Military Ordered to the Streets in Honduras

Thousands of Hondurans, many dressed in white, demonstrated on the streets of Honduras’s second-city, San Pedro Sula, over the weekend, demanding the government do more to improve citizen security. According to one of the leaders of the protest, Jorge Ortega of the Alianza Demócratica Nacional, one of the principal demands is that the Honduran police be purged of corrupt elements. Ortega, in La Tribuna yesterday:

“To remedy the growing problem of violence, we must first have confidence in the Police and then, after such confidence exists, the citizenry will be able to go the authorities to denounce crimes that have been committed.”

La Tribuna says growing worries over crime led officials of the Security Minister to go before leaders of the Honduran Congress Monday to request a significant budget increase. Security Minister Oscar Alvarez allegedly asked that the number of police on the streets be doubled from 3000 to 6000; that a “general disarmament” be implemented; and that new measures for regulating the circulation of motorcycles – a frequent sicario mode of transport – be created. There’s also talk of revisiting and perhaps adding to the 2003 anti-mara, Ley de Asociación Ilicita.

But today it looks like another has measure has been taken by the Lobo government after a meeting yesterday between various state officials, among them defense authorities, military officials, members of the Honduran Congress, the Ministerio Público, the Supreme Court and ex-president Ricardo Maduro. According to El Heraldo, the president has sent the Honduran military (the Air Force specifically) to the streets to carry out joint patrols with the country’s police forces in some of the areas most affected by rising criminal activity.

The country’s Defense Secretary, Marlon Pascua said Monday he has made all elements of the military available to fight organized crime. But, as La Tribuna notes this morning, the government has yet to indicate where exactly the military would become active nor for how long.

At the same time officials say they are beginning to prepare other measures aimed at fighting impunity. Among those mentioned, today a reform of the country’s penal code and perhaps even some parts of the constitution.

Absent in this all is any discussion of the state of the Honduran military, particularly since the June 2009 coup d’etat that toppled the government of Manuel Zelaya. IPS’s Thelma Mejia had an insightful piece on the matter in June 2010. At that time, she wrote “experts consulted by IPS said the military's growing role in the public sphere is one of the most painful consequences of the Jun. 28, 2009 coup d'état.” Leticia Salomón, an expert in military affairs at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras, went further, telling IPS that, as a result of the coup, Honduras was left with “highly politicized security forces” whose leadership had become a “decision-making body.”

Salomón’s 2010 recommendation: to reduce the size and public role of the military.

Other stories:

· The growing militarization of public security in the region is the topic of another piece in Mexico’s El Universal yesterday as well. In Mexico, the paper says military officials now head public security ministries in 12 Mexican states. State police forces are controlled by military officials in three states (Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Colima) while naval officers control security ministries in one state (Quintana Roo) and the Federal District (DF). In addition, the paper notes that generals, captains, and coronels can be found directing local security polices in numerous Mexican municipalities. El Universal: “The ministries of public security, and in many cases the principal police institutions, are being led by military officials in at least 25 Mexican states, among them those places where criminal activity is the greatest…” That is all a means of saying that the militarization of Mexican security extends far beyond the US-Mexico border. Ernesto Lopez Portillo, director of the Instituto para la Seguridad y la Democracia (Insyde) says efforts to improve police institutions are “way behind schedule.” The military has “filled a vacuum,” he tells the paper, but “does not have the capacity to modernize the police forces.” The model Lopez Portillo says should be embraced is one of “community policing.”

· Also in Mexico, El Diario reports that Sara Salazar matriarch of the Reyes Salazar family, is considering leaving Mexico with those members of her family who remain – this after the bodies of three more of her family members were found Friday in the state of Chihuahua.

· In Sight Crime reports on the dismantling of a Sinaloa cartel cell in Costa Rica last week – the latest evidence of that Mexican cartels’ trans-nationalization.

· EFE says veteran Mexican journalist Alma Guillermoprieto and Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince are the latest public figures to add their voices to the drug legalization movement. “Narcotrafficking will never be eliminated,” Guillermoprieto tells EFE in Barcelona Sunday. “To the contrary, each attempt to combat it only leads to its expansion.”

· BBC Mundo with more on the arrest of Bolivian general and intelligence chief, Rene Sanabria, in Panama on charges of running a cocaine trafficking ring. According to the BBC, Sanabria is being held in preventive detention in Miami. The great irony of the case, says the news service: the fact that Sanabria was known as “the best student of the DEA” in Bolivia, having played the role of “conciliator” when the Morales government expelled DEA agents from Bolivia in 2008.

· The CS Monitor writes on the re-nomination of Daniel Ortega as the FSLN’s presidential candidate this weekend, despite a constitutional ban on re-election. CS Monitor: “[T]he Sandinista strongman is increasingly considered the least-bad option here – at least by the country’s sizable poor population that has benefited from new social programs and government handouts.”

· In Cuba, the Miami Herald’s Cuban Colada blog says there are whispers around Havana that Fidel Castro will be officially stepping down as party chief of the Cuban Communist Party at the party’s much anticipated April congress. Castro handed over most of his party responsibilities in 2008 but has retained his title as party leader. Reuters, meanwhile, on delays in economic restructuring in Cuba. Raul Castro said Monday that plans to lay off some 500,000 state workers by March are “behind schedule.” The process will now be delayed to help soften the impact of the cuts, according to Cuban state television.

· In regional economic and development news, The Guardian reports on a Brazilian judge’s decision to block the construction of the Belo Monte dam in the Amazonian state of Pará. The dam has been billed as the third largest hydroelectric dam anywhere in the world. “If upheld, the Para court ruling would be a serious setback to President Dilma Rousseff's plans for large investment in infrastructure projects,” the paper reports. A plan to modernize the Brazilian air force with new fighter jet purchases appears to have also been put on hold – the victim of significant federal budget cuts. Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega unveiled cuts of $30 billion to the 2011 federal budget Monday, and Mercopress says Mantega made explicit that there was “no fiscal space” this year for the new military purchases. Bloomberg reports on the entry of South Korean auto maker Hyundai to Brazil. The company plans to invest $600 million in a factory in Piracicaba, Brazil, what Hyundai is calling its “gateway to Central and South American markets.” And Bolivian President Evo Morales was in Tokyo last week and, according to reports, may be considering the Japanese as a partner in Bollivian lithium development if Toyota can be convinced to produce electric cars in the Andean country.

· Al-Jazeera and Mercopress report on the beginning of a new trial against former Argentine dictators Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, this time for their role in the kidnapping of hundreds of babies during the 1976-1983 Argentine military dictatorship.

· Plaza Pública reports on the first steps being taken by various sectors of the Guatemalan Left toward forming a “broad front” political coalition. Plaza Pública suggests the Guatemalan Left has taken Uruguay’s Frente Amplio as its model.

· The LA Times with more on delays in Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s return to Haiti.

· The New York Times with an interesting profile of Caracas’s “Tower of David” – the 45-story, unfinished skyscraper erected during the 1990s and today one of the city’s most famous squats.

· And Reuters on Hugo Chavez’s entry into the Libya crisis. The Venezuelan president suggested Monday that some form of international mediation be sought. The idea is being discussed among ALBA member states, according to Chavez, who added that “a political solution” must be found “instead of sending marines to Libya.”

· Finally, another preview of Obama’s upcoming Latin America trip – this time from Chile’s Sergio Bitar, by way of the Inter-American Dialogue.