Former Leaders Call for Paradigm Shift in Global Drug Policy

A group of former world leaders says current global anti-drug policies have “clearly failed” in their objective to curtail both supply and consumption of illegal drugs. In a 24-page report, available here and set to be officially unveiled later today in New York, the Global Commission on Drug Policy recommends new steps be taken toward the legalization of certain drugs while also demanding an end to the “criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but do no harm to others.”

In addition, the commission calls on governments around the world to be more willing to experiment with alternative drug policies and legislation.

The BBC notes that the report is particularly critical of the US, saying the country must abandon anti-crime approaches to drug policy and adopt strategies rooted in health treatment and human rights.

“We hope this country (the US) at least starts to think there are alternatives,” says Cesar Gaviria, adding that the report’s authors do not believe US polices have been evolving in a way that is “compatible with our (countries’) long-term interests.” Gaviria says countries like Mexico and Colombia have an important role to play in pushing for such a discussion to begin in the US.

Responding to the report, the office of US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske rejected those claims, as well as many of the commission’s recommendations about legalization. “Making drugs more available - as this report suggests - will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe,” the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy said in statement released Wednesday.

Among the 19-person commission are former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, Brazil's ex-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria. The group also includes former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, current Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, Latin American writers Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, the EU's former foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and former US secretary of state George Schultz.

The Global Commission has been co-funded by Richard Branson of Virgin Group Ltd., George Soros's Open Society Foundation, the Instituto Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and the Centro Edelstein de Pesquisas Sociais in Brazil. It’s a continuation of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and published its report on drug policy in Latin America in 2009.

The Guardian notes that the release of the Global Commission’s report is accompanied in the UK today by an open letter from a variety of legal experts, academics, artists, performers, and politicians to PM David Cameron, urging Britain to undertake a “swift and transparent” review of its current drugs policies. The signatories call for new drug decriminalization policies similar to those implemented in Portugal in 2001. The letter comes on the 40th anniversary of Britain’s 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act.

Today’s bullet points:

· In a 32-1 vote in Washington, the OAS voted to restore Honduras to the inter-American organization Wednesday. The Miami Herald reports. Ecuador was the only country to vote against restoration at the present moment. With far-right opinions about Zelaya’s return over the weekend – a move which opened the door to Wednesday’s vote -- Roger Noriega and José Cardenas obsess over Hugo Chavez at Fox News and Foreign Policy, respectively. At Upside Down World, meanwhile, Chuck Kaufman of the Alliance for Global Justice writes on last week’s congressional briefing organized by the Americas Forum and entitled “How 21st Century Socialism Subverts Democracy in Latin America” – perhaps a sign of things to come, in Honduras or elsewhere, from the Latin Americanist Right.

· The Nation, in partnership with Haiti Liberté, has begun releasing stories from the Haiti archive of diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks. Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives report yesterday on the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of Washington and US petroleum companies to prevent then-President Rene Preval from joining Venezuela’s regional discount oil initiative, PetroCaribe. The full story is worth reading at The Nation.

· In Peru where the influence of Hugo Chavez has been much-written about in recent months, Jo-Marie Burt and Coletta Youngers profile left-leaning nationalist candidate, Ollanta Humala (See their profile of Keiko Fujimori here). The two authors highlight the coalition of intellectuals and former political figures who have lined up behind Humala, many out of fear over the possible return of fujimorismo. Last week former president Alejandro Toledo was the latest to come out publicly for Humala. Many figures in the country’s human rights community have made similar pronouncements. Perhaps the most unlikely Humala supporter has, of course, been Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, who announced this week he will no longer allow Peru's El Comercio to reprint his biweekly column, calling the conservative paper “a propaganda machine” for Keiko Fujimori. El Comercio responds here. AFP, meanwhile, reports on a decision by indigenous activists in Peru’s Puno region to halt anti-mining protests against a Canadian silver company until after Sunday’s vote. The region, says the news agency, is considered to be a Humala stronghold.

