Mexico Lawmakers Debate Controversial Internal Security Measures

Note to Readers: I’ll be off from tomorrow April 29 through the end of next week. There may or may not be some intermittent posting from others during that time. I'll see you back on Monday May 9. JFS

AP reports this morning that the Mexican Senate has approved a constitutional reform measure that would both allow federal legislators to seek re-election and allow candidates at any level to pursue public office without the backing of a political party. The reforms passed in a 95-8 vote Wednesday (with eight abstentions), and now goes to Mexico’s lower house for consideration. If approver there it will continue on to Mexico’s 31 state legislatures where it must be approved by simple majority (16) before finally arriving on President Felipe Calderon’s desk.

According to supporters, the measure will increase accountability – the idea being that if one must face re-election he/she will somehow feel more beholden to the will of the voters.

Meanwhile, a second and perhaps even more controversial measure is currently being debated in Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies. The Latin America News Dispatch reports that the lower house has less than one week to decide whether or not it will alter the country’s National Security Law, granting the Mexico’s president the power to deploy Mexico’s Armed Forces against a new list of broadly defined “internal threats.” The Senate has already approved the measure, but the Mexican Left remains strongly opposed to the measure – originally submitted by President Felipe Calderon back in April 2009 – saying it would allow the military to conduct surveillance of private citizens in order to gather intelligence and increase the military’s role in security operations. Moreover, PT deputy Jaime Cardenas argues there are no stipulations in the current 83 page initiative about whether or not military abuses would be tried in civilian or military courts. “Here we are creating a fourth power,” Cardenas said. “Technically, this decree constitutes a coup.” More from CIP’s Americas Program.

Mexico analyst John Ackerman seems to concur with that assessment. In a damning opinion in Proceso (and reprinted elsewhere), Ackerman says the measure “seeks to open the door to creation of a military government” in Mexico. “Instead of listening to the popular demand of ‘No blood,’ starting to remove the Armed Forces from the streets and establish transparency and monitoring through civil courts, Felipe Calderon is determined to normalize and broaden the new role of the military in the directly controlling the country.” Most dangerous of all, Ackerman contends, is an article in the bill which would allow the military to be used against any “action related movements or conflicts of a political, electoral, or social nature” when those movements constitute a “challenge” or “threat” to the security of the country, as defined by the president.

The debate over the measure comes just days before what could be the largest mass mobilization ever against Calderon’s prosecution of the drug wars. Narco News has more on those demonstrations which will begin May 5 in Cuernavaca and end May 8 in Mexico City’s zocalo. Among the broad front of organizers leading those efforts are poet and journalist Javier Sicilia, the ex-president of the Mexico City Human Rights Commission Emilio Álvarez Icaza, priest and immigrant rights defender Alejandro Solalinde, president of Causa Común María Elena Morera, Chihuahua Mormon Julián LeBarón, and ex-president of Mexico United Against Crime Eduardo Gallo.

Today’s bullet points:

· In Mexico’s northern state of Durango, AP says the number of corpses found at two mass grave sites soared yesterday to 104. In the Tamaulipas city of San Fernando the number of bodies recovered stands at 183, meaning that this month alone the bodies of at least 287 individuals have been found in what are now considered to be the two largest mass grave sites found in Mexico to date.

· Also in Mexico this week was Honduran President Porfirio Lobo. Lobo met privately with a group of Mexican businessmen whom he is courting to invest Honduras. Among those involved in the meeting were the head of America Movil, Daniel Hagg; Carlos Peralta, of Grupo IUSA; Alonso Quintana of ICA and the director of the state-run Federal Electricity Commission, Antonio Vivanco, says EFE. Next week Lobo will host the “Honduran Is Open for Business” forum – an attempt to attract new foreign investment and will include the participation of, among other individuals, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.

· In Costa Rica, former President and ex-Secretary General of the OAS Miguel Angel Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday after being found guilty of corruption. According to AP, Rodriguez and other former government officials took bribes in exchange for giving the Latin American branch of the French telecom company Alcatel a $149 million cell phone contract with the Costa Rican Electricity Institute. Seven other individuals from Rodriguez’s government have been charged in the case as well and were sentenced to between five and 20 years in prison. An appeals process is expected to begin shortly.

· In neighboring Panama, AP looks at a constitutional reform push by President Ricardo Martinelli which officially under way this week. Martinelli appointed a commission of legal experts tasked with drafting a set of reforms early in the week. Martinelli says the objective is to make Panama’s constitution “an example in Latin America.” His political opposition, among them the Frente Nacional por los Derechos Económicos y Sociales, seems to disagree.

· In Venezuela’s El Universal, an interesting interview with Sara Carolina Diaz, Secretary General of the opposition PPT who says the MUD must broaden its social base beyond political parties and reject any shades of Venezuela’s old “puntofijismo” if it wants to defeat President Hugo Chavez in 2012 elections. Meanwhile, the CS Monitor has a critique of the minimum wage hikes announced by President Chavez last week, contending the 26.5% raise will not keep up with inflation, which is expected to be between 28% and 30% in 2011. It’s also interesting to note, as the CSM does, that Chavez has raised the minimum wage ahead of May Day every year since 1999. On the other major economic policy announcement made last week – the new taxes on oil producers in Venezuela – Setty has excellent analysis (here and here) on why the new “special contributions” were implemented and who will be affected by them (as well as who won’t).

