Salvadoran Gov't Says 50 Migrants Abducted in Oaxaca

The Salvadoran foreign ministry announced Tuesday that it has reason to believe an armed gang abducted some 50 Central American migrants traveling on a cargo train in Southern Mexico almost one week ago. According to the foreign ministry’s statement, cited in Al-Jazeera’s coverage, by-standers witnessed the aggressors striking migrants with machetes and robbing many of their belongings before taking away a number of women, men and children of Salvadoran, Honduran, and Guatemalan nationalities. At least seventeen individuals say they escaped and arrived one day later (Dec. 17) at a migrant shelter run by Father Alejandro Solalinde in the Oaxaca town of Ixtepec.

The act may have been carried out by los Zetas, Father Solalinde alleged Wednesday – adding that multiple individuals, claiming to both represent the Zetas and Mara Salvatrucha, have paid visits to his shelter during the last week. The groups, he says, demand that the survivors be handed over.

The Zetas are believed to have been responsible for the kidnapping and murder of 72 migrants at a ranch near the US-Mexico border last August.

El Faro adds to the coverage, writing that the Mexican government has thus far denied the alleged abductions ever occurred. In fact, just hours after the Salvadoran government had issued their demand for an investigation, Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) had put out a response, claiming “no evidence existed” regarding a train being attacked in Oaxaca on the night of Dec. 16. Curiously, the INM did say that they had carried out an operation in the area that same night in which 92 undocumented migrants were arrested.

Father Solalinde responding to the Mexican government’s statement: “About whether or not there were abductions, yes, there were abductions. It’s a shame the federal government continues to worry about preserving its image.” More details in a good report from BBC Mundo.

Moving along:

· Los Zetas continue to be the principal target of military operations in the Guatemalan province of Alta Verapaz. EFE this morning with the latest on the state of siege there, saying security forced seized a small plane, 150 AK-47s, and the equivalent of U$S 63,000 in the province Tuesday. Guatemala’s defense minister, Abraham Valenzuela, in a press conference, also said the army is considering permanently stationing a “counternarcotics detachment” in Alta Verapaz. Meanwhile, President Colom said Tuesday the government has plans to expand the size of the Guatemalan military next year from 17,000 to 21,000 members, bringing back memories of the country’s militarization during 35+ years of civil war. As BBC Mundo points out, the initial military moves taken by the Guatemalan government look eerily similar to those of the Mexican government. However, a significant difference may be Guatemala’s parallel fight against impunity by the CICIG – notable for its absence in the Mexican case. The BBC report also suggests the fight against organized crime is uncovering some old political rivalries among the country’s elites. Carlos Menocal, the country’s current interior minister, said Tuesday former president Oscar Berger’s decision to reduce the size of the military by 66% (rather than the 33% ordered under the country’s peace accords) is a root cause of the recent boom in cartel activity. Eduardo Stein, Vice President under Berger, responds, saying the notion is based on a “false premise” that the military is better prepared than the police to fight organized crime.

· Extending beyond Guatemala, Nicaragua’s El Nuevo Diario looks this morning at how the state of siege may affect other Central American countries, particularly El Salvador and Honduras who have already activated new security measures along their borders to prevent cartels from moving operations across state boundaries.

· Both the LA Times and the AP report on an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling this week, which said the Mexican government violated the rights of two anti-logging activists who were arrested and tortured by the Mexican army in 1999 for allegedly growing marijuana and carrying illegal weapons. The men, Teodoro Cabrera and Rodolfo Montiel, have long proclaimed their innocence and say they were targeted for their political activism. The IACHR appears to agree and says the Mexican government owes both men $27,500 damages. Human Rights Watch’s Jose Miguel Vivanco says the ruling “lays bare all of the reasons the military should not investigate its own soldiers for human rights abuses.” Those reasons, he says include “the manipulation of evidence, the military's use of torture to elicit confessions, and the completely inadequate investigations into serious violations.” Beyond the specific case, the human rights group says the IACHR decision “shows that President Felipe Calderon’s proposed reform of the military justice system, which would only subject three types of abuses by military personnel to civilian jurisdiction, is inadequate.” The case of the two ecologists was successfully litigated by Centro de Derechos Humanos "Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez" A.C. (Centro Prodh) and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL).

· The AP with more on the murder of anti-crime activist Marisela Escobedo Ortiz – a killing which was preceded by her daughter’s slaying in 2008 and followed by the murder of her brother-in-law just days later. No definitive relation between the crimes has been established, although, as the AP notes, the killings have set off new national frustration about citizen insecurity.

· In Ecuador, IPS reports on an alternative strategy for combating citizen insecurity: a public referendum. While the date and exact wording of the referendum have not been set, President Rafael Correa announced Friday he will allow citizens to vote on reforms to the constitution and to the country’s criminal law to contend with rising worries over public security. IPS, on what may be up for public discussion:

“The proposed constitutional amendments will be on issues of law enforcement, such as the possibility that convicts should serve sentences consecutively (rather than concurrently), which has been unconstitutional for decades, and the organization and management of criminal courts.”

While some criticize the method (a referendum), more serious concerns seem to be about the proposal itself. Lawyer Jorge Crespo Toral, head of the Confraternidad Carcelaria del Ecuador, a non-governmental organization working for prison reform and rehabilitation of prisoners, says the idea that sentences should be “accumulated” and then served sequentially is “absurd.” The solution to citizen insecurity, he says, is not to extend sentences but “to help offenders turn over a new leaf and rebuild their lives, along with their families, by recuperating their capacity for productive and honest work.” And then this very bizarre end to the IPS report, indicating President Correa has thus far only mentioned one item that will be part of the referendum process. Correa:

“In response to the demand by thousands of young people who marched to the government palace, we will also ask the Ecuadorian people if they are in agreement with holding spectacles, like bullfights, in which animals are tortured.”

· Colombia Reports says a city known to be one of the region’s most dangerous, Medellin, has seen homicides drop 30% over the last three months. The reason could be more complicated than the numbers let on, however. Colombia Reports: “Jose Giron Sierra of Medellin think tank Instituto Popular de Capacitación explains the decreased violence by the fact that the war has been won - and not by the government.”

· Bloomberg with more on the on-going United States-Venezuela spat over ambassadorial nominee Larry Palmer. If approved and not allowed into Venezuela, the Obama administration is threatening unspecified “consequences.” Larry Birns of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs says one form of retaliation would be the expulsion of Venezuela’s ambassador in the US, Bernardo Alvarez, who was sent back to Venezuela once before, in 2008.

· Interestingly, Peruvian foreign minister José Antonio García Belaunde, speaking in Caracas Tuesday, said his government will back former Venezuelan oil minister Ali Rodriguez to be the new head of UNASUR. Consensus is required among UNASUR members to replace the late Nestor Kirchner.

· AFP reports US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton will be in Brasilia on New Year’s Day for the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff.

· And finally, a mixture of opinions. In The Guardian, Middle East analyst Nima Khorrami Assl comments on Brazil’s attempt at Middle East diplomacy – a strategy he says is based on a belief in “asymmetry” and a “near-equal insertion of developed and developing countries into the global market.” Also in The Guardian, Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN and chief climate negotiator, Pablo Solon, on “why Bolivia stood alone” in opposing the Cancun climate change agreement. Council on Foreign Relations fellow, Joel Hirst, with the case against new legislative moves in Venezuela, including the recently passed Enabling Law. Jaime Daremblum, in the Weekly Standard, with a rather provocative US to-do list for 2011, vis a vis Latin America. And Michael Shifter, in El Colombiano, with a short recap of Latin American politics in 2010.

*So concludes this last bulletin of 2010. A Happy Holidays to all. Back Jan. 3, 2011. JFS

Guatemala, State Absence, and the Balloon Effect

The AP this morning provides a more detailed picture of the situation in Alta Verapaz as a state of siege in the Guatemalan province enters into its third day. What’s perhaps most striking about the description is the near total absence of the state in the region prior to Sunday’s declaration. “Gangs roamed the streets with assault rifles and armored vehicles, attacking whomever they pleased and abducting women who caught their eye,” the news service writes. “Shootouts became so common residents couldn't tell gunfire from holiday fireworks.” Local leaders, the AP says, have been asking the state to step in for two years against traffickers who are believed to be linked to los Zetas in Mexico.

On Monday, the Guatemalan military announced the arrest of a handful of suspected Zeta affiliates. EFE reports on four individuals picked up on the way to the provincial capital of Coban, significant weaponry in-hand. In the town of Libertad, meanwhile, “hooded assailants” raided an establishment Sunday night killing seven, including at least one police officer. Prensa Libre says a total of ten individuals have thus far been arrested while security forces also took control of a landing strip being used for drug flights into Alta Verapaz. Prensa Libre also notes that the Guatemalan Congress will be amending portions of the “state of siege” declaration before giving it final approval on Wednesday, out of concern that certain articles threaten freedom of expression.

But a “state of siege” hardly seems like a viable long-term solution. For one, the condition of Alta Verapaz may not be all-together unique. Further north, in Guatemala’s Peten region, the BBC says the “cradle of Mayan civilization” is also looking ever more like a “haven for criminal activities” – human smuggling, illegal logging, and drug trafficking among them. Currently defending the 5000 sq km area of rainforest that is the Peten are just 250 young soldiers operating in pick-up trucks. Add to that Guatemala’s on-going struggle with poverty and a depressed coffee economy and the picture becomes even gloomier. President Alvaro Colom this week argued the solution to organized crime could only be a regional one:

“When President Calderon (of Mexico) is successful, they come here. If we manage to achieve success, they will go to Honduras, but sooner or later, if we don't hit them all together, they will come back.”

Perhaps the one bright spot amidst this week’s worries: the UN General Assembly’s extension of the CICIG’s mandate in Guatemala through 2013.

In Mexico:

· Suggestions at the LA Times that the Zetas may have been responsible for the massive explosion of an oil pipeline in a small town between Mexico City and Puebla. Authorities suspect a “clandestine tap” set off the explosion. The method has been adopted by the Zetas in other Mexican locations to siphon off lucrative crude from state-controlled pipelines. Twenty-eight individuals have been confirmed dead because of the most recent blast. Meanwhile, in Juarez, the AP reports that authorities have confirmed the murder of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz’s brother-in-law. Escobedo Ortiz, an anti-crime activist, was gunned down while protesting her daughter’s unresolved murder in Chihuahua city over the weekend.

· Also in Mexico, the major US papers are reporting on the release of former PAN presidential candidate Diego Fernández de Cevallos. “El Jefe Diego” was abducted last May at his ranch in Querétaro. Upon his release in Mexico City Monday, Fernández said little about his months in captivity – other than that he had forgiven his captors. The Wall Street Journal suggests his kidnapping was the work of a cell called the “Network for Global Transformation,” perhaps linked to the “People’s Revolutionary Army” (EPR). The EPR, however, has thus far denied that it was responsible for Fernández’s kidnapping.

· Human Rights Watch has released a new report detailing on-going violence and impunity in post-coup Honduras. Entitled “After the Coup,” the report appears to mostly re-document the findings of IACHR and OHCHR missions to the country while Roberto Micheletti exercised power. It adds verification of 47 acts of violence or intimidation against journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists, which appear to have been politically motivated. Among those 47 cases are at least 18 murders for which impunity has become the norm. HRW’s recommendations include extending recent budget increases for the Human Rights Unit in Honduras beyond 2011; strengthening judicial independence by implementing a 2001 constitutional reform that “provided for the creation of the Council of the Judiciary (Consejo de la Judicatura), an independent body that would take over many of the Court’s disciplinary functions;” and creating an international investigatory commission in Honduras, a la Guatemala’s CICIG. More from BBC Mundo.

· The Miami Herald reports on the unclear path forward in Haiti as officials suggest an announcement about election results will be delayed for some time.

· BBC Mundo reports on the Argentine government’s decision to prohibit security forces from using firearms, rubber bullets, and other weapons during times of social protest. According to the government, the new measure is part of its attempt to prevent the “criminalization social protest.” The opposition says security forces will be left “defenseless.” Meanwhile, the LA Times reports on the political landscape in Argentina after the passing of Nestor Kirchner, saying the popular first gentleman’s death has “spurred an unexpected tidal wave of popular support that could resuscitate [Cristina] Fernandez's political fortunes.” The president’s approval ratings have shot up to around 65% (they were at about 35% before her husband’s death) and 44% of Argentines last month said they would re-elect Fernandez de Kirchner, “more than enough to win office under Argentine election rules.”

· El País reports on the passage of a new telecommunications bill in Venezuela – legislation some could lead to new restrictions on freedom of expression on the internet. Venezuelanalysis has more on other pieces of legislation passed by the outgoing National Assembly, including a law which is to make banking a “public service.” Meanwhile, a group of 30 human rights organizations issued a public statement Monday rejecting the recently passed “Enabling Law,” and maintaining it was part of the government’s attempt to “criminalize” the work of NGOs and human rights groups “as never before.”

· More on Lula’s last days from Mercopress, highlighting the Brazilian leader’s call for an expansion of Mercosur to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. He also reiterated calls for Paraguay to approve Venezuela’s entry into the bloc as full member – a vote which remains pending.

· In an editorial, the Washington Post says Congress should move on free trade deals with Colombia and Panama.

· And finally, a piece by Colombian journalist Juanita Leon at Nieman Reports on La Silla Vacía, the investigative political blog she and others set up a year and a half ago. She calls the site a Colombian experiment in “sustainable independent journalism” – working against the hyper-concentration of the media ownership in the country while at once aiming to remain relevant as a “mainstream publication.” The power of La Silla Vacía, she argues, has come through its ability to “gather expert opinion, inside information, and high-level analysis” that has helped to reframe the terms of political debate and news coverage in Colombia.

State of Siege Declared in Northern Guatemala

The Guatemalan military declared a state of siege in the northern province of Alta Verapaz Sunday, allowing the army to “detain suspects without warrants, conduct warrantless searches, prohibit gun possession and public gatherings, and control the local news media.” The AP reports that the measure comes amidst growing concerns over Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) active in the region, specifically los Zetas. For now it appears the state of exception will be in effect for at least one month, but President Alvaro Colom indicated Sunday that he would consider extending it for “as long as necessary.”

