Translation: David Brookbank for ALAI (Latin America in Movement)
August 26, 2009
The UNASUR summit in Bariloche, Argentina will have to face two grave problems weighing heavily on Latin America: the military coup in Honduras and the militarization of the region as a result of the installation of not one but seven U.S. military bases in Colombia.
Regarding the first problem, UNASUR ought to demand consistency from Barack Obama in his statements of support for a new era of inter-American relations. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions, the coup is a trial balloon intended to test the reactions of the peoples and governments of the region. And that it happened in Honduras is precisely because that is the country most intensely subjected to the ideological influence and political dominance of Washington. (more…)
In recent days a variety of national and international media have published a list of songs censured during the last Argentinian military dictatorship, recovered in memory of those years of prohibition. The press has repeated the news and finds itself surprised to see some of the themes included in the list. However, this publication by COMFER (Federal Committee of Broadcasting) has made more noise than it deserves. In first place, it is not news that the last military dictatorship prohibited hundred of musical themes in the darkest years of Argentinian contemporary history. Anyway, the curious thing is that in the middle of the political failure of the Kirchner administration, there’s a forceful resurgence toward revision of the past in themes that have already been revised and that in any case, are not to be “disappeared” from the agenda of the “never again” media. (more…)
CORRECTIONS: The news that Gerardo Hernández received on his birthday, June 4, 2008, was not that the Supreme Court would refuse to hear the Cuban Five’s case, but that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had reinstated his two life sentences, after a previous ruling had overturned them. The Supreme Court’s announcement of the refusal to hear the Five’s case would come a year later, on June 15, 2009. In a sense, the timing was even more cruel, petty and personal than outlined below. The interview with Adriana Pérez, Gerardo’s wife, attributed in the article below to California’s La Opinión, was actually an Associated Press interview, from which La Opinión collected selected excerpts.
A State Department at the Service of Petty Interests:
Visa Denial as a Form of Torture
By Machetera
When the U.S. Government announced that it would deny Adriana Pérez a visa for the tenth time in eleven years in order to come from Cuba to the United States and visit her husband, Gerardo Hernández, incarcerated at the federal prison in Victorville, California, it carefully chose the date to break the news. The denial was announced on July 15, the couple’s 21st wedding anniversary. When the Supreme Court announced that it would refuse to hear the case of the Cuban Five, of whom Hernández is one, and the one facing the largest sentence, it chose the date with equal care: June 4, Hernández’s birthday. The timing of both events was as certainly deliberate as it was petty – a stamp of the U.S. State Department, where cruelty and pettiness abound.
Pérez has not seen her husband for almost twelve years, starting since almost a year before a SWAT team tore down the door to his tiny apartment in Miami in September of 1998 and arrested him, answering his question about why he was being arrested with a snarling “You know why.” So much for due process. It would be only the first violation of its kind in a never-ending chain. (more…)
This interview with Adriana Pérez, wife of Gerardo Hernández, one of the Cuban Five, is almost three years old, yet it has never been translated into English until now. It is a critically important interview for understanding exactly how the U.S. government has engaged in extraordinary punishment tactics beyond the absurdly harsh sentences meted out to the Five in 2001. It is also important for understanding how their punishment has been extended to their families, for the crime of solidarity with one another. Finally, it is a remarkable expression of that very solidarity.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Julio Castro & Javier Parra for laRepública.es
Translation by Machetera
On September 12, 1998, five Cuban citizens were arrested in the United States. It was said that they were spies, terrorists at the service of the Cuban government; that they were infiltrators who were working against U.S. national security. They were blamed for a series of crimes that later were proven to have no legal basis whatsoever, not even remotely connected to the real story, which was that they were trying to prevent the terrorist actions of various anti-revolutionary groups in Miami, obtaining information that Cuban security later passed to U.S. FBI agents in order to prevent the possible disasters which might be caused by these violent groups. The five are: Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Ramón Labañino Salazar, René González Sehwerert, Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez and Fernando González Llort. This has come to be known internationally as the case of the Cuban Five. (more…)
This is a translation that Machetera produced at the request of Cuba-L Analysis, of an article that clarifies some important issues in regard to the blockade of Cuba, which too often, people outside Cuba still call an embargo. Calling it an embargo is a way of diminishing its seriousness, and in fact as Machetera has written here previously, there are people who delight in pointing out that if Cuba has U.S. (or for that matter, Argentinean) products on its store shelves, it’s not a serious embargo after all. It’s an argument for shallow minds. (more…)
A photo published on page 62 of theLa Tribuna newspaper published in Tegucigalpa shows a soldier dressed in olive green camouflage and a military helmet, dragging Magdiel.
One important detail is that the firearm he is carrying in his right hand is similar to an M16 but smaller. This kind of firearm is only used by members of the Armed Forces, specifically the Army.
Relatives in Tegucigalpa were able to easily identify Magdiel when they saw the photo in La Tribuna of his capture, by his clothing and his face. At the same time the news was coming out on the radio about the dead man found in El Paraíso and through the descriptions they knew immediately that it had to do with a member of their family. (more…)
UPDATE: Machetera was provided with a transcript of this interview for translation and had difficulties downloading the audio. A Tlaxcala colleague who was able to listen to the audio provided a missing piece and a correction, indicated in green, below. Regarding the proof, please see this story published last spring in La Jornada (don’t worry, it’s in English, thanks to yours truly) and then ask yourself what the chances are that Andrés Pavón and Dick Emanuelsson are making the whole thing up.
Interview with René Andrés Pavón, President of the Honduran Human Rights Commission (CODEH)
There are paramilitary structures that are working in coordination with the armed forces, says the undisputed leader of the human rights struggle in Honduras, Andrés Pavón, in regard to the latest casualty of the dictatorship of the Honduran putschists.
It’s not that strange. The main professors of state terrorism come from the Zionist state in order to teach their methods of death, intelligence and terror, and they know how to sustain a state against a population that is fighting for its constitutional rights or recognition. Or, as in Honduras’s case, for the re-establishment of democracy. The interview with Andrés Pavon follows and can also be heard here. (more…)
If Machetera weren’t so lazy, or if perhaps she had a bit more of the self-promotional instinct, she’d be a little more prompt in publishing the translations she does for Tlaxcala. (And then you could find them here because you’d need a virtual Rosetta Stone to find them there – redesign on the way!)
Anyway, last Sunday, Tlaxcala published her English translation of a piece by Tlaxcala’s newest member, the immensely talented Honduran cartoonist Allan McDonald. McDonald also produced a wicked cartoon of Otto Reich that Machetera inserted here (scroll down a bit).
His piece, dedicated to his little girl, Abril, is about Ramon Custodio, the man who was once a voice for the dispossessed in Honduras but not any longer. And while Machetera was slacking on the posting, another translation materialized. Machetera is not saying hers is better. Just different. So here you go.If you prefer to read it in French, Tlaxcala has it here.
Honduras: The Rubber Man
for Abril
By Allan McDonald
Translation: Machetera
Long ago, when life was not fashionable and the world was a pathway of brownish stones, in the years of the olive green jeep, of scrabbling for candy, of the Alliance for Progress, that came disguised as powdered milk for the poor children at my school, it was the fabulous ‘80’s, when I came out of my house to fly kites against the wind unleashed by the sky and listened to the old people talking about a man named Custodio, a man of steel, forged in the heroism of openly accusing the military and being a defender, a handkerchief for the tears of wounded democracy in that green era. (more…)
Of all of the blogs that came to life, either newly created, or revived, as a result of the June 28 coup d’etat in Honduras, one stands out, particularly for English language readers: Honduras Oye, and Machetera highly recommends that you add it to your bookmark collection.
Sure, Al Giordano’s got good stuff, if you can get past the predictable carping about journalists and others who don’t measure up, and you don’t wonder too much about his new fascination with Serbians, and Eva Golinger is a firecracker and there is the added benefit that you can practice your Spanish along with her, and hey finally Machetera’s not the only one translating Latin American news any more (who knew translating would become a competitive sport?), but where Honduras Oye really steps ahead is that it hoovers up everything that might possibly be relevant to the unfolding political situation, from both English and Spanish language sources, and selects the most relevant stuff for the day. (more…)
Otto Reich and the Honduran Coup D’Etat: The Provocateur, his Protégé and the Toppling of a President is now available in Spanish, here and here. Thank you Manuel Talens, Paloma Valverde and Atenea Acevedo, all members of the wonderful and amazing Tlaxcala translation collective.
Uribe’s Mirror
Saturday, October 21, 2006
This is a translation that Machetera produced at the request of 
Author: Dick Emanuelsson
Honduras: The Rubber Man
Of all of the blogs that came to life, either newly created, or revived, as a result of the June 28 coup d’etat in Honduras, one stands out, particularly for English language readers: 
