Bodies of Three Rights Defenders Found in Chihuahua

Police in the Mexican state of Chihuahua uncovered the bodies of three missing human rights defenders Friday. All three were mentioned in a Human Rights Watch statement last week, calling on Mexican authorities to protect various activists who have been threatened or attacked in recent weeks.

The victims – Maria Magdalena Reyes, 45; Elias Reyes, 56; and his wife, Luisa Ornelas, 54 – went missing on February 7. All three had been actively demanding justice in cases involving other members of their family, most notably the late Josefina Reyes Salazar, killed in January 2010. (Reyes Salazar’s brother, Ruben, was also murdered in 2010). Just one day before the disappearances of Maria Magdalena Reyes, Elias Reyes, and Luisa Orenalas were reported, unidentified individuals also burned down the home of Josefina Reyes’s mother, Sara Salazar, a leader of the Return our Daughters (Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa) rights group.

The LA Times calls the Reyes family a “case study of the unrelenting violence ravaging northern Mexico.” Those family members who remain blame Mexican authorities for failing to protect their family.

Like Human Rights Watch, longtime Mexican human rights activist Gustavo de la Rosa calls the most recent disappearances and murders involving the Reyes family “an aggression against defenders of human rights.” Amnesty International echoes those sentiments in a new statement released after the discovery of the three bodies Friday. “The Reyes family is clearly being targeted in the most brutal way with five family members now dead,” said Susan Lee, Director of Amnesty’s Americas program. “The Mexican authorities’ top priority must be to ensure the safety of other relatives.”

According to the New York Times, two of Josefina Reyes Salazar’s sisters will continue protesting the Mexican government’s failure to pursue justice with a hunger strike.

The LA Times reports that the three bodies discovered Friday were found with handwritten signs “suggesting that they had worked for drug traffickers.” -- a charge the Reyes family has long rejected.

Other significant Mexico stories this weekend:

· Katia D'Artigues at El Universal comments on a statement made by former PRI Nuevo Leon governor Socrátes Rizzo. Speaking at the Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila last week, Rizzo suggested that the PRI-controlled federal government of the 1990s had created an alliance of sorts with told drug traffickers, telling cartels where they could and could not operate. “What control by the PRI governments guaranteed,” Rizzo continued, “was that drug trafficking did not disturb the social peace.” While many have suspected such an arrangement existed for some time, Borderland Beat says Rizzo’s words are the first time in recent history that a PRI insider has made such statements publicly. Borderland Beat adds that some believe “formalized arrangements” with drug traffickers began during the PRI administration of Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado from 1982 to 1988. Gancho highlights some responses to Rizzo’s provocative statement from both priístas and panistas, here and here.

· The Wall Street Journal looks at Mexican drug war “spillover” into Guatemala. The AP reports on the latest assassination attempt on a Mexican mayor outside of Monterrey Friday. Journalist Kristin Bricker, for the Security Sector Reform Resource Center, highlights the Mexican government’s non-compliance with Inter-American Court of Human Rights rulings against soldiers found guilty of raping indigenous women in Guerrero in 2002. The cases were tried in military courts – a move the IACHR says “violated the victims’ right to a fair and impartial trial.” The Washington Post with an interesting report on the American private security firms in Mexico. The Post says no country today has more private security firms, specializing in resolving kidnapping cases, than Mexico. But because the abductions occur in Mexico, there is nothing requiring American firms to report their cases to U.S. law enforcement agencies. According to the Post this means, “the boom in cross-border extortion rackets is occurring almost entirely in the shadows.” The AP says 28 individuals were killed over the weekend along the US-Mexico border and Mexico’s Pacific coast. CNS News says more civilians were confirmed dead in Ciudad Juarez in 2010 (3,111) than in all of Afghanistan (2,421). And Mary Anastasia O’Grady in the Wall Street Journal also comments on rising murder figures in Mexico while arguing the libertarian case against current US drug policy.

· From Bolivia, the AP says a senior Interior Ministry official and the recent head of that country’s anti-drug police force, the FECLN, was arrested Thursday in Panama and sent to the US. René Sanabria, a retired police general, faces charges of running an international cocaine trafficking ring. The general was named chief of the Center of Intelligence and Information Generation in the Interior Ministry in 2009. Three other senior Bolivian police officials were also arrested by Bolivian authorities in connection to the alleged ring over the weekend. In a statement Sunday, the Morales government’s deputy minister of social defense, Felipe Caceres, said everyone involved in the trafficking ring would be arrested and brought to justice in the coming days. The Bolivian opposition is using the arrests to attack the government. Andrés Ortega, an opposition lawmaker, says the case is a “very clear signal” that drug trafficking has “deeply infiltrated the Interior Ministry.”

· AQ on what may be the beginning of marijuana legalization in Uruguay.

· For the third weekend in a row, the Catholic Church in Cuba announced a new round of dissident releases. The release of nine prisoners includes Diosdado Gonzalez of the Group of 75, says the AP. Gonzalez will be allowed to stay in Cuba. The other eight individuals will go into exile in Spain. EFE also reports that Guillermo Farinas, arrested last Wednesday during protests to mark the one year anniversary of Orlando Zapata’s death, was released after 28 hours in prison.

· Chilean rights groups are asking that President Barack Obama use his visit to Chile next month to release more US documents which, in the AP’s words, “could be critical to prosecuting the Chilean agents responsible for torturing and killing leftists decades ago.” The daughters of Salvador Allende and Eduardo Frei are among those advocating a new round of declassification in Washington. AP:

“Chile’s Supreme Court recently ordered investigative judge Mario Carroza to probe Allende's death along with 725 others whose cases were never prosecuted. Another judge, Alejandro Madrid began probing Frei Montalva's death in 2002, and has charged six people, including doctors and former Pinochet spies, with poisoning him and covering up his death by removing his bodily fluids and organs."

Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at National Security Archive and author of The Pinochet File, tells the AP that the Obama administration is being presented with an opportunity to practice “archival diplomacy” by initiating further document declassification. Current US ambassador to Chile, Alejandro Wolff tells the news agency that human rights is on Obama's agenda and “there is every disposition to be helpful.” IPS, meanwhile, reports on what may be on President Obama’s Central America agenda in El Salvador.

· In Honduras, the AP says members of the FNRP met in Tegucigalpa this weekend to determine whether or not they would form a “broad front” party and participate in 2013 elections. FNRP leader Juan Barahona says the movement’s objectives include “holding a national constituent assembly, returning [Manuel] Zelaya to the country and taking political power to transform Honduran society.” Zelaya has called on the movement to form itself into a political party of one form or another, according to EFE. But that proposal appears to have been rejected for the time being by the movement. For more on the evolution of the FNRP: a letter from Zelaya to the FNRP assembly, the FNRP’s platform for last weekend’s assembly, and an interview given by the former president last week to Telesur.

· Tim Rogers at TIME examines “virtual” demonstrations on Facebook, both for and against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

· In the New York Times, Pooja Bhatia and Damien Cave on the apparently “stalled” return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti.

· Netfa Freeman interviews ALBA Secretary General Amenothep Zambrano, at Venezuelanalysis.

· AFP reports on the inauguration of UNASUR’s Defense Board in Buenos Aires last week. The building that will house the board will take the name of the late Nestor Kirchner. Jose Mujica, Fernando Lugo, and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner were on hand for the event, as were the foreign ministers from Venezuela and Ecuador.

· The Wall Street Journal says Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru have agreed on new steps toward creating an “electricity corridor” in the Andes, the objective being a more integrated regional energy grid.

· Finally, regional economic news. The Washington Post looks at the emergence of a “consumer class” in Latin America. The Post: “from Paraguay to Chile and Brazil to Peru, a growing middle class armed with cheap credit and new confidence in the future is contributing to the most vigorous economic expansion in decades.” As some note, that growth, however, continues to be fueled by primary exports. For the IMF’s assessment of the region, managing director Dominique Strauss Kahn authors a piece at Mercopress as he prepares to visit Panama, Uruguay, and Brazil this week.

The Brazil-US Agenda

Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota held a short public press conference with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington Thursday, offering a few insights about an the two countries’ evolving hemispheric relationship ahead of President Barack Obama’s scheduled visit to Brazil in March.

The full transcript of the press conference is available here. And there’s a short blog post about Patriota’s visit at DOS’s Dipnote as well. The latter quotes Sec. of State Clinton at length about the some of the issues that are currently on the US-Brazil bilateral agenda, among them matters of food security, human rights, clean energy, and issues of global inequality. Ms. Clinton also reviewed a series of initiatives and agreements which have been made between the two governments over the last years. Clinton:

"I am also pleased that last year our two countries launched the Global Partnership Dialogue to advance exchanges on economic, security, and social issues. In the past year, our energy ministries have concluded a work plan for energy that will help us collaborate on advancing sustainable technologies such as hydropower, smart grids, and energy efficient housing. We initialed an Open Skies agreement that will increase the number of flights between the United States and Brazil and make pricing more competitive, and we signed a defense cooperation agreement that will help us work together to meet the security challenges confronting us. I also was pleased that we signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will help us together promote international development.”

The issue of international development gets particular attention, which is interesting for a few reasons. There’s been significant debate in recent years about the relationship between Brazil’s regional Latin/South American foreign policy agenda and its broader global agenda. Some have argued that Brazil’s regional foreign policy – particularly its focus on Latin/South American integration – was an attempt to launch itself onto the international stage. But it’s unclear what reason or historical precedent there may be for an emerging global power to first assert itself regionally. If comments to the press Thursday are any indication, it seems the US is more focused on Brazil’s international role rather than its regional role where, it could be argued, more points of disagreement have existed (Cuba, the 2009 coup in Honduras, the building of Latin American-exclusive regional institutions that might one day replace the OAS, etc.)

That said, there still remain a variety of points of disagreement on extra-regional issues, often backgrounded but no less insignificant. As Mercopress reports, longstanding differences between the US and Brazil over global trade issues re-emerged in another set of meetings that Patriota held with US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner Thursday. Tovar Nunes, a spokesman for the Brazilian minister is quoted by the news agency saying differences over agricultural policy remain a serious stumbling block in moving WTO trade talks forward.

Those words follow comments by Patriota himself last week in which the foreign minister also rejected US demands that large developing countries like Brazil implement significant tariff reductions on a variety of industrial goods. U.S. demands of developing nations were not “justifiable,” said Patriota, particularly after rich countries triggered the 2008-09 global financial crisis and emerging markets were instrumental in its recovery with their strong economic growth.

Another issue to watch: Brazil’s continued push for serious and comprehensive UN Security Council reform. The issue was the last one Antonio Patriota raised during his public press conference with Ms. Clinton yesterday. And it appears the Brazilians got the French on-board with the idea earlier in the week.