The president’s spokesman Ronaldo Robles, meanwhile, said the measures were intended to “bring peace to the people and recover their confidence in the government.”

The Guatemalan constitution, allows for a state of siege declaration in the face of terrorism, sedition, rebellion, or, according to the AP, when events “put the constitutional order or security of the state in danger.” According to Spain’s El País, it represents the fourth of five degrees of exception permitted under Guatemalan law, superseded only by a “state of war.” Its implementation Sunday suggests growing government worries over the activities of some of Mexico’s most violent and notorious criminals in Guatemalan territory – among them the cultivation of marijuana and poppy as well as the construction of makeshift landing strips for drug flights arriving from the Andes. According to the Wall Street Journal, officials are also concerned about the more recent arrival of the Sinaloa Cartel in Guatemala which are “setting the stage” for turf conflicts similar to those seen in parts of Mexico.

Already Sunday counter-narcotics agents in ski masks could be seen patrolling the streets of Alta Verapaz’s provincial capital, Coban. According to government websites, at least 16 homes and offices were searched by the military while all vehicles entering and exiting the province were subject to searches. But not all seem optimistic about the effect the new measures might have. David Martinez Amador, an analyst and organized crime expert, quoted in the AP’s reporting, says if Guatemala “continues to have police corruption, a weak justice system and weak jails,” the problems posed by criminal groups will persist.

The AP’s presentation of the Zetas makes the transnational criminal group look ever more like an illegal transnational business group. Extorting businesses; controlling the sale of pirated CDs and DVDs; and charging migrants fees for passage through their controlled territory, the Zetas have also become active smugglers of stolen oil, the news agency says. While the culprits have yet to have been identified, it appears this latter activity was responsible for a massive explosion of an oil pipeline in the Central Mexican city of San Martín, just 55 miles (90 km) east of Mexico City. According to the New York Times this morning, at least 28 were killed in the Sunday blast. Over 50 others were seriously injured. State and federal authorities, including President Calderon who toured the devastation late Sunday, have pledged to “stop at nothing to bring whoever is responsible to justice.”

More on Mexico this weekend:

· As the death toll in the Mexican government’s militarized offensive against drug cartels topped 30,000 last week, a Mexican mother, Marisela Escobedo Ortiz, was gunned down as she protested the unprosecuted murder of her daughter in front of the governor’s office in Chihuahua city late last Thursday. The CS Monitor, citing the AP, says investigators believe the killer was the same individual suspected of killing Ms. Escobedo Ortiz’s daughter over two years ago. The AP also notes that adding to the brazen nature of Ms. Escobedo Ortiz’s killing was the fact that the murder – as well as the woman’s attempted escape – was captured by security cameras outside the governor’s office. The video has since been broadcast repeatedly on national television. Amnesty International, in a statement cited in the LA Times’ coverage, placed blame for Ms. Escobedo Ortiz’s murder squarely on the Mexican justice system. “The deficiencies of the judicial system in cases of murdered women and girls,” AI says, “have been demonstrated once again.” Meanwhile, from the New York Times, a report that President Calderon’s efforts to reorganize the country’s police forces suffered a major “setback” as the Mexican Congress adjourned Wednesday without voting on any of the president’s security reform proposals. Among those proposals was the idea of bringing local police forces under the control of state governors. Calderon had also pushed Congress to revise banking laws so as to “restrict cash transactions” and “stem the billions of dollars laundered by criminal groups.”

· More security worries in the border state of Tamaulipas Friday, where the AP reports on the escape of 141 inmates from a state prison in Nuevo Laredo -- “presumably with the assistance of prison staff.” Ironically, the jail break came on the same day that federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna “addressed a graduating class of new prison guards, underlining the urgent need to professionalize correctional forces.”

· And the LA Times with a weekend report on how, with a dismal education system and few job prospects, youth as young as 11 years-old, are being brought onto drug cartel payrolls.

· In Venezuela Friday, the National Assembly passed an Enabling Law which grants President Hugo Chavez special decree powers. Chavez says recent floods in Venezuela justify the fast-track authority. Indeed, as the LA Times notes, in neighboring Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos was recently granted similar powers by his Congress because of similar devastation from heavy rains. One very significant difference: Santos’s special powers last through mid-January while Chavez’s will last for 18 months (that’s all but 7 of the remaining months in Chavez’s present term in office). A new National Assembly will be seated on Jan. 5, and while still controlled by Chavez-backers, the president will no longer have the 2/3 majority he currently holds. Jackson Diehl, at the Washington Post, sees this all as another opportunity for the US to publicly support the Venezuelan opposition and Leopoldo Lopez, in particular.

· A new US-Venezuela diplomatic conflict could be on the horizon, even without Diehl’s advice. On Thursday, US Ass’t of State Arturo Valenzuela said if the Senate confirms Larry Palmer as the next US ambassador to Venezuela, he will be sent to Caracas, despite opposition from the Chavez government. In a speech over the weekend, the AP notes that Chavez responded to that statement, warning the US that he would have no problem detaining Mr. Palmer and sending him back to the US if he tried to enter the country. The controversy over Palmer, a career diplomat, stems from remarks he made about “low morale” in the Venezuelan military during the Senate confirmation process.

· The Organization of American States has asked Haitian President Rene Preval to delay the release of final election results so a group of international experts can “review the vote.” Such a panel has not, however, been formed yet, and according to the AP, the issue seems likely to “drag into the new year.” Also, in The Nation, journalist James North looks at the “structural crisis” which lays below the current focus on elections on Haiti. He also calls November’s vote “the final collapse of the huge reform movement that brought Jean-Bertrand Aristide,” despite the fact that the country “still needs profound, revolutionary change.”

· BBC Mundo reports on the conviction and sentencing, in-absentia, of 13 Pinochet allies in a French court room. Among those convicted and sentenced for the disappearances of four French citizens was Manuel Contreras, former head of Pinochet’s secret police. Contreras is currently serving a 180+ year sentence in a Chilean prison. There appears to be some possibility that the French court’s ruling could be followed by extradition requests, particularly of those who remain free in Chile.

· Human Rights Watch is asking Ecuador to drop a proposed presidential decree that could impose state control over nongovernmental organizations working within the country. HRW, on the proposal:

“The proposal sets out new procedures required to obtain legal status and says the groups would have to submit to government monitoring. International organizations would have to go through a screening process to seek permission to work in Ecuador. The decree would grant the government broad powers to dissolve groups for “political activism,” for example, and to oversee their work with constant monitoring. The decree is reportedly set to be adopted on December 20, according to civil society representatives.”

· Bolivia will become the next Latin American country to officially recognize Palestine, with 1967 borders, says the Jerusalem Post. The decision follows similar ones made by Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina. Chile is currently deliberating on the matter.

· Brazil’s Lula da Silva received a hero’s farewell at his last regional meeting in Foz do Iguacu last Friday. “Lula is indispensable not only in Latin America but in the world,” Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, urging the president to “stay.” Lula remained elusive about his next move, only remarking that “everybody knows I want to help organize political parties in Latin America, everybody knows I want to take Brazil's success stories to help the poor in Africa.” Meanwhile, on the domestic front in Brazil, news that Lula will exit with Brazil’s unemployment rate at an all-time low of just 5.7%.

· In other economic news, ECLA executive secretary Alicia Bárcena says Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela are among the Latin American countries which have taken the most important steps toward reducing both poverty and inequality in the region over recent years.

· Reporters without Borders denounces the arrest of two Honduran journalists, detained while covering the eviction of a family from the southern island of Zacate Grande by police and marines. The land under dispute is claimed by none other than agro-industrialist Miguel Facussé.

· Finally, a series of Wikileaks items. On Honduras, the New York Times with a report on a new cable showing how congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) used a congressional visit with Roberto Micheletti and other coup regime leaders in Tegucigalpa to advocate for SG Biofuels, a small company owned by one of the congressman’s family friends. According to the State Dept. cable:

“Using his status as a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Rohrabacher cheered his hosts in Honduras by openly challenging the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda there, then arranged a series of meetings with top Honduran officials, including the president, during which the congressman ‘enthusiastically promoted’ the biofuel company’s plans to perhaps set up operations in Honduras.”

On Peru, IPS reports on cables depicting the “two-faces” of US polices. On the one hand, new documents show serious State Dept. concern about corruption within the Peruvian military in drug trafficking zones. On the other, the US military continues to publicly support that same Peruvian military with counter-narcotics aid. The New York Times reports on State Dept. cables which suggest US frustration with other country’s “downplaying” of the human rights issue in Cuba. And from El País and others, a new Feb. 2009 cable on the US-Colombian military bases deal which Colombian officials, including then defense chief Juan Manuel Santos, pursued at the time partly as a “deterrent against possible Venezuelan aggression.” From the 2009 cable:

“On several occasions, Minister of Defense Santos has alluded to the airlift of supplies from the United States to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war and has requested similar ‘assurances’ from the USG in the event of a conflict with Venezuela.”

Mercosur's Economics of Regional Integration

Mercosur leaders are in Foz de Igaucu, Brazil today where, according to outgoing Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim, member states have agreed to new set of trade agreements between the South American bloc and Australia, New Zealand, Syria, and the recently recognized Palestinian territories. Mercopress says Argentine foreign minister Hector Timerman has initiated talks with representatives from the United Arab Emirates about a similar deal between Mercosur and the Cooperation Council of the Gulf. AFP reports on the signing of a new preferential tariff deal with several developing nations, among them India. There have been discussions about creating a new “High Representative” post within the bloc. And, according to Bloomberg, there was also talk Thursday, initiated by Brazil and Argentina, about bolstering economic and political ties between Mercosur and Cuba, perhaps going so far as to bring the island into the regional trade bloc as an associate member.

Also of significance in Foz de Iguacu: agreement by permanent Mercosur members Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay to draft common investment guarantees, anti-trust laws, and a single policy on the automotive industry in addition to renewed pledges made last June to “streamline” Mercosur’s “common external tariff” so as to ensure the free circulation of goods between members by 2014. Mercopress, on the optimism about regional economic integration, at least in the Southern Cone, at the present moment:

“Mercosur this year regained some of its momentum and regional leaders again are speaking of creating something similar to the European Union in South America.”

Similar sentiments from the Inter-Press Service’s reporting on the summit:

“For the first time in decades, there seems to be a reversal of roles [between the EU and South America]. The global crisis is posing serious challenges for the EU, while the South American bloc has recovered with a fiscal solidity and trade options that it did not possess when facing previous external shocks.”

This week’s meeting also comes amidst news that trade within the regional bloc, including with current associate member Venezuela, will hit an all-time high of over $40 billion in 2010. Responding to those numbers, Argentine Industries Minister, Debora Giorgi, called 2010 a “transcendental” year for the “consolidation” of the Market of the South. Interestingly, manufactured goods will make up 70% of that intra-Mercosur trade. Speaking with IPS, Luis Groppa, regional head of the Macroeconomic Monitoring Support Project, on what these changes are beginning to produce and what member states still desire:

“The development gap is narrowing, but what we seek is not only greater economic growth in quantitative terms, but growth with social inclusion in order to reduce inequality, which is the big challenge.”

Total exports from the bloc to the rest of the world are also estimated to rise to $230 billion this year, a 24% increase since 2009, and yet another sign of the region’s speedy economic recovery. Meanwhile, the bloc’s international reserves holdings currently stand at $200 billion dollars – equivalent to 13% of regional GDP. That, says IPS, represents “an unprecedented amount.”

In other issues related to the region’s rising international presence:

· News that right-leaning Chilean president, Sebastian Pinera is currently deliberating whether or not to follow Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil in recognizing an independent Palestine state within 1967 borders. U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs, William J. Burns recently criticized Argentina and Brazil’s recognition of Palestine, calling the move “premature.”

· EFE reports that Costa Rica and Nicaragua have accepted a regional mediation offer from Mexico and Guatemala aimed at resolving the on-going border dispute between the two countries. The new round of mediation was announced by Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom before the inauguration of the 36th Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Central American Integration System (SICA) taking place in Belize.

· Former Guatemalan interior minister, Carlos Vielmann, was rearrested in Spain on Thursday after turning himself into Spanish authorities. As CNN notes, Vielmann is wanted for his alleged role in series of extrajudicial killings at a Guatemalan prison in 2006. Those killings have become a target of the UN-backed anti-impunity commission in Guatemala, CICIG.

· BBC Mundo, which did a series on organized crime in Guatemala yesterday, does the same for El Salvador today. In a video report, BBC Mundo discusses the growing presence of Mexican cartels in the country while a written piece looks at evidence of collusion between local gangs like the Maras and transnational trafficking groups, like the Zetas. InSight, meanwhile, looks at how a controversial anti-gang law in El Salvador has gone unimplemented, three months after its passage. And the Economist on how, even amidst growing worries of citizen insecurity and economic problems, Mauricio Funes remains one of the region’s most popular leaders.

· InSight also directs attention to a new report from the Washington Office on Latin America and the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center (Center Prodh), on violence and rights abuses against mostly Central American migrants traveling through Mexico (“A Dangerous Journey Through Mexico”). Luis Arriaga, the Director of the Center Prodh:

“The failure to punish authorities and others involved in kidnappings and attacks against migrants has created a climate that perpetuates more abuses. The Mexican government's own reporting states that only two people have been sentenced for a crime against migrants in the past two years; this number pales in comparison to the magnitude of the abuses taking place.”

· Also on Mexico, the Washington Post says the country’s attorney general, Arturo Chavez Chavez, has requested Interpol’s assistance in tracking down and arresting lawmaker Julio Cesar Godoy, a federal deputy suspected of laundering money for La Familia. Godoy had his immunity revoked by the Mexican Congress in a 384 to 2 vote earlier this week. He has since split town.

· The Wall Street Journal looks at growing apprehension about Mexico and its drug violence on the part of major international companies.

· The Economist this week offers its thoughts on what some have called Mexico’s “Whack-a-Mole” strategy for going after top cartel kingpins. Like many others, it’s pessimistic:

“A temporary increase in violence may be a price worth paying to dismantle powerful gangs. But Mexicans are tiring of the war. In October a plurality considered the campaign a ‘failure’ for the first time, according to Mitofsky, a polling firm. Leaked cables from the American embassy report that a senior Mexican official cautioned that the fight would be hard to continue unless results were seen within 18 months. That was 14 months ago.”