· Regional election news: In Peru, BBC Mundo says Alejandro Toledo and his Peru Posible party will not be publicly endorsing either Ollanta Humala or Keiko Fujimori. The news would seem to be the biggest blow to Humala, who has been actively courting the former president and his supporters. More than not endorsing, Peru Posible says any member of its party who engages in active campaigning for either candidate will be “penalized with expulsion” from the party. In Guatemala, El Periódico publishes new poll numbers from Borge y Asociado showing Otto Perez Molina still in front of Sandra Torres, 34% to 21%. And in the DR, AQ says first lady Margarita Cedeno will not be making a run for president in 2012 to replace her husband Leonel Fernandez.

· In Haiti, TIME’s Tim Padgett on this week’s allegations of legislative vote fraud. In the Miami Herald, CSIS’s Johanna Mendelson Forman on why Michel Martelly should not resurrect and remobilize the Haitian military. Rather, she suggests, a “territorial civil defense force,” capable of acting as both a police force and national guard, be created, modeled, perhaps, after Costa Rica’s national police.

· The Guardian, earlier in the week, featured former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet in her new post at UN Women.

· And in Miami, the death of notorious anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch yesterday. As the Miami Herald reports, Bosch – along with the recently acquitted Luis Posada Carriles – was the most identifiable face of the violent, anti-Castro counter-revolution in South Florida. He was 84.

CELAC Considers "Democratic Clause;" Climate Change Next

Regional diplomats met in Venezuela yesterday for the first full day of a five-part series of regional meetings intended to lay the groundwork for the new Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). The organization is expected to be formalized during a summit in Caracas on July 5 and 6.

AP’s English language coverage of the conference leaves much to be desired, particularly its headline which suggests CELAC to be just another new initiative of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Not exactly. “We are here constructing the basic regulatory architecture for the functioning of this new institution…We are constructing the dream of integration that the Liberator (Simon Bolivar) sought for all of Latin American and the Caribbean.” That’s neither Chavez nor any of his ALBA allies, nor even Brazil’s regionalists, but rather the vice chancellor of right-of-center Chile, Fernando Schmidt, whose government is co-chair of CELAC preparations.

AFP goes on to highlight a few of the most important matters under discussion this week, among them the creation of a “democratic clause” to prevent the possibility of future coups. The news agency cites Chile’s vice chancellor again, who says the clause is intended to both “safeguard” the democratic institutions of the region as well as the “respect for human rights as an essential condition for the consolidation of a common future peace.”

Telesur suggests that proposals about a democratic clause will be evaluated over the next 30 days by Latin American countries.

Additionally, AFP notes that there was discussion Tuesday about whether or not CELAC will opt for a “consensus-based” decision-making process. That idea seems to have the early support of Colombia and its foreign minister Maria Angela Holguín. More from Holguín on Colombia’s optimism about CELAC, in an interview with Telesur.

For his part, Hugo Chavez also indicated Tuesday that dialogue with Honduras, being facilitated by his country and Colombia, could bring Honduras back into regional system shortly – although this still seems contingent about the Honduran Supreme Court’s appeals panel dropping all charges against former president Mel Zelaya, a decision which continued to be delayed this week.

And beyond Latin America, Chavez told foreign ministers Tuesday that he has started talks with Libyan officials in Venezuela this week in an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in the North African country. The meetings between the Venezuelan and the government of Chavez’s longtime ally Muammar Gaddafi come as NATO airstrikes targeted a Gaddafi compound and a state-run television station in Tripoli on Monday.

On Thursday and Friday another set of meetings are scheduled to take place in Caracas with environmental ministers from around the region. Creating a common position on climate change is expected to be the topic of discussion there. On May 12 and 13 regional energy ministers will hold a similar meeting, followed on May 18 and 19 by a meeting of regional finance ministers. Foreign ministers are then expected to reconvene on June 2 to agree on a working document for the July 5-6 CELAC summit in Caracas. A second summit is already being planned for Chile in 2012.

Today’s bullet points:

· On the never-ending Walid Makled extradition saga, Colombia now appears to be seeking “human rights guarantees” from Venezuela before the drug capo is returned back to his native Venezuela. AP with a brief report, although the details some a bit opaque.

· In Guatemala, 71-year-old drug kingpin Waldemar Lorenzana has been arrested. Lorenzana is suspected of working with Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel in Guatemala, helping to move cocaine from Colombia to the US. He now faces possible extradition to the US, which also appears to have provided unspecified assistance in the arrest. Reuters reports.

· Insight Crime highlights a new 2008 diplomatic cable obtained by Wikileaks and first reported on by McClatchy this week. The document cites a Defense Intelligence Agency report indicating that a number of weapons taken from cartels in Mexico and elsewhere have their origin in the Honduran military. The weapons range from light anti-tank artillery to grenades. In recent testimony before the US Senate, US Southcom chief, Gen. Douglas Fraser said that over 50 percent of the military-type weapons entering the region come from Central American stockpiles left over from past wars and conflicts.