To other stories:

· Some other international visits happening now and in future days. Colombia’s El Tiempo and El Salvador’s El Faro both report on Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes’s visit to Bogotá this week. Much of the talk has been about security cooperation between the two countries. El Tiempo quotes Funes about that matter in its reporting: “More than teaching Colombia our experience, we should focus on the mutual exchange of successful results that each of our countries has been able to obtain, some in the area of “re-habilitation,” others in dealing with such [organized crime] groups.” El Faro focuses on the fact that Funes said Colombia and El Salvador were fighting a “common enemy” – that of international organized crime and narco-trafficking. In so doing, Funes distinguished organized crime from an older form of localized gang activity. According to Funes, the latter had “evolved over the last 20 years” into a system in which “operatives truly are at the service of [organized] crime.

· AFP reports that Rafael Correa will be next up on Santos’s guest list. The Ecuadorean head of state will travel to Bogotá in early May to meet with his Colombian counterpart. The visit will be Correa’s third to Bogotá since Santos assumed the presidency in August 2010. Relations between the two countries were only fully re-established in November of 2010 following a cross-border air strike into Ecuadorean territory in March 2008, led by then Defense Minister Santos.

· Also on regional cooperation, the Center for Democracy in the Americas has released a new report on the need for US-Cuba cooperation around issues of oil exploration. According to CDA, Cuba and its foreign partners are preparing to begin oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico this year, but the US embargo on the island will “prohibit American companies from joining Cuba in efforts to extract offshore resources, deny Cuba access to U.S. equipment for drilling and environmental protection, tie the U.S. government’s hands leaving it unable to plan adequately for a potential spill, and put our coastal assets at great peril.” CDA’s executive director, Sarah Stephens:

“After living through the BP spill, we can’t maintain the illusion that the embargo will stop Cuba from drilling and must instead adopt policies that protect U.S. economic, environmental, and foreign policy interests.”

The full CDA report is available here, including a series of recommendations for US policymakers – among them the demand that that the 112th Congress “adopt bipartisan legislation introduced last year by Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) to allow U.S. firms to participate in oil exploration and effective crisis planning with Cuba.” Additional mention of the report this morning from EFE.

· Also on Cuba, CNN reports a trial date for USAID contractor Alan Gross has finally been set for March 4.

· A new report from Reporters without Borders (RSF) cites organized crime (a term which includes drug cartels, mafias, and paramilitary groups) as the greatest threat to journalists in the Americas. A total of 141 journalists, RSF says, were killed during the decade of the 2000s for “daring to denounce the influence of criminal gangs and their parallel economy.” More from the Knight Center. Meanwhile, at Just the Facts, Adam Isacson looks at some of the non-violent, legal means in which journalists’ work in the region has been complicated in recent years.

· The New York Times and the Washington Post both have reports today on a series of major drug raids across the US Thursday. NYT: “[A]uthorities said sweeps were conducted in nearly every major American city; involved more than 3,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agents; and resulted in the seizure of an estimated 300 kilograms of cocaine, 150,000 pounds of marijuana and 190 weapons. DEA special agent Derek Maltz tells the Times that the raids were part of a “multinational investigation” that could lead to more arrests and seizures in the United States, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. While planned before the attack on two ICE agents in Mexico last week, Maltz adds that “the United States hoped to show it would not tolerate attacks against its agents” (the Times’ words). “This is personal,” one ICE official tells the AP. “We lost an agent. We lost a good agent. And we have to respond.”

· The AP highlights a rising murder rate among youth in Brazil. According to a new Brazilian Justice Ministry report, the number of murders of Brazilians aged 15 to 24 rose from 30 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1998 to 52.9 in 2008. Reuters, meanwhile, looks at a troubling rise in “criminal band” activity in Colombia. So-called “successor groups” or “Bacrim,” (organizations linked to the dissolution of former paramilitary groups), drove a 40% rise in “massacres” in 2010, according to a statement by the UN human rights office in Colombia on Thursday.

· BBC Mundo profiles the first female chief of police in the state of Rio de Janeiro, 51 year old Martha Rocha.

· La Silla Vacía looks at the unraveling of “Uribismo” in Colombia, just six months after Uribe left office. Reporting in El Tiempo (here and here) looks at an ongoing and quite heated debate which has pit the former president and his allies against Argentine human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

· AFP reports on Cuban musician Silvio Rodriguez’s proposal this week that the US and Google team up to provide free internet access to the developing world.

· IPS on the debate over bio-fuel production which is quickly spreading across Central America.

· The AP on new immigration legislation in Mexico, passed by the Mexican Senate this week, without “controversial measures that would have toughened enforcement measures.” The bill now goes to the lower house for debate.

· Mercopress reports on a new joint Chile-Ecuador proposal for UNASUR to establish a regional scientific research base in Antarctica. Both countries currently have their own facilities on the continent. On March 11 UNASUR will become “fully effective” as a regional organization after nine of its eleven members ratified its organizational charter.

· A new site to bookmark for Spanish-language, Guatemala-related news: Plaza Pública.

· And a new issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas is out, examining the issue 21^st century golpismo in Latin America. Contributors include a number of respected thinkers and activists, among them Fernando Coronil on the 2002 coup against Chavez in Venezuela; Kim Ives and Roger Annis on the ouster of Aristide in Haiti in 2004; and Rodolfo Pastor on the Honduran coup of 2009 against Mel Zelaya. An editorial note on the issue is here.

Mexican Human Rights Activists Under Attack

A recent uptick in violence against human rights defenders in the state of Chihuahua continues to be met with impunity and silence by the Mexican government. According to BBC Mundo, several activists have had their homes burned and seen their close relatives disappeared in recent weeks.

