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.

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).

Mexico Dismisses Top Immigration Officials

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.

Setbacks for CICIG's Anti-Impunity Struggle

On Monday, former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo was acquitted of embezzlement charges in a 2-1 decision by a three-person panel of Guatemalan judges. The New York Times describes the decision this morning as a major “setback” for the country’s UN-backed anti-impunity commission, CICIG, which had helped carry out the investigation of the former president, extradited back to Guatemala in 2008 after fleeing to Mexico (by way of El Salvador). Portillo was accused of aiding in the illegal transfer of some $15 million to the National Defense Ministry.

According to Guatemala’s El Periodico, former ministers of defense and public finances, Eduardo Arévalo and Manuel Maza, were also acquitted in the Guatemalan court’s Monday decision.

Nonetheless, Portillo, the leader of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004, still faces extradition to the US. Federal prosecutors in the state of New York say the former president used American banks to launder tens of millions of embezzled dollars.

On Tuesday CICIG, headed by former Costa Rican Attorney General Francisco Dall’Anese, said it would assist in any potential appeal against the former president and his associates. As quoted in the Times, the commission also expressed its disappointment, saying the decision “reflects real state of justice in Guatemala.”

That statement was followed by more disappointing news late Tuesday when, in a separate Guatemalan court ruling, all charges against the country’s director of prisons, Alejandro Giammattei were also dropped. As AP reports this morning, Giammattei was one of 19 people accused of planning the murder of seven inmates during a 2007 uprising at the country’s Pavon prison, as well as the alleged execution of three inmates who escaped from the prison in 2005. Former interior minister, Carlos Vielmann has also been charged in the case but his extradition from Spain remains pending. CICIG has accused Vielmann, Giammettei, and a handful of other former officials of collaborating with organized criminal groups who carried out the 2005 and 2007 prison killings.

Today’s bullet points:

· There’s a great deal more out today about the allegedly new information published in the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ (IISS) recent publication produced from late FARC commander Raul Reyes’ infamous laptops. AP highlights information alleging members of then-candidate Rafael Correa’s presidential campaign solicited funds from the FARC and that Correa was “aware of the solicitations.” Unsurprisingly, Correa denied those allegations on Tuesday, calling them “absolutely false.” Reuters reports more on what the new publication alleges about Venezuela-FARC links. At a presentation of the book Tuesday IISS’s Nigel Inkster, described the archive – specifically the story yesterday about alleged assassination plans discussed by Chavez government officials and the FARC – as “tantalizing but ultimately unproven suggestions.” Like Correa, the Venezuelan government, through its Embassy in the UK, reiterated their rejection of the authenticity of the FARC files Tuesday, calling them “unreliable” in a statement released Tuesday. In the Guardian, Greg Grandin and Miguel Tinker Salas offer a similar opinion. Meanwhile, perhaps the most interesting reaction of all has been that of Juan Manuel Santos’s government in Colombia. As reported by El Tiempo, the government of the man who, as Alvaro Uribe’s defense minister in 2008, carried out the strike against Reyes in Ecuador and then apparently recovered his computers, said Tuesday that it will join its neighbors, Ecuador and Venezuela, in “turning the page” on the entire matter. Vice President Angelino Garzón says the goal of the Santos government right now is to “strengthen its relations” with Venezuela and Ecuador while foreign minister Maria Angela Holguín said the government hopes the dossier does not “damage the path” currently being traveled by Colombia and its neighbors.

· The vote count in Ecuador goes on after last weekend’s referendum. While just 51% of the total votes have been tallied thus far, the Miami Herald this morning highlights the fact that two of the most controversial referendum questions – one on media regulation and another that would allow the government to create a commission to restructure the judiciary over the course of the next 18 months – are in jeopardy of not being approved. Both pollsters close to the government and Ecuador Gallup affiliate, Cedatos, have predicted the government would win on all ten questions, and in a video posted on the government’s website on Tuesday, Correa maintained that would still be the case once votes from provinces that have been traditional Correa-strongholds were finally tallied.

· More on last weekend’s anti-drug war protests from journalist Kristin Bricker at Upside Down World and CIP Americas Program director Laura Carlsen in The Nation.

· In the northern Mexico state of Durango, BBC Mundo reports that the number of bodies at a mass grave there has jumped to 180 over the last week – a number almost identical to the San Fernando graves in Tamaulipas where 183 bodies have been discovered. The report says some of the bodies have been there for three or four years while others appear to have been buried in just the last few months.

· Earlier this week the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) called on the Honduran state to give physical protection to former human rights commissioner Leo Valladares and his family, after on-going death threats and reports of being surveilled. Valladares personal office was recently broken into and ransacked, says El Heraldo.

· Also in Honduras, a group of Honduran teachers suspended from their jobs for going on strike last month now say will begin an indefinite hunger strike in front of the National Congress. Red Morazánica de Información reports.

· In Argentina, BBC on the arrest of three former policeman involved in the participating in late 1970s “death flights,” one of which involved throwing French nun Leonie Duquet and human rights activist Azucena Villaflor from a plane into the Rio de la Plata in 1977.

· In Uruguay, AP says there are new doubts about whether or not a controversial decision to annul Uruguay’s 1986 amnesty law will pass the lower chamber of the Uruguayan parliament. At least two Frente Amplio deputies now say they will vote against annulling the “ley de caducidad.” A vote on the matter – approved by the Senate one month ago – is currently set for next Thursday.

· In Chile, The Guardian on a new plan to build a $7 billion hydroelectric dam in Southern Patagonia and the opposition that decision is likely to be met with from environmental groups.

· In Brazil, Reuters with more on the claims of rights violations against favela residents in Rio as the city prepares for Olympic and World Cup infrastructure upgrades. Reuters: “Both Amnesty International and a United Nations rapporteur have condemned Brazil over evictions related to World Cup and Olympic building work, a potential embarrassment for centre-left President Dilma Rousseff who has vowed to eliminate dire poverty in Latin America's largest economy.”

· IPS reports on the public release of Cuba’s new economic guidelines (“Lineamientos,” available here as PDF) published by the Cuban Communist Party on Monday. Among the issues in the document which has been receiving most attention: a statement that Cuban authorities will “study a policy to facilitate travel abroad by Cubans as tourists.” According to IPS, the document also places particular emphasis on pursuing regional integration as a “strategic objective.”

· From Mercopress, new UNASUR Secretary General Maria Emma Mejia on the goal of making South America an integrated “continent of peace” by 2020.

· Venezuela’s El Universal interviews the early favorite to be the Venezuelan opposition’s presidential candidate in 2012, Miranda Governor Henrique Capriles Radonski.

· US President Barack Obama traveled to El Paso, Texas Monday to launch what looks like a new push for immigration reform. The New York Times and BBC report.

· And Foreign Policy with still-image video highlighting the capture of the strangest looking “tank” I’ve ever seen – apparently the former property of a criminal organization operating near the northern Mexico town of Ciudad Mier.

Makled Extradited to Venezuela with "Guarantees"

Colombian authorities handed over Walid Makled (aka “el Turk”) to Venezuela early Monday morning, ending months of speculation about whether the accused drug kingpin would be sent to the US or back to his native Venezuela. The reasons for the extradition to Venezuela are many, among them the fact that Makled faces murder charges there, in addition to charges of money laundering and drug trafficking. In the US, he would have only been charged with cocaine trafficking. The case has also been central to a thaw in Colombia-Venezuela relations since Juan Manuel Santos took office last August.

As has been widely reported in recent months (the AP today being the most recent), much of the significance of the Makled case has come from the suspected trafficker’s claim that he colluded with and bribed dozens of officials in the Venezuelan military. (The Venezuelan officials Makled has accused unsurprisingly deny those allegations). As the Wall Street Journal discusses this morning, critics of Monday’s extradition contend Makled’s claims will be little-pursued by Venezuela’s judiciary. They also say the Venezuelan government will try to prevent Makled from speaking out publicly during his trial.

On those matters, it seems we’ll simply have to wait and see. What is known so far is that the Colombian government held off on Makled’s extradition until it received a diplomatic guarantee from Venezuela saying proceedings against Makled would respect basic human rights standards, most notably his right to a fair trial. According to statements made Monday by Venezuela’s deputy minister of Citizen Security, Néstor Reverol, Makled will be granted “due process” and “will also have the opportunity to be heard.”

While unrelated to the Makled case specifically, Monday’s extradition comes as another set of uncomfortable allegations reappear around the Chavez government. The International Institute for Strategic Studies in London is set to release a 240-page book on the FARC today, entitled “The FARC Files: Venezuela, Ecuador, and the Secret Archive of Raul Reyes.” The book is based on the files retrieved from the computer of the late FARC commander, killed by the Colombian military in a controversial cross-border airstrike into Ecuadorean territory in 2008. While many of the documents in the book (and accompanying CD) have already been cited, there is some history here that Venezuelan officials are probably uninterested in rehashing. This morning the New York Times has the first news coverage to come out of the new book and searchable CD, highlighting what it describes as an often “cooperative” but also “rocky and at times duplicitous” relationship between certain elements of the Venezuelan government and the FARC going back as early as the year 2000.

The revelations come just weeks after the Venezuelan government detained Joaquín Pérez, a man whom Colombian officials allege to be a close ally of the FARC living in exile in Sweden. Perez has since been deported to Colombia at the request of President Juan Manuel Santos.

Today’s bullet points:

· Continuing in Venezuela, a meeting between President Hugo Chavez and his Brazilian counterpart Dilma Rousseff was been cancelled Monday, almost as quickly as it was scheduled. Just one day after media reports about the trip were released – outlining an itinerary that was to take Chavez to Brasilia, Quito, and Havana – the Venezuelan president said he’d be forced to postpone, citing an all-too-bizarre “wounded knee.” While Chavez and Rousseff met at the latter’s January inauguration, the two leaders have yet to hold official bilateral talks as was the quarterly custom during Lula da Silva’s tenure. By my count this is the third meeting between Chavez and Rousseff that has been cancelled in the last four months. The most recent cancellation came in late March when Rousseff postponed so that she could join Lula in Portugal.

· In Ecuador, on-going vote tallying shows much tighter than expected balloting during Saturday’s 10-question referendum. According to Reuters: “with 40 percent of ballots counted by Monday afternoon, the range of ‘Yes’ votes for the 10 questions was 44 to 49 percent compared with 41 to 44 percent for ‘No’.” Analysts do note that Correa’s margin of victory will likely grow as votes in certain rural areas where Correa’s support is strong have yet to be counted. Up-to-date vote totals from Ecuador’s electoral council can be found here.

· A day after the culmination of a four-day anti-drug war march from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, President Felipe Calderon says he would be willing to meet with organizers of the protest movement. However, the president indicated once again that he has no plans to change his current military-backed strategy against Mexican cartels nor did he address one of Sunday’s principal demands: that public security secretary Genaro Garcia Luna be replaced. New poll numbers released this week show Calderon maintaining an approval rating over 50% (54% to be precise). On questions re: the drug wars, fifty percent of Mexicans say the president’s efforts in combating drug trafficking have been “good” or “very good,” up from 46% in November 2010. Reporting from the LA Times and CS Monitor.

· Meanwhile, at the US-Mexico border, a gun battle on Falcon Lake between Mexican marines and suspected Zetas traffickers left 13 individuals dead Monday. The violent encounter occurred after marines discovered a drug camp on an island in the border lake. In late September of last year U.S. citizen David Hartley is believed to have been gunned down on the lake. His body was never recovered. AP reports.

