Zelaya Returns to Honduras

On Saturday, former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned to his native Honduras, nearly two years after being ousted in a military-backed coup d’etat. Thousands of supporters greeted Zelaya as he touched down in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. He was joined by an escort of representatives from various Latin American countries. Zelaya’s return came just days after the former president met with current Honduran President Porfirio Lobo to sign a political deal (the so-called Cartagena Accord), which, in addition to allowing Zelaya’s return home, opens the door for a national vote over a possible constituent assembly and eases requirements for transforming the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) into an official political party.

The deal, mediated by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos, also annulled – at least for the time being – of all remaining legal proceedings against Mel Zelaya.

As AP notes, the Organization of American States, which expelled Honduras shortly after the June 2009 coup, is expected to re-admit the Central American country ahead of the group’s annual meetings scheduled for this weekend. Thus far, the only Latin American country to have publicly questioned such a move has been Ecuador.

Nevertheless there do remain numerous questions about what the return of Zelaya and the likely re-admittance of Honduras to the OAS will mean for a national human rights situation that remains fragile, at best. Over a dozen journalists and more than 40 peasant and union activists have been killed since Lobo assumed office in 2010, many at the hands of paramilitary death squads, according to human rights organizations. The LA Times notes that former human rights ombudsman, Leo Valladares, was forced to flee the country because of ongoing death threats. Opinions (and links) on human rights worries from CEPR co-director Mark Weisbrot in The Guardian, historian Dana Frank in The Progressive, and anthropologist Adrienne Pine at NACLA. Also an excellent report over the weekend from the UK’s Observer on the growing crisis of gender-based murder or “femicide” which, according to a new report from Oxfam Honduras and the Honduran NGO, the Tribunal of Women Against Femicide, is now the “second highest cause of death for women of reproductive age” in Honduras.

Honduras Culture and Politics, meanwhile, posts and comments on a variety of reactions to the Cartagena Accord from different political sectors in Honduras. Following Zelaya’s return speech Saturday, the LA Times speculated that the former president would “immediately reengage in politics” and might lead a new party formed out of the FNRP. After meeting with OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza and Porfirio Lobo over the weekend, Zelaya said Monday his goals now were to help in the organization of a national constituent assembly and aid in the construction of a “broad front” coalition similar to the one which has governed Uruguay since 2005. (Democracy Now with more in an exclusive interview with Zelaya).

For its part, the Lobo government made an about-face Monday on one of the issues which precipitated the ouster of Zelaya in 2009: Honduras’s deepening relationship with Venezuela. On Monday, the government said it will seek re-entry into Petrocaribe in order to receive discounted oil from Venezuela. In March of last year Mel Zelaya was named head of Petrocaribe’s political council by Venezuela.

Various bullet points from the last week:

· Reuters reports on possible next steps from Venezuela after the US enacted new sanctions against Venezuelan state oil giant PDVSA last week. The US says PDVSA violated an economic embargo on Iran by sending the country fuel additives between December 2010 and March 2011. The sanctions, which affect a total of seven companies (including ones from the UAE, Israel, Singapore, and Monaco) will prohibit PDVSA from competing for U.S. government contracts, from securing financing from the US Export-Import Bank and from obtaining U.S. export licenses. They do not, however, apply to PDVSA subsidiaries like CITGO nor will they prohibit the export of crude oil to the United States. In Venezuela, the penalties have been met with swift condemnation by both the Chavez government and much of the political opposition (See, for example, a translation by the Center for Democracy in the Americas of an editorial last week by Tal Cual editor Teodoro Petkoff who calls the sanctions a form of “imperial arrogance”). AP reports on major demonstrations against the PDVSA sanctions in the capital of Caracas Sunday.

· In Colombia, lawmakers approved a long-awaited Victims’ Law last week. According to The Guardian, “the law aims to give financial compensation (of approx. $10,000) to every victim reported murdered or forcibly disappeared.” It could also mean the eventual return of millions of acres of land to some 3.4 million individuals internally displaced by the country’s decade’s long armed conflict. Last week the government said nearly 58,000 people remain missing because of that conflict and at least 15,600 of those persons are believed to have been “forcibly disappeared,” according to the UN high commissioner for human rights. Colombian Interior Minister German Vargas Lleras noted last week that the bodies of 10,000 disappeared persons have been recently identified for the purposes of compensating victims’ families.

