Individually the poor are not too tempting to thieves, for obvious reasons. Mug a banker and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a janitor and you will be lucky to get away with bus fare to flee the crime scene. But as Business Week helpfully pointed out in 2007, the poor in aggregate provide a juicy target for anyone depraved enough to make a business of stealing from them.

The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators. Employers, for example, can simply program their computers to shave a few dollars off each paycheck, or they can require workers to show up 30 minutes or more before the time clock starts ticking.

Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest. When supplemented with late fees (themselves subject to interest), the resulting effective interest rate can be as high as 600% a year, which is perfectly legal in many states.

It’s not just the private sector that’s preying on the poor. Local governments are discovering that they can partially make up for declining tax revenues through fines, fees, and other costs imposed on indigent defendants, often for crimes no more dastardly than driving with a suspended license. And if that seems like an inefficient way to make money, given the high cost of locking people up, a growing number of jurisdictions have taken to charging defendants for their court costs and even the price of occupying a jail cell.

The poster case for government persecution of the down-and-out would have to be Edwina Nowlin, a homeless Michigan woman who was jailed in 2009 for failing to pay $104 a month to cover the room-and-board charges for her 16-year-old son’s incarceration. When she received a back paycheck, she thought it would allow her to pay for her son’s jail stay. Instead, it was confiscated and applied to the cost of her own incarceration.

Government Joins the Looters of the Poor

You might think that policymakers would take a keen interest in the amounts that are stolen, coerced, or extorted from the poor, but there are no official efforts to track such figures. Instead, we have to turn to independent investigators, like Kim Bobo, author of Wage Theft in America, who estimates that wage theft nets employers at least $100 billion a year and possibly twice that. As for the profits extracted by the lending industry, Gary Rivlin, who wrote Broke USA: From Pawnshops to Poverty, Inc. — How the Working Poor Became Big Business, says the poor pay an effective surcharge of about $30 billion a year for the financial products they consume and more than twice that if you include subprime credit cards, subprime auto loans, and subprime mortgages.

These are not, of course, trivial amounts. They are on the same order of magnitude as major public programs for the poor. The government distributes about $55 billion a year, for example, through the largest single cash-transfer program for the poor, the Earned Income Tax Credit; at the same time, employers are siphoning off twice that amount, if not more, through wage theft.

And while government generally turns a blind eye to the tens of billions of dollars in exorbitant interest that businesses charge the poor, it is notably chary with public benefits for the poor. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, for example, our sole remaining nationwide welfare program, gets only $26 billion a year in state and federal funds. The impression is left of a public sector that’s gone totally schizoid: on the one hand, offering safety-net programs for the poor; on the other, enabling large-scale private sector theft from the very people it is supposedly trying to help.

At the local level though, government is increasingly opting to join in the looting. In 2009, a year into the Great Recession, I first started hearing complaints from community organizers about ever more aggressive levels of law enforcement in low-income areas. Flick a cigarette butt and get arrested for littering; empty your pockets for an officer conducting a stop-and-frisk operation and get cuffed for a few flakes of marijuana. Each of these offenses can result, at a minimum, in a three-figure fine.

And the number of possible criminal offenses leading to jail and/or fines has been multiplying recklessly. All across the country — from California and Texas to Pennsylvania — counties and municipalities have been toughening laws against truancy and ratcheting up enforcement, sometimes going so far as to handcuff children found on the streets during school hours. In New York City, it’s now a crime to put your feet up on a subway seat, even if the rest of the car is empty, and a South Carolina woman spent six days in jail when she was unable to pay a $480 fine for the crime of having a “messy yard.” Some cities — most recently, Houston and Philadelphia — have made it a crime to share foodwith indigent people in public places.

Being poor itself is not yet a crime, but in at least a third of the states, being in debt can now land you in jail. If a creditor like a landlord or credit card company has a court summons issued for you and you fail to show up on your appointed court date, a warrant will be issued for your arrest. And it is easy enough to miss a court summons, which may have been delivered to the wrong address or, in the case of some bottom-feeding bill collectors, simply tossed in the garbage — a practice so common that the industry even has a term for it: “sewer service.” In a sequence that National Public Radio reports is “increasingly common,” a person is stopped for some minor traffic offense — having a noisy muffler, say, or broken brake light — at which point the officer discovers the warrant and the unwitting offender is whisked off to jail.

Local Governments as Predators

Each of these crimes, neo-crimes, and pseudo-crimes carries financial penalties as well as the threat of jail time, but the amount of money thus extracted from the poor is fiendishly hard to pin down. No central agency tracks law enforcement at the local level, and local records can be almost willfully sketchy.

According to one of the few recent nationwide estimates, from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, 10.5 million misdemeanors were committed in 2006. No one would risk estimating the average financial penalty for a misdemeanor, although the experts I interviewed all affirmed that the amount is typically in the “hundreds of dollars.” If we take an extremely lowball $200 per misdemeanor, and bear in mind that 80%-90% of criminal offenses are committed by people who are officially indigent, then local governments are using law enforcement to extract, or attempt to extract, at least $2 billion a year from the poor.

And that is only a small fraction of what governments would like to collect from the poor. Katherine Beckett, a sociologist at the University of Washington, estimates that “deadbeat dads” (and moms) owe $105 billion in back child-support payments, about half of which is owed to state governments as reimbursement for prior welfare payments made to the children. Yes, parents have a moral obligation to their children, but the great majority of child-support debtors are indigent.

Attempts to collect from the already-poor can be vicious and often, one would think, self-defeating. Most states confiscate the drivers’ licenses of people owing child support, virtually guaranteeing that they will not be able to work.  Michigan just started suspending the drivers’ licenses of people who owe money for parking tickets.  Las Cruces, New Mexico, just passed a law that punishes people who owe overdue traffic fines by cutting off their water, gas, and sewage.

Once a person falls into the clutches of the criminal justice system, we encounter the kind of slapstick sadism familiar to viewers of Wipeout. Many courts impose fees without any determination of whether the offender is able to pay, and the privilege of having a payment plan will itself cost money.

In a study of 15 states, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found 14 of them contained jurisdictions that charge a lump-sum “poverty penalty” of up to $300 for those who cannot pay their fees and fines, plus late fees and “collection fees” for those who need to pay over time. If any jail time is imposed, that too may cost money, as the hapless Edwina Nowlin discovered, and the costs of parole and probation are increasingly being passed along to the offender.