· Also in Honduras, the FNRP earlier in the week reported on the brutal murder and beheading of two Aguan campesino activists from the Movimiento Auténtico Campesino del Aguán, or MUCA. The bodies of the two men were found on April 19. Highlighting the FNRP report, Adrienne Pine also posts a rather absurd full page ad taken out by Aguan oligarch Miguel Facussé in Honduras’s La Tribuna, denouncing by name many of the human rights groups and activists who have implicated his Dinant Corporation in rights abuses in the Aguan Valley.

· In Mexico, six more bodies were found in San Fernando, bringing the new count to 183. AP reports.

· The head of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil yesterday meeting with favela residents who are resisting forcible removal by municipal officials seeking to open up new areas for pre-Olympic construction projects. According to AP, Amnesty International has begun a new international campaign promoting decent housing as a human right and plans to open a new office in Brazil later this year which will focus on housing issues. Al-Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo has more, noting that, in addition to AI, the UN’s special rapporteur for housing, Raquel Rolnik, is also investigating claims of forced evictions in Rio’s favelas. A report is forthcoming.

· In Haiti, president-elect Michel Martelly says he will push for new taxes on money transfers and international cell phone calls to raise money for education. AP reports.

· The US plays musical chairs with its diplomats in ALBA member states Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. The most senior official in the US Embassy in Caracas, Deputy Chief of Mission, John Caulfield, will be headed out of Venezuela and into Cuba where he will take over for outgoing Interest Section chief, Jonathan Farrar. Farrar moves on to the US Embassy in Managua, Nicaragua to replace Ambassador Robert Callahan.

· Reuters has more on the new oil windfall tax announced by Hugo Chavez last week, saying it could bring somewhere between $9 and $16 billion additional dollars into the government’s coffers. The new measure sets a top tax rate of 95% on the income of some oil producers operating in the country.

· The Financial Times has an excellent look this week at changes in Latin American international trade over the last decade plus, including a great graphic.

· And finally, in Spanish, Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti, who directs the independent investigative site IDL-Reporteros, talks with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas about the future of online investigative journalism in Latin America. Full video here.

Forging a "Latin American Consensus"

Both Brazilian foreign minister Antonio Patriota and presidential foreign policy adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia say there is no conflict between strengthening UNASUR, on the one hand, and allowing Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico to create their own, more liberal trade bloc, on the other. The four countries plan to sign an agreement next week making a new Pacific economic bloc official. Analysts say the project is both a step toward increased economic integration along the continent’s west coast as well as an attempt to open up new economic opportunities in Asia.

The statements from Brazil’s top foreign policy hands came during a visit with former Colombian foreign minister and new UNASUR secretary general Maria Emma Mejía, who was in Brazil for a meeting of the South American Council on Infrastructure and Planning (Cosiplan) – an organization created under the UNASUR umbrella last year to coordinate regional infrastructure projects and monitor foreign infrastructure investment from, among other places, China. Interestingly, Mejía’s views on the relationship between UNASUR and the Pacific bloc are essentially the same as those of Patriota and Garcia. Rather than being a counter to UNASUR or MERCOSUR, Mejía says the new bloc is “evidence of the dynamism of the region.”

And what about Venezuela, the left wing regional alternative to the Pacific bloc’s right? They too seem to see no conflict, at least yet, between the new Chile-Peru-Colombia-Mexico bloc and a broader agenda of regional integration. Chavista deputy, former economy minister, and Parlatino representative Rodrigo Cabezas, tells EFE that the new Pacific bloc, on the one side of the continent, and MERCOSUR, on the other, will be the foundation of a “Gran Comunidad Económica Latinoamericana.” [Venezuela’s official entry into the latter is still pending final approval by the Paraguayan Senate]. “Integration is based on complete respect for the various ideological positions found throughout Latin America,” Cabezas told the news agency, “and because of this, it’s possible to conceive of an integration with diversity that will always be present in Latin American governments.”

Venezuela hosts its Latin American neighbors at the second meeting of the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (CELAC) in July – an attempt to create regional structures that exclude the US and Canada. EFE reports on today’s first preparatory meetings for the summit, which bring foreign ministers and representatives from 32 Latin American and Caribbean states to Caracas.

Today’s bullet points:

· The AP and LA Times report on the deportation to Colombia of an alleged FARC representative in Europe. Joaquin Perez Becerra was arrested upon after arriving in Caracas from Frankfurt, Germany on Saturday. The AP says the arrest of Perez came after Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos phoned Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to request that Venezuelan authorities make the arrest. In an interview yesterday, Santos called Perez “the most important operative of the FARC” in Europe and said Chavez’s decision to have him detained was another sign that the Venezuelan president is “true to his word.” For Hugo Chavez, the story is a bit more complicated, however. As the Nuevo Herald reports, a number of pro-Chavez Venezuelan social movements, many of which CFR’s Joel Hirst labels a “front for terrorism” in an article for Fox News which seems more than a bit over the top, staged significant protests in front of the offices of the Venezuelan intelligence services (SEBIN) Monday, denouncing the arrest and an individual they call a “revolutionary journalist.”