· Peruvian voters will head to the polls this weekend to elect a new president. Most recent poll numbers show Keiko Fujimori and Ollanta Humala running in a dead heat. According to a mock nationwide vote organized by Ipsos and released over the weekend, Fujimori holds on to 50.5 to 49.5 percent lead over Humala with null and spoiled ballots excluded. A CPI mock vote shows Fujmori at 51.8 percent and Humala at 48.2 percent. Reuters reports on the final televised debate between the two candidates Sunday, writing that it “reflected a race that has become increasingly heated and based on personal attacks.” The New York Times profiled Keiko Fujimori on Saturday. TIME, meanwhile, profiles the man who could be the country’s next first gentleman, Fujimori’s American husband and self-described “Jersey Guy” Mark Villanella.

· A variety of reports over the weekend look at the race to head the IMF. The lead contender for that position, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, began her campaign to replace the embattled DSK in Brazil this week, promising to continue IMF reforms that give emerging nations a larger say in Fund decision making. The Wall Street Journal says Brazil “stopped short of endorsing Ms. Lagarde, but Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said her commitment to continued overhauls was the sort of reassurance the country would need to throw its weight behind a candidate.” Mantega is expected to meet Wednesday with the other contender for the position, Mexican Central Banker Agustín Carstens. The paper says despite regional affinities and Carstens’ recent calls for “bailout flexibility,” the “orthodox” Mexican market economist seems a dark horse to overtake Lagarde.

· The New York Times reports today on the issuance of arrest warrants by Spanish judge Eloy Velasco Nuñez for 20 former Salvadoran military leaders accused of planning and carrying out the killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989.

· Al-Jazeera on the exhumation last week of Salvador Allende’s body to determine definitively whether the late Socialist president of Chile took his own life or was killed by the Chilean military during the September 11, 1973 military coup that toppled his government. In the LA Times, Peter Kornbluh and Marc Cooper comment.

· IPS with a look at Amnesty International’s noble history in South America’s Southern Cone during the 1970s and 1980s as the rights group prepares for its fiftieth anniversary celebration.

· McClatchy’s Tim Johnson (Mexico-Guatemala) and NPR’s Jason Beaubien (El Salvador) with new reports on organized crime in Central America’s violent Northern Triangle. And in The Nation last week, Human Rights Watch’s Nik Steinberg with an excellent essay on drug-induced transformation of Monterrey, Mexico.

· Latin American News Dispatch highlights the killing of two environmental activists in the Brazilian Amazon last week. As LAND reports, the double murder came just hours after Brazil’s lower house voted to pass a controversial bill to reform the Forest Code, allowing small farmers more liberty to cultivate and deforest protected environmental areas within the Amazon.

· Mercopress on last week’s meeting of UNASUR’s Defense Council in Argentina for the inauguration of the Defense Strategic Studies Centre (CEED).

· Also from Mercopress, a look at Uruguay’s assumption of presidential powers on the UN Human Rights Council next month, and an upcoming visit by the UN Sec. General to the country.

· And BBC Mundo reports on new efforts by the Economic Commission for Latin America’s to boost regional cooperation through the expansion of broadband internet connections.

Effort to Annul Impunity Law in Uruguay Fails

I’ll be off next week on vacation so no posting. Back after Memorial Day. Thanks for reading. JFS

After 15 hours of debate, Uruguayan lawmakers voted at 5:30am this morning to keep the so-called “Ley de Caducidad” on the books. Uruguay’s El País has the first coverage of this morning’s vote against the nullification of the 1986 impunity law, reporting that 99 members of the lower house were present for the final vote which ended in a 49 to 49 tie. Deputy Victor Semproni, a member of the governing Frente Amplio coalition which had pressed for the annulment of the amnesty legislation, was the only lawmaker to abstain.

Last weekend, Frente Amplio party members agreed they would support a legislative vote against the 1986 law, despite the fact that Uruguayans voters had twice affirmed their desire to keep the impunity law on the books through referendums and despite significant tensions over the measure among sectors of the Broad Front.

