For another day, the top story is from Peru where the New York Times, Miami Herald, and LA Times all have more on the latest developments following last Friday’s violence in Bagua. The NYT writes that indigenous activists are “digging in for a protracted fight” even after the Peruvian legislature suspended presidential decrees that had made it easier for extractive industries to enter the Peruvian Amazon. The groups involved in the protests are “fueled by a deep popular resistance to the government’s policies, which focused on luring foreign investment,” writes the paper. The broad support for indigenous groups and their demands spilled over into many other Peruvian cities as well with a general strike drawing thousands of protesters to the streets of Iquitos, the largest city in the Amazon. Interestingly, the NYT piece notes that unlike some earlier efforts to organize indigenous groups in Peru, “the leaders of this new movement are themselves indigenous, and not white or mestizo urban intellectuals.” Meanwhile, the MH and LAT both have the AP’s report from Lima where students marched on the Peruvian Congress in solidarity with indigenous groups in the Amazon. The AP writes that the 20,000 students, along with labor and indigenous activists, were turned away with tear gas by riot police in the capital city. The demonstrators chanted “the jungle is not for sale” with some throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. A number of individuals are said to have been detained.
In the Washington Post, an AP story says human rights abuses in Mexico have risen sharply since the military was deployed to fight drug cartels in the country, with very few investigations of rape, killings, and torture following complaints. This is according to a new Human Rights Watch report to the United Nations. The Mexican government has denied the charges, saying the justice system “continues prompt investigation of all allegations of human rights violations.” Of the most pressing problems, HRW singled out the reliance on Mexican military justice system, with HRW advocacy director Juliette de Rivero saying “the dysfunctional Mexican military justice system routinely takes over the investigation of even the most egregious abuses, including alleged rapes, killings, arbitrary detentions and torture.” Mexico’s autonomous National Human Rights Commission says they have received 1,230 abuse complaints against the military in 2008 – up from 182 cases in 2006.
And the Wall Street Journal has a report on the state of the global economy and the difficulty of projecting when a recovery might finally begin. The World Bank said Thursday it expects the global economy to contract by “close to 3%,” a number that is much more discouraging than the Bank’s March estimate of a 1.7% contraction. But at the same time the IMF says the global recovery in 2010 may expand at a 2.4% rate, crediting the faster-than-expected rebound to stimulus spending by developed nations. Such seemingly contradicting statements, says the paper, show how difficult it is to predict anything about the downturn and when it may subside. The Bank’s President Robert Zoellick emphasized “while there are signs the recession may be easing in wealthy countries, developing nations are seeing a drop in exports, remittances and foreign investment”—what he calls a “second wave” of economic contraction centered in the developing world. Such drops seem to add much uncertainty to the equation.
In other news, the MH has another AP story which reports that the Mexican military arrested a wanted cartel member suspected of killing two federal agents recently in the border city of Tijuana. The man, Jose Filiberto Parra Ramo, has appeared in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration posters of “10 men it believes have been locked in a violent power struggle since a split in the Arellano Felix cartel last year.” As is the slightly bizarre and surreal tradition in Mexico, masked soldiers led Parra of a plane in Mexico City and paraded him in front of reporters in the airport while in handcuffs and scowling.
From Venezuela, the latest on the Globovision controversy. The AP says new threats were made against the anti-Chávez station with Chávez himself saying top executives at Globovision must reflect upon the TV channel's tough anti-government stance or they “won't be on the airwaves much longer.” The station has already been hit with a $2.3 million fine from Venezuela's tax agency, and its president remains under investigation for alleged fraud.
And, finally, Andres Oppenheimer writes in the MH on this same topic of the media in Latin America. The MH columnist calls “a concerted move by authoritarian leaders to silence independent media throughout the region” the “most immediate threat to democracy in Latin America.” Of particular worry, writes Oppenheimer, are the words of Rafael Correa who has said that when he takes over as president of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in July he will propose the creation of a regional body to defend governments against critics in the media. Venezuela and Bolivia have backed the Correa proposal thus far. Correa is also apparently seeking to shut down the Teleamazonas television network, using the fact the station aired a bullfight in a time slot in which bullfights are prohibited as one justification. Oppenheimer ends by berating other Latin American nations for” not sounding the alarm” to protect press freedom in the whole region.
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