The principal daily paper in Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez, El Diario de Juarez, says it will be making significant cuts to its coverage of the country’s bloody drug wars. According to the AP, the changes come after last week’s murder of a photographer working for the paper. The self-censorship was announced on the front page editorial this weekend, which asked drug cartels to clarify what it is they want from the paper so it can continue its work without further death and intimidation.” Here’s El Diario de Juarez, speaking to the city’s “de facto authorities,” as quoted by the AP:
“Leaders of the different organizations that are fighting for control of Ciudad Juarez: The loss of two reporters from this publishing house in less than two years represents an irreparable sorrow for all of us who work here, and, in particular, for their families. We ask you to explain what you want from us, what we should try to publish or not publish, so we know what to expect.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented the murders or disappearances of more than 30 Mexican journalists over the last four years. At least eight of those murders are directly related to coverage of crime and corruption cases, says the US-based media watchdog group. And on Wednesday the CPJ plans to meet with Mexican president Felipe Calderon to share, in person, its growing concern for the safety of reporters working in the country. As the AP reports, CPJ is asking that the Calderon make attacks on news media a federal crime and create a government committee to protect threatened journalists. The group is also calling on the Mexican government to grant more autonomy to Mexico's federal special prosecutor for crimes against reporters -- an office that the media group has called “ineffective.” Speaking to El Diario’s decision to restrict its coverage Sunday, CPJ’s senior coordinator Carlos Lauria had the following to say:
“Even in one of the places where violence is worst ... El Diario was still doing a lot of good reporting on crime. The fact that they're giving up is really bad. It's an indication that the situation is out of control.”
With additional coverage of Mexico and the drug wars this weekend: Al-Jazeera reports on the increased use of US Predator B drones to patrol the US-Mexico border, even amidst Mexico’s celebration of its independence. “Fears of Latino migrants and spiraling drug violence in Mexico, have led the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to deploy drones to monitor the entire border since September 1, along with a further deployment of 1,200 troops and other measures, as part of a $600m package for ‘enhanced security,’” says Al-Jazeera, highlighting the adaptation of a technology used in Iraq and Afghanistan to Mexico. The AP says the bodies of two police officers recently kidnapped while investigating a death in the state of Guerrero found Saturday. Seven still remain missing. Also in Guerrero, perhaps the most grotesque documentation of drug violence this weekend: “[U]nidentified men traveling in two vehicles threw two human heads into a refreshment stand in Coyuca de Catalan…One of the heads was blindfolded with duct tape.” Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY) responds to last week’s Washington Post editorial on gun trafficking from the US to Mexico, recommending that a ban on the importation of “firearms not used for sporting purposes” be enforced once again in the US. At Upside Down World, an interview with British academic Peter Watt, originally published in La Jornada, looks at the connection between today’s drug wars and neoliberalization of the Mexican state, beginning in the 1980s. And a very interesting interview with the author of El Blog del Narco – the most widely read “narco blog” documenting growing drug violence in Mexico.
To other stories:
· The Obama administration released its annual report on the worldwide efforts against drug trafficking last week. The report has not garnered much media attention (what attention it has received has focused on Bolivia, cited by the US again as having “failed demonstrably” in its anti-drug efforts.) Drawing even less attention has been the first time addition of Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua to the list of drug trafficking nations. A report from Nicaragua’s La Prensa has more on the latter country – particularly the response of Daniel Ortega’s government that it agrees with the United States inclusion of Nicaragua, and wants more US anti-drug aid as a result. For more on Nicaragua’s counter-narcotics efforts, Tim Rogers has a good report at the Nica Times.
· More on Bolivia and the drug trade. According to the AP, Bolivian VP Alvaro Garcia Linera said Sunday that drug trafficking added between 300 and 700 million dollars to his country’s Bolivian economy in 2009. That’s between 1.5 and 3% of the country’s total GDP, Garcia Linera says, adding his country remains committed to fighting such activity within its borders.