All opposition party deputies voted against nullification. As El País notes, Uruguay’s chamber of deputies had approved annulment of the Ley de Caducidad last October before hitting a stumbling block in the Senate. This time the obstacle was reversed as the Senate approved annulment by one vote in mid-April.

In a press release this morning, Amnesty International says Uruguay has “missed a historic opportunity in the pursuit of justice for victims of human rights abuses committed during military rule by failing to overturn a controversial law that blocked prosecution of security officials accused of violations.” Guadelupe Marengo, Deputy Director of the Americas programme at Amnesty International, adds that “A chance to turn a very difficult page by removing a norm that in practice put those responsible for human rights violations above the legal system…has slipped through the hands of the Uruguayans.”

Today’s bullet points:

· All ten referendum questions put forward toe voters two weeks and supported by Ecuadorean Rafael Correa appear to have been approved. The final vote tallies still require a stamp of approval from the country’s electoral council, according to the BBC, and the opposition will have the opportunity to challenge the results, should they desire. However, the preliminary results show the “Yes” vote gathering between 44.96% and 50.46%. The “No” vote received between 39.25% and 42.56%. Full results on each referendum question at the CNE’s site here.

· In Colombia, AP has more on the Colombian Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday to dismiss evidence from the Raul Reyes laptops, allegedly recovered by the Colombian military after a cross-border bombing raid against the late FARC leader’s camp in neighboring Ecuador in 2008. The wire says cases against at least 15 people suspected of aiding a guerrilla group are in the process of “unraveling” because of Wednesday’s decision. The first such case was one against ex-lawmaker Wilson Borja. Borja tells TeleSur Thursday he could pursue a counter-suit against former President Alvaro Uribe for accusing him of aiding the FARC, based on evidence from the computers. Meanwhile, former Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba says she is considering a bid to regain her seat in the Colombian Senate after the Wednesday’s dismissal. Cordoba was banned from the Senate in November 2010 for allegedly “collaborating with and promoting” the guerrilla group. Cordoba has long denied those charges and Colombia Reports says her defense “could now rest upon how much of [Inspector General] Alejandro Ordoñez's evidence against her was contained in the FARC computer files.” Ordoñez says he will call for a review of this week’s Supreme Court ruling. According Supreme Court President Camilo Humberto Tarquino, evidence from the computers was dismissed because the documents were picked up in the neighboring country by the military, rather than by the judicial police. He adds the decision is not a statement one way or the other on the “validity” of the documents, but rather addresses their (in)admissibility in a court of law.

· Also on Colombia, the Panamanian government says it will not extradite former Colombian spy chief Maria del Pilar Hurtado back to Colombia. On Wednesday, Attorney General Viviane Morales officially requested that Ms. Hurtado be arrested for her role in the DAS wiretapping scandal. She sought asylum in Panama in late 2010 and will apparently be keeping it. BBC Mundo reports.

· Latin American News Dispatch reports on the life for one-time FARC guerrillas in Colombia who have since demobilized.

· AP reports on the murder of Honduran television station owner Luis Mendoza in the city of Danli this week. Mendoza is the 13^th media worker to have been killed in the last year. The Honduras Human Rights blog, meanwhile, highlights the killing of another peasant activist in Honduras’s Aguán region. Forty-five year old Sixto Ramos, a member of campesino cooperative Nueva Suyapa, was shot and killed on May 18. Two other members of the campesino movement were killed one week prior while a fourth individual disappeared over the weekend.

· Also, on Honduras, former president Mel Zelaya says he plans to return home on MAY 28. FNRP leader Juan Barahona says Zelaya will return from the DR with former members of his government and will be accompanied by Venezuela’s foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro. AP reports while CEPR’s Alex Main has an excellent recap of recent Venezuela-Colombian mediation in Honduras.

· Mel Zelaya was in Nicaragua this week for the annual Forum of Sao Paulo gathering which continues to bring together over left-wing parties from around the region and beyond. Nicaragua’s Confidencial reports on day one of the meetings at which the issue of Honduras took center stage.

