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      L A T I N    A M E R I C A    D A T A    B A S E
    
              NotiSur - Latin American Affairs
    
ISSN 1060-4189      Volume 7, Number 8    February 28, 1997
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    Copyright 1996, Latin America Data Base (LADB), Latin
        American Institute, University of New Mexico
    
           Director:          Rebecca Reynolds Bannister
           Managing editor:               Kevin Robinson
                         Staff writers:
          Patricia Hynds, Carlos Navarro, Robert Sandels
 
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                       In This Issue:
   
URUGUAY: HUGE OIL SPILL CAUSES ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
   * Tourism, fishing, and wildlife affected
   * Cleanup methods questioned by environmentalists
   
VENEZUELA: VIASA AIRLINE TO BE LIQUIDATED
   * Shareholders agree to "amicable liquidation"
   
PERU'S "OTHER" GUERRILLAS TRY TO REGROUP
   * Sendero actions take large human and material toll
   * Breakaway faction emerges following Guzman's arrest
   * Sendero tries to rebuild
____________________________________________________________
   

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       URUGUAY
*********************
  

URUGUAY: HUGE OIL SPILL CAUSES ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
  
     The worst oil spill in Uruguay's history is threatening
resort beaches and wildlife.  Twenty miles of prime Uruguayan
coastline, which every summer attracts over a million
tourists, have been severely contaminated by the spill.  In
addition, wildlife on Isla de Lobos, home of one of the
largest concentrations of sea lions, has also been affected.
     The disaster began Feb. 8, when an oil tanker registered
in Panama ran aground and sprang a leak 20 miles off Punta del
Este, one of the most famous resorts on the South Atlantic
coast.  The San Jorge tanker was sailing from southern
Argentina to the Brazilian port of Sao Sebastiao carrying
about 60,000 cubic meters (370,000 barrels) of crude oil.  At
least 18,000 barrels were spilled.
     Following the disaster, President Julio Sanguinetti
quickly convened a meeting of the National Emergency System. 
He also flew over the contaminated area to observe joint
cleanup efforts by the military, the Environment Ministry, the
provincial government, and independent environmental
organizations.  However, reporters were not allowed to visit
Isla de Lobos until Feb. 26.
     The government has demanded that the owners of the ship,
Oilsud Corporation and Transportes Maritimos Petroleros,
assume financial liability for the disaster.  Legal charges
will be filed as a preventive measure, because "whoever
pollutes, pays," said Environment Minister Juan Chiruchi.  The
captain of the damaged ship, however, said the vessel hit an
uncharted sandbar.
     
Tourism, fishing, and wildlife affected
     Beach contamination could seriously affect Uruguay's
summer (December-March) earnings from tourism, which is now
Uruguay's second largest industry, after banking.  Punta del
Este, 147 km east of Montevideo, attracts 75% of the summer
tourism trade, mostly wealthy Argentines.  The resort is also
the frequent site of international meetings and conferences.
     In addition to affecting those who earn their living from
tourism, the livelihood of local fishers is also jeopardized
by the catastrophe.  The Instituto Nacional de Pesca (Inape)
has declared a ban on fishing and shellfish harvesting within
60 miles of the coast.
     Perhaps the most devastating effect of the oil spill is
the damage to one of Uruguay's key wildlife reserves, Isla de
Lobos, home to the world's largest population--more than
300,000--of two species of sea lions exclusive to the Southern
Hemisphere.  No clear figures exist on the number of sea lions
that have already died as a result of the spill, but
environmental experts said the death toll could reach 6,000. 
Environmentalists working to save affected wildlife said their
rescue efforts have had almost no success so far.
     The impact of the spill on the sea lions is increased
because they feed in shallow waters near the coast.  Minister
Chiruchi has predicted that many of this year's young will die
from contamination in the food chain.
     