· Lula da Silva is on a regional tour this week. After visits to Nicaragua, Panama, and the Bahamas, the former Brazilian president is meeting with Raul Castro today in Cuba before going on to Caracas. For his part, Hugo Chavez re-appeared in public Tuesday after being down for weeks with a bum knee. The Venezuelan president said he will be heading to Brasilia for his first official meeting with Dilma Rousseff on June 6 before going on to Ecuador and Cuba.

· The New York Times says final approval has been granted by Brazil’s top environmental agency for the construction of the huge Belo Monte hydroelectric dam. The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) has been among the dam’s critics. In mid-April Brazil withdrew the candidacy of the former Human Rights Minister Paulo Vannuchi for a seat on the IACHR because of the inter-American body’s request that the project be halted.

· CNN says a Spanish Court has approved the extradition of former Guatemalan interior minister Carlos Vielmann back to Guatemala to face murder charges stemming from incidents at two prisons in the country in 2005 and 2006. Vielmann will likely appeal the extradition ruling.

· Reuters with a long report on what drug wars in Monterrey could presage for the rest of Mexico.

· AP on the arrest of a top FARC commander, Guillermo Torres, alias "Julian Conrado," by Venezuelan authorities this week.

· Insight on the discovery of some 200 FARC “uniforms” in the possession of on-duty members of the Ecuadorean military. Three soldiers have been arrested.

· The Guardian says a Chilean judge will examine claims that agents of Augusto Pinochet injected poison into Neruda's stomach while he was treated in Santiago's Santa Maria clinic for prostate cancer less than two weeks after the Sept 11, 1973 coup against Salvador Allende. Chile's Communist Party called for the investigation after the poet's former driver said agents of the dictator injected the 69-year-old on the day he died.

· El Faro on Salvadoran Mauricio Funes’s proposal to implement a system of obligatory military service for “at risk” youth in his country.

· Colombia’s El Tiempo on the final approval of the Ley de Victimas. The bill now heads to the president’s desk for signing.

· Human Rights Watch’s Daniel Wilkinson pens an essay in the New York Review of Books reviewing Claudia Lopez’s new edited collection “And They Refounded the Nation” about parapolitics under Alvaro Uribe.

· And finally three human rights press releases: HRW condemns the imprisonment of six Cuban dissidents convicted in recent weeks for distributing pamphlets criticizing Raúl and Fidel Castro in Havana’s Revolutionary Square. Amnesty International calls on the Venezuelan government to investigate the murder of a seventh member of a single family killed over the weekend in Aragua. Aragua police officers are suspected to have been involved in each of the killings, says Amnesty. And the Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a grenade attack late Sunday on the offices of the Mexican newspaper Vanguardia in the Coahuila city of Saltillo.

Wikileaks: Honduras AG Says He Never Issued Zelaya Warrant

In private meetings with the US Embassy shortly after the June 2009 ouster of Mel Zelaya, the chief justice of the Honduran Supreme Court, Jorge Alberto Rivera Avilés, and the country’s attorney general, Luis Alberto Rubí, claim they never issued a “request for an arrest warrant” nor an actual “arrest warrant” for the then democratically-elected Honduran president. According to diplomatic cables from the US Embassy in Honduras obtained by Wikileaks and released this morning by El Faro, Rubí met with the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa in the hours immediately following the 2009 coup, telling officials there that he had only ordered the “confiscation of polling materials” and “had not asked for Zelaya’s arrest” in the days before his kidnapping and expulsion.

Shortly thereafter, however, Rubí’s story came out to the public looking significantly different. In a press conference on June 30, the attorney general praised the ouster of Zelaya for its supposed “legality” and maintained that the action had been taken after the issuance of an international arrest warrant against the president. The alleged documentation calling for the president’s arrest also went public leading one to believe the aforementioned Honduran officials were either being less than honest in his talks with the US Embassy or that the coup regime fabricated documents attempting to legitimate the coup after the fact.