The predatory activities of local governments give new meaning to that tired phrase “the cycle of poverty.” Poor people are more far more likely than the affluent to get into trouble with the law, either by failing to pay parking fines or by incurring the wrath of a private-sector creditor like a landlord or a hospital.

Once you have been deemed a criminal, you can pretty much kiss your remaining assets goodbye. Not only will you face the aforementioned court costs, but you’ll have a hard time ever finding a job again once you’ve acquired a criminal record. And then of course, the poorer you become, the more likely you are to get in fresh trouble with the law, making this less like a “cycle” and more like the waterslide to hell.  The further you descend, the faster you fall — until you eventually end up on the streets and get busted for an offense like urinating in public or sleeping on a sidewalk.

I could propose all kinds of policies to curb the ongoing predation on the poor. Limits on usury should be reinstated. Theft should be taken seriously even when it’s committed by millionaire employers. No one should be incarcerated for debt or squeezed for money they have no chance of getting their hands on. These are no-brainers, and should take precedence over any long term talk about generating jobs or strengthening the safety net. Before we can “do something” for the poor, there are some things we need to stop doing to them.

Barbara Ehrenreich, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (now in a 10th anniversary edition with a new afterword). She is most recently the founder of the just-launched Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which supports innovative journalism on poverty and economic hardship.  To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest Tomcast audio interview in which Ehrenreich discusses how the poor get soaked and her latest project to fund investigative journalism on poverty, click here or download it to your iPod here.

Those who underwent the pain, harm and loss of al-Nakba are yet to receive the justice that was promised to them.

Many Palestinians remember and reference al-Nakba, also known as the Catastrophe, on May 15 every year. The event marks the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians, while their villages were destroyed. The destruction of Palestine in 1947-48 ushered in the birth of Israel. Older generations relay the harsh and oppressive memory of their collective experience to younger Palestinians, many of whom live their own Nakbas today.

In covering al-Nakba, sympathetic Arab and other media play sad music and show black and white footage of displaced, frightened refugees. They rightly emphasize the concept of Sumud, steadfastness, as they show Palestinian of all ages holding unto the rusty keys of their homes and insisting on their right of return. Other, less sympathetic media discuss al-Nakba, if at all, as a side note – a nuisance in the Israeli narrative of a nation’s supposedly miraculous birth and its progression to an idyllic oasis of democracy. What such reductionist representations often fail to show is that while al-Nakba started, it never truly finished.

Those who underwent the pain, harm and loss of al-Nakba are yet to receive the justice that was promised to them by the international community. UN Resolution 194 states that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date” (Article 11). Those who wrought this injustice are also yet to achieve their ultimate objectives in Palestine. After all, Israel doesn’t have defined boundaries by accident.

David Ben Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel, once prophesized that “the old (refugees) will die and the young will forget.” He spoke with the harshness of a conqueror. Ben Gurion carried out his war plans to the furthest extent possible. Every region in Palestine that was meant to be taken was captured, its people were expelled or massacred in their homes and villages. Ben Guiron ‘cleansed’ the land, but he failed to cleanse Israel’s past. Memory persists.

Ben Gurion referenced my own family’s village – Beit Daras – which witnessed three battles and a massacre. In an entry in his diaries on May 12, 1948, he wrote: “Beit Daras was mortared. Fifty Arabs (were killed). The (villages of) Bashit and Sawafir were occupied. There is mass exodus from nearby areas (neighbors in Majdal). We sustained 5 dead and 15 wounded. ” (War Diaries, 1947-1949).

More than fifty people were killed in Beit Daras that day. An old Gaza woman, Um Mohammed – who I discussed in my last book, My Father was a Freedom Fighter – refers to what is likely the same event:

“The town was under bombardment, and it was surrounded from all directions. There was no way out. The armed men (the Beit Daras fighters) said they were going to check on the road to Isdud, to see if it was open. They moved forward and shot few shots to see if someone would return fire. No one did. But they (the Zionist forces) were hiding and waiting to ambush the people. The armed men returned and told the people to evacuate the women and children. The people went out (including) those who were gathered at my huge house, the family house. There were mostly children and kids in the house. The Jewish (soldiers) let the people get out, and then they whipped them with bombs and machine guns. More people fell than those who were able to run. My sister and I…started running through the fields; we’d fall and get up. My sister and I escaped together holding each other’s hands. The people who took the main road were either killed or injured. The firing was falling on the people like sand. The bombs from one side and the machine guns from the other.”

Ben Gurion would not necessarily doubt Um Mohammed’s account. He candidly stated: “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves…politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves…The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country” (as quoted in Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, pp. 91-2).

It is precisely for this reason that neither the old nor the young have forgotten. Every day is another manifestation of the same protracted al-Nakba that has lasted 64 years now. Young people’s hardships today are inextricably linked to the violent and horrific uprooting decades ago.

Al-Nakba has also remained an ongoing project through generations of Israeli Zionists. When Ben Gurion died in 1973, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in his mid-twenties. He was then serving his last year in the Israeli army, and today he rules Israel with a coalition that includes almost three quarters of the Israeli parliament. Like most Israeli leaders, he continues to contribute to the very discourse by which Palestine was conquered. He speaks of peace, while his soldiers and armed settlers take over Palestinian homes and farms. He makes repeated offers to Palestinians for ‘unconditional’ talks, as he repeats his violent rejection of every Palestinian aspiration. His lobby in Washington is much stronger than ever before. He reigns supreme, as he continues to fulfill the ‘vision’ of early Zionists.

Old keys and deeds of stolen lands attest to the intergenerational experience that is Al-Nakba. Today Palestinians continue to be herded behind military checkpoints. They are denied the right to proper medical care, and their ancient olive trees are ruthlessly bulldozed. What Israel has not been able to control, however, is the resolve of Palestinians. The prison, the checkpoint and the gun reside in our collective memory in a way that cannot be held captive, controlled, or shot.

In fact, al-Nakba is not a specific date or an estimation of time, but the entirety of those 64 years and counting. The event must not be assigned to the shelves of history, not as long as refugees are still refugees and settlers continue to rob Palestinian land. As long as Netanyahu speaks the language of Ben Gurion, other ‘catastrophic’ episodes will follow. And as long as Palestinians hold on to their keys and deeds, the old may die but the young will never forget.

Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

Dicha acción es reprochada por representantes de pueblos indígenas y de especialistas en materia legal, quienes critican a la institución agraria.