· Also in Venezuela, news over the weekend that the Venezuelan government plans to increase a windfall oil tax, taking advantage of a recent spike in international oil prices. The Venezuelan president says he’ll use the excess cash to fund a new social development fund. Chavez also announced Monday a 25% hike in Venezuela’s minimum wage. The wage raise starts next week with a 15% increase and will be completed in September with another 10% increase. According to AP, the new minimum wage will benefit more than 6 million people, who will earn $360 a month once the full increase is phased in. Presidential elections are set for 2012.

· Haitian election officials are delaying the certification of 19 legislative contests whose final vote tallies were significantly higher than preliminary results suggested. AP says the OAS has been brought in once again to “sift through the results” after both the UN and US expressed concern over the legitimacy of the new vote totals. After receiving the complaints, Gaillot Dorsinvil, president of Haiti's provisional electoral council (CEP), said the panel would delay publishing the results for 19 legislative races “for the sake of transparency and in the best interests of the nation.” But according to the Miami Herald, Dorsinvil defended the CEP’s final vote count, saying they were the result of electoral litigation by the candidates and their attorneys who disagreed with the preliminary results. As usual, CEPR’s Haiti Watch has an excellent breakdown of all the races in question.

· AP reports on the “rescue” of another 51 migrants in a home in Reynosa. Among those freed were six Chinese, 14 Guatemalans, two Hondurans, two Salvadorans and 27 Mexicans. The “rescue” comes after 68 migrants were found in another house in Reynosa last week. Interestingly, Mexican officials say four municipal officers have been arrested for the kidnapping of those individuals. It’s still unclear what the Mexican state does with its “liberated” migrants.

· The San Diego Union-Tribune says an investigation into links between 62 police officers in Tijuana and organized crime syndicates has all but collapsed eight months after the investigation began.

· Mexico’s El Universal reports on a new social initiative, “A Ganar,” funded by the Carlos Slim Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, the IDB, and USAID, and intended to help so-called “ni-nis” in Ciudad Juarez.

· Insight Crime translates Plaza Publica’s recent feature on the Zetas apparent return to Guatemala’s Alta Verapaz region after a two-month state of siege.

· Nicaragua’s Cofidencial and Costa Rica’s La Nación have begun publishing a new trove of Wikileaks US diplomatic cables. The first article to come out of the new release looks at US concern over the Ortega government’s ties with Libya – particularly the fact that Muammar Gadafi’s nephew has advised Daniel Ortega on matters of foreign policy.

· Latin America News Dispatch reports some 35,000 new documents released by the Brazilian National Archive earlier this month, which, among other things, show that the Brazilian Air Force intelligence continued to surveil left wing political parties, trade unionists, and students for at least a decade after the country’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship. Among those monitored, according to the new documents, were now ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and members of VAR Palmares, a resistance group to which current President Dilma Rousseff belonged.

· Newsweek’s Mac Margolis writes a glowing profile of Rio’s Public Safety Secretary José Mariano Beltrame and his project of “pacifying” Rio favelas using what Newsweek describes as a combination of “wiretaps, computerized crime mapping, and brute force.”

· At Foreign Policy, Francis Fukuyama and Seth Colby look for solutions to Mexican drug violence in Medellín, where they write an equally glowing piece about the Colombian city’s renovation under former mayor Sergio Fajardo. Only in the second to last paragraph do they suggest the city’s peace could be temporary:

“After bottoming out in 2007, Medellín's homicide rate has since doubled (though it is still one-fifth of what it was at the city's early-1990s nadir). Nearly everyone in the city agrees that the uptick in violence was the result of the Colombian government's 2008 decision to extradite to the United States former paramilitary leader turned crime boss Diego Murillo Bejarano, locally known as Don Berna. What that meant, in effect, was that the critics had been correct: The Colombian government hadn't actually successfully demobilized the drug-trafficking paramilitaries. Instead, by seriously crippling the competing guerrillas, the government had given a monopoly to Don Berna. It was peace achieved through market dominance, not demilitarization -- and when Don Berna's extradition decapitated his organization and prompted a violent scramble for power among lower-ranking lieutenants, the peace fell apart.”

· And on Mexico and other matters, David Rothkopf, also at FP, provokes thought and calls for introspection about the demand-side of the drug wars in the US. He also gets the rumor-mill turning, writing that former US ambassador to Argentina and current Deputy US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Anthony Wayne, is the frontrunner to replace Wikileak casualty Carlos Pascual at the US Embassy in Mexico City.

Tamaulipas: A Genocide Ignored?

As thirty-two more bodies were recovered from what are now a total 34 mass graves near the town of San Fernando, both the Washington Post and LA Times have disturbing reports this morning about the on-going Tamaulipas investigations. The Post says many of the individuals whose corpses have been examined thus far died from powerful blows to the head. The LA Times cites witnesses to some of the killings who talk of individuals being raped and then burned alive. A number of Mexican commentators, the paper writes, have begun to call the massacres the “Mexican genocide.” Others have apparently referred to the Tamaulipas town as “Mexico’s Auschwitz.”

