Non-Agenda (Honduras) Dominates OAS Agenda

After day one of the OAS’s annual general assembly, Honduras – that issue not on the official assembly agenda – has found its way atop the agenda of morning media coverage from Peru. We begin with the New York Times, which says US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton pled the case of Honduras before the OAS GA Monday. According to Ms. Clinton (whose full speech is available here), the United States condemned Mr. Zelaya’s ouster when it happened, but had since witnessed the “the free and fair election of President (Porfirio) Lobo.” The Times says the secretary also praised Lobo for setting up a truth commission to investigate the coup. “[It]’s time for the hemisphere as a whole to move forward and welcome Honduras back into the inter-American community,” said Clinton.

Leading the bloc of mostly South American countries opposed to Honduras’s re-admittance at this time, Brazilian deputy foreign minister said the Central American country’s return to the OAS “must be linked to specific means for ensuring re-democratization and the establishment of fundamental rights.” Among the specifics mentioned: creating the conditions for former president Mel Zelaya to “participate in the political life of Honduras.” [Over the weekend, US Assistant Sec. of State Arturo Valenzuela called Zelaya’s return “not a critical subject at this time” – at least for the US].

The Miami Herald has more on the issue, saying that regional leaders like Mexico argued that a more productive discussion about Honduras would occur if it were held “behind closed doors.” If done on the assembly floor, “we’d be starting a debate over a resolution which, certainly, would be very difficult to reach a consensus,” said Mexican foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa. Mexico too has been hesitant in supporting Honduras’s re-admittance to the inter-American body.

Beyond Honduras, it’s expected that at some point GA discussion will move to the issue of security and arms. According to Mexico’s El Universal, the OAS’s final declaration is to include the adoption of a “Hemispheric Action Plan against Transnational Organized Crime,” through which the foreign ministers gathered in Lima would officially request that the OAS support and coordinate capacity building and technical assistance efforts to “prevent, investigate, and eradicate organized crime” in their respective states. In his speech Monday, Secretary General José Miguel Insulza also echoed the main points of his recent inauguration address, saying “a far-reaching, modern and inclusive multilateralism that uses dialogue and agreements, not sanctions, exclusions or divisions, as its main tool” must be the OAS’s primary goal. In meeting with delegation heads, civil society groups, meanwhile, presented their concerns to the OAS. An OAS press release says these included “recommendations related to the prevention of political crises, women’s participation in social, economic and political decision-making; transparency in arms acquisition, and the inclusion of civil society in the design of environmental policies, among others.”

Also, clearly at the front of Hillary Clinton’s mind this week is the issue of Iran sanctions, and she seems determined to make that issue – to be voted on at the UN shortly – an issue at the OAS. Clinton briefly met with Brazil’s deputy foreign minister, Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, yesterday in Lima to talk about both Honduras and Iran. And, speaking with reporters, Clinton said she “fully expects Iran to pull some stunt in the next couple of days because they know sanctions are on the way.” Boz has more on what he believes is the Obama administration’s genuine support for multilateralism and Latin American regional integration – I’m more skeptical that, from an historical perspective (i.e. beyond just a comparison with the Bush II years), the rhetoric supporting multilateralism at diplomatic gatherings like the OAS is really anything new.

Beyond the headline:

· Significant news from Guatemala this morning where the head of the UN commission responsible for tackling corruption and impunity in that country, Carlos Castresana, unexpectedly resigned Monday. His reason, according to the AP: the Guatemalan government’s failure to uphold its end of the deal and his dissatisfaction with the country’s new attorney general. The Spaniard Castresana has led the much respected International Commission Against Impunity (CICIG) since 2007. But his words Monday were ones of frustration and despair. “Nothing that was promised is being done. On a personal level, I feel I cannot do anything more for Guatemala,” he told reporters. Among Castresana’s most recent frustrations was Guatemala’s decision to appoint Conrado Reyes as the country’s attorney general. Reyes is accused by some of having past ties with organized crime – allegations he denies. Castresana has also become the target of a “smear campaign” following the capture of ex-president Alvaro Portillo on money-laundering charges. Just last week, for example, a radio program alleged Castresana was romantically involved with a staffer. EFE says a replacement at CICIG (whose name has not yet been released) will arrive in Guatemala in the coming weeks. According to Castresana: “The work of Cicig will continue and the person who will replace me is honorable and independent, I can vouch for that.” A bit more from the Central American Politics blog, if interested.

· In Mexico, the number of bodies removed from a deep mine in Taxco, Guerrero continues to rise. Infolatam puts the number at 77 today. Of those, only six bodies have been able to be identified thus far. The majority are believed to be victims of organized crime.

