Just Associates

January 14, 2010

In the days before the coup in Honduras that forced President Manuel Zelaya out of the country in his pajamas on June 28, 2009, several women’s rights organizations had been organizing for constitutional reforms. Within hours of the coup, these same organizations quickly took to the streets, calling on the de facto government to respect the country’s constitution and democratic institutions. According to leaders within these groups, many protestors were met with repressive tactics by police and military and these human rights violations have not been addressed.

Lisa Veneklasen is the founder and executive director of Just Associates (JASS), an international organization supporting women’s rights advocacy and political organizing in 30 countries in Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, and Mesoamerica. Veneklasen says many of the human rights groups in Honduras continue to look to the Obama Administration to support their pro-democracy stance and to pressure the Honduran government to investigate and prosecute human rights abuses.

Listen to the EXTENDED CONVERSATION:

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In Memorium: Esther Chavez Cano [1933 – 2009]

When Esther Chavez Cano first organized protests in 1993 in Ciudad Juarez, hers was the initiating voice against “femicide,” a term given to the murder of hundreds of women in this border town. She accused local police and political leaders of covering up the murders and chided local media for not paying enough attention to the crimes. And her protests led to international attention on the murder of women and girls in Juarez.

But Chavez was more than simply an organizer. She was also a healer. She went on to found the city’s first rape crisis center known simply as Casa Amiga. She traveled the world raising awareness of the murders in Juarez, and raising money for the center. In 2008, Mexican President Felipe Calderón presented Chavez with the country’s highest human rights award. Her center also receives support by Mexican federal grants.

Chavez succumbed to cancer on Christmas Day, 2009. El Paso reporter Monica Ortiz Uribe has this remembrance.

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Paquito Hechevarría

Paquito Hechevarría was already an accomplished musician by the time he arrived in Miami as a teenager in the early 1960s. Encouraged by his father, a career military man in Cuba who loved music, Hechevarría took private piano lessons and later studied at the Municipal Conservatory of Music in Havana. Once in Miami, he became the house musician at the famed Fountainbleu, playing with such musical celebrities as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. and others in the legendary Boom Boom Room. This later led to his work at Ceaser’s Palace in Las Vegas.

As a house musician and musical journeyman, Hechevarría has recorded with such artists as Mongo Santamaria, Nestor Torres, Barry Manilow, and Gloria Estefan. His influence on the Miami Sound Machine crossover hit “Conga” is well documented. In the mid-Eighties, he formed Grupo Wal-Pa-Ta-Ca with bassist Israel “Cachao” Lopez and percussionists Walfredo de los Reyes and Tany Gil.

Hechevarría’s latest CD, titled frankly, features songs covered by the immortal Frank Sinatra, but with an Afro-Latino twist.

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YOUTUBE Video “Ponte el Mameluco” posted by Spiradic Productions.