· John Perry at the London Review of Books blog writes critically on the “Honduras: Open for Business” conference held recently in San Pedro Sula, as well as Pepe Lobo’s “Charter Cities” experiment.

· Guatemala’s Prensa Libre reports on a meeting of Central American leaders yesterday in Antigua to further define a regional strategy against organized crime. Central American countries plan to seek international financing for the regional project in the coming months.

· Spain’s El País looks at Keiko Fujimori’s “mano dura” citizen security plan to fight “common crime” in Peru. As the paper is the latest to highlight, Fujimori is now being advised by former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, who currently runs his own a private security consulting firm.

· And finally, on US policy toward the region. The New York Times ran a short report yesterday on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s apparently new desire to “improve ties” with Latin America. On Wednesday the Secretary hosted a private dinner with the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Panama and El Salvador. Over two years into the job Brookings Institutions’ Ted Piccone, an organizer of Wednesday dinner, said Clinton is now thinking about the “kind of legacy she’s aiming to leave” in the region. The first sign of what direction the administration will move over the next two years is likely to come through the selection of a new assistant secretary of state to replace Arturo Valenzuela. The names being floated thus far, like former US ambassador to Colombia and current assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement (INL), Bill Brownfield, suggest the nomination will come from inside the administration. Andres Oppenheimer comments in the Miami Herald.

Brazil Suggests Next IMF Chief Hail From the Global South

Dominique Strauss-Kahn officially resigned as managing director of the International Monetary Fund late Wednesday. The decision opens a bit of new space for the always interesting debate about who the next IMF chief should be. According to the New York Times, the early frontrunner to take over the position, traditionally given to a European (the World Bank’s head is historically from the US) is French finance minister and Strauss-Kahn ally, Christine Lagarde. The paper says former Turkish finance minister and longtime World Bank official Kermal Dervis could also be in the running.

Others are demanding the next head of the IMF be someone from the developing world, and unsurprisingly, it’s Brazil, along with South Africa, who has raised the issue most publicly. In an interview on Monday, former Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim said now was the time to end “the monopoly of Europe and the US” at the IMF and World Bank. Amorim, one of the architects of Brazil’s global rise, said such a decision would demonstrate that the Fund is “sensitive to global changes” and willing to make international organizations “more representative.” Another senior Brazilian official tells Reuters that selecting the next IMF head from Brazil or India would mark a significant shift. However, according to the report, the South American power is unlikely to actively push the matter given Europe’s historic “stranglehold” on the post. In fact, current Brazilian finance minister, Guido Mantega, suggested Tuesday that his first choice would be to see Strauss-Kahn retain his position at the Fund, calling the embattled Frenchman “one of the best IMF chiefs that we had in the past years.”

Another important South American economy, Chile, joined China in arguing the next IMF head should be selected based “on merit,” but neither put forward any specific names or countries, according to the Financial Times.

On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the first major European leader to indicate she would back a European candidate to replace Strauss-Kahn at the IMF. The head of Europe’s largest economy did say if she had specific candidate in mind but said acting quickly to replace the now former IMF chief was critical, given the current crisis in the eurozone.

Today’s bullet points:

· Continuing with economic news and analysis, former Chilean finance minister Andres Velasco has a thought-provoking new opinion, distributed by Project Syndicate, on growing worries that a major bust could follow the last decade of economic boom. He notes that because of improved macroeconomic management Latin America is not on the brink of another debt crisis –a la the mid 1980s – but says two notable similarities between South America’s current moment and the early 1980s or early 1990s are worth highlighting: record-high commodity prices and cheap international money. South America’s “terms of trade are higher and the relevant global interest rates lower than they have ever been,” Velasco writes, adding that these factors, more than any particular policies adopted in recent years, have fueled Latin American growth. The former finance minister says stark differences in growth between resource-poor Central America and resource-rich South America are evidence of this point. His conclusion: that South Ameican countries frist, rein in credit that is beginning to produce market bubbles in areas like housing and second, transition out of the sorts of expansionary fiscal policies that were widely seen as sheltering South American from economic crisis after 2008.

