1974-04-18

You are listening to Latin American Press Review, a weekly summary of events in Latin America with special emphasis on translation from the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group of Austin, Texas. 

Today's coverage will include an analysis of censorship and the new president in Brazil from the Christian Science Monitor and Opinião, the plight of Haitian political refugees in the United States from the British news weekly Latin America, developments in the Central American banana trade from the Argentine daily, La Opinión. 

Since the Brazilian military came to power in 1964, civil liberties in Brazil have been severely restricted. The Christian Science Monitor reports on one Brazilian newspaper's fight for freedom of the press. The São Paulo newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, has felt the censor's blue pencil more than any other paper in Brazil during the past several years. On almost any given day, there will be several columns on news pages and on the editorial page given over to poetry.

This is a clear indication to O Estado readers that the censors have been at it again. In fact, O Estado editors have the poetry in type and ready to use. While most of Brazil's press has been intimidated by the succession of military-dominated governments since 1964, O Estado has stubbornly refused to back down. It is regarded in Brazil as one of the few defenders of freedom of the press. 

The military since 1964, have, in a sense, constituted themselves as Brazil's only political party. Electoral politics as known over the years simply no longer exist. There are to be sure two official parties. One of them supports the government. It of course, is in the majority. The other party is a made-to-order opposition and has virtually no clout. Despite the columns of poetry it runs in place of news and comment, O Estado is clearly one of the two focal points of opposition to the military. The other is the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church. Many of the churchmen are hoping that Brazil's new president, General Geisel will be less authoritarian than his predecessor. "It is too much to hope that he'll change everything," a São Paulo clergyman said, "but we have hopes that he will be more conscious of personal liberty and human rights than General Médici, the former president." 

A major test of general Geisel's purported liberalism will be his reaction to the student unrest which the New York Times has reported on many Brazilian campuses. Brazilian university students have taken advantage of the recent change in governments to embark upon increased protests. While this activity is not worrisome by the standards of some countries, it has caused concern in Brazil's official circles.

A strike began a week ago at São Paulo School of Medicine in protest against the present system of internship. All 1,000 students are backing the strike action. Since the school year opened at the beginning of this month, there have been strikes in the University of São Paulo's Department of Social Sciences and in two university branches. There has also been a flurry of protest pamphlets in various universities. Leaflets distributed at the Federal University of Bahia, in the Northeastern city of Salvador, note a worsening of the situation there. 

São Paulo University's Department of Social Sciences has called for renewed debate in the university on political, economic, and social events in Brazilian society, and has organized a series of lectures by prominent liberal figures, including some teachers who have been barred from teaching at the school. Militants at the School of Communications and Arts in São Paulo University have begun issuing pamphlets against their director, accusing him of arrogant authoritarianism and of acting like a gendarme. São Paulo University's Council of Academic Centers recently issued a communique supporting various protest movements and declared that 1974 would be extremely important in the students' fight to strengthen their free and independent organizations. 

A Communications student declared that the basic problem is a lack of liberty. He was protesting against the presence of police agents inside the university and the lack of true student associations. The national and state student organizations were disbanded at the outset of the 1964 military coup and have never been restored. Since then, student protest and repression have come in waves. A forceful crackdown in 1971 and widespread arrests a year ago served to curb student demands until recently. The academic centers, which are isolated groups serving generally as social clubs, are now debating their role under the new Geisel government. One group is urging increased militancy and closer contacts among the centers. 

The recent prosecution of a Brazilian congressman under the National Security Law has cast doubt on President Geisel's liberalism. The Brazilian weekly Opinião reports that Congressman Francisco Pinto has been charged with subverting the national security by defaming Chile's chief of state. When the Chilean General Augusto Pinochet attended Geisel's inauguration a month ago, Pinto denounced the head of Chile's Junta as a Fascist and the oppressor of the Chilean people. Under new Brazilian laws, Congressmen are not immune to prosecution if they injure or defame the laws of national security. If convicted, the congressman faces two to six years in prison. 

This is the first time that Brazil's military government has formally charged a member of Congress with public offense to a chief of state. In the past, other congressmen have used strong language to denounce other leaders such as Richard Nixon, Juan Perón of Argentina, and Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba. 

The Pinto case has stirred much common and concern in opposition circles in Brazil in view of widespread hopes that the inauguration last month of General Geisel as president was a step toward liberalization. General Geisel has publicly declared that he favors a gradual but sure return to Democratic rule in Brazil and has promised a new voice in policymaking to Congress. Congress has been powerless in recent years.

Mr. Pinto himself expressed the view that the government's action against him was intended to placate not only General Pinochet, but also Brazil's hard line military leaders who have expressed concern over a slight relaxation of censorship. The congressman's five-minute speech included a warning against what he described as the Chilean leader's plan to create an anti-Communist axis with Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia. The speech has not appeared in full in the government-censored press. These reports on developments in Brazil appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, and the Brazilian weekly Opinião. 

The British news weekly Latin America recently carried this story about political refugees from Haiti, a tiny Latin American country which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. 

Latin America begins by telling the story of Mrs. Marie Sanon, a woman who recently fled Haiti to escape the fear of beatings and the threat of jail. Mrs. Sanon thought when she fled Haiti that she would find asylum in the United States. Instead, she's one of some 400 Haitians in the United States, over 100 of them in jail, who are faced with deportation as illegal aliens. 

