From: News@CLARINEWS.COM
Subject: Protests wrap Latin America in Colombus Day commotion
Reply-To: Multiple recipients of list MEXICO-L <MEXICO-L@TECMTYVM.BITNET>
Organization: Clarinews
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 23:56:47 GMT

	MEXICO CITY (UPI) -- Celebrations of the 500th anniversary of
Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas were overshadowed in Latin
American Monday by a massive indigenous protests that may have included
an attempt on the life of Venezuela's president.
	Most of the protests were peaceful, but local radio reports said two
people killed while trying to assassinate Venezuelan President Carlos
Andres Perez were apparently indigenous extremists.
	Officials did not immediately confirm the attack, but Radio Rumbo
said two gunmen fired on the president's entourage when Perez was
inaugurating a hospital near the city of Maracaibo, on Venezuela's
border with Colombia.
	The reports said Perez was not hurt but that the two attackers were
killed by the president's bodyguards and one other person was killed and
seven wounded in the shootout.
	In Mexico, more than 10,000 people gathered in the central plaza to
celebrate indigenous culture and demand an audience with President
Salinas de Gortari so they could present a list of demands including
bilingual education, respect for indigenous landholdings and improved
access to public services.
	Salinas, however, was not on hand and local press reports said the
Mexican president had headed for the coastal city of Vera Cruz to greet
a modern-day replica of Columbus fleet.
	Most Latin American governments held no official celebrations in
order to avoid confrontation with indigenous groups who banned together
months ago to plan a hemispheric protest dubbed ``500 years of
indigenous, black and grassroots resistance.''
	Thousands of marchers converged on capital cities across the region
to call attention to the suffering inflicted on their ancestors by the
Spanish ``invaders'' and the miserable living conditions that still
characterize life for most indigenous people in the Americas
	In Bogota, President Cesar Gaviria called on Colombians to ``close
the wounds that are still open and advance on the road towards the
construction of a more just, more prosperous and very peaceful society.''
	``This Oct. 12 should serve to strengthen the alliance that brings us
together under one nation with one collective purpose rather than
widening the distance between brothers,'' Gaviria said.
	In Buenos Aires, President Carlos Menem said Argentina should lead
the move toward unity in the Western Hemisphere.
	``Argentina will be the leader in everything that has to do with
Latin American and American unity,'' Menem said during the inauguration
of the exhibition 'Americas 92', an 2-month extravaganza that includes
pop concerts, exhibitions on European culture and Argentina's European
immigrant community and a life-size replica of Columbus' flagship, the
Santa Maria.
	The exhibition included one stand displaying artifacts of a
prehispanic Mexican civilization but dedicated no space to Argentina's
ancient cultures of the estimated 3 million indigenous people that still
survive there, mostly isolated in remote mountain areas.
	Across the main plaza from where Menem began his tour of the
exhibition, a small group of Kolla indians who had walked to the capital
from their home in Jujuy province, almost 1,000 miles away, ended a
four-day hunger strike and joined hundreds of indigenous protesters who
were gathering to mark Oct. 12 as ``a day of mourning'' and look back on
what they called the ``greatest genocide in the history of humanity.''
	In the Eucadoran capital, Quito, police and the army increased
security around the presidential palace and other government buildings
as several thousand indigenous people converged on the capital, blocking
major access highways and congregating in the central San Francisco
Plaza to protest their legacy from Columbus.
	In Montevideo, Uruguay, the official Columbus Day civic-military
parade got off to a shaky start when a group of runaway horses stormed
through the Civic Plaza, forcing government officials to scramble behind
monuments and sending hundreds of spectators screaming for cover.
	Soldiers of a special presidential guard unit were awaiting the order
to mount up when a salvo of canon fire signalling the beginning of the
parade set about 35 horses off on the stampede through the downtown
Montevideo.
	Police said no one was injured in the incident but that one of the
horses was killed when it collided with a city bus.

Organization: Doctoral student, Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA