With our headline again this morning, reporting on the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador. Around 1000 marched in the streets of San Salvador Wednesday to honor the slain archbishop while the Salvadoran state publicly honored Monsingor Romero for the first time ever. President Mauricio Funes asked for public forgiveness on behalf of the state “for the thousands and thousands of innocent victims,” including Romero whose assassination threw the country into a bloody civil war that lasted more than a decade and took the lives of some 75,000 persons. As highlighted here yesterday, the LA Times coverage also discusses a recent interview given by air force captain Alvaro Saravia to the Salvadoran daily El Faro earlier in the week. Saravia, long implicated in the murder of Romero and now living in hiding in some unnamed “a Spanish speaking country,” detailed the alleged involvement of Mario Molina (son of former Salvadoran President Arturo Armando Saravia) in the assassination. The younger Molina, says Saravia, hired a gunman for $400 to carry out the murder of Romero.
The New York Times adds to reporting with more quotes from Funes’s commemoration and the unveiling of a Romero mural at the San Salvador airport. “I know that it is a relief to society, that it is a balm for a country that is tired of violence and that seeks the reconciliation of spirit,” said of the state apology. However, during a press conference with the local media after the speech, Funes maintained his position about the executive’s inability to investigate the murder of Romero and other dirty war victims. “I apologized because the state failed to investigate, but it is not for me to investigate, that is up to the judges of the Republic.” Various human rights groups, including the Inter-American Human Rights Commission, have called for the opening of such investigations—a call the DC-based Center for Democracy in Americas echoes in a statement released yesterday.
In other stories:
· Two days after the US and Mexico renewed—and apparently readjusted—counter-narcotics cooperation, opinions and analysis are circulating. In a Newsweek report, the magazine says Mexico-Iraq parallel being made by some should give Mexico hope, not despair. That includes the words of former US drug czar, Barry McCaffrey who told the Mexican media recently that “Juárez is vastly more dangerous than Baghdad and Kabul,” and former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda who has called the “parallels” between the Iraq War and the Mexican war on drugs “striking.” Newsweek writes:
“Both [Mexico and Iraq] seem to have been wars of choice, launched by presidents with an excessive faith in military force and a preference for loyalists over technocrats in their cabinets. Both have tarnished the reputations of occupying armies because of abuses committed against innocent civilians. Both saw an exponential increase in violence in their first years, taking place mostly between local warlords defying the authority of the state. (The death toll in Mexico rose from 2,700 in 2007 to 5,600 in 2008 and 6,600 in 2009.) Both were led by presidents who stuck with ineffective strategies for far too long. And both have drained the treasuries and political strength of their authors….But… Not only is the drug war a simpler problem with a simpler (and more reachable) solution, but the comparison to Iraq provides more reasons for Mexico to hope than to despair.”
The magazine rejects the idea that Calderon launched a war of choice and argues that the problem has not been the war itself but rather the Calderon government’s “execution” of it. On that point, Newsweek ends by returning to an Iraq analogy, arguing that Tuesday’s strategy announcements could represent the equivalent of a “surge.”
· Shannon O’Neil at the Council on Foreign Relations calls Tuesday’s announcement a “welcome move.” “The joint strategy will expand beyond the previous military focus on dismantling drug trafficking organizations and reforming law enforcement institutions to incorporate initiatives to improve border surveillance and to address social and economic factors that underpin the violence,” says O’Neil. Jorge Castaneda, in the LA Times, rejects the notion that there have been any successes in Calderon’s war on drugs. His recommendation: a new strategy by which Mexico lobbies for decriminalization “of at least marijuana in the United States.” “Most important…it would demand a totally different, ‘de-narcotized’ U.S.-Mexican agenda. This would mean placing Mexican development at the top of the agenda, along with immigration, energy and infrastructure and social cohesion funds,” argues Castaneda. And finally, Andres Oppenheimer gives some perspective to Mexican violence. Citing a new study by the Brookings Institute, Oppenheimer notes that the country’s murder rate is five times less than that of Jamaica, half that of Brazil, and significantly lower than US cities like Washington and New Orleans. As Brookings’ scholar Kevin Casas-Zamora, the study’s author, tells Oppenheimer, “Violence in Mexico is concentrated in a few cities, mainly in Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Baja California…In Ciudad Juárez, it's out of control. But in the country as a whole, it doesn't come even close to Washington, D.C.'s.”
· The US also added 54 alleged Mexican narcotraffickers to a list that allows the US government to freeze bank accounts and penalize those with whom they do business. The new additions target the Gulf cartel and their hit men group, the Zetas, specifically.
· Also Wednesday, OAS Sec. General José Miguel Insulza was re-elected to a second term, despite harsh criticism from some corners in recent weeks. Insulza received 33 votes of support with only Bolivia abstaining (but not opposing) the secretary-general’s re-election. This according to EFE. Those votes includes late nods of support from a diverse group of countries including the US, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Peru. With an opinion on the OAS, Jaime Daremblum of the Hudson Institute criticizes the organization from the right by attacking what he calls “a bloated and largely unaccountable bureaucracy” and its road to “irrelevance.”
· Two other inter-American notes of the past week. IPS has more on this week’s annual meetings of the IDB and a process of internal reforms agreed to by the development bank at those meetings. The news service’s Emilio Godoy writes, “At the end of the IDB's annual meeting Tuesday…delegates from the institution's 48 member countries agreed to a general capital increase of 70 billion dollars, greater transparency in the allocation of funds, and a stronger focus on climate change.” That number is significantly less than the $180 billion in capital the IDB had sought, and, says IPS, this difference reflects a continued lack of confidence in the Bank on the part of donors. “A bigger bank is not necessarily a better bank,” Paulina Garzón of Amazon Watch tells IPS. “We want a commitment to a methodology for evaluating projects to ensure that they are environmentally sustainable.”
· Via CEPR’s Haiti Watch, information about Tuesday’s hearing on foreign assistance to Haiti which brought various human rights NGOs before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. Another interesting Haiti piece in the Washington Post yesterday looks at how telecommunications companies are trying to make Haiti a “mobile nation” in the wake of the January quake.
· President Obama, in a written statement Wednesday, called the deteriorating human rights situation in Cuba, “deeply disturbing.” The US State Dept. also named jailed Cuba dissident Darsi Ferrer an honorable mention pick for its State Department Freedom Defenders Award this week.
· A car bomb in the Colombian port city of Buenaventura killed 9 and wounded around 50 yesterday. The Colombian military has blamed the FARC for this most recent attack. Meanwhile, I recommend Adam Isacson’s most recent post at Plan Colombia and Beyond which examines in great detail allegations of Venezuela-FARC ties, as well as recommended next steps and responses. On the US side, Isacson writes, “instead of confusing signals that Colombia could misinterpret as a green light for military action, it’s time for more precise language.”
· Finally, as Brazilian President Lula da Silva plays host to controversial Belarussian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, CEPR’s Mark Weisbrot has an interesting opinion in the Folha de Sao Paulo, arguing that Lula ought to hold his ground against US (and Brazilian opposition) pressures to sanction Iran. He writes: “Lula meets with all sides to the dispute because he is trying to play a mediating role, and to prevent another unnecessary war. That is what mediators do…The world needs this kind of leadership - badly.”
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