La acción N° 11-000646-1028-CA se interpuso ante la Sala Constitucional el pasado 19 de abril, y en ella explícitamente se invocó la inconstitucionalidad de esta ley, al aducir vicios durante el procedimiento de aprobación del proyecto en la década de los setentas.

El reclamo del IDA surge en razón de que luego de más de 30 años de vigencia de la ley, esta institución cubre los costos de indemnización de las expropiaciones a personas no indígenas que se encuentran asentadas en comunidades resguardadas por la jurisdicción.

Debido a lo anterior, Rolando González explicó a UNIVERSIDAD que ante las dudas que hay por la forma en que fue aprobado en su momento este proyecto, la institución debe velar por sus competencias jurídicas. “Como administrador de una institución no puedo estar girando plata cuando tengo una duda legal sobre la pertinencia o no del giro”, acotó.

El jerarca puntualizó que recientemente le fue entregado un estudio técnico, elaborado desde el año 2010 por el departamento legal del IDA, en el cual se detectaron presuntas irregularidades a la hora de dictaminar y aprobar la ley en el seno de la Asamblea Legislativa.

El IDA argumenta que en 1975 la junta directiva del Colegio de Abogados presenta ante la Asamblea Legislativa, una iniciativa para dotar de títulos de propiedad a indígenas poseedores de tierras dentro de las áreas de dominio público del Instituto de Tierras y Colonización (ITCO, hoy IDA), dicho proyecto fue remplazado por otro texto dictaminado posteriormente como la Ley indígena, en su momento iniciativa de la Comisión Nacional de Asuntos Indígenas (CONAI).

CRÍTICAS AL IDA

Representantes de pueblos indígenas han recibido con extrañeza la mencionada acción legal del IDA.

Hugo Lázaro, presidente de la Asociación de Desarrollo Integral del Territorio Indígena de Rey Curré -en el Pacífico sur-, señaló que la tenencia de tierra de los indígenas es baja, y culpó de esto a la inacción de las instituciones responsables de realizar  la recuperación de espacios en los territorios indígenas.

Criticó que “el Estado una vez más trata de incumplir sus obligaciones adquiridas, dejando a los indígenas en una situación de mayor desamparo”.

“El IDA viene actuando a rabietas, sin pensar en las consecuencias políticas que le podría traer esta acción”, censuró Lázaro.

La Ley Indígena no es la primera vez que se lleva a consulta ante la Sala Constitucional, ya que en anteriores ocasiones los magistrados han rechazado acciones que buscaban dejar sin efecto los alcances de esta ley. Por eso, el indígena Geyner Blanco cree que lo más conveniente es que una vez más esta Sala rechace la acción: “uno esperaría que la Sala mantenga una línea”, comentó.

A su parecer, de ser acogida la acción interpuesta por el IDA, desestabilizaría la seguridad jurídica de las comunidades indígenas, y violentaría la cohesión cultural de los pueblos; “se podría perder el acceso a muchos sitios de importancia cultural, fundamentales para la identidad”, advirtió.

Mientras tanto, el abogado y experto en legislación indígena, Rubén Chacón, es del criterio que desde años atrás el IDA ha buscado la manera de desligarse de sus compromisos con las comunidades de los aborígenes, y ahora esta institución encontró un aliado político que se prestó para tomar esta acción.

“Desde hace 15 años el IDA viene afirmando que nada tiene que ver con el tema indígena, pero lo que pasa es que los presidentes ejecutivos nunca han logrado concretar ese criterio oportunista”, criticó Chacón.

Por su parte, el director ejecutivo de CONAI, Víctor Hernández, expresó su preocupación por una posible resolución de la Sala Constitucional que abriría las puertas a las empresas nacionales e internacionales, que pretenden extraer los recursos de los territorios indígenas.

En su opinión, “hay una serie de empresas transnacionales que están haciendo fila para la extracción minera, maderera; sin la ley indígena las comunidades quedarían a la intemperie, y todo estos que están haciendo fila desean que la ley indígena desaparezca”.

Paradójicamente, el 19 de abril -fecha en la que el IDA interpone la acción de inconstitucionalidad- se conmemoró  el “Día del Aborigen Costarricense”, por lo que las intenciones de la institución son vistas como una provocación a las luchas reivindicativas de los sectores indígenas del país.

En este sentido, el presidente del IDA, Rolando González, adujo que esto era una “lamentable coincidencia”, al tiempo que opinó que “jamás han buscado acciones para perjudicar a las comunidades indígenas, pero igual sería impropio permitir actos lesivos en contra del IDA, y contra las comunidades campesinas que se nutren de los fondos de la institución”.

Para el presidente de la Asociación de Desarrollo Integral del Territorio Indígena de Rey Curré, Hugo Lázaro, la “agresión” recibida por parte del Estado mediante la acción de inconstitucionalidad presentada por el IDA, podría dificultar procesos de diálogo iniciados en zonas del país donde se pretende desarrollar proyectos dentro de territorios indígenas.

Y es que con la reciente visita al país de James Anaya, relator especial en temas indígenas de la Organización de Naciones Unidas, se promovió la necesidad de generar un ambiente de confianza que propicie los mecanismos de consulta en comunidades aborigen como Térraba, donde el megaproyecto hidroeléctrico que impulsa el Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) inundaría al menos mil hectáreas en manos indígenas.

“Costa Rica se comprometió a actuar de buena fe, sin embargo no lo cumple, por lo que las comunidades indígenas en el sur del país podrían actuar de manera más beligerante”, afirmó Lázaro.

TIERRAS EN MANOS DE OTROS

Por otro lado, de las 350.000 hectáreas en posesión de las 24 comunidades indígenas, cerca del 40% de estas tierras -más de 130.000 hectáreas- están en posesión de personas no indígenas.

El proceso de recuperación -según el presidente del IDA- ha sido continuo, aunque en esta administración no se han destinado fondos para la expropiación en territorios indígenas.

Los datos aportados por la institución reflejan que desde el 2003 y hasta el 2009, el IDA ha desembolsado la suma de ¢1.074.033.218, recobrando cerca de 735 hectáreas en comunidades como Rey Curré, Cabagra, Abrojos-Montezuma, Térraba (Puntarenas),  Zapatón (San José), y Tayní (Limón).

