Mexican President Felipe Calderon has accepted the resignation of the country’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora, in what the AP calls “the biggest shake-up yet in his offensive against organized crime.” Mr. Medina-Mora’s image as an upstanding official had been tainted after one of his top aides was accused of working with cartel bosses, and thus many in Mexico were unsurprised by Monday’s announcement. But while there was speculation that the move might signal a new approach to the drug war, President Calderon assured Mexican it would not. For his part, Medina-Mora also stood by his record as attorney general. “The historic decision to use all the power of the state to limit the power of the criminal organizations was fundamental to ensure our future as a nation,” he said Monday. “History will have to recognize the correctness and valor of this decision.” The incoming attorney general, Arturo Chavez, is a former federal prosecutor and was the attorney general in the state of Chihuahua in the mid 1990s. He also served as a mediator between protestors and the state government in Oaxaca during the 2006 conflict there. As the New York Times reports, the replacement of Mora comes just days after armed men murdered a candidate for the state legislature, his wife, and two children in the southern state of Tabasco. Officials say the murders were likely retaliatory after various La Familia cartel members were arrested. And in Sunday’s Guardian, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso argues once again that the so-called “war on drugs” that Mexico and others are fighting has been a failure. The former president, who recently served on the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, cites new measures in Argentina, Mexico, and beyond on decriminalization for the possession of small quantities of drugs, and argues “a solution need not be a stark choice between prohibition and legalisation. Alternative approaches are being tested and must be carefully reviewed. But it is clear that the way forward will involve a strategy of reaching out, patiently and persistently, to the users, and not the continued waging of a misguided and counterproductive war that makes the users, rather than the drug lords, the primary victims.”
On the crisis in Honduras this morning, there are mixed opinions on new U.S. measures, announced late last week, which were taken in an attempt to dislodge the de facto regime in Tegucigalpa. Time’s Tim Padgett says the U.S. cut all non-humanitarian aid to the country, totaling $32 million, revoked the visas of all coup regime officials, and threatened to not recognize late November elections unless Manuel Zelaya is restored as president. But the U.S. also showed “mixed signals,” the magazine writes, by not calling the June 28 ouster a “military coup.” The reason: “even though soldiers threw Zelaya out of the country at gunpoint, in his pajamas, he was not replaced with a military leader. Instead, Micheletti, a civilian who headed Honduras' Congress, was made President.” And according to WOLA’s Vicki Gass, this could translate into trouble beyond Honduras as well. “I think the armies and the business elites they back in those countries [like Guatemala and El Salvador] are watching the Obama Administration's moves on Honduras very closely,” Gass says, arguing that the U.S. non-designation may have “created risks in other countries.”
Also, there are new reports that the $164 million allocated by the IMF for Honduras may be withheld. See a new CEPR press release and “Honduras Coup 2009” for more. An editorial in the Washington Post supports the most recent aid cuts by the Obama administration, but, it seems, for quite different reasons. The paper argues that pressure on the Micheletti regime to sign the San José Accords should continue so as to not “play into the hands of the Latin American left,” namely Hugo Chavez [for Obama’s supposed “direct diplomacy” failures with Chavez and others, see also Jackson Diehl in the Post over the weekend]. Newsweek, meanwhile, reports on Mr. Zelaya’s Washington tour last week which included face time with Sec. of State Clinton and the SFRC’s ranking member, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN). “The deposed can often seem desperate, even pathetic. So the trick in Washington is somehow to maintain an air of dignity even as you plead, beg, and cajole,” writes Daniel Stone. This week the Zelaya caravan is expected to head to Spain after making a second visit to Guatemala over the weekend and a stopover back in Nicaragua. After meetings in the U.S., the deposed leader called the new U.S. measures against the Micheletti regime, “satisfactory.” Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez declared, “it’s about time.”
Chavez’s words came as he was on the road visiting what the Miami Herald calls a group of “friendly autocrats.” The list of countries he visits on the 11 day tour include Libya, Belarus, Russia, and Iran. But before those latter countries, the Venezuelan president made a stop in Venice, Italy, for the premier of Oliver Stone’s new documentary, “South of the Border.” The LA Times reports that hundreds gathered outside the film festival there, chanting “president, president” while Chavez “threw a flower into the crowd and touched his heart, and at one point took a photographer's camera to snap a picture himself.” Back in Venezuela, however, things were less pleasant. The AP reports that tens of thousands of allies and opponents of Mr. Chavez came out to the streets of Caracas on Saturday, many denouncing the arrests of opposition activists detained during recent protests against Chavez’s new education law. The AP also says a new probe against Globovision has been issued by the telecommunications chief of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, because “the channel allegedly broadcast a ticker strip of text messages from viewers calling for a coup.” And while relations between Venezuela and Colombia remain tense, an interesting piece in the LAT discusses how banished oil executives and engineers are arriving in Colombia and apparently lending their expertise to the Colombian oil industry.
In other news, the Herald has the second in a series on the 12 year old rape case in Colombia, for which a U.S. soldier (and Mexican contractor) stand as the accused but have gone unprosecuted. The LAT reports that Brazil will buy 36 fighter jets from France in a deal worth some $2 billion. The paper also comments on the new video released in the Chevron case which appears to show impropriety by some involved in the case. And finally, the MH’s Andres Oppenheimer writes about re-election in Colombia after the House approved a referendum measure last week. The columnist writes, “A third consecutive term would be bad for Uribe, bad for Colombia, and bad for Latin America. Bad for Uribe, because instead of leaving office as a hero, he will end up badly, much like former Argentine President Carlos S. Menem, Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori and others who bent the laws to run for third terms. Bad for Colombia, because it would turn it into a Mickey Mouse democracy, where an almighty maximum leader would generate a popular reaction that sooner or later would move the political pendulum in the opposite direction. And it would be bad for Latin America, because it would be a big blow for pro-democracy forces.”
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