In an interesting passage of one cable cited in the El Faro report, US ambassador Llorens also cites conversations he had with three prominent Honduran businessmen Antonio Travel, Emilio Larache, and Emin Barjum shortly after the coup. Similar to Rubí and Rivera Avilés, the men note the “illegal” nature of the coup but support the coup regime no less under the notion they could successfully wait things out until November elections “restored a constitutional government.”

A July 24 cable from the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, obtained by Wikileaks and released to the public earlier this year, said there was “no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch.”

Speaking at a press conference after returning to back to Honduras this weekend, Zelaya called for a thorough investigation into his 2009 ouster.

Today’s bullet points:

· More on Honduras as the OAS prepares to vote on the readmission of Honduras to the inter-American body today. FNRP deputy coordinator Juan Barahona says the FNRP opposes the return of his country to the OAS this week, arguing the Lobo government must first prove it can comply with all the points of the Cartagena Accord before its brought back into the fold. Speaking with TeleSur, Barahona says that to allow Honduras back into the OAS this week would allow the coup d’etat of 2009 to be “left in impunity. Just as Honduras’s expulsion from the OAS came through consensus, its re-integration should so too come through consensus, says Barahona. Ecuador has said in recent days it opposes Honduras’s re-admission this week, but added it will abide by whatever decision the OAS reaches today.

· On human rights in Honduras, Human Rights Watch is calling on the Lobo government to ensure government officials stop attacking the credibility of human rights prosecutors in the country. The head of the country’s Human Rights Unit, Sandra Ponce, was the most recent target of such attacks. After opening an investigation into the deaths of seven alleged youth gang members in Ciudad Planeta, near San Pedro Sula, Deputy Secretary of Security Armando Calidonio publicly criticized Ponce and her Unit for targeting the police during their investigations. Since those statements, Ponce has received numerous threats.

· In a letter from the US House to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 87 Democratic members of Congress say the Honduran government must be more actively “pressed” by the US to end abuses by state security forces. The group also calls for the suspension of U.S. aid to the Honduran military and police until “mechanisms are in place to ensure security forces are held accountable for abuses.”

· Regarding Honduras’s political future, various suggestions this week that former first lady Xiomara Castro de Zelaya could be a candidate for president in 2013. AFP reports after an interview with Castro de Zelaya. In its coverage of this weekend’s return of Zelaya, IPS says Castro de Zelaya will run. This morning Democracy Now also airs an interview with the former first lady. And finally Lisa Sullivan of the School of the Americas Watch was among those who accompanied Mel Zelaya back to Honduras Saturday. She posts a report-back from this weekend’s historic event, highlighting its regional significance.

· Colombia’s El Espectador has a good interview with Colombian foreign minister Maria Angela Holguín, the woman responsible for implementing quite significant shifts in that country’s foreign policy over the last nine months. TeleSur, meanwhile, interviews the woman who preceded Holguín, current UNASUR Secretary General Maria Emma Mejía, about regional integration.

· Ahead of elections in Peru, journalist Gustavo Gorriti of IDL-Reporteros speaks with WOLA’s Adam Isacson about Sunday’s vote and why much of the country’s intelligentsia has opted for Ollanta Humala. Jo-Marie Burt and Coletta Youngers, meanwhile, offer a closer looker at Keiko Fujimori and legacies of Fujimorismo. And Ollanta Humala sits down for an interview with TeleSur.

· As an autopsy gets underway to determine the definitive cause of death of former Chilean president Salvador Allende, a file from a military court’s investigation into Allende’s death suggests the former leader “may have been shot from a small firearm before he shot himself with a machine gun from under his chin.” The New York Times and AP report in English; Chile’s CIPER with the longer story in Spanish. AP also reports on new calls that the death of Chilean poet and longtime Communist Party activist Pablo Neruda be investigated. Neruda died on 23 September 1973, less than two weeks after the coup against the Allende government. The cause of death was then said to have been prostate cancer.

· The body of a possible witness to the killing of two land reform activists in the Brazilian Amazon was found Sunday just one day before the Brazilian government said it will increase policing in the Amazon rain forest in an effort to stem such attacks. The group Catholic Land Pastoral says more than 1,150 rural activists have been killed in Brazil over the past 20 years.

· AP and BBC on a brief visit to Bolivia Tuesday by Iranian defense minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi. Vahidi is wanted by Argentina for allegedly helping to organize the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 which killed 85 people. Vahidi was in Bolivia for the inauguration of a defense academy for ALBA member states. Late Tuesday, Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca wrote a letter to Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman saying that Vahidi had left the country at the request of the Bolivian government.

· Reuters says four Cuban men who threw anti-government leaflets in Havana's Revolution Square were sentenced Tuesday to up to five years in prison by a Cuban court. Elizardo Sanchez of the independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights has asked Amnesty International to put the men on the group’s list of “prisoners of conscience.”

· The International Crisis Group has a new report assessing the work of Guatemala’s UN-backed anti-impunity commission, CICIG.

· And the LA Times notes the passing of longtime Guatemalan human rights advocate Ricardo Stein. The Times calls Stein one of the “key architects” of the 1996 Guatemalan peace accords. In neighboring El Salvador during the 1980s, he helped create the Center for Information, Documentation and Support for Research at the Jesuit-run University of Central America. From 1998 to 2006 he directed the Soros Foundation Guatemala. Stein was 62.

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.

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.

Massacre in El Peten

Officials now say at least 29 individuals were killed on a coconut ranch in the Northern Guatemalan province of Peten, their bound, decapitated, and tortured bodies discovered early Sunday. AP calls the mass killings “one of the worst massacres” since the country’s nearly four-decade long civil war came to an end in 1996. Similar comments from police spokesman Donald Gonzalez who referred to the murders Sunday as the “worst massacre we have seen in modern times.”

The LA Times says the killings were carried out by a “small army” of some 200 gunmen who, according to witnesses, arrived at the ranch on buses but have otherwise been unidentified.

The victims all appear to have been laborers on the Peten ranch where they were found. Police are investigating whether or not the mass killings are connected to the Saturday death of Haroldo Leon, the brother of late Guatemalan drug boss Juan Jose “Juancho” Leon, himself killed in 2008. The Zetas, have long been suspected of being involved in the latter’s murder, which is said to have allowed the Mexican drug gang to gain control over transshipment routes in neighboring Alta Verapaz.

Officials found one wounded survivor of the massacre – an individual who says he evaded murder by pretending to have been killed. No details have yet been released about what specifically that individual is said to have witnessed.

More Spanish-language coverage from Guatemala’s El Periódico, highlighting the suspected relationship between Sunday’s massacre and the recent killing of Heraldo León.

This weekend’s bullet points:

· In Port-au-Prince Saturday, former pop singer Michel Martelly was sworn in as Haiti’s next president. AP reports while the Miami Herald looks at the various challenges the new president faces. The outgoing head of Minustah, Edmond Mulet says Martelly inherits a “failed state,” adding that in the coming days Martelly is likely to discover that “the state institutions, ministries, government agencies that should implement the vision and plans of the new government cannot deliver.” On Sunday, those close to the new president said the first major personnel announcement would be nominating businessman Daniel-Gerard Rouzier as the country’s next prime minister. Haiti’s parliament must approve the nomination. The prime minister will also serve (with UN special envoy Bill Clinton) as co-chair of Haiti's Interim Recovery Commission.

· Mexican immigration officials said Sunday they are prepared to subject migration agents to psychological, drug, and lie detector tests as part of a new effort to combat corruption in the country’s National Immigration Institute (INM). At a press conference Sunday, National Immigration Institute Commissioner Salvador Beltran del Rio said 40 agents are currently being investigated for a variety of abuses – this after the dismissal of seven regional immigration directors late last week. AP reports.