Cleanup methods questioned by environmentalists
     Moreover, some scientists questioned the government's
decision to use chemical dispersants, which they said could
cause additional harm to marine life.
     "The use of dispersants is worse, from a biological point
of view, because it increases the toxicity of the oil," said
Denise Vizziano, head of a scientific team studying the
utilization of dispersants in oil spills.  "The product
disperses the hydrocarbon, transforming it into small drops
that are more easily ingested by small organisms, such as
plankton."
     From its regional offices in Buenos Aires, the
environmental organization Greenpeace International criticized
the government's delay in responding to the spill as well as
cleanup methods.
     "Dispersants are only palliatives that send the problem
to the bottom of the sea," said Juan Carlos Villalonga,
Greenpeace expert on oil spills.  "Aesthetically, you can say
the problem is gone, but at the level of fish, fauna, and
flora, the contaminant is still there.  A few passes by planes
dropping dispersant on the slick is like sweeping garbage
under the carpet."
     According to the weekly newspaper Brecha, investigators
with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
which evaluated the cleanup following the Exxon Valdez oil
spill in Alaska in 1989, concluded that "apart from some
systems such as aspiration or the use of bacteria to eliminate
the crude naturally, the majority of methods not only do not
achieve their objectives, but have negative consequences on
the flora and fauna."
     Critics also pointed out that other, less harmful methods
are available.
     "In this case, the solution used could be beneficial from
an economic perspective, but harmful biologically," said
Vizziano.  "We believe that the ideal would have been to use
containment barriers to facilitate suctioning the oil from the
water, which would not affect marine life."
     Octavio Romano, director of the association Rescate
Maritimo (REM), proposed using an organic solution.
     "A vegetable product exists, a wood byproduct, that acts
aggressively on the oil but respects the fauna and flora,"
said Romano.
     Following the debate on the clean up methods, INAPE
decided to reduce the use of chemical dispersants from an area
of three miles to one.  In addition, on Feb. 20 INAPE said
that 40 containers of a natural nontoxic product used in the
cleanup of both animals and beaches would be arriving within
the next few days.  However, serious damage has already
occurred.
     In addition, Greenpeace warned that it is quite possible
that the worse consequences are still to come.
     "This is not an accident," said Villalonga.  "In the
future, and considering the present policy in Argentina to
increase the extraction and sale of crude going to Brazil,
these spills will occur almost routinely in high-traffic areas
such as the Maldonado coast of Uruguay."
     The spill was the second major environmental catastrophe
to hit the area within two weeks.  A forest fire broke out in
early February near Punta del Este, destroying hundreds of
hectares of pine forest and part of the country's largest
reserve of native fauna.  [Sources: Inter Press Service,
02/15/97; Spanish news service EFE, 02/20/97; Associated
Press, 02/23/97; El Observador (Uruguay), 02/25/97; Brecha
(Uruguay), 02/21/97; Mercopress (Uruguay), 02/17/97; Diario El
Pais (Uruguay), 02/26/97, 02/27/97]
  

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      VENEZUELA
*********************
  

VENEZUELA: VIASA AIRLINE TO BE LIQUIDATED
  
     Shareholders of Venezolana Internacional de Aviacion
(VIASA)--owned jointly by the Venezuelan government and the
Spanish airline Iberia--voted to liquidate the company,
leaving 2,400 employees out of work.  Crippling debts and
labor problems forced the Feb. 20 decision, which came a month
after all flights were suspended.
     VIASA was founded by the government in 1960 and partially
privatized in September 1991.  In the privatization, 45% of
the shares were awarded to Iberia, 15% to the Venezuelan Banco
Provincial, and the remaining 40% remained with the state
Fondo de Inversiones de Venezuela (FIV), which oversees the
government's privatization efforts (see Chronicle of Latin
American Economic Affairs, 06/13/91 and 04/30/92).  According
to the company, VIASA ran approximately 85 flights per week,
transporting 17,500 passengers.
     Last Dec. 19, VIASA employees rejected an emergency plan
to save the airline, presented by Iberia, which proposed a
reduction of personnel by between 10% and 20%.  Iberia
insisted that part of VIASA's financial woes resulted from an
excessive number of employees on the payroll, with three times
the number of pilots and flight attendants of most
international carriers.
     Following the employees' rejection of the plan, Iberia
said it would "not invest another peseta" in the company
unless the employees agreed to the restructuring.
     When no agreement was reached by Jan. 23, the company
suspended all flights.  Since that time, the Venezuelan
government has explored various options to keep the airline
flying, expressing concern for the social impact and the
effect on tourism.  However, the government also said it could
invest no more money in the airline, in effect signing VIASA's
death sentence.
     