Both the Post and the Times suggest that evidence of disappearances around San Fernando dates back months, if not years. Officials in neighboring states of Guanajuato, Queretaro, and San Luis Potosí say they raised worries about missing residents to Tamaulipas authorities as early as 2009. Nobody seems to have investigated anything until less than one month ago.

After the bodies of 72 Central American migrants were found at a ranch in San Fernando, the Post says President Felipe Calderon sent in the Mexican military to retake the town. He promised to “protect migrants and Mexican families,” but the Mexican government’s attention quickly faded. The presence of federal forces was only temporary and after they withdrew, residents of San Fernando say violence returned almost immediately. Criminal groups – likely collaborating with some members of the town’s local police force – seized local farms, killing owners and converting barns and sheds into what the paper describes as “holding pens and execution chambers.”

In addition to sixteen local police officers who remain detained for allegedly protecting the Zetas in San Fernando, the town’s police chief was also arrested last Thursday.

The same day still unidentified gunmen are reported to have launched a major attack on another Tamaulipas town -- the border city of Miguel Aleman – launching grenades and burning down three car dealerships, an auto parts outlet, a furniture store and a gas station.

The Times says some are now demanding that the Mexican Senate use its power to unilaterally dismiss the elected officials in the state Tamaulipas, a rare measure and one which would be accompanied by the indefinite “suspension civil rights” in the northeastern state.

In an interview over the weekend, San Fernando mayor Tomas Gloria Renquena’s rejects the notion that his town is an anomaly, telling the Post that “San Fernando is Mexico. It’s just like anywhere else.”

Meanwhile, in Mexico’s southwest, five women, all employees of the same beauty salon in the city of Acapulco, were found brutally murdered over the holiday weekend. On Sunday, the AP says the body parts of another woman were discovered strewn about the upscale Mexico City neighborhood of San Miguel Chapultepec.

Today’s bullet points:

· In Haiti, both the US and UN are questioning the results of Haiti’s legislative elections, which were announced last week. Reuters and AP say the preliminary results of 18 legislative contests were reversed when official tabulations were released on Wednesday. Sixteen of the reversals, the U.N. mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) says, favored outgoing President Rene Preval’s INITE party. In a statement Friday, MINUSTAH says, “The final results have…raised serious concerns about the transparency and legitimacy of the process leading to their publication.” The US Embassy in Port-au-Prince echoed those remarks in its own statement. “We have found no explanation for the reversals of 18 legislative races in the final results, which in all except two cases benefited the incumbent part. Without a public explanation and review ... the legitimacy of seating these candidates is in question.” A series of protests against the election results took place in the Haitian countryside on Thursday. In the border town of Belladere, a staff member of Partners in Health was killed after a PIH staff house was torched.

· Also in Haiti, the New York Times reports on mass evictions of internally-displaced Haitians by private landowners. According to the International Organization for Migration, Haiti’s displaced population has fallen from its peak of 1.5 million shortly after the 2010 quake to 680,000 today. Most who have left the camps, however, have not returned to new or rebuilt homes and often remain in equally precarious and unstable living situations.

· Two opinions in the Washington Post (here and here) on Haitian president-elect Michel Martelly.

· The first poll numbers ahead of a June 5 runoff in Peru were released Sunday. The Ipsos-Apoyo survey shows Ollanta Humala up six points on Keiko Fujimori, 42% to 36%. El Comercio publishes the full results.

· In neighboring Ecuador, a number of the most important measures on Rafael Correa’s 10-point referendum proposal appear to have significant popular support two weeks before a national vote there. The idea of creating a five-member panel with a six-year mandate to overhaul the judiciary and appoint top judges has the backing of just over 60%, according to the Cedatos poll. There is slightly less support for a proposal to, in Reuters words, “prohibit banks and the media from owning shares in companies outside their sectors.” The AP reports more on freedom of press worries.

· Infolatam has a good look at the intra-party tensions in Uruguay’s Frente Amplio after the Senate approved the annulment of the country’s 1986 amnesty law two weeks ago.

· Also from Infolatam, news that Argentina will host the next meeting of G-20 finance ministers next month. The issue of commodity prices is expected to be the principal matter for discussion.

· AP reports that an individual suspected of working with the FARC was detained by Venezuelan authorities after arriving by plane in Caracas from Frankfurt, Germany.

· Brazil’s Estadao with more on Dilma Rousseff’s major foreign policy speech last week. While calling regional integration her “top foreign policy priority,” Rousseff also noted the new role human rights will play in Brazilian international relations.

· And after 38 years as a member of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), Venezuela officially announced Friday it will be leaving the five nation trade bloc. AP reports while Mercopress notes the announcement last week was not a particularly new one. Chavez first said Venezuela would abandon CAN in 2006, in favor of Mercosur, after Peru and Colombia began FTA talks with the US. Last week’s re-announcement comes ahead of the second meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Caracas in early July. Argentine foreign minister Hector Timerman was in Venezuela last week to begin preparing the agenda for those meetings which will be co-chaired by Venezuela and Chile. More on the relationship between that project and Mercosur, from EFE, while in the US, the Russell Crandall, most recently the director of Andean Affairs on President Obama’s National Security Council, has a piece in the new issue of Foreign Affairs on the shape of a “post-American” Western Hemisphere.