· In Uruguay, an historic vote will occur today in the country’s lower house, deciding whether or not to annul a 1986 amnesty law, the so-called “ley de caducidad.” AP has English language coverage this morning, focusing on how the effort has caused deep fissures within the ruling Frente Amplio coalition. While both opposition parties oppose annulling the law, on Wednesday, it was FA deputy Victor Semproni who said he would block the measure by refusing to vote with his party. More coverage from Uruguay’s La República which speaks with President José Mujica. While not actively supporting the measure, Mujica has said he will sign the bill nullifying the law, should it be approved by parliament. El País looks at a bit of the unrest over the measure within the country’s military. And the Uruguayan weekly Brecha talks with FA party chief, Jorge Brovetto about what some are calling the “worst crisis” within Frente Amplio since it assumed national power for the first time ever in 2005. In the US, meanwhile, the Washington Office on Latin America makes the case for why the 1986 impunity law – denounced by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights but twice upheld by Uruguayan voters– should be nullified.

· The LA Times reports on the arrest in Guatemala, mentioned yesterday, of former kaibil special-forces operative, Hugo Alvaro Gomez Vasquez, alleged to have taken part in the early Sunday massacre of 27 ranch workers in El Petén. President Alvaro Colom called Gomez “one of the principal leaders” of the Zetas operating in Guatemala. Mike Allison, who has been following the massacre closely, has more good analysis today, particularly regarding the need keep the Petén massacre in context, rather than jumping too quickly to the conclusion that any single incident is evidence of Guatemala becoming a failed or narco state.

· From Guatemala’s past, an investigation by the government into US syphilis experiments conducted on Guatemalans during the 1940s has revealed that some 1300 individuals were infected with sexually-transmitted diseases without their consent. The formal results of the investigation will be released in Guatemala this week. AP reports.

· Colombian foreign minister Maria Emma Holguín confirmed this week that Honduras was on the close to being re-admitted to the OAS after joint mediation by her country and Venezuela. Holguín said she “is almost sure” Honduras will be at the OAS’s General Assembly in San Salvador in early June. Meanwhile, an adviser to exiled former president Mel Zelaya said again this week that the former president could return to Honduras later this month, highlighting the weekend of May 27 specifically. El Tiempo, with EFE reports.

· While charges against Zelaya have been set aside, at least for now, the president of the Honduran Supreme Court, Jorge Rivera Avilés, says possible charges against ex-officials in the Zelaya government remain active and could be pursued. La Tribuna reports. Honduras Culture and Politics, meanwhile, looks at an announcement this week from the official Honduran Truth Commission, headed by former Guatemalan vice president, Eduardo Stein. Stein has decided to push back once again the date when the commission will make its investigation into the 2009 coup official. HE says the commission’s goal is to not impact Honduras’s possible return to the OAS.

· El Faro reports that Salvadoran attorney general Romeo Barahona says he is investigating the “Cartel de Texis,” a significant drug trafficking operation allegedly controlled by prominent Salvadoran businessman, José Adán Salazar Umaña. El Faro broke the story earlier this week with a major investigative report.

· A Miami judge has granted asylum to Chavez political opponent Eligio Cedeño, arrested and imprisoned for 34 months for violating Venezuelan currency regulations. The Wall Street Journal says the move is “likely to further erode relations between Washington and Caracas.”

· In Venezuela, the body of newspaper columnist Wilfred Ivan Ojeda was found Tuesday in the town of La Victoria. Authorities say Ojeda died after being shot in the head. In addition to being a columnist, Ojeda was also a prominent Chavez critic with the Democratic Action party. AP reports.

· In Colombia, the Attorney General’s office has formally charged former DAS spy chief María del Pilar Hurtado, and ex-secretary general of the presidency, Bernardo Moreno, for overseeing illegal wiretapping against journalists, judges, and figures opposed to then-president Alvaro Uribe. Hurtado is currently in exile in Panama. BBC Mundo reports.

· Democratic congressmen are voicing new concerns about a US FTA with Colombia after an assassination attempt on Colombian labor lawyer, Hernán Darío. Rep. George Miller (D-MA) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), say the attempt on Darío’s life raises issues about the Colombian government's ability to guarantee labor rights. Darío, the lead attorney defending a group of sugarcane workers who went on strike in 2008, remains in critical condition after being shot five times in the city of Cali. The Hill reports.

· Colombia’s El Spectador with details on Colombia’s Victim’s Law, over which debate in the Senate looks to be wrapping up this week.

· Colombia Reports says the country’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that files from the Raul Reyes laptops are inadmissible as evidence in court as the material was illegally obtained. The ruling came in the case of former socialist congressman Wilson Borja, who had been charged with collaborating with the FARC. As quoted by Colombia Reports, the Colombian high court also questioned the “validity of the content” on the computers, saying the data “cannot be verified as the alleged emails [used in the Borja case] were copied into Word documents without indication of sender or receiver.”

· AP reports that 400 of the 513 migrants discovered in two truck trailers in Chiapas this week have already been repatriated to their native country of Guatemala. The remaining 113 are either minors or are from other countries, including El Salvador, Ecuador, India, Nepal, China, the Dominican Republic and Honduras.

· And finally, while votes continue to be tallied, two opinions on Ecuador’s referendum of almost two weeks ago, from Renard Sexton in The Guardian and historian Marc Becker at Upside Down World.

Over 500 Migrants Discovered in Southern Mexico

Mexican authorities in the state of Chiapas discovered 513 migrants from Central and South America, as well as Asia, crammed inside two trailers traveling north on Tuesday. The AP says the trucks were headed for the Mexican city of Puebla when an X-ray scanner at a highway checkpoint near Tuxla Gutierrez revealed the truck’s contents. In Puebla, some migrants say they were told they would be transferred to another set of vehicles for the final leg of the journey to the US border.

The individuals say they were charged approx. $7000 for the journey. BBC says four individuals have been arrested for running the smuggling operation. A police spokesman says the number of individuals recovered from the trucks was the “largest ever” to be discovered by Mexican authorities. Al-Jazeera’s Frank Contreras also reports, by video, from Mexico City.

Meanwhile, in a separate case in Chiapas, two more migration agents from Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM) were detained Tuesday for their alleged role in prostituting young female migrants from Central America. According to AP, those detained include the ex-assistant director of a migrant holding facility and a former assistant head of immigration services in a Mexican town near the border with Guatemala. Both will face human trafficking charges, along with charges of “corrupting minors.”

Today’s bullet points:

· The Wall Street Journal reports this morning on what is, for now, the final day of a 48-hour state of siege in the Peten region of northern Guatemala. The decree was issued by President Alvaro Colom after Sunday’s gruesome massacre of 27 laborers at a remote Peten ranch. In the Guatemalan press, El Periódico reports on the arrest of Hugo Gomez Vasquez, a man Guatemalan prosecutors allege is linked to the kidnapping and murder of three relatives of Otto Salguero, the owner of the Los Cocos ranch and the apparent target of this weekend’s brutal attack. According to the paper, officials suspect a link between the killings of those three individuals and the murder of day laborers employed by Salguero – perhaps related to some sort of unpaid debt owed by Salguero to the Zetas. El Periodicio and Prensa Libre highlight what may end up being the most significant element of the story: possible links between the Zetas in Guatemala (specifically the Zetas “Z-200 cell” cell which has operated in Guatemala) and former Guatemalan military men, including ex-members of the elite “Kaibiles” special forces. El Periodico says Hugo Francisco Chávez Méndez, an ex- sergeant in the Guatemalan military was also among those detained in recent days. For his part, President Alvaro Colom spokoe this week of evidence that “a lot of migration of ex-officials from the 1980s” joined groups like the ‘Zetas’” after the 1996 Peace Accords. Prensa Libre says Mexican authorities made similar claims about Zeta-Kaibiles connections in 2005. More from Mexico’s Proceso.

· In other Guatemala-related news, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk has asked an international commission to investigate the country’s failure to enforce labor rights protections under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The investigation would be the first labor case brought by the US against a free trade partner, according to Bloomberg. In an email Monday, USTR Kirk said, “While Guatemala has taken some positive steps over the past several months, its actions and proposals have been insufficient to address what we view as systemic failures.” The AFL-CIO labor federation and six Guatemalan unions first asked the U.S. to investigate the Guatemalan government’s failure to enforce labor laws in April 2008. It only took the US three years to respond – a fact that doesn’t bode well for labor groups in Colombia where an FTA could be completed this summer and where similar concerns about labor rights have continue to exist.