Sin embargo, la lentitud de procedimientos ha provocado que comunidades indígenas prefieran llevar este tema a los estrados judiciales; el caso más reciente se vislumbró en el Tribunal Contencioso Administrativo en Goicoechea, y mediante una histórica sentencia emitida por ese tribunal en setiembre del año anterior, se ordenó al Estado la expropiación de cerca de 4.500 hectáreas de tierras indígenas en Kekoldi, Talamanca, y que están en manos de personas externas al territorio. En este juicio figuraban como demandados el IDA y la CONAI.

El abogado defensor de la comunidad indígena de Kekoldi durante este proceso, Danilo Chaverri Barrantes -del Centro Justicia y Derecho-, no dudó en advertir que la acción del IDA es una respuesta a este tipo de proceso de recuperación de tierras, que han iniciado en algunas otras comunidades, como Bajo Chirripó y Cabécar de Talamanca.

“¿Cómo es posible que 34 años después de aprobada esa ley ahora están exigiendo que se cumpla y venga el IDA diciendo que esa ley es inconstitucional?”, reprochó Chaverri.

Los abogados Danilo Chaverri y Rubén Chacón son del criterio de que el IDA con esta acción interpuesta en la Sala Constitucional estaría haciendo de Procuraduría General de la República (órgano defensor del Estado). Ambos juristas consideran que el IDA debe cumplir la ley, no impugnarla.

The words, of course, merely summed up a moment in the news cycle last week. We, the news-consuming public, were primed – by CBS, but it could have been any mainstream outlet – for a tidbit of potential drama the next day in the hottest murder trial around right now. But in the process, we were also silently reminded, yet again, that everything is spectacle. At the level at which we call ourselves a nation, nothing is serious, not even matters of life and death.

Fear, by Scorsone y Drueding

There’s something so painful about all this – painful beyond the horror of the crime itself, or the national murder rate. The 24-7 media trivialize the stakes and gleefully report the “courtroom drama” as a sporting event; but even more distressingly, the legal bureaucracy swings into motion without the least awareness of any value beyond its own procedures. It all happens with a certainty of purpose that generates the illusion that things are under control and social order prevails.

But none of this has anything to do with what social order actually requires when harm has occurred, which is . . . healing.

The next day, at George Zimmerman’s bond hearing, he surprised his lawyer and everyone else by addressing Trayvon Martin’s parents directly, if pathetically: “I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son. I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am, and I did not know if he was armed or not.”

While the words, which fail utterly as an apology, may have been completely self-serving, as the lawyer for the murdered boy’s parents maintained, they may have been something else as well, and my sense is that they were – an anguished and flailing attempt to connect in some way, to bridge the terrible gap his act created. It’s possible it has dawned on George Zimmerman that he killed a fellow human being for no reason and may be caught forever on the wrong side of a fundamental moral divide. Another term for this is hell – and his presence there has nothing to do with the outcome of his trial.

The coverage of the shooting and the legal procedures that have taken control of the matter betray no awareness that the fundamental and eternal need of all concerned is to heal the rift of Trayvon Martin’s death. Such a thing, under the most ideal of circumstances, would take years; its accomplishment would be a miracle – but it happens, when victims or survivors are able to summon more courage than they thought they had and expand their own humanity toward forgiveness, reconciliation and love.

But in our legal system, we acknowledge only the need to determine guilt or innocence and the need to mete out punishment to the guilty – as though punishment closes the case and puts matters back in balance. In such a system, the victim himself quickly becomes irrelevant and, often enough, forgotten. And the lasting harm caused by the crime is utterly beside the point.

Indeed, crime and punishment are indivisibly part of the same wrong, or so it seems to me with increasing frustration and despair. The punishment is no more than society’s recoil action, meting out further harm, solving nothing and perpetuating the violence – at enormous expense, of course.

Why do we have such a system?

“Logically, the opposite of love is hatred; but Jung and others have pointed out that the psychological opposite to love is fear,” writes David R. Loy in an excellent essay called “Healing Justice : A Buddhist Perspective.”

“By no coincidence,” he goes on, “(Thomas) Hobbes’ theory of a social contract makes fear the origin of the state, for the absolute authority of the state is the only thing that can protect my self-interest from yours. True or not, that has become our myth: We legitimize the state’s justice insofar as we accept that it is needed to protect us from each other.”

Our system of what we call justice is built on a foundation of fear and social isolation. It codifies and perpetuates both, at the same time erecting barriers that separate all who are caught in the system from the larger human emotions that could save us.

And the mainstream media, instead crying out for a healing-based legal system or reporting with awareness that such a system is possible, spirals backwards into ever more cynical exploitation of public fear. “Mugs in the news,” for instance, now seems to be a mainstay on news websites: titillating mug shots of the unconvicted, obtained from local police departments, showing our fellow citizens in trouble, frozen in their awkward grimaces before the police camera. The point is ridicule, separation and perpetual spectacle: Look how bad they are!

Yet beyond the awareness of the media, systems of restorative or transformative justice are catching on around the world. Healing is an arduous process, but it’s possible – and it saves people’s lives. If we can break the separation we feel between those who have wronged us, if we can hear one another’s stories, the future suddenly fills with possibility.

The Manning prosecution is a tragic miscarriage of justice.  US officials are highly embarrassed by what Manning exposed and are shooting the messenger.  As Glenn Greenwald, the terrific Salon writer, has observed, President Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers for espionage than all other presidents combined.

(Art: Exiled Surfer)

One of the most outrageous parts of the treatment of Bradley Manning is that the US kept him in illegal and torturous solitary confinement conditions for months at the Quantico Marine base in Virginia.  Keeping Manning in solitary confinement sparked challenges from many groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU and the New York Times.

Human rights’ advocates rightly point out that solitary confinement is designed to break down people mentally.  Because of that, prolonged solitary confinement is internationally recognized as a form of torture.  The conditions and practices of isolation are in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention against Torture, and the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination.

Medical experts say that after 60 days in solidary peoples’ mental state begins to break down.  That means a person will start to experience panic, anxiety, confusion, headaches, heart palpitations, sleep problems, withdrawal, anger, depression, despair, and over-sensitivity. Over time this can lead to severe psychiatric trauma and harms like psychosis, distortion of reality, hallucinations, mass anxiety and acute confusion. Essentially, the mind disintegrates.

That is why the United Nations special rapporteur on torture sought to investigate Manning’s solitary confinement and reprimanded the US when the Army would not let him have an unmonitored visit.