· The number of bodies at a mass grave site in the northern Mexico state of Durango jumped again over the weekend to 218, making it the largest such grave to have been discovered thus far in the country, according to AP.

· In the Mexican state of Oaxaca, AP says violence “motivated by an electoral dispute between indigenous communities” has left at least eight dead. The incident occurred near the town of Santiago Choapan.

· The New York Times profiles Mexican poet and anti-drug war organizer Javier Sicilia. According to the Times, Sicilia has “achieved what others have failed to do” in provoking “serial public responses from the Calderón administration” about the government’s prosecution of the drug wars. Calderón met with Sicilia privately one week ago, the Times reports. According to Sicilia, the Mexican president admitted in the meeting that he had “made a mistake” while adding “I can’t go back now.” Meanwhile, CNN reports that Sicilia and others are now in the process of planning a follow-up demonstration to last week’s anti-drug war march from Cuernavaca to DF. The demonstration is set for June 10 in Ciudad Juarez. The plans come as the Calderon government announced Thursday it would be sending hundreds of new troops to the border state of Tamaulipas in the coming days.

· Major protests against a planned hydroelectric dam in Southern Chile brought some 30,000 demonstrators to the streets of the Chilean capital of Santiago over the weekend. BBC Mundo reports that as many as 70 individuals were arrested during the demonstrations. A new poll shows that nearly ¾ of Chileans oppose the dam project.

· AP reports that a new effort to declassify US intelligence documents related to Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship has failed in the US House. An amendment re-proposed by New York Democratic congressman Maurice Hinchey, calling for the U.S. intelligence agencies to declassify all of their files on Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship, was rejected in a 214-194 vote Friday. A similar bill proposed by Hinchey in 1999 aided in the release of similar intelligence files on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the wire reports.

· In Uruguay, the left-leaning Frente Amplio coalition decided during a party plenary Saturday that it would go ahead with a contentious parliamentary vote later this week about whether or not to annul the country’s 1986 amnesty law. The so-called “Ley de Caducidad” continues to protect human rights violators from prosecution for abuses committed during the country’s 1973-1985 dictatorship. Notably, the decision to hold the vote was opposed by the country’s President, José Mujica, vice president Danilo Astori, and former FA president Tabaré Vázquez, all of whom fear the issue could cause irreparable divisions in the coalition. Uruguay’s two opposition parties have long opposed annulling the law. Mercopress reports in English; Uruguay’s El País in Spanish.

· Amnesty International released its 2011 annual report last week. The Americas section can be linked to here.

· In Ecuador, it looks increasingly like all ten of the referendum questions voted on last week and supported by President Rafael Correa will be approved. Current vote tallies available here as vote totaling continues.

· Two new polls from Ipsos and CPI in Peru show Keiko Fujimori continuing to extend her slim lead over Ollanta Humala before a June 5 runoff. The former has Fujimori obtaining 51.1% against Humala’s 48.9% while the latter poll shows Fujimori at 52.9% compared to Humala’s 47.1%. AP also reports on the most recent addition to Ms. Fujimori’s campaign team: former NYC mayor and one-time Republican presidential contender, Rudy Giuliani. The wire says Fujimori announced over the weekend that Giuliani was advising the campaign on citizen security issues and would be coming to Peru briefly sometime over the next few days.

· Finally, the New York Times front-page report Sunday on Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s new mercenary army in the United Arab Emirates has Latin American implications. According to the Times, an unspecified number of Colombians are among the 800 or so mercenaries who have been trained by retired American soldiers and veterans of the German and British special operations units and the French Foreign Legion employed by Prince’s new company, “Reflex Responses,” or “R2.” More on the Colombia-specifics from Colombia Reports. For other articles in recent years on itinerant guns-for-hire from Colombia, see the AP and CNN on Colombian mercenaries appearing in post-coup Honduras, as well as US-trained Colombian military and police officials working for Blackwater in Iraq, as reported by the LA Times and Mother Jones in 2005 and 2008, respectively.