A new community policing program in Rio de Janeiro has attempted to create “goodwill” and trust between security officials and favela residents, normally fearful of the police. As the Washington Post’s Juan Forero reports this morning, the old image of heavily armed police officers entering the city’s shantytowns to end violence with violence has not all-together ended (as last week’s deadly confrontations showed), “but in a handful of other once-violent districts,” says the paper, “the strategy is to replace the militarized police with patrol officers.” Capt. Pricilla de Oliveira Azevedo, the head of one such community policing unit in a Rio favela, says the program allows the police to be better positioned to “develop intelligence from residents about drug trafficking” and “determine where new state funds are needed to build homes and provide social programs.” “It is difficult to be able to change a 50-year situation in one year, but our intention is to change the minds of people and their impression of the police,” Azevedo tells the Post. Until the program was started, police had almost entirely withdrawn from favelas, only entering to engage drug traffickers in violent gun fights, while “off-duty police officers and firefighters formed their own militias, which extort local businesses and also fight the drug dealers for preeminence.”
In Haiti, the Miami Herald reports this morning that current Prime Minister, Michele Pierre-Louis is fighting for her political career as several lawmakers are demanding she—along with many of her top ministers—be removed. Those working most actively against Ms. Pierre-Louis are a group of six senators, allied with President René Preval. And the political crisis has now led to increased involvement of foreign diplomats and even Sec. of State Hillary Clinton who spoke with President Preval by phone this week. It remains unclear exactly what has sparked anger against the prime minister, according to the MH, but it almost certainly relates to economic troubles that continue to plague the Caribbean’s poorest country. Others see the moves against Pierre-Louis as a form of political positioning by current lawmakers ahead of scheduled November 2010 elections. “Since becoming prime minister, she has struggled with limited human and financial resources and with a structure of government that has been emasculated over decades of mismanagement and selfish politics,'” Robert Maguire, a Haiti expert at Washington’s Trinity University, tells MH.
In Honduras, this morning there are (yes, once again) glimmers of potential hope. As El Faro and others reported yesterday, OAS negotiator John Biehl spoke Monday on Chilean radio and said he believed an agreement between Mel Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti will be announced this week. The statement came as a surprise to many, after official talks collapsed last week. “Things have continued getting much closer [between the two parties],” remarked Biehl. Biehl’s words were followed Monday by a State Dept. announcement that it had increased its participation in the negotiation process. Sec. of State Clinton was reportedly on the phone with both Zelaya and Micheletti this week, saving her “toughest comments” for Mr. Micheletti with whom Clinton spoke for over half an hour. The NYT calls the efforts “the first time the Obama administration has taken a leading role in pressuring the leaders of the de facto government to restore democratic order in Honduras.” And Honduran papers are now reporting that U.S. Ass’t. Sec. of State Tom Shannon will arrive in Tegucigalpa tomorrow to help in resolving the ongoing crisis. Zelaya’s chief negotiator, Victor Meza, said he did not yet know the exact agenda of Mr. Shannon yet but added that the OAS’s head of political affairs, the Bolivian Victor Rico, would also arrive to facilitate further talks.
Meanwhile, there was news of violence against the family of Roberto Micheletti over the weekend. The de facto leader’s nephew was found shot to death, execution-style, on Monday, but officials have said there is no evidence that the killing was related to the June coup that put his uncle into power. In an unrelated attack, a military colonel was killed outside of Tegucigalpa as well Sunday. A motive for that crime has yet to be discovered. Time has a somewhat amusing article this week also on Zelaya’s former Tourism Minister, Ricardo Martinez, who traveled to a tourism convention in El Salvador recently to tell tourists they should postpone their visits to the country until after the end of the crisis. “I'm not saying I am encouraging travel to Honduras, because I have shown you that the situation [for tourism] does not exist. But what I am saying is, ‘Please don't forget us, because we are going to solve this crisis. And once we do, we are really going to need your help,’” says Martinez. And the Nation has a short piece by Canadian filmmaker-journalist Avi Lewis who has just finished a two-part short video documentary on the situation on Honduras. Links to the videos are available within the article.
In other news today,
· The AP reports that Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa was in London this week to ask that European countries pay some $3 billion to encourage his country not to drill for oil in the Amazon reserve. Environmentalists say the plan could set a precedent in the fight against global warming by lowering the high cost to poor countries of going green. Germany and Spain, in particular, have shown interest in the idea.
· Meetings between Guatemala’s Alvaro Colom and Mexico’s Felipe Calderon led to a new electricity sharing plan between neighboring countries, which both hope will lead to an intra-regional electric grid stretching from Mexico to Colombia. Colom and Calderon also signed new bilateral accords to cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime.
· Time has another piece this week on the huge drug bust that led to the arrest of some 300 La Familia associates in the U.S. last week. In particular, the piece looks at the how U.S. measures to curb meth use led to La Familia entering the U.S. market for the drug.
· And finally, in an editorial this morning, the Wall Street Journal writes the “Chavez model hits Nicaragua.” The paper calls the constitutional court’s ruling against term limits last week “classic strong-man stuff on Hugo Chávez's Venezuela model.” The paper then accuses the international community of simply standing by and watching. With its usual provocative (and somewhat misleading) argumentation, the WSJ goes on: “Hondurans deposed Mr. Zelaya because he was showing similar designs on changing their constitution to be able to run again and stay in power. Hondurans have to live in Mr. Ortega's neighborhood, and their action against Mr. Zelaya may well have saved them from Nicaragua's fate.”
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