History will likely judge Manning as heroic as it has Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

It is important to realize that tens of thousands of other people besides Manning are held in solitary confinement in the US today and every day.  Experts estimate a minimum of 20,000 people are held in solitary in supermax prisons alone, not counting thousands of others in state and local prisons who are also held in solitary confinement.  And solitary confinement is often forced on Muslim prisoners, even pre-trial people who are assumed innocent, under federal Special Administrative Measures.

In 1995, the U.N. Human Rights Committee stated that isolation conditions in certain U.S. maximum security prisons were incompatible with international standards. In 1996, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture reported on cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in U.S. supermax prisons. In 2000, the U.N. Committee on Torture roundly condemned the United States for its treatment of prisoners, citing supermax prisons. In May 2006, the same committee concluded that the United States should “review the regimen imposed on detainees in supermax prisons, in particular, the practice of prolonged isolation.”

John McCain said his two years in solitary confinement were torture. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” The reaction of McCain and many other victims of isolation torture were described in an excellent 2009 New Yorker article on isolation by Atul Gawande.  Gawande concluded that prolonged isolation is objectively horrifying, intrinsically cruel, and more widespread in the U.S. than any country in the world.

This week hundreds of members of the Occupy movement merged forces with people advocating for human rights for prisoners in demonstrations in California, New York, Ohio, and Washington DC.  They call themselves Occupy 4 Prisoners.  Activists are working to create a social movement for serious and fundamental changes in the US criminal system.

One of the major complaints of prisoner human rights activists is the abuse of solitary confinement in prisons across the US.  Prison activist Mumia Abu-Jamal said justice demands the end of solitary, “It means the abolition of solitary confinement, for it is no more than modern-day torture chambers for the poor.”  Pelican Bay State Prison in California, the site of a hunger strike by hundreds of prisoners last year, holds over 1000 inmates in solitary confinement, some as long as 20 years.

At the Occupy Prisoners rally outside San Quentin prison, the three American hikers who were held for a year in Iran told of the psychological impact of 14 months of solitary confinement.  Sarah Shourd said the time without human contact drove her to beat the walls of her cell until her knuckles bled.

When Manning was held in solitary he was kept in his cell 23 hours a day for months at a time.  The US government tortured him to send a message to others who might consider blowing the whistle on US secrets.  At the same time, tens of thousands of others in the US are being held in their cells 23 hours a day for months, even years at a time.  That torture is also sending a message.

Thousands stood up with Bradley Manning and got him released from solitary.  People must likewise stand up with the thousands of others in solitary as well.

So, stand in solidarity with Bradley Manning and fight against his prosecution.  And stand also against solitary confinement of the tens of thousands in US jails and prisons.  Check out the Bradley Manning Support Network, Solitary Watch, and Occupy 4 Prisoners for ways to participate.

Dante Alighieri

Desde la cárcel de mi casa, desde la vidriosa prisión de mis ideales perdidos veo un periódico ardiendo en mis manos con las fotos de aquellos cienes

Que se quemaron en los fuegos encendidos de la miseria humana.

El fuego adentro, por Usha

Que se cocinaron en el horror de esta vida.

Que salieron huyendo con una antorcha de fracaso en sus ojos.

Condenados por ser propietarios de la nada.

Presos de la suerte echada entre los brazos de un juez corrupto.

Que se tatuaron el infortunio en las espaldas del olvido.

Que por un poco de frijoles robaron para engañar el estómago.

Que nunca fueron a la escuela del hijo del ministro.

Que se arroparon con las cenizas del sueño en el musgo de la libertad.

Que se les ensartó una bolsa negra como un luto plástico.

Que cayeron baleados como en una feria de fuegos no artificiales.

Que aun tenían las marcas de las flechas de san Valentín.

Que ardieron en la batalla contra el silencio.

Que apartaron el humo de las cortinas oficiales.

Que cayeron en las bartolinas de la inocencia.

Que no tenían el permiso para ser decentes.

Que eran ladrones, rateros que no aprendieron a robarse la casa presidencial.

Que no tenían una sonrisa perfecta para ser diputados.

Que no pudieron pagar un magistrado en la corte celestial de la las leyes monetarias.

Que no tuvieron gracia para usar la corbata blanca de la cleptomanía.

Analfabetos que no leían a Dale Carnegie.

Que no tomaron tiempo de entender a Paulo Coelho.

Que no les interesaba la poesía.

Que no fueron Opus Dei.

Ateos de la esperanza redentora del Cardenal.

Que andaban colgando la medallita de la virgen de Suyapa.

Que tenían la claridad de su voz en el oído de la clemencia.

Que no se parecían a Steve McQueen en Papillón.

Que no escuchaban a Mozart.

Que creían en la música de liberación de los Tucanes de Tijuana.

Que se drogaban en la función cirquera del código penal.

Que amaban a sus mujeres gordas sin la vergüenza del rico que paga amantes rubias.

Que no hablaban bonito frente al paredón falso del poder.

Que lavaban su ropita en las pilas sin el agua bendita de la iglesia que los llora.

Que no usaron maquillaje para salir hoy en las portadas de la prensa.

Que no se peinaron para las entrevistas rojas de la televisión.

Que aprendieron carpintería para ser como el hijo de Dios.

Que inventaron el lenguaje con las manos para no hablar como las mentiras del gobierno.

Que tenían las esperanzas en los burdeles de un licenciado.

Que fueron condenados por un tribunal sin juicio ni historia.

Que se hicieron hamacas para aprender a dormir en los cantos de sirena de la justicia.

Es el segundo asalto contra ese juez. El primero fue cuando unos (presuntos) corruptos que han robado a espuertas dinero de todos, han logrado sentar en el banquillo para inhabilitarlo, para echarlo de la carrera judicial, a quien los procesaba. Es el caso Gürtel de España; una increíble trama de corrupción multimillonaria ligada a algunos dirigentes del Partido Popular. ¿Pretexto para juzgar a Garzón? Unas escuchas de conversaciones entre procesados y sus abogados autorizadas por el juez instructor, solicitadas por la policía, avaladas por el fiscal y prorrogadas por el juez que continuó la instrucción al llegar el caso a un tribunal superior. Pero Garzón solo es acusado de prevaricación y juzgado. Sorprendente. Aparte de que antes se han autorizado escuchas similares y nunca juez alguno ha sido acusado. Si es el caso, se declaran nulas como pruebas las conversaciones y se acabó.