Since there are no immigration quotas for the Western hemisphere countries, immigrants may be admitted when they meet certain qualifications or if they are political refugees. Tens of thousands of Cubans are in this country because they are the type of refugees acceptable to the State Department. US authorities claim that escapees like Ms. Sanon are not political refugees because, they say, there is no political repression on that Caribbean island. The State Department says that since the death of Papa Doc Duvalier three years ago, his son, Jean-Claude, has brought about a more liberalized regime. But, says Latin America, Ms. Sanon and many others have charged that nothing has changed in Haiti and that the reform is just a cosmetic device to attract tourists to the island.

Mrs. Sanon lived in Port-au-Prince Haiti with her parents and nine other brothers and sisters in a small house. To meet increasing family expenses, her father rented a room to a man they later learned was a member of the Duvalier secret police, the Leopards. Early last year, after months of not receiving any rent from their boarder, one of the sisters went to ask for it and was brutally beaten. When the father went to find out what happened, he was arrested. Later, her mother was arrested too, and both were kept in jail for a month. 

After their release, the family lived in constant fear of further beatings or arrests. One of Mrs. Sanon's brothers, a law student, refused to help plan national sovereignty day observance at the university and declared his opposition to the regime. One day, Mrs. Sanon's friends told her that the Leopards were going to arrest her and her brother that night. With another brother, they left Port-au-Prince and made their way to Cap-Haitien where they met others who also wanted to escape. 

38 of them, including 30 men, seven women and a 16-year-old boy jammed into a small 20-foot sailboat they found and set sail for freedom, Miami, 750 miles away. But after two days out, the rudder broke and Gulf Currents brought them to the Cuban shore. Cuban officials offered them asylum, but they refused saying they were not Communists. They made repairs and set out again. Days later, the rudder failed again and the boat floundered. 

After nine days of helpless drifting, they were cited by some fishermen who then radioed the US Coast Guard. They were soon picked up and brought to Miami. The group, of course, asked for political asylum, but the State Department refused since it holds the view that no political repression is practiced on the island. 

Yet, says Latin America, despite proclamations of the Duvalier government to the contrary, terror and imprisonment have been documented by a number of human rights groups such as Amnesty International. In a report issued last year, Amnesty said no real changes have taken place in Haiti, except for an increasing struggle for power, both within the Duvalier family itself and among the ministers and other officials. For many years, hardly any information about political prisoners seeped out of Haiti. Prisoners who were released or exiled did not dare speak for fear of reprisals on themselves or their families. 

United States government officials say that many Haitians have come to this country for purely economic reasons, and that 30% never request asylum. They also say that the refugees who can't establish that they will be subject to persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular group cannot remain in the United States. Why the State Department is treating Haitians differently than other refugees is a question that has been posed by many groups supporting the Haitians. 

In Miami, a former Justice Department attorney who represents 250 of the refugees says what it boils down to is that the United States is unwilling to accept the fact that people who come from right-wing countries are oppressed. People who flee to the United States from Communist countries are always granted political asylum, but we have a long history of refusing those from right-wing or Fascist dictatorships. That from the British newswekly, Latin America.

In a recent article entitled "Central America: Made Martyr by The Big Fruit Company", La Opinión, an Argentine newspaper reports on the US-based Standard Fruit Company. Standard Fruit unilaterally suspended its import of bananas from Honduras in reprisal for an agreement Honduras made establishing an export tax on bananas of $1 per case. According to Standard Fruit, the agreement will bring Honduras unemployment and cause a drop in wages, as well as affect banana production in all of Latin America's other banana-producing nations. The decision, reports La Opinión, was made public by Standard Fruit following an interview which several of the corporation's highest officials had with Honduran President López Arellano. 

Officials spokesmen have stated that Honduras remained firm in defense of its recent agreements, reached collectively with Panama, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Colombia. Standard Fruit alleged in a press statement that the rise in the export price of bananas will diminish North American banana consumption, thus making it necessary to adjust the supply in order to compensate for the new situation.

Standard Fruit announced its intention to take such action at a recent meeting of Latin American banana producers held in Honduras. During the meeting, a Standard Fruit official warned all of the various representatives that it would suspend all banana shipments out of Honduras if the $1 tax was agreed upon. The threat, which would hurt, especially Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras, was ignored by all of the representatives present. 

Following the meeting, a Costa Rican newspaper, Latin, reported on the reaction to Standard Fruits actions by Costa Rican President José Figueres. Figueres labeled Standard Fruit's operations colonialist. The Costa Rican President also said that Standard Fruit was the only foreign fruit company which had refused to pay the $1 export charge. Addressing his country in a national television broadcast, Figueres stated, "It is a typically colonialist attitude and has caused us great difficulty. However, we will not alter our approach and we'll do what must be done." 

Standard Fruit's hardline policy, reports La Opinión, is due to two chief factors. Standard Fruit fears that competitors will move in and capture its market when its prices rise. The company also fears that the banana producers, if not dealt with firmly, will pursue with greater interest their recent tendency towards trade with Socialist nations. 

This report on the banana trade in Central America was taken from the Argentine daily, La Opinión, and the Costa Rican paper, Latin. 

You have been listening to Latin American Press Review, a weekly summary of events in Latin America with special emphasis on translations from the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group. Comments may be sent to the group at 2434 Guadalupe Street, Austin, Texas. That's 2434 Guadalupe Street, Austin, Texas. 

Latin American Press Review is distributed by Communication Center, the University of Texas at Austin. Views expressed are those of the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group and its sources and are not necessarily endorsed by the University of Texas or this station.