CICIG Comes Under Fire from Guatemalan Elites

The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) – the UN-backed investigative body which has been praised by many for its “highly effective” prosecution of criminals in a country where 96% of crimes go unpunished – is now coming under attack by some of Guatemala’s most recognizable political and economic elites. According to an excellent report from the AP this weekend, one of the newest critics of the international body is Eduardo Stein, Guatemala’s vice president from 2004 to 2008 and someone who actually helped bring the commission to Guatemala three years ago [Today Stein continues to direct an international truth commission in neighboring Honduras.] Stein says the CICIG is “going out of control,” by, in the AP’s words, “filing extra-judicial execution charges against top officials from his government over the allegedly pre-meditated killing of prison inmates.” The former Vice President and a group of prominent Guatemalan businessmen are even suggesting that the commission be placed under local political control for “overstepping its mandate” and perhaps even operating “outside the law” (the AP’s words).

For his part, the CICIG’s director, former Costa Rican Attorney General Francisco Dall’Anese, has rejected these recent statements, calling them “a dark campaign by powerful groups” in a country plagued by corruption and crime. The AP quotes Pedro Pablo Marroquin, editor of La Hora, who explains new fears among Guatemala’s elites this way:

“It is touching people we never expected it to touch. And the problem is, we live in a society where some people are untouchable.”

Some of the most high profile cases that could soon go to trial include an embezzlement case against former President Alfonso Portillo, as well as cases against a son of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, a one-time defense minister, two ex-interior ministers, three national police chiefs, two counter-narcotics commanders from the country’s police forces, and a director of Guatemala’s prison system.

It’s the investigation of a former Interior Minister, the director of prisons, and two former high-ranking members of the national police force which is causing the most recent stir. As the AP reports, the group of high-profile officials are being pursued for their involvement in the execution of multiple prison inmates while retaking control of the Pavon prison farm from inmates in 2006. The AP, with the graphic details of those alleged crimes:

“(Former Interior Minister Carlos) Vielmann and (former prisons director Alejandro) Giammattei were seen at Pavon after the inmates were captured, stripped naked and escorted to where they would be killed, prosecutors told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the case's political sensitivity. After they were executed, said one prosecutor, the killers dressed the men in clothes lacking bullet holes and planted inoperable weapons on them. Photos from the court case provided to the AP by prosecutors, and which the commission showed to foreign ambassadors this week, support those allegations.”

As Michael Deibert at the Guardian puts it this weekend, while the CICIG remains “imperfect,” it remains the “best hope that Guatemalans have in the fight against the corruption that is causing the future of their country…to vanish amid the din of automatic weapons fire.”

To other stories:

· Also on Guatemala, AFP reports that over 120 human rights activists have been killed by “criminal structures” in the country over the last half decade. Those numbers come from the private rights group, Unidad de Protección de Defensores y Defensoras de Derechos Humanos de Guatemala who also says it has documented some 2300 instances of human rights defenders being threatened and attacked.

· On violence in Mexico, two major weekend interviews in the US press. First, CBS News recently sat down with President Felipe Calderon. True to form, Calderon tells CBS the fight against Mexican cartels is, in fact, going quite well. “We are kicking them and kicking them really hard,” Calderon maintained, adding that those Mexican soldiers who have been killed in the fight “realized that they are working for the future of Mexico.” The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady, meanwhile, recently talked with Ciudad Juarez mayor Hector ‘Teto’ Murguia who demanded the US pay more attention to what is going on along its border. O’Grady’s lede quote from the mayor:

“I can't imagine how the U.S. can be so worried about Iraq and Pakistan while we don't sense that it is worried about the border here. We are together whether we like it or not.”

Murguia’s diagnosis of and offered solution to the violence, seem different from those of President Calderon. Murguia:

“The real causes that are generating the insecurity in Juárez and all over Mexico are lack of opportunity, lack of education, lack of [necessities], impunity, lack of justice. It is a mixture of a lot of problems where we Mexicans haven't done our homework. People who think they are going to fix [the problem] with policemen and arms are completely crazy.”

But as O’Grady and others note, there are few in Juarez who actually believe the mayor to be the clean operator he portrays himself to be.

· Also on Mexico, an AP report this weekend suggests drug cartels are recruiting younger and younger individuals into their ranks. Bill Conroy at Narco News with reporting on the US-Mexico strategy of targeting top capos, who can be held up as symbols of victory in the drug wars. The problem, as Conroy writes: “Any effort to cut off the heads of these narco organizations, only gives rise to more heads, like the mythical Hydra.” And the Houston Chronicle has an important story on how the terror of Mexico’s violence is not confined to major border cities like Juarez but rather extends to “an untold number of villages, towns and cities across Mexico” where “no matter how prosperous or poor, no one can expect to be spared.”

· In Bolivia last week, there were new hints of a potential thawing in US-Bolivian bilateral relations after a visit from US Ass’t. Sec. of State, Arturo Valenzuela. The Washington Post also runs a weekend report on counter-narcotics policies in Bolivia – policies with which the US seems to be still unhappy. And, from EFE, a report on the Bolivian military’s declaration this weekend that it is a “socialist” and “anti-imperialist” institution.

· From Al-Jazeera, news on the release of two more political prisoners in Cuba. The first individual released, Arnaldo Ramos, had previously refused asylum in Spain and, the Al-Jazeera report makes it seem like he will be allowed to stay in Havana, although that cannot yet be confirmed. Luis Enrique Ferrer, another dissident released on Saturday, says he will now go to Spain after reaching a deal with the government to give his home to family members remaining in Cuba. Laura Pollan of the “Ladies in White” adds that a third prisoner, Diosdado Gonzalez, has now been told he will be released within a month as well.

· MercoPress reports that the Colombian Senate has voted to accept UNASUR’s founding charter. The country’s Lower House must now vote on the matter – a vote which could come before UNASUR’s Nov. 26 summit in Guyana. Just one more country must officially ratify the charter for the organization to become “legally existent.” Uruguay is expected to take up the issue in its national legislature this month as well.

· The New York Times with more on Daniel Ortega’s controversial push for re-election in Nicaragua.

· Two looks at Haitian elections and some of the 19 candidates apparently running, in reports from the New York Times and Miami Herald. The latter features Rene Preval’s handpicked successor, Jude Célestin, who the Miami Herald gushes over.

· The Santiago Times runs a comparative piece on dealing with the legacies of human rights abuses in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

· IPS features the laudable work of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) which has now worked in some 40 countries around the world to identify the remains of individuals killed primarily in acts of political violence and state terrorism. It’s most recent work, however, has been identifying victims around Ciudad Juarez at the original request of the rights group, Justicia para Nuestras Hijas.

· And finally, also from IPS, a report on the governor-elect Gregorio Santos in the state of Cajamarca, Peru. The election of Santos, a left-leaning politician, has brought worries to mining companies in one of the country’s most heavily exploited regions. Hans Flury, president of the National Mining, Oil and Energy Society (SNMPE), the industry’s powerful private business association, put his reaction to Santos’s election as bluntly as possible, telling IPS, Santos’s election is “devastating news” given his anti-mining positions. Later in his interview with IPS Flury calls Santos a “staunch communist.” To that Santos has responded that if mining companies “comply with the law, they have nothing to be afraid of.” Santos:

“The real problem is that in Cajamarca everything revolves around what mining companies do or fail to do. But very soon this is going to stop.”