Caricatura de Baltasar Garzón - SCIAMMARELLA

El segundo juicio es por investigar crímenes de guerra y de lesa humanidad del franquismo. El Tribunal Supremo aceptó la acusación de prevaricación contra Garzón, presentada por dos asociaciones franquistas: Manos Limpias (¡qué feroz burla!) y Libertad e Identidad. La defensa ha pedido la anulación de la causa, porque el instructor de la misma, un tal Varela, corrigió y arregló el escrito de acusación para que pudiera ser admitido. Increíble.

El pretendido fundamento de tal querella es la ley española de Amnistía de 1977 que -dicen- prohíbe investigar crímenes de la dictadura franquista. Hugo Relva, consejero jurídico de Amnistía Internacional, ha declarado que esa ley no impide la investigación de crímenes de guerra, pero, aunque lo prohibiera, España ha firmado y ratificado tratados internacionales que la obligan a investigar esos graves delitos por encima de sus leyes nacionales.

El Fiscal no apoya la acusación y pide la absolución de Garzón porque no prevaricó. Ha declarado que en tres décadas de carrera no ha visto nada como la insólita e insostenible actuación del juez instructor Varela.

Human Rights Watch, la Comisión Internacional de Juristas y Amnistía Internacional se han pronunciado contra ese juicio y a favor del juez Garzón. Amnistía Internacional ha recordado que los crímenes de guerra y de lesa humanidad (como tortura y desaparición forzada) no prescriben jamás ni pueden ser nunca objeto de amnistía.

En España, según Amnistía Internacional y otros, que han investigado los crímenes perpetrados durante la guerra civil española y los primeros años de la dictadura franquista, cabe contabilizar más de 143.000 desaparecidos. En Argentina y Chile, que horrorizaron por sus desaparecidos durante sus dictaduras militares, hubo unos 3.500 ejecutados y desaparecidos en Chile, y 30.000 en Argentina. La cantidad de desaparecidos en España convierte la investigación de los crímenes del franquismo en una cuestión esencial para la democracia española.

Además de las lúcidas exigencias planteadas por el movimiento 15 M en sus denuncias de la  perversión y descomposición de la democracia, sometidos los gobiernos al poder financiero, en España hay que añadir como reivindicación imprescindible erradicar los últimos restos de franquismo. O no habrá democracia de verdad.

Como escribe Vicenç Navarro, “no hay mejor indicador de la escasa calidad de la democracia española que los juicios a Garzón”. Democracia disminuida por ser fruto de una Transición con plomo en el ala. Como insiste Navarro, “la Transición española fue un proceso dominado por las fuerzas conservadoras y los aparatos del franquismo, enquistados en el Estado español”.

Se pasó de la dictadura a una monarquía democrática en un marco de leyes franquistas sin la menor ruptura, mientras magistrados, muchos políticos, mandos policiales y jefes militares durante la dictadura conservaban puestos y prebendas y proseguían sus carreras transmutados a demócratas de toda la vida.

De modélica la transición española, nada.

Quizás la aspiración a un cambio de verdad despertado por los indignados del 15M sea el acicate necesario para la ruptura con el franquismo que nunca se hizo del todo. Porque no perdamos de vista que la Transición fue sobre todo mantener por todos los medios el orden social dominado por la minoría rica y privilegiada; es decir, el capitalismo de siempre.

Xavier Caño Tamayo es Periodista y escritor

That description can be traced to January 2002, when the base received its first 20 prisoners in shackles. General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned they were “very dangerous people who would gnaw hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down.” We now know that a large portion of the 750 plus men and boys held there posed no threat to the United States. In fact, only five percent were captured by the United States; most were picked up by the Northern Alliance, Pakistani intelligence officers, or tribal warlords, and many were sold for cash bounties.

(Arte: Banksy)

The Guantánamo story starts in 1903, when the U.S. Army occupied Cuba after its war of independence against Spain. The Platt Amendment, which granted the United States the right to intervene in Cuba, was included in the Cuban Constitution as a prerequisite for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the rest of Cuba. That provision provided the basis for the 1903 Agreement on Coaling and Naval Stations, which gave the United States the right to use Guantánamo Bay “exclusively as coaling or naval stations, and for no other purpose.”

In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a new treaty with Cuba that allows the United States to remain in Guantánamo Bay until the U.S. abandons it or until both Cuba and the United States agree to modify their arrangement. According to that treaty, “the stipulations of [the 1903] agreement with regard to the naval station of Guantánamo shall continue in effect.” That means Guantánamo Bay can be used only for coaling or naval stations. Additionally, article III of the 1934 treaty provides that the Republic of Cuba leases Guantánamo Bay to the United States “for coaling and naval stations.” Nowhere in either treaty did Cuba give the U.S. the right to utilize Guantánamo Bay as a prison camp.

It is no accident that President George W. Bush chose Guantánamo Bay as the site for his illegal prison camp. His administration maintained that Guantánamo Bay is not a U.S. territory, and thus, U.S. courts are not available to the prisoners there. But, as the Supreme Court later affirmed, the United States, not Cuba, exercises exclusive jurisdiction over Guantánamo Bay. Amanda Williamson, a spokeswoman in the Red Cross’ Washington office, noted that prisoners at Guantánamo “have been placed in a legal vacuum, a legal black hole.” Amnesty International went further, noting an obvious gap between U.S. rhetoric and practice: “Given the USA’s criticism of the human rights record of Cuba, it is deeply ironic that it is violating fundamental rights on Cuban soil, and seeking to rely on the fact that it is on Cuban soil to keep the U.S. courts from examining its conduct.”

Although the Convention Against Torture, a treaty the United States has ratified, forbids the use of coercion under any circumstances to obtain information, prisoners released from Guantánamo have detailed assaults, prolonged shackling in uncomfortable positions, sexual abuse, and threats with dogs. Mustafa Ait Idr, an Algerian citizen who was living in Bosnia when he was sent to Guantánamo, charged that U.S. military guards jumped on his head, resulting in a stroke that paralyzed his face. They also broke several of his fingers and nearly drowned him in a toilet. Mohammed Sagheer, a Pakistani cleric, claimed the wardens at Guantánamo used drugs “that made us senseless.” French citizen Mourad Benchellali, released from Guantánamo in July 2004, said, “I cannot describe in just a few lines the suffering and the torture; but the worst aspect of being at the camp was the despair, the feeling that whatever you say, it will never make a difference.” Benchellali added, “There is unlimited cruelty in a system that seems to be unable to free the innocent and unable to punish the guilty.”

