The Economist helpfully summarizes the partial vetoes that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff issued against the very troubling Forest Code, which emerged from the country’s legislature with broad concessions to the country’s loggers and large-scale farmers.
Throughout the history of the [Inter-American Human Rights] Commission, there have been efforts from coup-originated and autocratic governments, like that of Fujimori, to try to “perfect” the system. These in reality aimed to weaken the Commission…. [W]hen the Commission hit the Fujimori government hard with a series of cases, like the Constitutional Tribunal, La Cantuta and Barrios Altos, this government’s ambassador was Beatriz Ramaccioti, who very effectively tried to extract Peru from the Court’s jurisdiction through a so-called “reflection and strengthening” process. This was supported by Mexico, Brazil and some other countries. The secretary-general at the time, César Gaviria, took the side of the democratic countries, and these efforts did not prosper. Now we have another process, despite the efforts that the Commission has made for this country and the region, an effort with which Peru should not identify itself. But now there is a secretary-general who, in my judgment, is the worst in the history of the OAS. And for a Chilean, with the role that the Commission played during the dictatorship, it is shameful what he has done.
Imagine this being read by the recording that says “Your call is important to us, please stay on the line.”
“What matters to the U.S. is to work jointly with the hemisphere countries and so advance towards a better future, fight poverty, attack issues such as climate change and see how we can work together as we did at the recent Summit of the Americas in Colombia, and ensuring that human rights are respected, and strengthening democracy.”
— State Department Acting Under Secretary for Press Affairs Mike Hammer, May 31, 2012.
Speaking at the Inter-American Defense College this morning. (Looks like a tough crowd for an NGO guy, doesn’t it.)
I probably won’t have time to post again today.
The minister even said that, maybe because the gangs are so strong in El Salvador, that’s why we don’t have the presence of drug cartels in the country, like there are in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. Should they then be considered a lesser evil? Should we even contribute to strengthening them, in order to avoid the narcos’ entry?
The combat going on in the past two weeks in Comunas 8 and 9 show that we are now not in the presence of combos [territorial gangs], but of mafiosa organizations who want to control a “gran plaza.” The Urabeños or Gaitanistas are trying to take over the “business” in the city. They already own the trafficking routes in the periphery, but they want downtown. Fernando Quijano, one of the members of Corpades and a major expert on Medellín’s mafias, says it clearly: “In Comunas 8 and 9 there are more than 700 armed men, between the Gaitanistas, Office of Envigado, the BJs and other smaller combos.
Beto O'Rourke, Marijuana Legalization Supporter, Beats Rep. Silvestre Reyes
Veteran Rep. Reyes (D-Texas) has lost his primary in El Paso, the Texas city that borders Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. In this heavily Democratic district, Beto O’Rourke is very likely to win the general election and be El Paso’s next member of Congress.
In this majority-Latino district, it says something about voters’ mood that they chose a very liberal politician, and a very outspoken advocate of marijuana legalization, over a moderate with a law-enforcement background (Reyes headed the Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector in the early 1990s).
It’s also very interesting that a pro-marijuana legalization congressman might soon be representing a district that includes both the DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) and the Northern Command’s anti-drug Joint Task Force North.
A map of recent FARC attacks, from an article in the Colombian newsweekly Semana about perceptions that guerrilla activity has increased and that the Colombian government’s security policies are losing momentum.
Over at InsightCrime, Erin Shea (a former intern on the “Just the Facts” project) mines information from an April U.S. indictment to build an “org chart” of the Sinaloa Cartel’s structure in Ciudad Juárez and its environs.
In March 2000, paramilitaries tore through the hamlet of Mampuján, in María La Baja municipality only a short drive from Cartagena, where they massacred eleven people and displaced over 1,100.
Twelve years later, the massacre’s victims have been promised generous financial reparations, first through the 2005 “Justice and Peace” law and now through the 2011 “Victims and Land Restitution” law.
But the promises keep going unmet and the people of Mampuján keep getting jerked around, reports the excellent Colombian investigative website La Silla Vacía.
“‘In January they said to us that the reparations would come in March,’ Gabriel Pulido, one of those displaced from Mampuján, told La Silla. ‘But nothing happened. Later in April, but nothing. This is now an insult to the victims.’”
This is particularly troubling, notes La Silla, because Mampuján is considered an “emblematic” case and a key test of the Colombian government’s ability to keep the lofty promises that it has been making to hundreds of thousands of victims of the country’s long conflict.
FARC proof-of-life video for French reporter Romeo Langlois, whom the guerrillas have held since late April after capturing him following combat with the Colombian Army. Langlois was embedded in a Colombian Army unit on an anti-drug operation in the southern department of Caquetá. The FARC say that they plan to release Langlois tomorrow. Let’s hope they actually do.
At Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris’s website, Wilfer Bonilla argues that the Venezuelan government’s “Misiones” — welfare, housing, food security and similar programs — are the key to ailing President Hugo Chávez’s continued popularity and double-digit lead in the polls for October 7 elections. As many as 70 percent of Venezuela’s population has received benefits from at least one of the Misiones over the years.
The graph from his post shows a sharp drop in Venezuelans under the poverty and extreme poverty lines. Doubters may contend that these are official Venezuelan government statistics and actual poverty statistics are higher — but the trendline is probably close to reality. This is the best explanation why, despite shortages, rampant crime, widespread corruption and erosion of checks on executive power, the Chávez government stands a strong chance of remaining in power after 14 years.
From Plaza Pública (Guatemala).
“Members of the Guatemalan Army and the National Civilian Police carried out operations and arrests at businesses located in the Mercado del Guarda, Zone 11 of Guatemala City.”
On April 21, leaders of SINTRAEMCALI, the Cali Municipal Corporation Workers Union, received death threats, which included an invitation to their own funeral (along with bullets and a prayer book). The materials make clear that the labor leaders have been under surveillance for some time by the “Black Eagles” (a paramilitary group), which issued the death threats. The SINTRAEMCALI union has been engaged in an emblematic labor rights case in Colombia, pushing for the reinstatement of 51 workers illegally fired for their union activities.
From a May 17 letter to President Obama from 10 members of the U.S. House of Representatives concerned about labor rights in Colombia following the entry-into-force of the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement.
The letter has proved more than prescient, as a gunman fired at SINTRAEMCALI Vice-President Adolfo Devia yesterday, missing him but killing his brother.
“Down with ‘soap opera democracy’”
“Inform yourself, vote and turn off the idiot box”
“Turn off your television, pay attention”
— Slogans from banners carried by student protestors in Mexico, part of a broadening movement expressing exasperation with mass television networks’ coverage of the campaign for the country’s July presidential elections.
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