Argentina's Past That Has Not Yet Passed

Fifty-two year-old Argentine rights activist Victor Oscar Martinez re-appeared late Wednesday after disappearing three days prior. After leaving his home in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo on Monday, Martinez’s lawyer said Thursday that her client was abducted, heavily sedated, and held in an unidentified location. Martinez says his captors threatened him and his family, saying he should leave the country and not testify in a new human rights investigation against a former military official he has long said was involved in the death of Bishop Carlos Horacio Ponce de León over thirty years ago.

On July 11, 1977, Martínez was traveling with the Bishop to the deliver evidence of military human rights crimes to the Vatican’s embassy in Buenos Aires when the car the two were traveling in mysteriously crashed. Martínez, then just 19, survived the accident but says he was later detained and tortured by the military who sought information about the work being carried out by Bishop Ponce de Leon.

The New York Times says a new inquiry into the Bishop’s death is in the process of being reopened and Martinez was expected to be called to testify once again.

Argentina’s Página 12 has the first interview with Martinez since being released.

Today’s bullet points:

· In Honduras, Grupo Dinant, a biofuels company controlled by Honduran oligarch Miguel Facussé, may be folding after recently losing a $20 million loan from a German development bank – this according to Dinant’s treasurer Roger Pineda who spoke with Bloomberg earlier in the week. The German environmental and rights groups CDM Watch and Food First Information and Action Network were among those lobbying the German Bank to halt its loan to Facussé, saying Dinant may not hold legal claims to its land and is suspected of being involved in the killings of peasant activists in the Lower Aguan Valley. Pineda calls those claims blackmail and says the jobs of as many of 8,000 are now in jeopardy. Last week Grupo Dinant also lost the backing of the EDF Trading – a French carbon trading company – on a biogas project in the Aguán Valley. Rights abuse claims are suspected of influencing that decision as well. More from Honduras Culture and Politics.

· McClatchy has the latest story on the growing presence of drug gangs in Central America, reporting from San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Mexico’s Proceso looks at the presence of Mexican drug cartels in Costa Rica. The Washington Post reports on the now deserted Highway 101, aka the “Highway of Death,” in Tamaulipas near which 145 bodies have been found in recent weeks. Reuters says the body count at a new mass grave in the state of Durango has risen to 37. And Moises Naím, at the Huffington Post, asks, who is responsible for “losing” Mexico? Decades of tolerance for traffickers by the Mexican government? The Calderón government’s militarization of the drug wars in 2006? The drug market in the US? Naím argues all of these things are to blame. His conclusion: that the problem start being treated as a national one, rather than one that can be attributed to any particular leader or party, past or present.

· Uruguay’s lower chamber is expected to approve new legislation that will allow personal cultivation and consumption of small amounts of marijuana next week. Uruguay’s El País reports.

· The US Treasury Dept. has finally published new Cuba travel rules announced by the Obama administration in January. Details from the Miami Herald.

· Venezuelanalysis reports on protests by rural activists in Venezuela demanding an investigation into the killing of two peasant activists a week and a half ago in the state of Barinas.

· BBC with the latest look at growing divisions between Rafael Correa and indigenous groups in Ecuador

· And Raúl Zibechi, at the Americas Program, has an extraordinary look at major worker protests that erupted in Brazil’s Amazon last month. Thousands of workers have been brought into formerly isolated regions of the Amazon to implement the government’s infrastructure construction agenda – most notably dam building. Zibechi focuses on the plan to construct four dams on the Madeira River, two of which have already begun along the Bolivian border. Some 20,000 workers are now working on those two projects alone, often in less than decent conditions.

At Last an Official Haitian "President-Elect"

Former Haitian pop singer Michel Martelly was announced as the official winner of Haiti’s presidential elections Wednesday, bringing an electoral season that feels like it has lasted an eternity to its final conclusion. With just under 68% of the vote, Martelly was proclaimed the victor against contender and former first lady, Mirlande Manigat.

The Provisional Electoral Council also announced the final results of the country’s legislative vote, confirming that outgoing President Rene Preval’s INITE party had, indeed, won a majority in the Senate. As the AP notes, that could present an obstacle for Martelly as he seeks to gain Senate approval for a new Prime Minister.

Martelly received the news in Washington, D.C. where he was as part of a three-day international visit that includes talks with US and international organization officials. On Wednesday, he met with US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. The Miami Herald has the coverage.

One day before that meeting, a group of 53 Democratic House members sent a letter to the Secretary of State demanding the US “dedicate significant attention to the critical and urgent task of improving the appalling conditions in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps.” CEPR’s Haiti Watch continues to stay on top of Haiti-related news and notes the letter and this week’s meetings between president-elect Martelly and Ms. Clinton come on the heels of a new Humanitarian Bulletin on Haiti released by the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). That report says just 19% of the US$175 million funding required for basic water and sanitation needs of “transitional shelter and spontaneous camp residents” have thus far been met by donors. Overall, the Miami Herald reports just 37% of the original $5 billion in international funds allocated for Haitian reconstruction have been thus far been delivered.