Australian lawyer Richard Bourke, who has represented many of the men incarcerated at Guantánamo, charged that prisoners have been subjected to “good old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages.” According to Bourke, “One of the detainees had described being taken out and tied to a post and having rubber bullets fired at them. They were being made to kneel cruciform in the sun until they collapsed.” Abdul Rahim Muslimdost, an Afghan who was released from Guantánamo in April 2005, said he suffered “indescribable torture” there.

U.S. and international bodies have verified reports of torture and abuse. Physicians for Human Rights found that “the United States has been engaged in systematic psychological torture of Guantánamo detainees” at least since 2002. FBI agents saw female interrogators forcibly squeeze male prisoners’ genitals and witnessed detainees stripped and shackled low to the floor for many hours. In February 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that the violent force-feeding of detainees by the U.S. military at Guantánamo amounts to torture.

The very existence of the Guantánamo prison camp harms America’s international reputation. A January 2005 editorial in Le Monde concluded, “The simple truth is that America’s leaders have constructed at Guantánamo Bay a legal monster.” Moreover, it has created more enemies of the United States. Writing for the New York Times, Somini Sengupta maintained that Guantánamo Bay has been a setback in the war on terror insofar as it has “emerged as a symbol of American hypocrisy.”

The list of Guantánamo critics is a long one. Archbishop Desmond Tutu dubbed it a stain on the character of the United States. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the United States must close the camp as soon as possible. The Economist called for the facility to be dismantled, described the treatment of the prisoners there as “unworthy of a nation which has cherished the rule of law since its very birth,” and claimed it “has alienated many other governments at a time when the effort to defeat terrorism requires more international co-operation in law enforcement than ever before.” The National Lawyers Guild, Association of American Jurists, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Amnesty International have all called for closing the prison camp and releasing or charging prisoners with criminal offenses in accordance with international legal norms.

In addition to legal and political problems with Guantánamo, there are enormous human costs to consider. Attorney Joseph Margulies has been to death row in six states and watched his client be executed. But as he noted, “I have never been to a more disturbing place than the military prison at Guantánamo Bay. It is a place of indescribable sadness, where the abstract enormity of ‘forever’ becomes concrete: this windowless cell; that metal cot; those steel shackles.”

Indeed, Army Col. Terry Carrico, the first warden at Guantánamo, complained that when he was there, the men were held in “basically outdoor cages,” adding, “It’s what you would normally find in a veterinarian’s facilities to hold animals.” Carrico said “very few” of the men imprisoned during his tenure had useful intelligence. He favors closing Guantánamo, but doubts that will ever happen.

President Barack Obama said a year ago that he was committed to closing Guantánamo because it was a symbol that was “probably the No. 1 recruiting tool” on terrorist websites. But Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which bars any transfer of detainees to U.S. prisons, even for trial. The act also restricts the President’s authority to transfer detainees to other countries. Of the 171 men remaining at Guantánamo, 89 have been cleared for release by a review conducted by the CIA, FBI, military, and Department of Homeland Security. But those men will likely die at Guantánamo because Obama refused to put the brakes on Congress’s use of the issue as a political football in the NDAA.

In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Harvard lecturer Jonathan M. Hansen wrote, “It is past time to return this imperialist enclave to Cuba,” adding, “It has served to remind the world of America’s long history of interventionist militarism.”

Obama should heed Hansen’s words. For the abiding presence of the Guantánamo gulag is not simply illegal and immoral. It also continues to be a symbol of U.S. hypocrisy, and makes us a target for more terrorist attacks.

Marjorie Cohn is the immediate past president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where she teaches criminal law and procedure, evidence, and international human rights law. She lectures throughout the world on human rights and US foreign policy.

(Photo: Nathan Rupert/flickr)

Teniendo en cuenta estos antecedentes, ¿a quién puede importar la primaria republicana de Iowa? ¿Cuáles son las razones por las que la prensa mundial otorga tamaña trascendencia a un show mediático como ese, despojado de toda sustancia democrática? Basta leer las declaraciones de los candidatos republicanos, a cual más retrógrado y reaccionario, exaltando los valores tradicionales y patrioteros de la derecha estadounidense, para comprobar la profundidad abismal de la crisis política de ese país. Va de suyo que las opiniones de los candidatos demócratas, comenzando por el propio presidente, no modifican en lo más mínimo este diagnóstico. Tal vez lo empeoren. El disparate de los candidatos republicanos, exhaustos luego del ejercicio democrático llevado a cabo en Iowa, llegó tan lejos como para que varios de ellos -especialmente Michele Bachmann, la (frustrada) esperanza del Tea Party que cosechó un número irrisorio de votos- fulminaran con sus críticas a Obama por… ¡sus políticas “socialistas”! Se nota que esas gentes, aspirantes todos ellos a heredar el trono imperial de la Casa Blanca, no tienen la menor idea de lo que están hablando. En su majestuosa mediocridad no se dan cuenta de que si hay algo que impidió (¿o sería más preciso decir “postergó”?) el hundimiento del capitalismo estadounidense fueron las políticas del tandem Bush-Obama que efectivamente pusieron en práctica un socialismo muy del agrado de la burguesía: socializaron las pérdidas de los grandes oligopolios financieros e industriales y las redistribuyeron meticulosamente al conjunto de la población. Mientras tanto, los principales CEO de esas corporaciones afectadas por el “socialismo” de Bush-Obama seguían ganando, una vez pagados los impuestos, más de diez millones de dólares anuales como recompensa por sus brillantes negocios.