In a statement released Tuesday, Human Rights Watch says the most recent such attacks include house burnings carried out against human rights defenders María Luisa García Andrade and Sara Salazar on February 15 and 16. Both Garcia Andrade and Salazar work with the rights organization Return our Daughters (Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa). In the case of Salazar, the incident was only the latest in a series of violent acts of intimidation. Just one week prior, two of Salazar's children, Elias and Magdalena Reyes Salazar, as well as Elias's wife, Luisa Ornelas, were abducted. Their whereabouts, says HRW, remains unknown.

García, Salazar, and other staff of the organization Return our Daughters, along with human rights defenders at the Women's Human Rights Center (Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Mujer) in Chihuahua, were granted special protection measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in June 2008. But members of both groups tell Human Rights Watch that federal and state authorities have “failed to take adequate steps to provide protection” HRW:

“[T]he Women's Human Rights Center said that repeated requests to reinforce their office windows with bars and install security cameras had not been granted by authorities, and so they paid for the security measures on their own. They said that an emergency telephone number provided by the state government has been out of order since July 2010, when the new governor, César Horacio Duarte Jáquez, began his term.”

José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, comments on the situation:

“Human rights defenders in Chihuahua take on huge risks for themselves and their families by documenting grave abuses. How many more must be threatened, abducted, or killed before the government takes the steps necessary to keep them safe?”

More in the full HRW statement here.

Meanwhile, there are various reports this morning that just one week after an attack on two US ICE agents in San Luis Potosí, the Mexican army claims to have arrested at least six individuals suspected of being involved in the attack. Among those arrested Wednesday was suspected Zeta member Julian Zapata Espinoza — aka “El Piolin.” Mexican military officials claim Zapata Espinoza has already admitted to killing US agent Jaime Zapata – but serious bruises on the face of Zapata and the men with whom he was arrested should quickly call into question the conditions under which that alleged confession was made.

According to the military, the suspect says the Zetas “mistook” the ICE vehicle for one used by a rival gang. The AP reports that Zapata Espinoza had been arrested in 2009 on illegal weapons charges, but “jumped bail and disappeared until soldiers caught him and five other suspects in raids Wednesday on four Zetas safehouses in San Luis Potosi.”

The arrests came on the same day that Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced he will be traveling to Washington to meet with US President Barack Obama and House Leader John Boehner (R-OH) next week. It also follows an interview Calderon gave to Mexico’s El Universal this week in which the Mexican president expressed deep discontent with US officials, including US ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual.

To other stories:

· The AP says at least 46 individuals were arrested in Cuba Wednesday as rights groups marked the anniversary of the death of dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Zapata died after an 83-day hunger strike one year ago. Most of the detained were released shortly after their arrests, although at least one notable dissident, Guillermo Farinas, was reported to have still been in state custody as of late Wednesday afternoon. (Human Rights Watch says Farinas was placed under house arrest Wednesday). President Obama issued a statement condemning the wave of crackdowns, and said he would “join the Cuban people in marking [the] anniversary [of Zapata’s death] by again calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners in Cuba.” The US State Department released its own statement, saying it too “deplored the continued intimidation and harassment by the Cuban government of activists and their family members, including Zapata’s mother Reina Luisa Tamayo, who are working to promote human rights on the island.”

· The New York Times this morning reports on political meddling by the now former president of the American Chamber of Commerce of Nicaragua, Roger Arteaga Cano. According to the Times, Arteaga Cano “organized secret meetings with opposition party leaders in an effort to oust Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega in an election this year.” Those efforts received what the Times calls “tacit approval” by the US Embassy. The Times:

“The chamber’s activities over the past two years — detailed in interviews with Nicaraguan officials and business executives and in State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks — illuminate the remarkable role the foreign affiliates of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sometimes play in the politics of their host nations. Occasionally, they are at odds with United States policy. But often, the chamber groups are so aligned with it that they appear to act as unofficial instruments to advance the American government’s goals.”

Brookings’ Kevin Casas-Zamora comments on the recent revelations in Nicaragua saying, “It is a really bad idea, and it tends to backfire.” (He also notes that the logo for the American Chamber of Commerce of Nicaragua included the United States flag). “You are simply handing on a platter a rhetorical weapon that someone like Ortega will surely use against you.” On the specifics of the US Embassy’s relationship with Arteaga and the Chamber, via Wikileaks cables:

“[C]ables sent by Mr. Callahan to Washington go a bit further, suggesting that the embassy at least indirectly encouraged groups like the chamber to work to unify the opposition to Mr. Ortega and his party.

“‘We will continue to encourage all pro-democratic groups to work together to advance their common goals, including uniting for 2011,’ said an August 2009 cable, which also mentions Mr. Arteaga and his role as American Chamber president. “It is clear that this message has been understood by some in the political and business community, fostering the above unity efforts.’”

· The AP reports on the trial of Luis Posada Carriles, which appears to have restarted on Tuesday after a week-long pause to deliberate a request for a mistrial.

· Roque Planas, for AS/COA Online, breaks down the referendum process going forward in Ecuador. No official date has yet been set for the vote, although some officials are now suggesting it may be held in May.

· AQ reports on new Wikileaks cables from Colombia which indicate that, in 2008, then Colombian President Alvaro Uribe authorized “clandestine cross-border operations against the FARC in Venezuela, while trying to avoid a repeat of a crisis generated by the capture of FARC official Rodrigo Granda in Caracas in 2003.” According to AQ, the cable “contradicts official statements by Colombian officials” who claimed Mr. Granda was arrested in Colombia. [At the same time, the cables support claims by Venezuela that Mr. Granda was captured in Caracas and then transferred to Colombia.]

· Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota is in Washington DC this week preparing for President Obama’s Brazil visit in mid-March. The Hill meanwhile reports on Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus’s (D-Mont.) trip to Brazil Tuesday to discuss expanding US-Brazil trade and seek a conclusion to Doha round trade negotiations. The US and Brazil remain at loggerheads of those talks. Last week Brazil’s Antonio Patriota said U.S. demands for major developing countries to” make more concessions in global trade talks” were not justifiable. Reuters says Brazil in particular objects to “U.S. demands for more market access to services and nonfarm goods.”

· BBC reports that Lula da Silva is coming under investigation for alleged “misuse of funds” while president. The charge is that the ex-president sent out 10 million letters to older Brazilians promoting “low-interest loans” in 2004. Federal prosecutors say letters were “not in the public interest and benefited a bank which was linked to another corruption scandal.” No comment yet from the former Brazilian president.

· El Faro with the latest report on on-going delays in the implementation of a new access to information law in El Salvador. Again the focus is on foot-dragging by Salvador’s Gana party.

· IPS profiles the growing role of women in grassroots organizing in El Salvador.

· Benjamin Dangl at Upside Down World contrasts the response of the Bolivian government to protests over rising food prices to violent crackdowns in the Middle East, suggesting the Morales government’s model represents something quite novel: the idea of “governing by obeying the people.”

· Joaquin Villalobos with a somewhat different take on the Latin American Left, in El País.

· And on Libya and Latin America. From Anti-War.com, reports that the hacker-activist group “Anonymous” may be planning to take down targets in Venezuela and Nicaragua because of their perceived support for Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi. [Venezuela has not made public statements of support for Gadhafi while Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has]. Libyan state websites were attacked earlier this week by Anonymous members. Nikolas Kozloff at the Huffington Post and Al Giordano at Narco News also have two opinions worth reading – the former criticizes Chavez’s relationship with dictator Gadhafi and the latter is very critical of TeleSur’s Libya coverage, both from the Left.

Transnational Capitalism with a Brazilian Face?

To follow-up on the brief discussion of South-South relations yesterday, Reuters has a long report out this morning about Brazil’s entry into other parts of Africa – the report’s suggestion being that Brazil’s Africa development strategy could represent an alternative to a more exploitative Chinese model of resource extraction on the continent.

The argument for Brazilian difference is essentially two-fold:

First, whereas the Chinese have thus far preferred to import their own labor force to Africa (along with foreign capital), Brazil is making a concerted effort to create new employment opportunities for local populations while also promoting the transfer of technical skills.

Second, while the Chinese have largely extracted African resources for their own domestic consumption, Brazil’s focus has been on creating new markets. Adriana de Queiroz, Executive Coordinator at the Brazilian Center for International Relations, cites the role of Brazil’s state oil company in Africa as an example of this difference. Petrobras “is not going to Africa to bring back oil to Brazil,” she says, but rather is in Africa to “grow the company in other markets.”

(A third and less developed distinction between Brazil and China is the idea that the former’s investment is in some way culturally-distinct from the latter. According to one Brazilian diplomat: “Brazilians are well-received” in Africa. “We are a mixed country. We have cultures from lots of countries. We were a colony, so people see us as equals. They don't see us as a power that comes to colonize.”)

Left unexplored are at least two things. One is a question of scale. As Reuters notes, when compared to China (or even India), Brazil is still a marginal player in Africa. Chinese trade ($107 billion/year) is over five times that of Africa-Brazil trade ($20 billion/year). Chinese foreign direct investment in Africa has reached $13.5 billion (14 percent of total Chinese FDI) while Brazilian FDI in Africa between 2001 and 2008 added up to just $1.12 billion. Moreover, Brazil’s development banks, created with a focus on national development, continue to be more constrained than China’s in the area of international expansion.

Are Brazilian practices in Africa more a function of its limited investment capacity than a sign of distinct model of foreign capitalist development? What happens if Brazilian capacity for investment ever reaches Chinese levels?

Second is a question of whether or not Brazil’s desire to “form partnerships” and create “new markets” is really any less immune to social and political conflict than the Chinese model. Reuters notes that the Brazilian biofuels industry has become one of the principal industries with its eyes on Africa. It’s desire: “to secure a position as a global provider of ethanol.” But that project will require huge amounts of land, as international groups like Friends of the Earth have been quick to point out. Already there have been major protests after land acquisitions by foreign companies in Tanzania, Madagascar and Ghana. “Tensions” are rising in Sierra Leone as well, says Reuters.

Should the biofuel industry remain central to Brazil’s scramble across Africa, it’s hard to imagine how foreign capital with a Brazilian face will be any less susceptible to political struggle than any other form of capital, Chinese or otherwise.

To other stories:

· A new report from Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission released Tuesday says at least 11,333 migrants were kidnapped in Mexico from April to September 2010. The AP says 42 of the migrants kidnapped during that period were from Honduras, 16.2 percent from El Salvador, 11.2 percent from Guatemala, and 5 percent from Cuba. A similar study by the human rights commission between September 2008 and February 2009, revealed 9,758 had been kidnapped. And while the Mexican government recently pledged to improve its migration laws, a new immigration bill being discussed in the Mexican senate is already drawing criticism. That bill, says the AP, would “guarantee rights like education, health care and equal treatment for migrants,” but would also allow the federal police to detain undocumented migrants.