· A group of Central American migrants freed over the last month by Mexican authorities say immigration agents are responsible for pulling them off a bus in Tamaulipas and handing them over to criminal groups. According to reports the kidnapped individuals picked out the immigration officials from photos provided to them by federal investigators this week. AP reports. On a similar note in Juarez, controversial security chief Julian Leyzoala said this week that he believes ¼ of the city’s police are colluding with criminal organizations.

· The New York Times and Wall Street Journal both look at recent efforts of Mexican regulators to break up billionaire Carlos Slim’s Latin American telecom empire. Last month Mexico’s antitrust agency fined Slim’s wireless phone company, Telcel, $1 billion while the Mexican congress also recently approved new antimonopoly legislation that, according to the Times, “raises fines for monopolistic practices and permits prison terms for executives who have been found to engage in them.” Last week, Mexico’s Supreme Court continued the assault, closing a legal loophole that Slim had used to prevent lower tariffs.

· Colombia’s El Tiempo speaks with former Colombian foreign minister Maria Emma Mejía as she officially takes over as Secretary General of UNASUR this week.

· Competing claims from the Cuban government and Cuban rights groups regarding the weekend death of dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto in the city of Santa Clara.

· The Miami Herald with a fascinating look at how Baby Doc has settled back into a quite normal life in Haiti.

· BBC and the Wall Street Journal last week report on new regional foreign investment numbers released by the Economic Commission for Latin America last week. The new numbers show foreign investment growing by 40% in 2010, with China leading the pack, particularly in Brazil where 90% of the country’s foreign investment goes toward extractive industries.

· And finally, El Faro’s Carlos Dada sits down on the apparently quite damp front lawn of Julian Assange’s Ellingham Hall residence in the UK for an exclusive interview with the Wikileaks founder. El Faro will become the latest local media outlet to begin publishing US diplomatic cables obtained by the whistleblower website next week.

Anti-Drug War March Concludes in Mexico City

Tens of thousands amassed in Mexico City’s Zócalo Sunday, the capstone to a four-day anti-drug war march that began in the city of Cuernavaca on Thursday. Much of the reporting over the weekend has focused on the man responsible for organizing the Mexico City march, Javier Sicilia. Sicilia’s son was killed in Cuernavaca less than two months ago – one of nearly 40,000 killed since late 2006 – and since then the poet and journalist has dedicated himself to organizing one of the largest demonstrations to date demanding an end to the country’s militarized drug wars. Mexico analyst and UNAM professor John Ackerman, himself a vocal supporter of this weekend’s demonstrations, is quoted in the Washington Post Sunday describing Sicilia’s organizing success as stemming from his capacity to unite a broad front – the upper class who are worried about security, the political left, the progressive wing of the Catholic church, trade unionists, and everyone in the middle who is, in Ackerman’s words, “just frustrated with the current state of affairs.”

Interestingly, the EZLN responded to Sicilia’s call for parallel demonstrations to be held in other cities around the country, organizing what looks to have been the largest simultaneous march in San Cristóbal de las Casas. As many as 20,000 people are said to have participated in that march – what the BBC suggests could be the beginning of a new Zapatista campaign.

In the Zócalo Sunday, Sicilia began to articulate the message of an anti-war coalition. He demanded the resignation of Genaro Garcia Luna, Mexico’s director of public security. Proceso, which has excellent reporting on the entire march this week, highlights the movement’s demand for a new “social pact” (the details of which can be found here) and the nomination of a “citizen candidate,” unaffiliated with any of Mexico’s three major parties, for 2012 presidential elections. (Sicilia denies personal interest in the position). Proceso reprints Sicilia’s speech in the Zócalo Sunday, underscoring the call for some sort of electoral boycott should the movement’s demands go unmet.

Beyond Sicilia, independent journalist Kristin Bricker has excellent English-language reporting before and during the four-day march on other participants. La Jornada has coverage of the march in Spanish. And MexicoReporter.com has a video report, speaking with demonstrators as they entered Mexico City Sunday.