Today’s Bullet Points:

· In Argentina, the only witness in a case against a former Argentine military officer, Lt. Col. Manuel Fernando Saint Amant, suspected of being involved in the 1977 death of Bishop Carlos Horacio Ponce de Leon, vanished Monday but, according Página 12, was found late Wednesday. On Wednesday, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner mobilized federal forces to begin a search for fifty-two year Victor Oscar Martinez. In 1977, Martinez was traveling with the Bishop to deliver evidence of human rights crimes to the Vatican's representative in Argentina when the car they were traveling in crashed, killing the Bishop. According to the AP, the government suspects the car accident was provoked by the military to prevent the bishop from reaching the Vatican’s embassy. [Another activist bishop, Enrique Angelelli, had died in a similarly suspicious car accident the previous year]. After surviving, Martinez says he was detained and tortured by the Argentine military who demanded information regarding the late bishop’s human rights work. Martinez’s brief disappearance this week – which does not yet seem to have an explanation – brought back memories of the 2006 disappearance of Jorge Julio Lopez. After denouncing a former Argentine police official of crimes against humanity, Lopez vanished and five years later remains missing.

· In Chile, President Sebastian Pinera signed a new bill Wednesday, committing the country to new access to information standards. The signing came during the second annual conference on transparency in Chile organized by the country’s Transparency Council, created as part of a 2009 Transparency Law. La Tercera reports on the event and the new bill in Spanish. The Santiago Times translates some of the recent coverage into English – specifically the forthcoming launch of a new website for public access to government information. More from Freedominfo.org.

· The AP reports on the discovery of a 26 bodies at what seems to be a new grave site in the Mexican state of Durango. BBC Mundo focuses on the discovery of 68 living individuals – among a number of Central American migrants – being held against their will in a home in the Tamaulipas city of Reynosa. The former abductees say they were taken while they traveled by bus by individuals who identified themselves as members of the Gulf Cartel – the principal rival of the Zetas. And from Insight, an interesting look at “uniforms” now being worn by many Mexican drug trafficking organizations. “[Ma]ny of the uniforms used by DTO members are almost indistinguishable replicas of those used by federal or municipal police...allow[ing] them to blend in and conduct robberies, kidnappings, or killings with impunity,” says Insight. Interesting comparisons to the modus operandi of DTOs in Colombia as well.

· Mexico opinions: the Latin America Working Group’s Lisa Haugaard at the Huffington Post comments on a wave of anti-drug war mobilizations that have begun to sweep across Mexico in recent weeks. CIP/Americas Program director Laura Carlsen comments on the on-going ATF gunwalking scandal. And WOLA’s Adam Isacson at Just the Facts on why Congressman Michael McCaul’s (R-TX) proposal to add Mexican cartels to the “foreign terrorist” list may not get very far.

· The CS Monitor reports that at least nine Latin American countries are currently developing unmanned drone programs to monitor everything from drug trafficking to gang activity to illegal logging. The new phenomenon has led some in the region – among them Mexican Senator Fernando Baeza – to demand an international agreement be established defining the scope and limits of new drone missions. The countries currently creating unmanned, unarmed drone projects include Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

· More on the Walid Makled saga at the Economist. Apparently Makled’s extradition to Venezuela has been put on hold again – perhaps for another month – as US agents continue to “debrief” the Venezuelan drug kingpin in a Colombian prison.

· In Peru, Mario Vargas Llosa has announced he will be voting for Ollanta Humala in a June 5 presidential runoff – this after referring to Humala as either “cancer” or “AIDS” – nobody seems quite sure which – before round one voting. Spain’s El País and Peru’s La República report.

· In Colombia, NPR with a short piece on Medellín’s participatory budgeting system.

· Two opinions on the conclusion of the Cuban Communist Party Congress: Geoff Thale of WOLA on why the meeting marked an important moment of change – at least in terms of economic policy. Cuban historian Rafael Rojas, in El País, on why it represented political continuity.

· In a speech marking “Diplomat Day” in Brazil, Dilma Rousseff outlined in perhaps the clearest terms to date, her foreign policy objectives. She called Latin American integration her “top foreign policy priority;” followed by deepened relations with emerging powers China, India, and Russia; and finally continued “constructive” relations with the US and Europe. EFE reports.

· And regional economic news, with a focus on Brazil: The Wall Street Journal reports on the latest interest rate hike at Brazilian Central Bank. The raise of one-quarter brings the country’s benchmark interest rate up to 12%. The Economist writes critically of Brazil’s handling of inflationary worries. Finally, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal today recaps the showdown between the US and the developing world – particularly Brazil – at the IMF last week. You get the sense that the international ramifications of the US financial crisis, particularly in the developing world, are only now really beginning.