· The CS Monitor on the land reform in Bolivia, one of only two or three South American countries (the report says Brazil and Venezuela also continue land reform projects) who continue land redistribution programs. As the report indicates, the Morales government’s continuation of land reform is an attempt to carry out the mandate of agrarian reform begun in 1953.

· As Lula da Silva prepares to leave office with a “dizzying” approval rating of 87%, incoming Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has named current deputy foreign minister, Antonio Patriota as her new foreign minister, replacing Celso Amorim. Current defense minister Nelson Jobim, meanwhile, will stay on into the next administration.

· Finally, Cuba. In the Baltimore Sun, the New America Foundation’s Anya Landau French and Arturo Lopez-Levy on why Alan Gross is a victim of US policy to Cuba. In the Miami Herald, Marifeli Perez-Stable on Guillermo Farinas and what she sees as a lack of international solidarity with Cuba’s dissidents. And Wikileaks has released – and the Miami Herald reports on – new diplomatic cables that indicate Raul Castro sought to open up a back channel with the White House in late 2009. The Spanish, namely the country’s ambassador in Havana, Manuel Cacho and foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, were the alleged go-betweens. However, according to the documents, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and the US’s top diplomat in Havana, Jonathan Farrar, both showed little interest in creating a new back-channel for direct negotiations.

State vs. Civil Society: the Venezuelan Challenge

As a controversial bill that would grant Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez decree powers for one year awaits final approval, on Wednesday the country’s National Assembly offered initial approval to another package of legislative acts that have many talking. Those laws, the BBC Mundo reports, include a bill on the “Defense of Political Sovereignty and National Self-Determination.” Among its ten articles, the bill prohibits both partisan and non-governmental organizations from receiving “foreign monies” that are intended to defend “political rights.” More specifically, the proposal’s objective is to “protect the exercise of political sovereignty and national self-determination from foreign interference” by restricting “economic aid or financial support” to persons or groups that might “threaten the stability and functioning of the Republic’s institutions.”

The BBC cites an article from the state-run Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (AVN) which spells out who some of those organizations might be. Getting mentions are USAID and Freedom House, as well as anti-Chavez organizations Primero Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo, Súmate, Podemos and 100% estudiantes.

Penalties for breaking the proposed law would range from fines to political proscription.

Not mentioned in the bill (again, according to BBC Mundo’s coverage) is the notion of “international cooperation,” an idea of some chavistas which has included the creation of a State-administered fund to receive and distribute all foreign money intended for non-governmental organizations. “International cooperation” is mentioned among the nine articles of the “Ley Habilitante” (Enabling Law), likely to be approved by the end of this week, but according to Marino Alvarado of the human rights group, PROVEA, Wednesday’s proposal may be “more serious” than earlier talks of “international cooperation.” Based as it is on the vague principal of “national sovereignty,” Alvarado tells Tal Cual that unions, cooperatives, and even the university could be subject to the penalties under the law if they “invite someone from abroad” considered by the government to be “a threat to the state institutions.”

On the “enabling law,” the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) (among others) expressed its concerns in a statement Wednesday. The IACHR:

“Both the constitutional provision and the delegating law fail to set the limits necessary for the existence of true control over the executive branch’s legislative power, while there does not exist a mechanism to allow a balanced correlation of government power as a guarantee for the respect for human rights.”

The IACHR goes on to say that the “possibility that bodies democratically elected to create laws delegate this power to the executive branch is not in and of itself a violation of the separation of powers or the democratic state,” but, in the case of the present Enabling Law proposal, there is special concern about how “power delegated to the executive branch” might be used to “create norms that establish the sanctions that would apply when crimes are committed.” The IACHR also cited the aforementioned article on “international cooperation”:

“In this aspect, the IACHR reiterates its concern regarding the possibility that the capacity of non-governmental human rights organizations to do their important work is curtailed.”

The final issue taken up in the IACHR’s statement (released jointly with the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression) is a modification of the country’s 2005 Telecommunications and Social Responsibility in Radio and Television Law (Ley RESORTE). The Inter-Press Service has more on this today, as a first reading of an amendment to that law was approved by Venezuela’s single-chamber legislature yesterday. IPS, on the amendment, and particularly their controversial extension of “social responsibility” to the internet:

“Under the proposed amendments, radio, TV or internet messages that ‘could incite crimes against the president,’ ‘could stir up unrest or disturb public order,’ ‘defy the legitimately installed authorities,’ or that promote ‘law- breaking, war, hate or political, religious, racial, gender or xenophobic intolerance’ will be actionable.”

The proposed amendments face a second vote in the National Assembly before they are officially approved. The same is the case for the “Defense of Political Sovereignty” proposal.

