Tens of thousands of public school teachers in the Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico (FMPR), the country's largest union, are set to go on strike sometime after Feb. 1 in defiance of the Puerto Rican government and parts of the labor movement. Teachers have set up strike committees in schools, and some say participation is higher than during a strike in 1993. In Ponce some 600 FMPR members blocked streets in a recent pro-strike demonstration, while more 500 teachers picketed in front of school board offices in Caguas.

Several Haitian nongovernmental organizations--including the Haitian Platform for Alternative Development (PAPDA), Haitian Women's Solidarity (SOFA), Tet Kole Ti Peyizan ("Union of Small Farmers") and the National Coordinating Committee for Women's Rights (CONAP)—have written the Haitian government demanding an investigation of reports of sexual against Haitian women and minors by soldiers in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

At least 10 people were injured and 55 arrested during an 24-hour general strike Oct. 2 in the Dominican Republic called by the Alternative Social Forum (FSA), a coalition of grassroots organizations. The groups were demanding higher wages for civil service workers, police and the military; a reduction in the prices of food and medicines; a halt to evictions; and changes in the Hydrocarbon Laws.

On June 14, the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization approved by consensus a resolution calling on the US government "to assume its responsibility to expedite a process that will allow the Puerto Rican people fully to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and independence," and requesting that the UN General Assembly "consider the question of Puerto Rico comprehensively in all its aspects." The resolution, presented by Cuba and co-sponsored by Venezuela, "[r]eiterates that the Puerto Rican people constitute a Latin American and Caribbean nation that has its own unequivocal national identity." (El Nuevo Dia, San Juan, June 14; Text of Draft Resolution, June 11; UN Department of Public Information News and Media Division, June 14)

In a surprise decision, US District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso, TX, threw out all charges against right-wing Cuban militant and former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles May 8, allowing him to go free days before he was set to be tried for immigration fraud. He is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela, where is accused in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

Negroponte's comments on Cuba recall Rumsfeld's on Iraq four years ago, don't they? From AP, Jan. 17 (emphasis added):

Cuban President Fidel Castro, ailing and out of sight, has been meeting with a trickle of international guests in recent months, a U.S. government official said Tuesday.

Citing "lack of evidence," on Aug. 14 a Haitian criminal tribunal in Port-au-Prince headed by Judge Fritznel Fils-Aime ordered the immediate release of Annette Auguste ("So Ann"), Georges Honore, Yvon Antoine ("Zap-Zap") and Paul Raymond, prominent supporters of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his left-populist Lavalas Family (FL) party. The four were arrested at various times between March 2004 and July 2005; they were held without formal charges until April 2006, when they were charged in connection with a violent attack by Aristide supporters against opposition students at the State University of Haiti (UEH) on Dec. 5, 2003, in which several students were injured and UEH rector Pierre-Marie Paquiot's legs were broken.

On Aug. 9 the US Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a 237-page report on the killing of Puerto Rican nationalist leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios in the western town of Hormigueros on Sept. 23, 2005, by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The OIG concluded that Ojeda had fired on the FBI agents first and that they were justified in returning fire and in waiting 18 hours after Ojeda was hit before entering his house to check his condition. But the report says the agents should have considered surrounding the house and forcing Ojeda out with tear gas and should have made a greater effort to negotiate a surrender. (Harford Courant, Aug. 10; FBI press release, Aug. 9)