· At another Mexican mine in the northern state of Sonora, federal police were sent in by President Felipe Calderon Monday to evict copper miners who have been on strike for almost three years, protesting health and safety issues at the mine. The Wall Street Journal says the decision is a “blow against what [Calderón’s] administration sees as intransigent labor unions.” The National Mining and Metal Workers union called the police action “illegal” and has called on organized labor to protest around the country. The union also claims that three people were injured by gunfire as police evicted miners. The New York Times says those claims cannot, however, be confirmed.

· The AP reports on other major trade union news from Bolivia were President Evo Morales was re-elected as the head of the country’s largest coca-grower’s union Monday. He’s held that position for over two decades, and while largely “symbolic,” in Morales’s words, the president has promised to continue attending union meetings.

· In Venezuela, criticisms of the recently created Centro de Estudio Situacional de la Nación (CESNA) are becoming more pronounced this week. Critics maintain that the new body, which will apparently report to the Interior and Justice Ministries is set up to limit freedom of information. Specifically, the argument is that the CESNA will have the ability to declare classified public and private information, as it sees fit. According to the head of the NGO Control Ciudadano, Rocío San Miguel (in a long piece from Spain’s Vanguardia), since “anything determined to be part of the national interest can be classified,” a “permanent state of exception” has been created. Caracas Chronicles, meanwhile, suggests that May inflation numbers, still not released in Venezuela, may be the first victim of CESNA censorship.

· In Brazil, state police in Sao Paulo arrested 17 of its own officers over the weekend on charges that they participated in death squads that killed 23 people in April of this year.

· Also from Brazil, the Economist chats with Brazil’s Central Bank chief in an online video interview. And the Wall Street Journal reports on upcoming Brazilian elections, suggesting Dilma Rouseff may be the new favorite to win come October. Explaining her recent surge, the paper says “one explanation … may be an economic forecast of 6% growth this year, as well as expanded government aid for low-income families.”

· In Argentina, the BBC reports that DNA tests have begun on the adopted heirs of the country’s Clarín media empire, Marcela and Felipe Noble Herrera, to determine whether or not they were kidnapped from individuals killed during the country’s military dictatorship. Interestingly, the two have opposed such tests, saying it’s a politically motivated campaign against their adoptive mother. The Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, however, allege that Ernestina Herrera de Noble, who currently owns Clarín, illegally adopted both children 34 years ago.

· Recent opinions include Mary Anastasia O’Grady on the Venezuelan economy in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times’ columnist Bob Herbert who recently discussed the other oil spill: Texaco/Chevron’s in the Ecuadorean Amazon. Also, the Miami Herald runs an editorial today on Cuba, saying 37 dissidents were temporarily arrested last week at the same time 26 others were in the process of being moved to hospitals nearer to their homes. And the LA Times has a very interesting editorial on what it calls a “truly historic development” in Colombia, lost amidst the presidential election. Here’s the news:

“Thanks to the work of the Cornell Law School International Human Rights Clinic, Colombia has joined the ranks of nations that provide free and compulsory primary school education. Four years of work by the clinic and by the Colombian Coalition for the Right to Education came to fruition last week when the Colombian Constitutional Court ruled that charging tuition for public elementary school was a violation of the Colombian Constitution.”

· Finally, in Washington news, via a tweet from the Inter-American Dialogue, it looks like the Dialogue’s Dan Erikson has just been appointed a senior adviser for Western Hemisphere affairs at the State Department.

A Latin American Arms Race?

Thirty-three diplomats from around the Americas arrived in Lima, Peru yesterday for the beginning of the Organization of American States’ annual general assembly. The meeting’s theme is “peace, security, and cooperation in the Americas.” And top on the agenda, reports AFP, will be issues of military spending, as well the future return of Honduras to the inter-American body.

First, on the former. Peru’s foreign minister José García Belaunde remarked over the weekend that the issue of weapons purchases was made a central topic of discussion by the host country (note: the host country is always charged with setting the agenda of the OAS’s general assembly) in order to “strengthen confidence building measures and limit arms spending.” According to figures presented by the Peruvian foreign minister, regional military spending in 2008 came in at $38 billion– a 150% increase if the four year period 2005-2009 is compared to the previous five years. Figures in the recently released SIPRI report on global military expenditure are slightly different but seem to echo a similar trend – at least if we look at military spending around the region in real terms. According to the Swedish institute, Latin America (South America + Central America and the Caribbean) registered just over $57 billion in military spending in 2009 (a 7.6% increase from 2008 to 2009 in South America and a 9.7% increase in CA and the Caribbean; both in real terms). [By comparison, North America alone spent $680 billion on the military in 2009, also a 7.6% increase in real terms from 2008]. Brazil was far and away Latin America’s most active military spender, accounting for nearly half of the region’s total military expenditures ($27.124 billion in 2009). Next was Colombia, followed by Chile and Mexico.

But as Inka Kola shows, with the aid of some very interesting graphics [more good graphs at Structurally Maladjusted], when military spending is compared to national GDP some different trends appear. Under those terms, Colombia leads the region in military spending, allocating 3.7% of its total GDP to the military in 2009. It’s followed by Chile at 3.5%, Ecuador at 2.8%, Brazil at 1.5%, Venezuela at 1.4%, and Uruguay at 1.3%. Finally, when the spending is graphed in terms of percentage increase/decrease from 2008 to 2009, it’s Uruguay who leads the region in one year military spending increases – ratcheting up its spending by 24% over the last year. The three countries which have reduced military spending from 2008 to 2009: Chile, Argentina, and most significantly Venezuela. So is there regional arms race beginning in Latin America? Arturo Valenzuela, briefing reporters before Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to the region this week, said no, the issue does not worry the United States. He may be right – but it really depends on which way you look at it.

Below the headline:

· On the second major item on the OAS’s to-do list – Honduras – the AP says the region remains divided. Discussion about the Central American nation’s return to the OAS is not on the “official agenda” this week in Peru, says Infolatam. Rather, it is expected to be discussed at either a lunch or in a private meeting of foreign ministers Monday. Speaking this weekend, Secretary General Insulza said everyone in the region agrees on Honduras’s return [to the OAS]. “The only difference,” he said, “is that some believe that should occur without any further delay while others believe it’s necessary to require further conditions” – one of those being the ability of former president Mel Zelaya to return to his home country from exile. In the New York Times this weekend, Marc Lacey also has some very good reporting on how Latin America remains divided one year after the Honduras coup. The event, says Lacey, remains a regional one.

“[A] year after one of the most unusual coups in Central American history played out in Honduras, it continues to divide Latin America and pose an unrelenting challenge to the Obama administration’s goals in the region. And despite months of crisis negotiations and halting compromises, the Honduran political standoff will still haunt a meeting of the Organization of American States that opens on Sunday in Peru.”

Besides the regional implications, much remains unstable within the Central American country. Among concerns the concerns are on-going arbitrary arrests, beatings and killings of government opponents; the murder of journalists (seven this year); and most recently the controversial dismissal of four anti-coup judges from the country’s Supreme Court. The best quote comes from truth commission head Eduardo Stein who, the Times says, has been “studiously avoiding one politically charged word to describe Mr. Zelaya’s ouster — coup.”

“In our minds and in the evidence we’ve gathered, it is clear that it was a forced expulsion of a president who had been elected by popular vote,” Stein said by telephone from Tegucigalpa. “What do you call that?”

· Another interesting article at NACLA considers the drifting apart of the United States from rising Latin American powers, most notably Brazil. The two countries, it seems, have quite different visions of a future international political order. For Brazil that means a reformed United Nations in which developing countries are given a permanent voice on the Security Council. São Paulo’s Folha even reports that Lula may have hopes of succeeding Ban Ki-Moon as the U.N. Secretary General.

· Staying on the subject of a changing world, the LA Times this morning examines new Chinese language programs in Mexico. A pilot program in Aguascalientes, Mexico is introducing elementary students to Chinese language and culture, the paper says -- a sign that Mexico, which has lagged behind other countries in the region in diversifying its economy away from US dependence, may be changing course. The LAT: “State authorities launched the pilot language program in Aguascalientes, a working-class city, in hopes of jumping on the Chinese bandwagon. As China swiftly expands its reach across Latin America, Mexico is experiencing a flurry of new Chinese investments in traditional targets like nickel mines and in newer areas like car-part factories and electronics.”

· Staying in Mexico, already 39 bodies have been pulled from the Guerrero mine-turned-mass grave, discovered late last month. That number could rise over 100 many predict. According to authorities, the mine had become a dumping ground for drug gangs and “may be the largest mass grave ever found in Mexico,” according to Guerrero Attorney General Albertico Guinto. Also, more grisly news of six dead bodies discovered in a cave near Cancún – three with chests opened, hearts removed. Authorities suspect the Zetas are responsible. USA Today has a report on cartels’ new penchant for tapping Mexico’s oil pipelines to siphon off crude, some of which is then sold into the US. The system is bringing in as much as $715 million/year to cartel coffers. And the Washington Post reports that Cancún mayor, Gregorio Sanchez, arrested last week for aiding drug traffickers, vows to stay in the race for governor in Quintana Roo. Sanchez recently called the charges against him a “political lynching.”

· Real lynchings are coming under scrutiny in Bolivia where four police officers were recently subjected to the cruel practice by indigenous groups claiming their right to carry out “indigenous justice.” According to the Latin America Herald Tribune, similar debates about the place of indigenous justice have erupted in Guatemala and Ecuador.

· In Colombia, it appears no electoral accord will be reached between Antanas Mockus and the left wing Polo Democrático. Also from Colombia, the Boston Review has a long piece worth reading by Luis Fernando Medina. The article provides an historical overview of Colombia’s decades of violence, the formation of a guerrilla groups and the Colombian “para-state,” as well as prospects for future peace.

· From The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill, additional investigative work after a recent Washington Post article discussed President Obama’s expanding covert wars noting that US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) forces are deployed in 75 countries around the world, including six Latin American countries (Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico).

· Two notes on Haiti this weekend include news that the UN Security Council backed sending an additional 680 police officers to join Haitian peacekeeping forces and a Time piece looking at the challenge of rubble removal in the country.

· At the Open Society Institute’s blog, Victoria Wigodzky discusses the IACHR’s recent report on citizen security and human rights, released in mid-May in Argentina. “The publication of this report—and the debates that it has already generated throughout the region—helps dispute the myth that mano dura (iron fist) policies are a necessary and effective solution to crack down on crime,” she writes.

· Finally, we end with numbers this morning. New approval numbers in Mexico show Felipe Calderón regaining some popular support. He’s at 59% approval, up three points since February. In Bolivia, Evo Morales has lost significant support in recent last months. His approval numbers have fallen from 70% in December to just 44% in May (source: Ipsos-Apoyo poll) – at least within the country’s major urban centers of Cochabamba, El Alto, La Paz and Santa Cruz. Election poll numbers in Brazil show Dilma Rouseff and José Serra in a statistical dead heat, at 37% a piece (source: IBOPE). And my favorite numbers of the weekend are on presidential bank accounts. The AP says Uruguayan president José Mujica’s personal wealth consists of nothing more than a 23-year-old VW Beetle whose estimated value is 1,900 US dollars. [His annual salary is $11,000 of which he gives 20% back to his political party]. On the other end, a new Univ. of Chile study says that of the $21 million former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet apparently amassed, only 10% was legitimately earned.

Mexican Organized Crime: Under (Re)Construction

On a morning of slow news, the new issue of Economist examines the “shifting battle lines” of the drug war in Northeast Mexico. The report comes from the city of Reynosa – the Mexican border city in the state of Tamaulipas whose “cut-price dentists and prostitutes” are known for having attracted “streams of Texan visitors.” That Reynosa, however, is difficult to find today, says the magazine. Until this year an “uneasy alliance” between the drug-trafficking Gulf cartel and the Zetas, the notorious gang of former Mexican special-forces soldiers who were enlisted by the Gulf cartel in the 1990s, had held at bay the sort of violence typically associated with cities like Juarez. Today, with the alliance between the Gulf cartel and the Zetas in tatters, the situation looks significantly different. And cartel members, civilians, politicians, and journalists alike have become the victims of Tamaulipas’s “re-organized crime.” Here’s how the Economist describes it:

“The schism has made the north-east one of the most dangerous places in Mexico. The border cities in this region are smaller than those further west. But the violence in Tamaulipas state … is now as bad or worse than in Juárez, reckons Jesús Cantú, a political scientist at the Technological Institute of Monterrey. Politicians who try to make a difference pay dearly. On May 13th José Mario Guajardo, a mayoral candidate in the town of Valle Hermoso, was murdered along with his son and an employee.”

The tide may just now be turning as Gulf cartel looks to be getting the best of Zetas on the northeast’s unmarked battle fields. Zeta members are deserting and new recruits are proving more difficult to find than before, says the magazine. And, interestingly, that comes as welcome news to many of the area’s most powerful drug traffickers in the process of diversifying their trafficking portfolio. According to the Economist, crystal methamphetamine is quickly becoming the drug of choice for Tamaulipas crime syndicates, requiring large “factories” for its production. Apparently the Zetas penchant for kidnapping and extortion has brought more frequent police incursions to Tamaulipas and the “business-minded” traffickers have been none too happy about this. The Economist’s lose-lose outlook: “The sooner the traffickers are rid of the troublesome Zetas, the sooner they can get on with business.”

Below the headline today:

· That story from Mexico comes out as Mexican President Felipe Calderón, doubling as the chairman of the country’s National Public Safety Council, approved a plan Thursday for all of Mexico’s municipal police departments to be subsumed under state law enforcement agencies. The plan must still be ratified by the Mexican Congress and a majority of Mexico’s 31 state legislatures and the federal district of Mexico City. According to the president, the new plan would provide much needed clarity, unity, and structure for the struggle against organized crime. In Calderón’s words: “There is no better response to criminality than institutional solutions that endure beyond administrations.”

· Also on the transnational aspects of the drug war, the AP reports on the seizure of “the largest weapons cache in a decade.” The discovery came near Laredo, Texas on Saturday where police pulled over a truck “laden with brand new assault rifles, bayonets and ammunition,” believed to have been headed for Mexico. By the numbers that’s 147 boxed assault rifles, 200 high-capacity magazines, 53 bayonets and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. The quote of the day comes from Laredo police investigator Joe Baeza, commenting on the seizure, the two men arrested, and the cargo’s presumed destination. “Two Joe Blows aren't going to buy a bunch of weapons and it stops there. We're pretty positive it was headed to Mexico.”

· Moving south, El Faro reports that Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes is planning a visit to Cuba in the coming weeks or months. No date has been set, but the trip comes after Funes re-established diplomatic relations with the island just one year ago. Among the items that will likely be on the agenda: bi-lateral medical and medicine exchanges/cooperation.

· In Guatemala, a piece at Global Post reports on the presentation of the new book La Masacre de Panzos by American anthropologist Victoria Sanford. The book presentation is notable for its location: the community center of the Guatemalan village where the notorious 1978 killings took place. Sanford’s book was published with support from the Soros Foundation of Guatemala and, says the article, “a local teachers association invited [Professor Sanford] to present it in Panzos with a panel of authors and dignitaries, including a ranking government human rights monitor.”

· Into Colombia, this week’s Economist offers its take on Juan Manuel Santos’s resounding round-one victory in last Sunday’s presidential vote. Meanwhile, the first round-two poll numbers are out (from the Centro Nacional de Consultoría), giving Santos a 61.6% to 29.8% edge over Antanas Mockus. Santos also picked up the support of approx. 85% of Liberal Party congressmen this week, according to El Tiempo. Meanwhile, in the Mockus camp, the former Bogotá mayor held private meetings with the left-leaning Polo Democrático’s candidate Gustavo Petro Thursday. Very few of the talks’ details were disclosed by Mockus following the meeting, however.

· Also in Colombia, EFE reports that a preliminary investigation was launched by the country’s attorney general’s office this week, examining Defense Minister Camilo Ospina and outgoing armed forces chief Gen. Freddy Padilla de Leon’s role in multiple extrajudicial killings carried out by the Colombian military. The investigation, part of the country’s “false positives” scandal, comes from a complaint filed on Jan. 23 by lawyer and journalist Felipe Zuleta. It also follows a recently released report on Colombia from the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions.

· At IPS, more on the new CEPAL report on Latin America’s tax system which I am finding to be quite fascinating.

· The BBC has a report on a new series of Operation Condor-related trials beginning in Argentina. The trials will bring five former intelligence and military officials before the court in relation to the murder of 65 individuals between 1976 and 1985 at the infamous Automotores Orletti detention center.

· Also fascinating new reports circulating this week reveal the previously unknown hand of the United States in the 1971 coup against Juan José Torres in Bolivia. The coup brought Gen. Hugo Banzer to power until 1978. According to researcher Robert Baird, “the only proof (until now) [of US participation in the coup] was a Washington Post report published a week after the event, which said that US Air Force Major Rober J. Lundin had advised the plotters and lent them a long-range radio. The report was never substantiated, however, and the State Department denied it immediately, asserting unequivocally that the US played no part in the overthrow of Torres. Here’s the new information Baird has dug up:

“Minutes from a July 8, 1971 meeting of the 40 Committee (an executive-branch group chaired by Henry Kissinger and tasked with oversight of covert operations) included discussion of a CIA proposal to give $410,000 to a group of opposition politicians and military leaders, money that they knew would be used to overthrow Torres. (Under Sec of State U. Alexis Johnson: “what we are actually organizing is a coup in itself, isn’t it?”) Though the committee decided to wait to hear from Ambassador Ernest Siracus (he opposed the measure) the plan was ultimately approved. The same day that the coup began in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, an NSC staffer reported to Kissinger that the CIA had transferred money to two high-ranking members of the opposition.”

· An interesting piece at Foreign Policy looks at how Brazilian ethanol could neutralize the effect of any new UN sanctions on Iran.

· Which leads to today’s opinions. Also at Foreign Policy, Alex Main of the Center for Economic and Policy Research offers his take on Latin America-Middle East relations. “Whether in the media or in U.S. policy circles, the words ‘Middle East’ and ‘South America’ are rarely mentioned together in a positive light,” says Main. Whether it’s Hezbollah in the Tri-border region, Iran in Venezuela, or now Brazil’s role in brokering a new nuclear pact with Iran, Main contends that “the U.S.'s own troubled relations with Iran and the rest of the Middle East, have strongly colored U.S. perceptions of Latin America's relations with that distant region.” In reality, however, the relationship between the two regions is better understood by the increasingly popular notion of South-South cooperation, “whereby developing nations turn to one another to develop trade and technical cooperation, and to break their economic dependence on traditional industrialized powers.” Finally, back to our lead this morning by way of a recent op-ed by Felipe Calderón’s security adviser Joaquín Villalobos, who considers the threat of Central America and the Caribbean becoming a “narco-region.” That possibility seems pretty grim. He writes:

“Central America and the Caribbean have optimal conditions to become a narco-region that could include multiple failed states, endemic and brutal violence, and migration on an even larger scale than the present.”

Haiti to Int'l Community: It's Time to Follow Through

Officials representing more than 55 countries and 35 international organizations gathered in the Dominican Republic Wednesday to discuss international reconstruction efforts in Haiti following last January’s devastating earthquake. The meetings, dubbed the World Summit for the Future of Haiti, sought to not only address the short-term needs of the country but also outline a plan for Haiti’s “long-term economic growth,” according to summit organizers.

Haitian president René Preval urged those gathered in the DR to follow through with their respective aid promises made at the international donor’s conference in New York last March. He also called on the international community to support Haitian democracy. “Haiti needs a systematic anti-seismic defense. It's called democracy,'” Préval said Wednesday. “Without political stability, without democracy, our project is doomed to fail.”

Of the 5 billion that was pledged to Haitian reconstruction efforts over the next two years in New York, very little has actually reached Haiti. Interestingly, according to both Al-Jazeera and the Miami Herald, only Brazil has followed through with its entire aid pledge thus far, having delivered $55 million to the country. Aid experts say that the country will need at least $11.5 billion in aid over the next ten years to meet recovery goals.

UN Special Envoy Bill Clinton, meanwhile, said the unanimous support for Haiti’s reconstruction that exists within the international community must translate into real actions. The goal, said Clinton, is a “self-sustaining” Haiti. In a line a number of reports are highlighting today, Clinton also added that Haiti is possibly the only subject on which the US, Venezuela, and Cuba are in complete agreement.

Below the headline today:

· A new study co-conducted by several US and Mexican government agencies says more than half of the money smuggled back into Mexico by drug cartels each year is cash which never passes through any bank account. As such, it’s “nearly invisible to law enforcement,” according to the AP. “Drug moguls can buy real estate, cars, airline tickets and just about everything else in cash, allowing their powerful businesses to easily launder the estimated $19 billion to $29 billion they earn each year selling cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana in the U.S.” Nearly 75 percent of transactions are done in cash in Mexico. That’s in contrast to just 20% in the US. And according to the study, a key element in disrupting cartel activity must be the “targeting” of cartel treasurers in Mexico who “supervise the movement of the cash as it's carried from street dealers in U.S. cities to safe houses in Mexico.”

· That study accompanies results from a new Economic Commission for Latin America report on regional inequality published last week – and reported on in Mexico’s Crónica (h/t Two Weeks Notice). According to ECLA, the amount of money collected each year in taxes has steadily declined over the last two decades in Mexico, countering regional trends. As a percent of its GDP, Mexico collected just 9.4% in taxes in 2008, down from 11.4% in 1990. Those numbers put the country in last place in the region, on par with Haiti which collected 9.5% of its GDP in taxes in 2008. [As a point of comparison, Latin America as a region averaged a tax collection rate of 18.4% of GDP in 2008, with the two largest economies in the region, Brazil and Argentina, collecting 35.5% and 30.6% of GDP in taxes, respectively].

· And finally on Mexico, the AP writes this morning that the US-Mexico border may not be as dangerous some would have us believe – at least on the US side. Using government data, the AP says the four major cities with the lowest crime rates in the country –San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, and Austin – are all near the US-Mexico border. Further, an in-house Customs and Border Protection report indicates that Border Patrol agents “face far less danger than street cops in most U.S. cities.” According to immigrant advocate Isabel Garcia of the Tucson-based Derechos Humanos, “The warnings about violence are just an excuse to crack down on migrants who want to work and be with their families.”

· On Jamaica, the New York Times reports this morning on accusations of extrajudicial killings committed by Jamaican security forces at the peak of last week’s violence in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood of West Kingston. On the matter, the Times writes the following:

“Several of the accusations emerging from Tivoli Gardens center on the conduct of officers in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, which has faced criticism in the past by human rights groups like Amnesty International for the relatively high number of people killed by police officers every year. In recent years, Amnesty found, 12 percent of killings were committed by police officers.”

· In Bolivia, US Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela spent time Tuesday meeting with Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca. According to a summary of the meetings at Just the Facts, the trip sought to restart discussions regarding a “bilateral framework agreement” that could lead to the re-establishment of full diplomatic ties between the two countries in the coming months. Such ties were cut in September 2008 after Bolivia expelled then-US ambassador Philip Goldberg. But speaking after the meeting, Valenzuela was decidedly optimistic, telling reporters he was “excited to say that we have advanced more than 99 percent toward signing this new framework agreement of mutual respect.” More from Bolivia’s La Razón.

· EFE reports today that eradication of coca has declined in Bolivia since Evo Morales took office in 2006. But seizures of cocaine have doubled in that same time period.

· Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru this week, along with Sen. Chris Dodd. The focus of their trip: learning about the region’s efforts to curb the drug trade, renewable energy, and trade.

· Meanwhile, in Washington, Venezuela was once again placed on the State Department’s list of nations who are “uncooperative” with anti-terrorist efforts. The blacklisting means the sale of defense materials, as well as the issuance of licenses for the export of weapons and technology” to Venezuela will continue to be banned.

· BBC Mundo reports on Ecuador’s efforts to sign an alternative trade deal with the European Union, distinct from the sort of free trade agreements the EU has recently signed with Colombia and Peru. President Correa, who hopes to begin negotiations with the EU this month, is calling his framework, which seeks to protect Ecuadorean producers, a “trade agreement for development.”

· More on Latin America’s call for increased South-South cooperation at the Economic Commission for Latin America’s annual meetings in Brasilia, from IPS. Also this week, Mexico assumed the rotating presidency of a very busy UN Security Council.

· El Faro has a good piece looking at Mauricio Funes’s first year in office in El Salvador.

· Finally, some opinions. Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue and Andres Oppenheimer, both in the Miami Herald, on Colombian elections. An editorial in the Washington Post rails against US cotton subsidies – a point of major friction between the US and Brazil. The US recently agreed to pay Brazil $147.3 million per year to settle the trade dispute. In the Post’s opinion, the case “laid bare” the fact that cotton subsidies are not only a “wasteful sop to special interests,” but “also an obstacle to free and fair trade that needlessly complicates U.S. relations with the rest of the world.” And in an LTE, Colombia’s ambassador to the US, Carolina Barco, criticizes the Post for publishing Juan Forero’s piece on Alvaro Uribe’s brother and his potential paramilitary ties.

Latin America and Africa: Closer than Once Thought

Nine men were charged by US prosecutors Tuesday for their alleged role in a West African drug smuggling ring that stretches across three (sometimes four) continents. This according to a Wall Street Journal report this morning which highlights the international character of those detained (a Nigerian, a Russian, a Colombian, two Ghanaians). The DEA report on the anti-drug operation (called “Operation Relentless”) which brought the drug ring down in Liberia says the following about the transnational nature of the inter-continental smuggling networks which connect the Americas, Africa, and Europe:

“During the last decade, drug trafficking organizations based in South America have increasingly used countries along or near the West African coast as trans-shipment hubs for importing massive quantities of cocaine to be later distributed in Europe or elsewhere within Africa. Through a combination of privately owned aircraft and maritime vessels, these organizations, predominantly based in Colombia and Venezuela, have transported hundreds of tons of cocaine, worth billions of dollars, to places such as Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Sierra Leone, Togo, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, and Liberia. In so doing, representatives of these drug trafficking organizations have often sought to bribe high-level public officials with large cash payments and narcotics in order to ensure the safe passage, storage, and distribution of their cocaine shipments.”

The report, along with the Journal’s coverage, also notes that those involved in the smuggling network say cocaine shipments were to be supplied by members of the Colombian rebel group, the FARC. A CS Monitor piece [note: on second glance, this piece is not so new (2009) but was for some reason up again at the Miami Herald's site earlier in the week] also looks at South America-Africa drug connections, asking whether Colombian cartels may have been behind the assassinations of Guinea-Bissau’s president and Army chief. Here’s what that piece said about the presence of Colombian cartels in Guinea-Bissau:

“In recent years, Colombian drug cartels have begun flying small planes across the Atlantic, landing on tiny islands dotting the Guinean coastline. Since Guinea-Bissau has no navy to patrol its waters, the cartels were free to unload tons of cocaine destined for Europe. The drugs were then distributed to impoverished African migrants, who would carry the drugs north by boat to the shores of France, Italy, and Spain.”

