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 According to Spain’s El País, it represents the fourth of five degrees of exception permitted under Guatemalan law, superseded only by a “state of war.”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.”
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