "Considering the feelings of the Okinawans, it is very difficult for me to sign," he said at a news conference March 27.
Clinton to cut Social Security
Clinton administration officials announced March 18 plans
for reviewing the eligibility of 1.4 million of the 7.5
million people receiving disability payments from the Social
Security or Supplemental Security Income programs over the
next two years. The commissioner of Social Security, Shirley
Chater, stated that everyone receiving Social Security
disability benefits will be evaluated by 2002.
Jonathan Stein, general counsel of Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said the "announcement takes a step in the direction of the purge of the disabled that occurred in the early 1980s." The Reagan administration provoked outrage among working people in the early 1980s when it stopped payments for more than 500,000 people receiving disability benefits. A measure that prohibits alcoholics and drug addicts from receiving disability benefits was included in a government spending bill approved March 28 in Congress with support from the Clinton administration.
House bans abortion method
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a final version
of a bill on March 27 that bans women from using intact
dilation and evacuation, a late-term abortion procedure. The
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposed
the bill, asserting that it "employs terminology that is not
even recognized in the medical community."
Opponents of the measure say it could be used later to attack abortion rights in general. Catherine Albisa, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy in New York, said, "The bill is so vague it may also apply to other abortion procedures."
Assault on welfare marches on
While the U.S. Congress and President William Clinton remain
deadlocked on budget proposals, state governments around the
country have plowed ahead cutting billions of dollars from
welfare programs with waivers from Washington to enable them
to cut billions more.
In early March, California's Los Angeles County reduced general assistance payments to 90,000 beneficiaries by 25 percent. In the past year, six states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, followed Michigan's 1991 example and eliminated general assistance for able-bodied adults without children. All together, 37 states won waivers to adopt time limits, impose stringent work requirements, or place other restrictions on people receiving welfare benefits.
- MAURICE WILLIAMS