· The Wall Street Journal reports on a possible suspect in the shooting of a US ICE agent last week in San Luis Potosí. WSJ: “Jesús "El Mamito" Rejón, a former corporal in Mexico's elite forces who became a top leader in the violent Zeta cartel, is one of the people the U.S. believes may have been involved in the killing of [Jaime] Zapata last week.” Somewhat interestingly, Rejón has been fingered by his rivals, the Gulf Cartel, which issued a communiqué in the Brownsville Herald last week. The paper notes that Rejón was formerly the head Mexico’s federal police in Ciudad Miguel Aleman, a town in the state of Tamaulipas which was most recently in the news in November 2010 for having been a point of shelter for citizens fleeing Zeta violence in nearby Ciudad Mier.

· Meanwhile, in the US, The Hill reports that some lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee are “considering whether U.S. agents operating in Mexico should be allowed to carry weapons” in the wake of last week’s attack.

· AQ and AFP have wrap-ups of a deadly weekend in Acapulco while Reuters reports on President Felipe Calderon’s latest criticism of the US for what the president calls a lack of coordination among US intelligence agencies. Reuters: “In unusually critical remarks given strong U.S. support for Mexico's drug war, Calderon told El Universal newspaper on Tuesday the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the CIA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were constantly trying to outdo each other while evading responsibility. Calderon also slammed U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual in the interview, saying the ambassador had shown “ignorance” about recent events in the country.

· In Venezuela, the AP says a three-week student hunger strike ended Tuesday after the Venezuelan government agreed to review the cases of over two-dozen Chavez opponents, who, anti-chavistas say, are being held as “political prisoners.” More on the specifics of the agreement reached, from El Universal.

· IPS reports on the “Haciendo la Paz en Colombia” forum organized by former senator Piedad Córdoba in Buenos Aires this week. Speaking to IPS, Córboda says “the most important thing” for Colombia today is the fact that the Santos government has shown a “hint of disposition…to achieve peace.” Argentine political scientist Atilio Borón, speaking about the role of the international community in the peace process, called the FARC’s unilateral release of hostages last week an “outstanding gesture” which the Santos government should respond to by sitting down with the FARC “as was done in Ireland, Guatemala or El Salvador.” There is also discussion about the possible role UNASUR might play in an eventual peace process, with Argentine human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel challenging the regional body to “play a leading role in achieving peace in Colombia,” as it did when it rejected the creation of new U.S. military bases in Colombia.

· At the Huffington Post, the Latin America Working Group’s Lisa Haugaard on what Republican-proposed foreign aid budget cuts could mean for Latin America.

· New presidential poll numbers in Guatemala, from Borge and Associates: Otto Pérez Molina 42.9% Sandra Torres 11.1% Álvaro Arzú 6.7 %.

· The Guardian reports on major anti-mining demonstrations led by environmentalists, indigenous groups, and trade unionists in Panama. The protests follow recent mining law reforms which demonstrators say threaten indigenous land rights.

· On Latin America and Libya, the AP says Peru became the first Latin American nation to break ties with the Gadhafi government after violent crackdowns on protestors this week. Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega seems to be standing by the Libyan dictator. As Lucía Newman at Al-Jazeera reported yesterday – and the AP continues today, Hugo Chavez’s silence on the situation in Libya is perhaps most significant – and perhaps an implicit rejection of the terror Gadhafi has unleashed on his own people. For more on the Chavez-Gadhafi relationship, prior to this week, Wikileaks has some new documents of interest.

· And the Latin Americanist has a recap of some of the latest Wikileaks documents coming out in the latest dump of Latin America-related cables.

The "Caracas-Brasilia Axis," Libya, and South-South Relations

The Miami Herald reported this weekend on growing ties between South America and the Middle East – what it called a “hemispheric marriage” that, before events in Egypt, was to be “consummated” at an Arab-South America summit in Peru. The summit has since been postponed, putting any new plans to increase commercial relations between the two regions on indefinite hold.

However, even with the summit’s postponement, South America’s growing presence in the Middle East – be it through new trade deals, migration, or through the recognition of an independent Palestinian state – has been cited as one the many signs of a new and independent South American foreign policy (particularly vis a vis the US). As former Colombian deputy foreign minister, Andelfo García, says to the Herald, “It’s like a wave rolling through Latin America,” “The region has its own vision and wants to play a larger [international] role.”

Which brings us to events of the last two days. After bombing protestors in his own country Monday, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi appeared in grainy footage outside of his home in Tripoli Tuesday night to deny rumors he had fled the country for Venezuela. “I am in Tripoli and not in Venezuela,” Gaddafi told Libyan state TV. “Do not believe the channels belonging to stray dogs.”

That statement came in response to comments made by British foreign minister William Hague earlier in the day which suggested there was “credible information” indicating that Gaddafi was on his way to South America.

For their part, both Venezuela’s foreign minister and information minister denied such reports as well Monday (communiqué here), although some chatter continues today about the possibility of the Libyan dictator going into exile in Venezuela. A cordial relationship between Gadaffi and Hugo Chavez has been well-documented (The Guardian notes that Libya named a soccer stadium after Chavez), although ties between the two countries pre-date Chavez and have been defined by a variety issues, among them shared international oil interests.

But it’s not just Venezuela who has seen Libya as an important point of entry into the Middle East. More recently, as Al-Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo reports, the other half of the “Caracas-Brasilia axis,” Brazil, has also become a major economic player in Libya. A-J:

“Brazil’s biggest and most influential engineering and construction companies are also some of the most important players in construction projects in the northern African country that is now embroiled in a bloody citizen uprising against the 40-year rule of Muammar Gaddafi."