Bullet points from the last week:

· While results have not been made official yet, Rafael Correa has declared victory in the 10-question referendum vote held over the weekend. According to BBC, exit polls show the measures passing by somewhere between 51% and 57%. Just the Facts posts the eclectic 10 questions (with commentary) which were presented to voters Saturday. Reuters focuses on powers that will be granted to Correa’s to reorganize the country’s judiciary. Among other things, the New York Times looks at complaints from media groups about a few of the referendum questions.

· In Honduras, the Supreme Court ruled last week that it will dismiss all remaining charges of corruption against former President Manuel Zelaya. On Friday, the country’s public prosecutor Luis Rubí said he would not appeal that decision, although, as Honduras Culture and Politics notes, there remains some uncertainty about whether corruption charges could be re-filed at some future date. Last week’s decisions seem to open the door for Zelaya’s return to Honduras, although in a letter to supporters released Thursday, he said “persecution” would continue if he did so.

· AP and Reuters report that the Cuban Communist Party will begin public dissemination today of the economic reforms approved at the PCC Congress last month. Copies of the document will go on sale for one peso while an extended version explaining the new guidelines will cost Cubans two pesos. More on Cuba’s reforms from José Manuel Prieto in a long essay in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books. Also, a new report from the New America Foundation’s US-Cuba Policy Initiative on economic reforms. Excerpts at the Havana Note.

· Continuing in Cuba, AP reports on the death of dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto in the central city of Santa Clara over the weekend. Fellow dissident Guillermo Farinas says Soto was detained and beaten by state security forces during a weekend demonstration and blames security forces for the death. Unconfirmed reports from doctors say Soto died of pancreatitis.

· New poll numbers show Ollanta Humala and Keiko Fujimori now in a statistical dead-heat just one month before second-round balloting in Peru. A Catholic University Poll released Saturday shows Humala polling at 40.7% with Fujimori close behind at 40.5%. An Ipsos-Apoyo poll released Sunday places Fujimori in first, at 43.8% with Humala close-behind at 42.3%. Meanwhile, reluctant Humala-backer Mario Vargas Llosa has gone all-in against Keiko Fujimori. In his Sunday column in El Comercio, the Nobel Prize-winning author accused the government of Alan Garcia of ordering the country’s state intelligence services to sabotage the campaign of Ollanta Humala. AP reports on the accusations.

· Latin America News Dispatch reports on Brazil’s decision last week to break off relations with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) after the regional body demanded Brazil halt construction of the $17 billion Belo Monte dam. In a 52-page response from the Brazilian foreign ministry, issued in late April, Brazil said it would continue with the project. Moreover, President Dilma Rousseff last week ordered Brazil’s envoy to the OAS, Ruy Casaes, to remain in Brasilia indefinitely.

· The Miami Herald reports on Arturo Valenzuela’s announcement last week that he will soon be stepping down from his position as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Valenzuela will return to teaching at Georgetown University.

· IPS reports on next steps being taken by Bolivia at the UN to legalize the coca leaf.

· The CS Monitor reports on Brazil’s extension of civil union rights to gay and lesbian couples.

· The New York Times looks at the return of crime, corruption, and congestion to Bogotá.

· Miami Herald reports on Southcom chief, Gen. Douglas Fraser’s comments last week that organized crime and drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America represent the region’s greatest security threats.

· In other commentary, Dana Frank writes in The Nation about recent teacher demonstrations in Honduras; World Politics Review talks with CEPR’s Alex Main about the formation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC; and Ruben Martinez, in the LA Times today, on the need for US solidarity with Mexicans seeking to bring the drug wars to an end.

· Finally, the New York Times on the deaths of two major figures from Latin America’s cold war past. René Emilio Ponce, a Salvadoran military leader accused of ordering the murder of six Jesuit priests in 1989, died last Monday at a military hospital in San Salvador. He was 64. And in Argentina, novelist Ernesto Sábato, the man who led the commission that investigated crimes committed by the nation’s military dictatorship and produced the commission’s famous “Nunca Más” report, died Saturday at his home Buenos Aires. He was 99.