For Now, Cuba to Carry On with the "Historicos"

The Cuban Communist Party opted for political “experience” over rejuvenation, announcing Tuesday that 80-year-old histórico and former Sierra Maestra rebel, José Ramón Machado, was selected as the Party’s new second-in-command. Machado takes over the position from 79-year-old Cuban President Raúl Castro, who, as expected, officially replaced his brother, Fidel, as the Party’s first secretary. (For his part, the elder Castro, donning his traditional track suit, made a surprise appearance at the Congress’s closing session).

Cuba expert Arturo Lopez-Levy tells the Times that Machado’s selection was likely based on his knowledge of the inner workings of the party and his past experience heading an office in charged with approving promotions and developing ties with party leaders across the island.

There was a bit of relative youth added to PCC’s central committee and its 15-member Politburo. As the New York Times reports, the latter will now include three youngsters – that is, individuals under the age of 60 – among them, new economic reform czar Marino Murillo, Havana Communist Party chief Mercedes Lopez Acea, and Economy Minister Adel Izquierdo Rodriguez.

Absent from Tuesday’s closing session were any further details about how and when the economic reforms (Lineamientos), approved by the Congress this weekend, would be applied. Phil Peters has more details at The Cuban Triangle. His conclusions:

“The Congress reaffirmed the commitment to economic reform; proposed a mechanism to push the reforms through the bureaucracy; signaled that reforms will proceed deliberately but not on an emergency basis; stated that the Party needs to butt out of day-to-day government and business affairs at all levels; and passed up the opportunity to make big personnel moves, including those that would send signals about next-generation leaders.”

Today’s bullet points:

· In Honduras, the country’s Appeals Court is expected to announce shortly whether or not it will drop pending corruption charges against former President Mel Zelaya, ousted in a 2009 coup d’etat. The decision would open the door for Zelaya’s return to the country, and potentially, Honduras’s eventual re-integration within the OAS. Members of the FNRP met with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez over the weekend to discuss their criteria for supporting such re-incorporation into the inter-American system. The meeting followed an earlier one between Chavez, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, and Honduran President Pepe Lobo about the same topic. Juan Barahona, sub-coordinator of the FNRP, says the Resistance has four demands that must be met before it will support the move: the return to Honduras of Zelaya and all other individuals exiled by the coup; respect for human rights; the convening of a Constituent Assembly; and, now, the recognition of the FNRP, by the government, as a legitimate political force that can participate in future elections.

· A second US free trade agreement with a Latin American country – this time Panama—appears to be moving forward. The New York Times reports that the two countries agreed Monday to exchange tax information, ending US worries about Panama becoming a haven for income-tax evaders. Not coincidentally, the White House announced yesterday that Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli will be traveling to Washington next week (April 28) for his first face-to-face meeting with President Obama.

· Also in the US this week is unofficial Haitian president-elect Michel Martelly. Among those with whom he is meeting are Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Official results in Haiti’s presidential race are expected to be finally announced sometime today. More from AQ.

· The Wall Street Journal and Mercopress have more on the growing differences about international economic policy between Global South powers – particularly Brazil – and the Global North – namely the US. As discussed earlier, the central issue of dispute at this week’s IMF meetings was whether or not extremely low interest rates in the US are behind speculative capital outflows toward the developing world. Brazil says so-called ‘hot money’ is behind inflation worries. Despite statements to the contrary by Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega, the Financial Times contends that such worries continue to rise in Brazil. New March unemployment numbers released this week show unemployment there to be at a record low of 6.5%, and some economists argue that is fueling rising demand and thus rising prices. Brazil’s Central Bank plans to raise interest rates by 25 to 50% today in its latest attempt to hold back new lending.

· While worries about inflation are not as significant in Chile – at least yet – Dow Jones says that country’s Central Bank suggested the idea of capital controls should be studied in advance, just in case, despite repeated statements by President Sebastian Pinera that the country opposes such measures.

· On the relationship between economic numbers and politics, Reuters looks at the impact $100+ oil will have on an upcoming election season in Venezuela.

· Insight looks at Juan Manuel Santos’s qualification this week of earlier statements about the FARC and Venezuela.

· The Miami Herald examines what may be the newest drug trafficking thoroughfare – the Dominican Republic. According to the paper, more than 5000 officials from the police and military have been fired in the last year alone for suspected ties to traffickers moving drugs through the island from Colombia and on to the US and Europe. Miami attorney Joaquin Perez, who represents a number of alleged traffickers tells the paper: “There is no question that most of the heavy lifting in drug trafficking in the Dominican Republic is being done by the military: They are the ones who facilitate the entry of drugs. They get a commission, in the form of drugs, and then find someone to sell it.”

· AFP reports on the opening of a new regional counter-narcotics and security operations center in Panama, to be administered by Central American Integration System (SICA).

· BBC Mundo says Bolivia has accepted $250,000 from the US for coca eradication. The new funds come just weeks after the US arrested former Bolivian drug czar General Rene Sanabria in Panama for his alleged participation in cocaine trafficking.

· The LA Times reflects on the Bay of Pigs debacle, fifty years after.

· And the Real News with a long video report on teacher protests of recent weeks in Honduras.