The United States has pledged its continued support to Mexico, urging it to, in the AP’s words, “stay the course” in its ongoing fight against drug trafficking organizations. That war, according to the Mexican government’s own statistics, has taken the lives of at least 34,600 people since current President Felipe Calderon entered office in 2006. 2010 proved to be the deadliest of Calderon’s four-year military campaign as the death toll surpassed 15,000 – a 60% increase from the previous year.
Nevertheless, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, meeting with her counterpart Patricia Espinosa in the colonial city of Guanajuato Monday, said there was “no alternative” to continuing the fight as it is currently being waged. Clinton:
“It is messy. It causes lots of terrible things to be on the news…The drug traffickers are not going to give up without a terrible fight. And they do things that are just barbaric — like beheading people. It is meant to intimidate. It is meant to have the public say, 'Just leave them alone and they won't bother me.' But a president cannot do that.”
As the New York Times reports, those words are in marked contrast to the sorts of doubts expressed by some US diplomats in recent years, as disclosed in various cables released by the whistleblower website Wikileaks. Among other things, the Times says those cables demonstrated diplomatic concern that the country “suffered from squabbling and mistrust among agencies, intelligence missteps, and a less than complete dedication to the rule of law.” While Ms. Clinton declined to address the Wikileaks cables in the press conference which followed her private talks with Foreign Minister Espinosa, the Washington Post reports that the US Sec. of State did say she believed the Mexican government “is making progress” in ensuring human rights are protected while prosecuting its war on criminal organizations. She then qualified that statement saying “more needed to be done,” specifically citing the need for military rights violators to be tried in civilian courts. The US, said Clinton, “stands ready” to assist Mexico in creating a better-equipped, better trained judiciary.
After her meeting in Guanajuato, Clinton traveled on to Mexico City to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
Ms. Clinton’s visit to Mexico coincided with the release of Human Rights Watch’s 2011 World Report. In a press release accompanying HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth’s presentation of the group’s report in Brussels, Mexico is, somewhat interestingly, the only Latin American country that receives a mention. HRW:
“[T]he Obama administration in its first year simply ignored the human rights conditions on the transfer of military aid to Mexico under the Mérida Initiative even though Mexico failed to prosecute abusive military officials in civilian courts as required. Only in the administration's second year did it withhold some aid.”
In its specific Mexico country report, HRW has more details about a troubling human rights situation in the country. Rather than improving, as Ms. Clinton suggested, HRW’s evaluation depicts a situation that has been moving in the opposite direction:
“Journalists, human rights defenders, and migrants are increasingly the targets of attacks by criminal groups and members of security forces, yet Mexico has failed to provide these vulnerable groups with protection or adequately investigate the crimes against them.”
And finally more Mexico-related Wikileaks cables also greeted the Sec. of State upon her arrival. This week reports on a new 2010 cable from the US Embassy in Mexico, detailing President Calderon’s Feb. 17, 2010 discussions with US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano about violence in Ciudad Juarez. Among other things, the discussion’s highlight growing intelligence sharing through the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC). “Representatives from EPIC have been going daily to the Federal Police command and control center to assess mechanisms to transmit operational intelligence,” the US Embassy reports. El País, meanwhile, reports on new cables discussing how Mexican intelligence services have granted permission to the FBI to interrogate detained, undocumented migrants about matters of “international terrorism.” More on both reports in Juarez’s El Diario.
To other stories:
· Human Rights Watch’s Americas Director, José Miguel Vivanco, talks with BBC Mundo about the 13 Latin American country reports released as part of HRW’s 2011 World Report. Among other things, Vivanco says there must be more public criticism and less “diplomatic silence” about rights violations which continue in the region. He cites recent criticisms of the 18-month Enabling Law in Venezuela by the OAS as a positive form of public criticism that, at least momentarily, has caused President Hugo Chavez rethink the term on his special decree powers. But, says Vivanco, countries like Cuba and Venezuela, much criticized in the US, must not be the only ones to be criticized for their human rights shortcomings. Specifically, Vivanco says serious human rights questions remain in Colombia and should, with others, receive equal attention in the US. A selection of particular country reports of interest can be found here: Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Peru, Mexico, and Venezuela. Some of the first major English-language news reports on the Latin America section of HRW’s annual report focus on Venezuela (AP) and Colombia (Miami Herald).