Reflexiones estas, en suma, acerca de la total intrascendencia de estas primarias -y las que seguirán en las semanas siguientes, incluyendo un par de ridículos “super martes” que ya provocan la estudiada excitación de la prensa estadounidense y sus voceros de la periferia- que pueden extenderse sin forzar ningún razonamiento a las elecciones presidenciales de los Estados Unidos. Porque, como dicen algunos de los (pocos) politólogos críticos que hay en ese país, ¿a qué viene tanta cháchara con elecciones en las cuales nada se elige y con presidentes que nada presiden toda vez que el “gobierno permanente” que realmente detenta las riendas del poder en sus manos: el complejo militar-industrial y sus aliados, no ha sido elegido por nadie, no debe rendir cuentas ante nadie, ni mucho menos podrá ser removido por el sufragio popular? No importa lo que el pueblo elija, ni el mandato que otorgue al candidato elegido, porque los que verdaderamente mandan lo hacen en virtud de realidades mucho más proteicas –los millonarios negocios y negociados hechos bajo la complaciente mirada del gobierno y de una dirigencia que depende de los donativos de los oligopolios para financiar sus ambiciones políticas- que las débiles señales producidas por el proceso electoral. Además, a diferencia del “populacho” desinformado e impotente que en proporciones cada vez menores acude a las urnas, la clase dominante imperial sabe lo que es bueno para Estados Unidos y lo que hay que hacer en cada momento. Parafraseando aquella vieja fórmula de mediados del siglo pasado que decía que “lo que es bueno para la General Motors es bueno para Estados Unidos” sus personeros hoy saben que “lo que es bueno para el complejo militar-industrial es bueno para Estados Unidos”, por lo menos para una dirigencia que piensa exclusivamente en acrecentar los beneficios y perpetuar los privilegios de ese uno por ciento contra el cual se levantaron los indignados de Ocupemos Wall Street. A esa clase dominante del imperio el veredicto de las urnas, sea en las primarias republicanas o demócratas, o en las elecciones generales, le tiene absolutamente sin cuidado. Su inserción en las articulaciones decisivas del aparato estatal estadounidense no está sujeto a escrutinio o control público alguno, y su dominio sobre la clase política y los grandes medios de comunicación la colocan a salvo de cualquier contingencia surgida en el terreno electoral. Lo único que le preocupa en relación con las primarias y las elecciones es seguir alimentando la ilusión popular de que el país es una democracia, evitando que la masa de la población llegue a pensar que el régimen político imperante no es una democracia sino una abyecta plutocracia. Sabe que de persistir esa creencia su dominio será poco menos que inexpugnable. El problema es que la ilimitada voracidad de esa burguesía y la super-explotación a la que somete al propio pueblo estadounidense más pronto que tarde podría romper el hechizo y dar inicio a un proceso de movilización y radicalización de imprevisibles consecuencias. Por eso hay que presentar al anodino ejercicio que tuvo lugar el pasado martes en Iowa como si fuera una vibrante prueba de la salud democrática de Estados Unidos. Una mentira, no piadosa, sino maléfica hasta el tuétano.

Techo y tolerancia de la dominación capitalista

Todos aquellos elementos de carácter democrático del llamado Estado Social de Derecho han sido en Costa Rica producto de luchas de los trabajadores y del pueblo costarricense a lo largo de las últimas 7 décadas. Desde el Código de Trabajo, pasando por la Salud y la Seguridad Social ( Caja ), el sistema electoral, la nacionalización de servicios estratégicos ( banca, telecomunicaciones, electricidad, agua, puertos y aeropuertos ), legislación agraria, educación pública, y hasta la legalización del Partido Comunista y la creación de la misma Sala Constitucional, son todas conquistas históricas y democráticas en los marcos de un Estado burgués. Estas conquistas – de puro reformismo burgués – deben hoy ser defendidas y más aún, profundizadas en tanto en su letra dan márgenes de acción política, organización y defensa de los intereses de los trabajadores. La burguesía nacional fue tolerante con estas conquistas en tanto no pusieran en entredicho su dominación y sirvieran incluso para su acumulación originaria de capital. Pero las mismas siempre han tenido un techo y este se achica especialmente en períodos de crisis capitalista. La tragedia del neoliberalismo en boga de las últimas dos décadas no es otra cosa que el asalto y el desmantelamiento de todo este andamiaje de conquistas democráticas que aún perviven a duras penas en el ordenamiento jurídico burgués costarricense y que a la postre, definían su llamado Estado Social de Derecho.

Desde esta perspectiva, el Derecho Ambiental – que es una de las ramas más recientes del Derecho – es otra conquista democrática en el marco del Estado burgués. Y hay que decirlo: en Costa Rica la legislación ambiental de las últimas décadas, surgida al influjo del desarrollo de las corrientes ecologistas universales, se ha convertido hoy por hoy y más rápido que ningún otro Derecho, en un franco estorbo para la implantación de los planes de super-explotación de un capitalismo imperialista y depredador de las riquezas naturales. El caso Crucitas es elocuente. El atropello técnico y legal de disposiciones y principios normativos ambientales y del Derecho Público fue tan grosero en este caso que, al más corrupto de los tribunales nacionales le sería muy difícil retorcer el Derecho – su propio Derecho – para favorecer a la transnacional minera.

Pero ese mismo sistema judicial que hoy parece sorprendernos con esta sanción a la corrupción ambiental, acaba de asestar un duro golpe a un amplio sector de comunidades organizadas que impugnan el peaje de la concesionaria Autopistas del Sol. Igualmente y después de verse obligado a procesar a dos expresidentes de la república y sus pandillas por corrupción, a todos ellos se les minimiza la pena y el sistema los deja impunemente libres. Las tendencias represivas y criminalizantes de las luchas sociales han sido sistemáticas en el Derecho y los Tribunales Penales costarricenses luego de las jornadas del Combo del ICE en el año 2000. En materia laboral y agraria son miles los casos de injusticias que se cometen diariamente en esos antros judiciales contra trabajadores y campesinos sin tierra, burlados todos en sus derechos. No por casualidad estos mismos tribunales en estos mismos días, declaran ilegales las huelgas en la Imprenta Nacional y de anestesiólogos de la Caja, así como el desalojo violento de las familias campesinas de Medio Queso de Los Chiles.

De todas estas contradicciones del Derecho y del Sistema Judicial burgués hay que sacar provecho y utilizarlas en todo lo posible. Pero de ahí a embelesar las bondades de un régimen repodrido que sigue siendo en su esencia burgués, anti-obrero, anti-ambiental, anti-popular y sistemáticamente represivo, hay un gran trecho. Con esto combatimos el ilusionismo y la confianza en ese Poder Judicial que tienden a tejer ahora cuanto progre y filisteo hay en el camino. Es necesario decir que las luchas legales, exitosas o no, son también esencialmente desmovilizadoras y tienden a convertirse en un mero “pleito de abogados”  que inhiben la acción y organización de los sectores sociales en lucha.

Héctor Monestel es abogado, miembro del Consejo Universitario de la Universidad de Costa Rica, y dirigente del Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS).