Fw: [narconews] An Assassination in Bolivia as Narco Newsroom Arrives

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg@tin.it>]

This Alert Dedicated to the Memory of Coca Growers' Union Leader Casimiro
Huanca (1946-2001)

Dear Colleagues,

The Narco News Team has arrived in Cochabamba, Bolivia to begin authentic
news coverage of the growing social unrest in this South American nation,
caused by the US-imposed war on drugs.

As we land on the path of Bolívar, we have learned that yesterday afternoon,
at the very same hour that Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga met with George
W. Bush in Washington, coca farmers in Chimoré were blockading the main
highway in the region by placing pineapples and other "alternative crops" on
the pavement.

The "Expeditionary Forces" of the Bolivian military arrived, shot tear-gas
into the crowd of unarmed farmers, and detained the regional coca growers
union president Casimiro Huanca, 55, and his aide Fructuoso Herbas, 30.
Then, in front of witnesses, the soldiers shot Huanca in the neck, hitting
the ephemeral artery, and the stomach, and Herbas in the leg. Huanca died a
half-hour later. Herbas is in a Cochabamba hospital. The victims were
unarmed. The blockaders' only weapon was... pineapples.

The Catholic Church, the Public Defender, and the human rights organizations
in the region have universally defined the death of Huanca as an
assassination.

Tension grows in the Chapare region as president Quiroga returns from
Washington, the death toll of military and police assassinations against
unarmed civilian protesters during Quiroga's first five months as president
is now 15 deaths.

Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/
narconews@hotmail.com

Live from Cochabamba, Bolivia...

Where Coca is a Food...

Where Coca Growers are Unionized...

Where 4,000 US-Funded Soldiers Can't Stop a Thousand Years of History