· The Washington Office on Latin America, the Center for International Policy, and the US Office on Colombia have released a new joint statement on Colombia – specifically re: new discussions about a US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, certain to be on the agenda when Colombian Vice President Angelino Garzón travels to Washington next week. The DC-based organization’s say an FTA should not be supported until efforts to stem violence against trade unionists, human rights defenders, and Afro and indigenous peoples show “significant results.” Forty-two trade unionists were killed in 2010, according to the Colombian National Labor School (ENS). Over 105 indigenous persons were killed over that same period while advocacy groups estimate that there continue to be at least 6000 individuals actively participating in armed groups operating in 29 Colombian departments.
· The AP with a long report on the case of accused drug kingpin Walid Malek – the Venezuelan national detained in Colombia and the process of being extradited back to Venezuela, much to the (quiet) chagrin of US officials.
· The AFP on Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’s three-day visit to France this week, just days after the term of his own – but much less discussed – special decree powers ended this week. (A total of 37 pieces of legislation were passed by decree during Colombia’s “state of exception” which began on Dec. 7 – and was extended on January 6, after devastating floods). Meeting with President Sarkozy on Wednesday, Santos and his French counterpart are expected to take up issues of monetary policy, transportation, education, technology, the environment and drug trafficking. On Thursday, Santos travels on to Davos for the World Economic Forum.
· Reuters reports that Peru has become the latest South American country to offer recognition to a Palestinian state. Like right-leaning Chile before it, Peru did not, however, specify if it would do so according to Palestine’s pre-1967 borders.
· Honduras’s El Heraldo reports on the arrival of the FBI to Honduras in the coming days to begin advising the country’s Dirección Nacional de Investigación Criminal (DNIC).
· The Miami Herald on new Cuba Wikileaked cables re: issues of corruption in the Cuban government.
· EFE reports that the Ecuadorean indigenous movement CONAIE is opposing President Rafael Correa’s decision to hold popular referendum. In a statement Monday, the group said it will advocate a “No” vote with respect to the questions under consideration.
· Jaime Daremblum at the Hudson Institute comments on Arturo Valenzuela’s talk at the Brookings Institution a couple of weeks ago, expresses his general displeasure with the Obama administration’s Lat Am policy at the Weekly Standard. One throw-away line from Mr. Daremblum: “Turning to Honduras, Valenzuela described the 2009 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya as a ‘coup d’état.’ By now, given all we’ve learned about the details surrounding that event, U.S. officials should be embarrassed to label it a ‘coup.’” And like conservative commentator Carlos Alberto Montaner in today’s Miami Herald, Daremblum says he believes “the Venezuela-Iran alliance represents the biggest threat to regional stability since the Cold War.” To be fair, only Montaner says Brazil is part of the “dangerous game” as well.
· While some are calling for a reduced UN presence in Haiti – particularly in the country’s national political process, Andres Oppenheimer, in the Miami Herald, says the international community (OAS, UN, and “other big donors”) needs to increase its presence in Haiti and should even organize the country’s runoff election (He uses post-WW II Japan as an historical comparison). If that fails, Oppenheimer’s next solution: “[T]here should be a temporary U.N. trusteeship, which for political etiquette reasons, should be called anything else but that.”
· And finally, the AP on the death of Bishop Samuel Ruiz Monday. Known as the “Bishop of the Poor,” the longtime defender of indigenous rights is most remembered internationally for having served as the mediator in peace talks between the government and the EZLN (Zapatistas) during the 1990s.
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