To other stories:

· On human rights and Brazil, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has made an historic ruling, maintaining, in the New York Times words, that “a Brazilian amnesty law covering crimes during the country’s 21-year dictatorship [is] invalid.” The Court went on Tuesday to say that Brazil is responsible for the forced disappearance of at least 70 peasants and militants who were part of the Araguaia resistance movement. Brazil has been among the most hesitant in the Southern Cone to investigate atrocities committed by the state during two-decades of Cold War dictatorship (1964-1985). Its national Supreme Court went so far as to uphold the constitutionality of the country’s amnesty law earlier this year. But the Inter-American court was clear in its rejection of that ruling Tuesday, saying the country must “conduct a criminal investigation into the Araguaia case, bring the guilty parties to justice, search for those who have disappeared and provide medical and psychological treatment to their surviving relatives.” The ruling also included a directive that “42 direct relatives of the victims be provided $45,000 each in compensation for their suffering.” Viviana Krsticevic of the Center for Justice and International Law called Tuesday’s ruling a “turning point,” and one which puts the human rights issue squarely on the desk of incoming President Dilma Rousseff. More from Mercopress as well as the National Security Archive, which adds “one of the most important conclusions of [the] case is the affirmation of the victims’ right to the access of information about the disappearances.”

· A series of reports and interviews on organized crime, corruption, and impunity in Guatemala and elsewhere: first, BBC Mundo, in a video report and written article, calls drug cartels the “new enemy” of the country. While traffickers have long had a presence in the Guatemala, the report says the relocation of heavily armed Mexican cartels to the country is today’s most pressing concern. Currently there are approx. 52 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in Guatemala (as a point of comparison, Mexico’s murder rate is just 14/100,000). And 95% of those killings go unprosecuted. According to the Francisco Dall’Anese head of the UN’s anti-impunity commission, CICIG, the challenge is two-fold: win the battle against organized crime while at the same time maintaining constitutional guarantees. In a separate BBC interview, Dall’Anese speaks more about the work of the CICIG – work which has come under recent scrutiny by members of the country’s political and economic establishment. And the Wilson Center now has up on its site a recent discussion about organized crime in both Guatemala and other Central American countries (Honduras and El Salvador, among them).

· Also from the Wilson Center, video from a Monday panel on Honduras and the Inter-American System. Speakers there included OAS Sec. General José Miguel Insulza, Leticia Salomón of the Centro de Documentación de Honduras, Eduardo Stein of the Honduran Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Honduran ambassador to the US, Jorge Ramón Hernández Alcerro, among others.

· At the Huffington Post, Vincent Warren and Joshua Birch of the Center for Constitutional Rights, write on the one year anniversary of Walter Trochez’s murder in Honduras. Trochez, a LGBTQ activist, was also an active member of the Honduran Resistance. His murder attracted significant attention and to this day has gone unprosecuted.

· In Ciudad Juarez, the number of deaths in 2010 surpassed 3000 this week. The indispensable Diario de Juarez was the first to break that news. Also on Mexico, an editorial in today’s New York Times comments on the Washington Post’s investigative series on US guns and their movement south into the hands of Mexican cartels.

· Reuters reported yesterday (and Amnesty International comments) on the Cuban government’s decision to prevent dissident Guillermo Farinas from traveling to France to accept the European Parliament’s Andrei Sakharov human rights prize.

· Peruvian writer and recent Nobel Prize winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, has come out with strong criticism of Keiko Fujimori’s presidential candidacy in Peru, calling the possibility of her election “a catastrophe for the country.” Many suspect Fujimori would pardon her father, Alberto Fujimori, if elected.

· From the AP, MINUSTAH, which had previously dismissed claims that its troops might be responsible for bringing cholera to Haiti, now says it will support a UN-backed independent commission to investigate the cholera epidemic and its origins.

· And lastly, on the recently released Latinobarómetro numbers for this year. Brookings’ Kevin Casas-Zamora looks at what the results reveal about the region. The topics he touches upon: the region’s general sense of optimism, its support for pragmatic policymaking, serious worries about crime and violence, and Venezuela. It’s this last point which may bring us back to where we started today. The new Latinobarómetro numbers show 84% of Venezuelans preferring democracy over any other political system. In Casas-Zamora’s words, this “dwarfs” even nations like Uruguay and Costa Rica – two nations which consistently sit atop the region with respect to the democracy question. I highly recommend reading all of Casas-Zamora’s analysis. This last part in particular might complicate thinking about what’s going on in Venezuela (and others places) at the present moment. It also raises questions, I think, about growing divisions between international definitions of democracy and the notions of democracy supported by the historically “excluded.” Excerpting from Casas-Zamora:

“Whatever misgivings one may have about the political situation in Venezuela, it has to be recognized that the presence of President Hugo Chávez has conferred considerable dynamism to debates on democracy in Latin America.”