Guatemala’s national police chief, Baltázar Gonzalez, as well as the head of its antinarcotics unit, Nelly Bonilla, were arrested by state authorities Tuesday, accused of having ties to drug traffickers. As the New York Times reports, it’s the second time in less than a year that a Guatemalan national police chief has been linked to the drug trade. These particular arrests stem from a gunfight last April involving two drug groups. Thirteen others have also been arrested in connection to the incident, including five lower level counter-narcotics agents.
The Times’ reporting goes on to say that Tuesday’s arrests cap a very difficult last couple of days for the government of Alvaro Colom. On Sunday Colom sacked his interior minister, Raul Velasquez, because of accusations of embezzlement and on Monday the vice minister of interior, Francisco Cuevas said he had discovered a “criminal network operating inside the national police a month ago.” These domestic events were topped off by the new annual narcotics report issued by the State Dept. which says Guatemala has become “the epicenter of the drug threat,” with “entire regions” under the control of drug cartels—namely the Mexican Zetas group. On Friday, US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton is expected to be in Guatemala where she’ll meet with President Colom. Drug trafficking is among the major issues on her agenda.
In other stories:
· Sec. Clinton met with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet Tuesday, and the State Dept. has posted the full transcript of their public remarks. Clinton delivered 25 satellite phones to the country on her visit and a field hospital, temporary bridges, and water purifiers are also apparently on their way. Requests for power generators and saline water were also among President Bachelet’s immediate international requests. Bachelet also estimated that total damage from the quake—and the ensuing tsunami—was around $30 million. In addition, the death toll has now risen to some 800 persons. However, new reports today say hundreds more may have been swept to sea by a series of tidal waves which followed Saturday’s earthquake. Additionally, there are some who are now complaining about government’s response to the disaster, although opinions on the matter appear decidedly mixed, as a Wall Street Journal report this morning indicates. From the LA Times, an interesting piece looks at how difficult it was for Ms. Bachelet to call the military out of the barracks for internal security in quake-ravaged areas. Given her own personal history, the paper writes, “it is not a decision she made lightly; she arrived at it only after intense debate within the government, say experts and people who know her.” However, according to Chile scholar and director the Americas Program at CSIS, Peter DeShazo, “[Bachelet] has the credibility and the political capital to take a step like this.” Some are even critical of the president for not sending in the military fast enough. Currently, some 14,000 Chilean troops have been dispatched to areas in and around Concepción. Others are now questioning the government’s failure to warn residents that a tsunami would follow the 8.8 quake on Saturday. And finally, also from the LA Times, analysts say US aid to Chile will likely do little reverse a declining image of the US in the region.
· From the other recent earthquake in Haiti, the New York Times reports today that an independent assessment of the UN’s humanitarian efforts in that country show a lack of “sufficient coordination with local organizations in delivering aid and establishing security.” As a result, cases of sexual abuse against women and girls have skyrocketed. This according to Refugees International, a nonprofit who conducted the UN evaluation. The full report (available here), based on 10 days of investigation, concludes that “by all accounts, the leadership of the humanitarian country team is ineffectual.” The Times says the report corresponds with the findings issued some two weeks ago by Human Rights Watch. Responding to criticism, UN deputy humanitarian coordinator Catherine Bragg says the sheer scale of the disaster has made an effective response difficult. “It is the most complex humanitarian response we have ever had to deal with. It would be very easy to make negative comments about how things are coordinated.”
· The AP reports that Venezuelan authorities have agreed to cooperate with a Spanish investigation into links between ETA, the FARC, and members of the Venezuelan government. Speaking both with President Hugo Chavez and his foreign minister Monday, Spain’s foreign minister says he was assured that the country would fully cooperate, although Venezuela has firmly denied the allegations. In what appears to be an unrelated event, the deputy director of Venezuela’s SBI intelligence agency, Luis Correa, was also arrested Monday by Venezuelan officials. The charges against him: “intercepting messages and e-mails from top government officials, betraying the fatherland, illegal weapons possession and sale of classified information to foreign powers.”
· From Ecuador, BBC Mundo reports that the country’s vice president, Lenin Moreno, traveled to Iran this week to gain Iranian support for the Yasuní environmental project. The now quite well-known project seeks international money to keep petroleum in the ground. Moreno was also expected to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about trade issues while in Tehran and he defended his country’s right to trade with the country. “You cannot prohibit Ecuador from doing business with any country in the world,” he told reporters, adding that “at least six Latin American countries maintain such relations with Iran.” One of those countries is Brazil where the subject of Iran and its nuclear program are under discussion today with Secretary of State Clinton.
· A final note on Clinton’s Latin American tour. The UK has already responded to Clinton’s offer to help organize a dialogue with Argentina over the disputed Falkland/Malvinas Islands. The British response: No thank you.
· Other articles and posts of note this morning include a list of 43 “politically motivated killings” in Honduras since the June coup, compiled by COFADEH; via Just the Facts, a new podcast interview with Roxana Altholz of the UC Berkeley Law School’s Human Rights Clinic. The topic of discussion: the clinic’s recent report on extraditing paramilitaries from Colombia; Time has more on Colombian elections, after the Uribe decision; in Paraguay, the famous Archivo de Terror—one of the most important sources for studying repression in the Southern Cone during the era of Plan Condor—is going digital; and a fascinating interview about how Brazil is trying to get other Latin American countries to adopt its version of the Japanese digital television standard instead of a standard that is compatible with the European Union.
· And with opinions, Michael Shifter at Foreign Policy looks at how Latin America has asserted a new independence—no longer as interested in what the U.S. thinks. “Building that oft-invoked ‘partnership’ between Washington and South American countries looks harder now than ever,” writes Shifter. Cherry-picking some important paragraphs,
On Brazil: “These days, most Latin American countries don't depend on the United States as much politically; nor do they have to listen like they used to. Brazil in particular is not just a regional power but is increasingly assertive on the global stage. Within the G-20, Brazil is more inclined to form an alliance with China, India, and Russia (the so-called BRIC group) than it is with the likes of the United States, Canada, or even Argentina or Mexico.”
On the OAS: “[the OAS] is less likely to be useful in tackling the myriad, shared problems that afflict the hemisphere. With persistent irritation with the inter-American agenda -- and with the emergence of a parallel bloc that excludes Washington and Ottawa -- the main temptation of many U.S. policymakers will be to simply let Latin American countries go their own way and maintain only a perfunctory involvement in the region and the OAS.”
Shifter’s conclusion: “Perhaps the shock of Washington's first real (if gradual) ‘ouster’ from the region in this new regional grouping should get the message across: The United States will have to jettison its often patronizing attitude and engage patiently in hard diplomatic work if it hopes to work with its neighbors.”
· Also, a few more Orlando Zapata Tamayo-related opinions at the Miami Herald today (here and here), and one on Hugo Chavez and the Spanish allegations at the Wall Street Journal.
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