· Also in Central America, EFE reports that former Honduran President Mel Zelaya has been sworn-in as a Central American Parliament (Parlacen) deputy. The “surprise” event took place in Guatemala late last week. All former presidents become deputies of Parlacen after they leave office. Thus, by swearing-in the former Honduran leader, ousted in a June 2009 coup, the Central American body appears to have officially recognized Zelaya as the constitutionally legitimate ex Honduran president.
· With additional reporting and opinions on Cuba’s economic restructuring, Marc Lacey for the New York Times has a tempered analysis of what we might expect as private enterprise becomes more prominent on the island. “The mix of consumerism and authoritarianism that one finds in Vietnam and China is presumably a more palatable model — privatization, but with the state in firm control,” says Lacey. But, Lacey adds, “in China and Vietnam the path toward a modern economy was carefully coordinated with a series of steps toward normalization of relations with the United States.” Right now it seems too early to say if the United States Congress is prepared to move in that direction. From the Miami Herald’s Cuban Colada blog, news that Brazil plans to advise Cuba on how to support the growth of small and medium-sized businesses. Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will comments on Cuba this weekend and concludes with recommendations for significant US policy changes. Here’s Will:
“Today, the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba by means of economic embargoes and travel restrictions serves two Castro goals: It provides an alibi for Cuba's social conditions, and it insulates Cuba from some of the political and cultural forces that brought down communism in Eastern Europe. The 11th president, Barack Obama, who was born more than two years after Castro seized power, might want to rethink this policy, now that even Castro is having second thoughts about fundamentals.”
Sarah Stephens of the Center for Democracy in the Americas backs up Will’s call for the US to follow Cuba with policy changes of its own, at the Huffington Post. “By failing to act in response to what Cuba is doing,” Stephens writes, “the President is undermining the credibility of his Cuba program.” Meanwhile, recent developments in Cuba are hardly changing the hard line position of the Washington Post. In an editorial this morning, the Post provocatively argues that “apologists for the Castros and for U.S. corporate agriculture” who “greeted the half step with renewed calls for the lifting of what remains of the embargo on trade with Cuba” are playing into “the Castros' strategy.” Only when Cuba ensures political freedom, the Post argues, should the US allow “tourists and business executives to return to the island.”
· One week before Venezuelans head to the polls for legislative elections, the curiously timed announcement that the US had detained a former Los Alamos nuclear scientist and his wife for allegedly attempting to provide nuclear secrets to Venezuela. In 2008 (two years ago), the couple had apparently been talking with an undercover US agent, posing as a Venezuelan, about their ambitious plans. To be clear (unlike John Bolton last week), US officials say there is “no information from the undercover operation that Hugo Chavez's government has any plans to try to build a nuclear weapon,” nor is there any evidence that the Venezuelan government had any role in the affair.
· With pieces actually related to Venezuela, the New York Times’ Simon Romero is critical of the Chavez government’s claims that it has improved indigenous inclusion. “Some indigenous people still face a more vexing reality than [the Chavez] government’s words suggest,” says Romero. But, he adds, “reflecting Venezuela’s political complexity, most of the Warao interviewed here expressed loyalty to Mr. Chávez,” citing “access to some social programs, including literacy projects, as reasons for their allegiance.” Also, two pieces on elections in the Miami Herald [here and here].
· A full summary of Peruvian presidential contender Ollanta Humala’s talk last week at the Inter-American Dialogue is now available here.
· A Colombian air raid near the Ecuador border, combined with a “ground assault,” has killed at least 22 FARC rebels, the AP reports.
· And on the underreported conflict between Mapuches and the Chilean government, BBC Mundo with more on this weekend’s announcement that a round of talks has at last been agreed to by the Pinera government in order to resolve problems stemming from the use of a Pinochet-era anti-terrorism law to imprison Mapuche activists.
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