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senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) to block recent US Cuba travel changes implemented by the Obama administration has been withdrawn.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.”