According to the news agency, the lifting of UN sanctions against Libya in 2003 opened the door to major infrastructure projects – some of the most significant of which (new highways, airport terminals, and dams) are being coordinated by three Brazilian construction companies: Odebrecht, Andrade Gutierrez and Queiroz Galvão. Deepening Brazil-Libya relations culminated in July 2009, says A-J, when former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited Libya with a group of 90 Brazilian businessmen to enhance “south-south” commercial ties.

It’s too early to say what the impact of events in Libya will bring, either domestically or internationally. But more than in Tunisia or Egypt, the role South America might play in Libya in the coming weeks and months ahead seems to be something worth watching – if only to better understand the possibilities and limits of South America’s new regional foreign policy, as well as the future of one of the more significant South-South relationships.

To other stories:

· Colombia’s El Tiempo reports on Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes’ visit to Colombia this week. Security and trade issues are atop the agenda, says the paper. On the former, Funes has gone so far as to suggest the possibility of a Colombian security training center being built in El Salvador to cooperate on “very specific technical matters.” Regional (as opposed to bilateral) security issues are also expected to be discussed between Funes and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

· Honduran officials are also traveling abroad this week on a notable trip through Asia to learn about various “model cities” projects. Honduras Culture and Politics has the full report on stop one of the 63-person, Pepe Lobo-led excursion: South Korea. (More here and here and here on Honduras’s semi-quixotic “model cities” proposal).

· Largely absent from the “charter cities” program is any discussion of a still tense political situation in Honduras. For that, historian Darío Euraque, the head of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History under Manuel Zelaya, has just published a new book on the June 28, 2010 coup and its impact on issues of Honduran culture. With the author’s permission, Adrienne Pine has access to a PDF of the book at her site.

· EFE reports on the sentencing of former Senator Marco Uribe Escobar to 90 months in prison by the Colombian Supreme Court for his links to the AUC right-wing paramilitary organization. Uribe Escobar, a cousin of former president Alvaro Uribe, made an alliance with the AUC leader Salvador Mancuso in 2002 in order to win a seat in the Colombian Congress.

· Also in Colombia, BBC Mundo reports on some of the disappointments that have accompanied the transitional justice process, five and a half years after the Ley de Justicia y Paz went into effect.

· In Bolivia, news about a future tri-lateral counter-narcotics initiative that would include Bolivia, Brazil, and apparently the United States. Brazilian and Bolivian officials are expected to meet this week to hammer out more details about such cooperation – although still little information yet about what role the US would play in the pilot project.

· Via Havana Note, Cuban dissident blogger Ernesto Morales Licea (at the Huffington Post) shows just how out-of-touch anti-Castro US lawmakers like Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez are with realities, both on the island and off. Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls on the Cuban government to release the last two journalists who remain in prison on the island, Pedro Arguelles Moran and Albert Santiago Du Bouchet. The RSF statement follows the release of journalist Ivan Hernandez last weekend. “Recent encouraging signs of an opening, including the unblocking of certain blogs and Web sites, will hopefully pave the way for a real debate between government and civil society,” says RSF.

· In Venezuela, the AP with more on student hunger strikers who are demanding international investigations into alleged rights abuses in the country. Specifically, the students have asked that the government allow OAS Sec. General José Miguel Insulza to visit Venezuela – a visit that would require a prior invitation from the Venezuelan government, according to Insulza.

· BBC Mundo with some details of the latest Wikileaks Latin America cable dump, about which I hope to have more in the coming days.

· The National Security Archive posts the complete text of an “historic ruling issued last October by a Guatemalan court that convicted two former policemen to 40 years in prison” for the forced disappearance of Guatemalan labor activist, Edgar Fernando Garcia nearly 30 years ago. The Archive also posts some of the key documents from the Guatemalan National Police Archive used to prosecute the case.

· And in The Guardian, Professor John Ackerman on how the US can and must move away from its support of a militarized drug war in Mexico by dealing with issues of assault weapons sales and drug consumption domestically and making “the reduction of violence and the establishment of the rule of law” the central objective of its foreign policy toward Mexico.

Seven More Prisoners Released in Cuba

The Cuban government announced the release of seven more prisoners Saturday – six of whom had been serving time for what the AP calls “crimes against Cuban security forces” and will go into exile in Spain. The seventh – dissident journalist Ivan Hernandez – will be allowed to stay in Cuba after refusing to go into exile. Hernandez is the latest member of the “Group of 75” to be freed, and, following the releases of Angel Moya and Hector Maseda one week ago, he is the most recent high profile political prisoner to be allowed to remain on the island.

Speaking to AFP upon arriving home in Matanzas this weekend, Hernandez says he has no plans to remain silent now that he is out of prison. “A major from the interior ministry told me that since I was being released from jail, that I should stay quiet at my home," Hernandez tells AFP. “But I told him that I was going to keep writing and working as an independent journalist just like before they convicted me.”

According to the AP, six of the original 75 individuals detained during the Castro government’s 2003 security crackdown have yet to be freed.

Meanwhile, on the US side of the Cuba debate, news last week that an attempt by freshman senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) to block recent US Cuba travel changes implemented by the Obama administration has been withdrawn. Rubio, with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), had proposed an amendment to a new Federal Aviation Administration funding bill that would have halted new US flights to countries on the US government’s “state sponsors of terrorism” list. Newspapers in Rubio’s home state of Florida suggest strong opposition from Florida’s Chamber of Commerce may have influenced Rubio’s decision to withdraw that proposal.