Shareholders agree to "amicable liquidation"
     In mid-February, the government and Iberia held a closed-
door meeting after which they announced their conclusion that
"an amicable liquidation" was the only solution.  Under the
terms of the agreement, Iberia will write off a US$30 million
debt held by VIASA to balance the company's books and
facilitate the liquidation process.  The owners likewise
agreed to compensate the company's suspended workers, appoint
two administrators, and ask the courts to begin the legal
process of liquidation.
     Although the principal shareholders agreed to set up a
US$20 million trust to pay the laid-off workers, union leaders
said they would oppose the plan, adding that they had little
confidence in the principal actors, particularly the
government and Iberia.  The union said it would continue its
lawsuit against the directors of Iberia and VIASA, whom they
accuse of gross mismanagement leading to the collapse of the
airline.
     Almost immediately following the announcement that VIASA
was being liquidated, FIV president Alberto Poletto said the
government would consider launching a new airline, which would
be able to use the VIASA routes.
     However, the Venezuelan Airlines Association (ALAV) said
any new Venezuelan "flagship" airline would not automatically
assume the rights and routes accorded to VIASA.  While
Venezuela does not risk losing the routes previously managed
by VIASA, new service agreements must be drawn up if routes
are left "dormant" for more than 30 days--and that deadline
has now passed.  [Sources: Inter Press Service, 02/15/97,
02/20/97; The New York Times, 02/20/97; Spanish news service
EFE, 02/17/97, 02/19-21/97; El Nacional (Venezuela), VENews
(Venezuela), 02/25/97]
  

********************************
     SUMMARIES & ANALYSIS
********************************
  

PERU'S "OTHER" GUERRILLAS TRY TO REGROUP
  
     
     By Lucien O. Chavin
     
[The author is a staff writer with Latinamerica Press, a
weekly bilingual publication in Lima, Peru.]
     
     With the attention of Peru's security forces focused on
the ongoing hostage crisis at the Japanese ambassador's
residence, the country's other guerrilla group, Sendero
Luminoso, is slowly trying to rebuild its shattered
organization.
     Sendero--which is much more violent than the Movimiento
Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA), whose guerrillas have been
holding 72 hostages in Japanese Ambassador Morihisa Aoki's
residence since Dec. 17--has been waging a bloody war against
the state since 1980.
     During most of its 17-year struggle, Sendero, known
officially as the Partido Comunista Peruano, has targeted
mainly campesino leaders, leftist elected officials and
community leaders, and religious workers, as well as police
officers and soldiers.  Central government representatives and
military officers were never high on the group's list of
targets.  The idea, according to Sendero, was to liquidate
those sectors that "cushioned" the state's policies.
     The 1992 assassination of Maria Elena Moyano, the vice
mayor of the Lima district of Villa El Salvador and an
important grassroots women's leader, fit this strategy.  At
the time, Sendero justified Moyano's death, saying that she
trafficked in food aid to keep the people oppressed.
     
Sendero actions take large human and material toll
     Sendero's campaign to destroy the Peruvian state reached
its height in mid-1992 when Lima was rocked almost daily by
car bombs planted by the group.  Sendero blew up televisions
stations, municipal offices, schools, office buildings, and
even a residential apartment building, killing more than 30
civilians while they were sleeping.  Sendero is blamed for the
majority of the more than 30,000 deaths caused by political
violence in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s.  In addition, its
strategy of calling "armed strikes" and destroying factories
and high-tension electric towers is responsible for the bulk
of the more than US$20 billion in economic losses caused by
political violence.
     The group's claim that it had reached "strategic
equilibrium" in 1991 ended almost as quickly as it began with
the capture of nearly all the members of its politburo in
September 1992.  Among those captured was Abimael Guzman,
Sendero's once-mythic leader who had managed to avoid arrest
since going underground in 1979 to prepare for the war against
the state (see NotiSur, 09/22/92, 10/06/92, 10/13/92).
     Guzman was easily broken by the police once in jail. 
Serving a life sentence in a windowless cell at a navy base in
Lima, Guzman--in statements released by the government--has
called on his followers to reach a "peace agreement" with the
government.  In a video of Guzman with several other members
of the politburo, he demands that his followers lay down their
weapons.
     Guzman's capture and his quick capitulation to the
state--he has called President Alberto Fujimori one of Peru's
greatest leaders--was too much for most of his followers who
began turning themselves in or, as they say, going into "deep
underground" while they wait for their leader to say something
else.
     