· The Obama administration also announced Tuesday that it will extend temporary protected status by one and a half years to Haitian immigrants in the US after last year’s quake. The extension will allow Haitians who arrived in the US as late as Jan. 12, 2011, and have lived here continuously, to apply for TPS. AP reports.

· AP also reports that Sweden and the U.S. will provide $2.6 million in aid to Haiti, specifically aimed at preventing sexual assaults in the country’s numerous camps for the internally displaced. The monies will be administered by the International Organization for Migration.

· Prosecutors in Ecuador say they will pursue an investigation against President Rafael Correa over alleged evidence pulled from the Raul Reyes laptops and published last week by a British think tank, suggesting the Ecuadorean president accepted campaign funds from the FARC in 2006. Both Correa and his foreign minister Ricardo Patino, have strongly denied those charges. The former has said he is willing to take a lie-detector test to prove his innocence. BBC reports.

· In Venezuela, new economic numbers released this week show the country’s national economy expanding by 4.5% over the first quarter of 2011—more confirmation that the country has, in fact, pulled itself out of an economic recession. According to central bank figures, the public sector grew 3.3 percent while the private sector grew at a rate of 4.6 percent over the quarter. AP and Bloomberg report. For its part, the Washington Post this morning reports from Brazil on what it describes as Venezuela’s “waning” regional influence, both economically and politically. As evidence Post correspondent Juan Forero highlights a still-stalled joint oil refinery project that was to be built by Venezuela and Brazil in the latter’s historically impoverished Northeast.

· A group of Latin Americanist right-wingers, among them Roger Noriega and former US Florida Republican congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, gathered this week to discuss Peru’s upcoming elections and denounce the “international conspiracy” in favor of the left-leaning candidate Ollanta Humala. A former assistant secretary of state under George W. Bush, Noriega says that of the two Peruvian candidates, it’s only Humala who is “trying to hide his past and his dangerous ideas” and it’s only Humala’s political career which is “due to the ‘caudillo’ Hugo Chavez.” La República has an entertaining photo from a 2000 conga line which suggests Noriega’s candidate, Keiko Fujimori, has also gotten close to the Venezuelan president in the past. Meanwhile, Peruvian writer and pundit Alvaro Vargas Llosa joined his father, novelist Mario Vargas Lllosa, this week, announcing that he is backing Humala’s candidacy. Humala needs all the help he can get right now as Fujimori’s lead has grown to six points according to most recent poll numbers.

· Mexican anti-drug war poet Javier Sicilia is this week’s interviewee on TeleSur. In Mexico, meanwhile, Sicilia received a somewhat strange endorsement from the Beltran Leyva gang, which unfurled a banner in Cuernavaca saying the poet can “count on their support.” Insight and Proceso report in English and Spanish.

· Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is interviewed this week by FP’s Elizabeth Dickinson about Plan Colombia, Twitter, and his decision to remain active in politics.

· Former congressman David Bonior (D-MI) speaks with WOLA on significant changes in Cuba after recently returning from the island. President Obama, on other hand, said this week he has not yet seen any “significant changes” in Cuba.

· Plaza Pública has a long report on the Alfonso Portillo embezzlement case in Guatemala. Portillo and a number of other former high ranking officials were acquitted last week, but the former president still faces possible extradition to the US in a separate money laundering case.

· And Colombia has quickly appointed a new ambassador to Caracas. Ricardo Montenegro, former business attaché at the Embassy, will take over for Jose Fernando Bautista who resigned at the beginning of the week because of his ties to a Bogotá construction company currently being investigated for offering bribes to Colombian politicians. Colombia Reports with more.

Colom Declares State of Siege in Peten

As details emerge, various reports this morning finger the Zetas as responsible for the late Saturday/early Sunday massacre of over two dozen rural laborers on a ranch in the Guatemalan province of Petén. In a nationally broadcast address Monday Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom suggested a drug cartel was behind the killings and said a state of siege would be declared in the province to root out the perpetrators.