Other news:

· In Honduras last week, AFP reports that the Honduran Congress gave final approval to significant constitutional reforms, initially approved in January. In a 104 to 11 vote, the amendments supported by the new Congress allow formerly “petrified” articles of the Honduran constitution to be altered through a national plebiscite or referendum. In June 2009, an attempt by former president Manuel Zelaya to hold such a plebiscite on the issue of a constituent assembly provoked the illegal ouster of his government. When asked to differentiate the measures adopted last week from those promoted by Mr. Zelaya, current President Pepe Lobo repeated the standard, yet dubious, line offered by golpista forces in June 2009: that Zelaya had sought to use a national referendum to remain in power indefinitely. Somewhat interestingly, however, Lobo seems to have adopted the language of Mr. Zelaya and others to describe the constitutional reforms of last week. After the reforms passage Thursday, Lobo claimed Honduras had moved from being a “representative democracy” to a “participatory democracy.”

· Two other noteworthy stories in Honduras this weekend. IPS’s Thelma Mejía reports on new counter-narcotics aid to the Central American country – monies which IPS says will “militarize” Honduras’s anti-drug fight. Colonel Ruíz Pastor Lanza, head of the Honduran Air Force, says new U.S. aid will come in the form of “more cooperation and coordination,” including with the Honduran military. Particularly noteworthy is the following information from IPS:

“In Mosquitia, which holds the largest remaining intact rainforest in Central America, the engines of the military helicopters and armored vehicles are revving up for a ‘surprise’ strike against drug trafficking, in which U.S. forces from Palmerola are expected to take part.”

The report also cites the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Central American Human Development Report 2009-2010 on citizen security which touched on cartel recruitment strategies in places like Mosquita and Olancho. “There is a silent competition for the young” the UNDP reported. “Organized crime has in them a 'reserve army' of labor, and offers them incentives and protection.”

· In Honduras’s Bajo Aguán region, meanwhile, In These Times reports on the January kidnapping of land activist Juan Chinchilla, one of many that has occurred in recent months. In These Times: “During the last year, 35 peasants from the Aguán region have been killed by paramilitaries and private security contractors working for corporations like Grupo Dinant, say peasant groups.” Grupo Dinant, controlled by one of Honduras’s richest landowners, Miguel Facussé, is said to own some 42,000 acres in the Aguán Valley and has been seeking to expand African palm production on land currently being occupied by landless peasants.

· CNN reports on another deadly weekend in Ciudad Juarez. Fifty-three people, including at least four police officers, were killed within a 72 hour period, according to the Juarez state attorney general’s office. The spokesman for that office, Arturo Sandoval, went so far as to call this weekend the “worse violence of the year,” and there are reports that Juarez Mayor Hector "Teto" Murguia will name a new municipal police chief on Monday, “in light of the violence.” The uptick in violence came as eight federal Cabinet secretaries provided an update on their “Todos Somos Juarez” social development strategy over the weekend. The violence also came as President Felipe Calderon announced the deployment of four new Army battalions to Mexico’s northeast.

· Further south CNN adds mention of 13 taxi drivers who were killed in the resort town of Acapulco over the weekend. In the western border city of Tijuana, the AP reports on the sudden and unexplained resignation of retired Mexican army officer Julian Leyzaola. The Washington Post with the latest details on the attack of two ICE agents last week in San Luis Potosí. And Robert Haddick, managing editor of the “Small Wars Journal” tries to apply the latest lingo and thinking about “21^st century warfare” and counter-insurgency to Mexico.

· In Guerrero, Mexico, Al-Jazeera with a short video report on an alternative “community policing” practices being adopted in one Guerrero highland community. More in a recent piece at Upside Down World about the “policia comunitaria” model being adopted by some villages in Guerrero.

· On politics in Mexico, the AP reports that former Mexico City mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has decided to temporarily split with the PRD because of an alliance the party is considering making with the PAN.

· In Guatemala, the AP reports that a state of siege in Alta Verapaz came to an end Friday. However, “hundreds of soldiers and police sent to Alta Verapaz in December will continue to provide security,” according to the wire service. The government says the two-month militarization of the department ended with the arrest of 20 suspected Zeta operatives as well as the seizure of 230 guns and five aircrafts.

· Just the Facts has a good summary of the on-going diplomatic row between the US and Argentina. Additionally, the State Dept. released its version of events late last week, including a list of items it claims were on-board the C-17 cargo plane that arrived in Buenos Aires on February 10.

· The AP reports on the most recent exchange of statements between the US and Venezuela exchanged statements, this time over the demands of student protestors in Venezuela who have called on the OAS to investigate rights abuse claims in the country. OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza has said that he cannot meet with the protesters in Caracas without an invitation from the Venezuelan government. The US government says the Venezuelan government should allow the OAS to investigate. And Venezuela says the US should not “meddle.”

· Venezuelanalysis on the unanimous rejection of Rep. Connie Mack’s (R-FL) call last week for a “full scale economic embargo” on Venezuela. An official response to Mack’s reckless words from Venezuelan representatives to the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino) – both chavista and anti-chavista – available here.

· The Wall Street Journal reports on the end of a 16-day truckers strike in Colombia after the government and the Colombian trucker’s union struck a deal Friday.

· And Time’s Tim Padgett with more on China’s proposal for a “dry canal” in Colombia, as first reported by the Financial Times last week. As the magazine notes, “China is now the top purchaser of exports from Brazil and Chile; and according to the U.N.'s Economic Commission on Latin America & the Caribbean (ECLAC), within five years it should replace the European Union as Latin America's second-largest trading partner after the U.S.”