Breakaway faction emerges following Guzman's arrest
     Nevertheless, a breakaway faction of Sendero, known as
Sendero Rojo, has refused to lay down its weapons, saying that
Guzman's surrender in prison is a ploy.  This faction, led by
Oscar Ramirez Durand, known as "Feliciano," has kept a low
profile since Guzman's capture, but Sendero experts say that
it is far from dormant or defeated.
     In addition, they say that the MRTA siege of Aoki's
residence, which gained that group worldwide attention (see
NotiSur, 01/10/97, 01/31/97 and 02/21/97), is important to
Sendero for several reasons.
     David Scott Palmer, a professor of international
relations at Boston University and a Sendero expert who taught
with Guzman at the San Cristobal University where Sendero got
its start, says that, although Sendero is not nearly as strong
as it was several years ago, it is trying to rebuild its base.
     "My assumption is that Shining Path is taking advantage
of the MRTA action to improve its own situation," says Palmer. 
"Similar to past situations, it is using the circumstances to
improve its standing."
     Currently, the country's intelligence agency (Servicio de
Inteligencia Nacional, SIN) and the anti-terrorist force
(Direccion Nacional Contra el Terrorismo, DINCOTE) are
primarily occupied with trying to figure out how the MRTA--an
organization DINCOTE said was dead in March 1996 when it
deactivated its MRTA desk--pulled off the embassy takeover. 
With SIN and DINCOTE attention focused elsewhere, Sendero has
been carrying out daily actions in the northern jungle and
central highlands, two areas where it continues to exercise
some level of control.
     In the most recent Sendero attack on Feb. 24 in the small
community of Crisnejas, in the department of Huanuco, 350 km
north of Lima, a Sendero column destroyed a local health
clinic in the town.  In a Dec. 27 attack on the campesino
community of Abra de Porculla, in the northern department of
Piura, Sendero killed six campesinos in typically violent
style, beating them to death with clubs and stones.  The
following day, Sendero killed four campesinos in Huanuco in
the same way.
     Both Palmer and Gustavo Gorriti, a leading Sendero
scholar and currently associate editor of the Panamanian daily
La Prensa, say that Sendero Rojo must be seething when local
and international press refer to the MRTA as the country's
leading guerrilla group, mentioning Sendero only as the
country's "other" guerrillas.
     "There is a great deal of hate between the two
organizations," says Gorriti.  "They have different ideologies
and ways of operating and organizing.  With the taking of the
ambassador's residence, the MRTA believes it now has a more
solid position over Sendero, which Sendero must not like at
all."
     Before the leaderships of Sendero and the MRTA were
arrested--MRTA's leader Victor Polay was captured in July 1992
and is imprisoned at the same base as Guzman--the two groups
regularly attacked each other, particularly in the central
jungle where drug trafficking in rampant.
     During the early days of the hostage crisis, the MRTA
took pains to distance itself from Sendero.  When the third
and largest group of hostages was released on Dec. 20, the
MRTA had one of the hostages read a communique that included
a point differentiating the MRTA from Sendero, which it said
is against the Peruvian people.
     
Sendero tries to rebuild
     Nevertheless, Palmer says that, while the MRTA believes
it has gained the upper hand in its battle with Sendero,
Sendero has been much better at trying to rebuild after the
fall of its leaders.
     "It (Sendero) has done what MRTA has never been able to
do, which is try to reorganize at the grassroots level," says
Palmer.  "It is trying to regain operational structure,
something MRTA cannot do."
     Because Sendero is not carrying out violent actions in
Lima, analysts are concerned that the general population will
lose sight of the violence this group is capable of
unleashing.  In the early years of the internal conflict,
Sendero confined its actions to highland areas, which gave
residents in the capital a false sense that the war was far
off and would never touch them.  This changed in the early
1990s, and most people were caught off guard by the
coordinated way in which Sendero was able to operate.
     "I don't find it surprising that they are not operating
in Lima," says Palmer.  "It is quite clear that they've
returned to a defensive posture, which is consistent with
moving back to the countryside and returning to their actions
of the past."
     Gorriti agreed.  "Because Shining Path is not carrying
out attacks in Lima does not mean it is not active," he said. 
"It is trying to rebuild and recruit new members.  Any action
would attract attention to this and jeopardize its future
plans."
     Although Sendero has been relatively quiet in Lima, it
has certainly not completely stopped carrying out actions.  In
November 1996, the last month in which official statistics
were released, Sendero carried out actions--albeit minor--in
13 of Lima's 43 districts.
     In Villa El Salvador, where Maria Elena Moyano was killed
five years ago, a district employee, who asked not to be
named, said that he believes Sendero is once again trying to
make headway in the district.  He said that the strategy is
much more subtle than in the past and includes, in some cases,
lending money to people interest free and then slowly
incorporating them into the group.
     Villa El Salvador Mayor Michel Azcueta, who survived a
Sendero attack in 1993 that left him with a marked limp, says
that Sendero has never been able to fully penetrate Villa, but
it has not stopped trying.  Since the MRTA siege began in
December, Peru's National Police have increased Azcueta's
police guard from two officers to five.
     Regardless of their actions--even spectacular attacks
such as the MRTA's embassy siege--both groups are pale images
of what they were in the early 1990s.  Intelligence sources
calculate that MRTA has only about 500 supporters nationwide
and Sendero has probably less than 2,000 people they can count
on for support.  Combatants are even fewer, probably numbering
less than 1,000.  But even in their weakened state, both
groups will be capable of carrying out terrorists actions for
years to come.