According to AP, the president said he’d even personally travel to the Petén to “direct operations."

Meanwhile, the details of the gruesome killings were retold to journalists, including AP, on Monday by an individual who appears to have survived the massacre by pretending to have been killed. Another pregnant woman present at the ranch was also spared by what most now say were 30-50 assailants who arrived at the ranch by truck late Saturday. AP says the intended target of the attacks was the ranch’s owner, Otto Salguero. His whereabouts is currently unknown.

Mike Allison at Central American Politics has a good rundown of what is known about the massacre at the present moment, based on a variety of press reports. He notes that while the assassins did not identify themselves to their victims, there are some indications that the group's leader called himself “Kaibil,” the name of Guatemala’s notorious special forces unit during the country’s dirty wars of the 1980s.

Insight Crime also raises some interesting questions about who the Zetas in Guatemala actually are. El Periodico, on the other hand, looks at who the innocent victims killed Sunday were.

Today’s bullet points:

· Guatemala’s Plaza Pública reports on a new far right wing candidate in Guatemala’s election campaign, industrial magnate Ricardo Sagastume Morales, aligned with the Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN) of retired general José Luis Quilo Ayuso. The report suggests one of the Frente’s principal gripes has been the work of the UN-backed anti-impunity commission, the CICIG.

· In neighboring El Salvador, El Faro published yesterday its most significant investigative report to-date on organized crime in that country– an epic report on the so-called “Texis Cartel” operating in Salvador’s northwest and controlled by 62-year-old businessman José Adán Salazar Umaña, aka “Chepe Diablo.” El Faro’s report is based a series of intelligence reports obtained by the independent news site. The reports go back over a decade and give first-time details of perhaps the most important cocaine smuggling routes through El Salvador, connecting Honduras with Guatemala, and implicating numerous government officials and security officials.

· In Peru, Reuters with more on the addition of former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani to Keiko Fujimori’s list of informal advisers – an attempt, according to some, to distance herself from her father’s highly controversial security policies. A new issue of Revista Ideele also has a number of articles on the upcoming Peruvian second-round vote which look like they are worth reading, among them Jo-Marie Burt on the legacy of “Fujimorismo” and Gustavo Gorriti on Fujimori vs. Humala.

· AP reports that a new MINUSTAH chief in Haiti was named Monday. Replacing outgoing MINUSTAH chief Edmond Mulet will be former Chilean foreign minister Mariano Fernandez, UN Sec. General Ban Ki Moon announced yesterday.

· Colombia’s El Tiempo reports on the resignation of that country’s ambassador to Venezuela, José Fernando Bautista, because of apparent connections to the Nule group, currently being investigated in a major corruption scandal. More from Semana and Colombia Reports.

· BBC Mundo reports on the creation of a new presidential commission on gun control in Venezuela – an attempt to reduce the number of weapons in circulation in the country. According to BBC, the commission will be include officials from the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the Supreme Court, the National Assembly, the Ministerio Público, the country’s customs administration, as well as civil society representatives from NGOs working on human rights and arms control issues.

· WOLA highlights an attack on labor rights lawyer Hernán Darío in the Colombian city of Cali late last week. Darío is currently the lead lawyer in a case defending sugarcane workers who participated in a strike in 2008 from criminal charges. As a US FTA with Colombia moves toward possible approval in the coming weeks, WOLA says the shooting “underscores the continuing and serious labor rights problems in Colombia” and “calls into question whether there has been real progress on the labor rights situation” in the country

· AP mentions the first reports of independent transportation workers in Cuba beginning to unionize as part of the country’s economic reform process.

· IPS reports on Amnesty International’s country report on Brazil, released as part of its annual report last week, and highlighting the serious problems of inequality which have persisted, despite important taken to reduce poverty.

· And on Honduras, the DC-based Center for Democracy in the Americas has released a new report on the need for a new social pact in Honduras to overcome serious problems of social exclusion in the Central American country. The report comes after CDA participated as an observer to the recent National Assembly of the Honduran Resistance (FNRP).