Just days after a group of recently rescued Central American migrants identified six Mexican immigration officers as the perpetrators of their kidnappings and their eventual hand-off to criminal gangs in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM) announced Thursday it has fired seven top migration officials. The individuals include the director of migration operations in the state of Tamaulipas as well as individuals holding similar posts in six other Mexican states – Mexico state, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosi, Tabasco, and Veracruz.
The six lower-level agents fingered by the group of abductees rescued in Tamaulipas were also arrested earlier in the week.
In the state of Oaxaca, where many of the 40+ Central American migrants abducted last December remain missing, Alejandro Solalinde, a Catholic priest who runs a migrant shelter in there and helped organize last week’s anti-drug march from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, said Thursday’s dismissals were little more than a “Band-Aid” over more systemic problems. In an interview with Milenio Television yesterday (quoted in the AP’s coverage), Farther Solalinde said immigrant agents must be subject not only to dismissal but also criminal investigations.
A statement from Mexico’s Interior Ministry said the firings of state migration directors this week was just the beginning of a major immigration overhaul that would also include the removal of those migration agents believed to be involved in corruption. It looks like such decisions, however, will only be made after new state directors are appointed.
According to AP, at least 168 of the immigration institute's 5,000 employees have been fired or suspended since September for alleged abuse and corruption. At least 11,333 foreign migrants were reported kidnapped between April and September in 2010, most of them Central Americans, according to a recent report by Mexico's National Commission of Human Rights. More coverage of the Thursday announcement from the LA Times.
Today’s bullet points:
· After a number of reports from the IMF over the last two years praised Latin American governments for steps taken to prevent the Southern spread of an economic crisis, the Fund this week says the region could be on the brink a “full-blown crisis” if governments do not cut public spending and take measure to ensure monetary stability. At a conference of central bankers in Brazil, the IMF’s director for the Western Hemisphere, Nicolas Eyzaguirre, had particularly sharp words for Brazil, saying the government must act to “rein in the economy” or else its economic success “could end in tears.” Reuters calls the former Chilean finance minister’s words “some of the strongest warnings to date by a senior official of the near-term dangers posed by Latin America's recent run of prosperity.”
· In other economic news, Dow Jones reports on the World Trade Organization’s decision to accept a Brazilian proposal to begin a two-year study on the relationship between trade and currency valuation. According to Roberto Azevedo, Brazil's representative at the WTO, the decision is an historic one, as it’s apparently the first time the WTO has ever agreed to discuss the relationship between currency and trade. Brazil has blamed indirect and direct currency manipulation in both the US and China for the appreciation of the Brazilian real.
· Nation contributor Dave Zirin has a very critical up at The Nation’s website on Rio de Janeiro’s construction push ahead of the Olympic Games and World Cup. Meanwhile, ESPN publishes a long story on concerns over gangs and violence in the run-up to both international sporting events.
· Honduran President Pepe Lobo says he will order the Interior Ministry to investigate any potential assassination plots against former president Mel Zelaya. Just one day after an aide to Zelaya said the exiled former president was preparing to return home this month, Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro suggested her husband remained worried about his personal safety, should he return. The former president of Honduran Supreme Court, Jorge Rivera Avilés, called claims of an assassination plot “speculation.” In the Guardian, meanwhile, Viviana Krsticevic, executive director of the Center for Justice and Law has an opinion on Honduras worth reading today. Krsticevic criticizes the very judiciary Jorge Rivera Avilés once headed, arguing that Honduras’s readmission to the OAS should not occur until “an autonomous, unbiased and efficient judicial system” is installed which can “ensure that officials who took part in the coup are replaced” and “rule of law” restored.
· After being acquitted of embezzling $15 million in defense funds earlier this week, former Guatemalan president Alfonso Portillo has begun to fight his pending extradition to the US on a separate set of money laundering charges. AFP with coverage.
· In Chile, some 20,000 students and teachers marched Thursday in the capital of Santiago, demanding increased state funds and resources for public education. Similar protests were held in other major cities around the country. Nearly 70 individuals were arrested during the protests, some of the largest student demonstrations since President Sebastian Pinera took office. La Tercera reports.
· In Cuba, both a Cuban medical examiner and the family of Juan Wilfredo Soto say the late dissident showed no signs of physical beating after he was detained on May 5. Soto, who suffered from other health problems, including diabetes and heart issues, died shortly after his detention last week in the central city of Santa Clara. Dissidents continue to claim his death was the result of an excessive use of force by Cuban security officers, despite the statements from medical officials and Soto’s family. AP reports.
· Uruguay’s La República and El País report on alternatives being weighed by Frente Amplio lawmakers this week re: the country’s 1986 amnesty law, the Ley de Caducidad. After the Uruguayan Senate voted to overturn the law one month ago, the parliament’s lower chamber must decide next week whether it too will make a similar decision. The decision has divided the Broad Front ruling coalition, a number of whose members say voting to overturn the law would go against the will of voters. Uruguayans rejected annulling the law for a second time in a national plebiscite in 2009.
· The Miami Herald reports on this weekend’s inauguration of new Haitian President Michel Martelly while AP reports on the silence of Jean-Bertrand Aristide since his return back to Haiti in March.
· David Cole at The Nation on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives’ decision to give its first annual Human Rights Activism award to Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who famously sought to hold Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet accountable for human rights abuses in Chile but has since come under serious fire for opening an investigation into human rights crimes committed by the Franco dictatorship in his native Spain. Garzón also speaks with Democracy Now.
· And finally, both Americas Quarterly and NACLA have new issues out, both looking at hemispheric power, Brazil. Among the highlights in the former, some “Reflections on Brazil’s Global Rise,” by former Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim and a roundtable on “The New Brazil in the Changing Hemisphere.” In the latter, commentary by and an interview with eminent Brazilian sociologist and CLACSO executive secretary, Emir Sader about current President Dilma Rousseff and the foreign policy of Lula da Silva.
No comments:
Post a Comment