According to David Zounmenou, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Tshwane, “This recent set of killings can be explained [as] the action of the drug traffickers, who would not allow anything to get in the way or to obstruct their links with Europe.” Zounmenou continues: “Drug trafficking is not a domestic matter anymore. It affects the stability of many countries, it affects systems of governance, and it allows groups to acquire weapons.”

Interestingly, these reports on Africa-Americas trafficking links come alongside other stories in recent days which hint at deepening relations, of a very different kind, between the two continents. Brazil recently announced the creation of an international television station for Africa. At the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s (ECLAC/CEPAL) annual meetings, held this week in Brasilia, President Lula da Silva said that when he leaves his post on January 1, 2011, he plans to “work on behalf of” Latin America, the Caribbean, and interestingly enough, Africa. “The two continents,” he said, “must become continents of dignity and respect.” [He also highlighted Latin America’s newfound political independence, slammed the Washington Consensus, and praised the various economic alternatives provided by the CEPAL, with its focus on a strong state that promotes development and social equality.] African nations, meanwhile, were meeting in France this week for the 25^th Africa-France Summit. Among the demands of the continent’s leaders was a Brazilian favorite: comprehensive reform of the UN Security Council and the G-20 so that the developing world is better represented on issues of global governance.

Below the headline this morning:

· The Cuban government began moving political prisoners to jails closer to their respective homes Tuesday. The moves are part of a deal struck between the Cuban government and the Catholic Church which has been negotiating for the past two weeks with Raúl Castro. Reuters calls the deal a “modest humanitarian gesture” while family members say they hope the transfers are a “first step towards freedom for some of the island's 190 imprisoned dissidents.” A statement from the Church says six men arrested in a 2003 crackdown will be among the first to be transferred. Raúl Castro, the Church says, has also pledged that “ailing prisoners” would be moved to hospitals. [According to human rights groups, at least 26 prisoners are currently in poor health, but it’s not yet known how many prisoners will be moved in total.] And, says the BBC, the government has also promised to “stop harassing the prisoner’s wives’ group, the Ladies in White, who would be allowed to continue their weekly protest march” under the new agreement.

· Cuban musician Silvio Rodríguez arrived in New York this week to prepare for a show he plays this weekend at Carnegie Hall. He spoke to the press Tuesday. The Cuban Colada blog has bullet points on what he said, including his belief that the sentences against most political prisoners held on the island are too harsh. According to Rodríguez, a longtime supporter of the Revolution, “I think that by now a good many of them, if not all of them, should be out in the street.”

· In Washington, D.C., President Obama welcomed Peruvian President Alan García to the White House Tuesday. Trade, immigration, and “bi-lateral matters” [among them, narco-trafficking – although Reuters says “Peru’s cocaine problem” was “little mentioned”] were on the agenda, according to the AP. Obama also praised Peru as an “economic success story.” Sec. of State Hillary Clinton will be in Peru next week for the annual meeting of the OAS. She travels on to Ecuador, Colombia, and Barbados.

· With more on the Colombian elections this morning, the OAS said in a post-election communiqué that Sunday’s vote was “the most peaceful in four decades.” Compared with 2002, the Centro Integrado de Inteligencia Electoral says there was a 78% drop in “acts of violence” on election-day. AQ reports on post-round-one alliance-making. Juan Manuel Santos is seeking the backing of Conservatives and Radical Change voters while Antanas Mockus is hoping to secure the votes of the left-leaning Democratic Pole and perhaps some Liberals as well (the Liberal Party, however, has already announced it will not endorse either Mockus or Santos). And at the PBS Newshour on-line, Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue offers his analysis of Sunday’s vote and Santos’s surprising margin of victory.

· As the last 314 US troops departed Haiti, UN envoy Bill Clinton returned to the country Tuesday. His new mission, says the AP, is to “invigorate recovery from January's devastating earthquake and help millions end lives of poverty and danger.” [Tuesday’s trip was Clinton’s first since officially becoming co-chair of the committee that oversees the disbursement of $5.3 billion in international aid]. The AP says a lack of shelter remains Haiti’s most pressing need – particularly as hurricane season approaches. [On that issue, worries rose this week after experts announced this year’s hurricane season could be particularly intense because of warm Atlantic waters and a “waning the El Nino effect.”] Jacqueline Charles at the Miami Herald has more on Clinton’s visit while the Washington Post runs an editorial on Haiti, saying the US must not forget the country now that the US military is gone. “Now that the full-time presence of American boots on the ground is ending, it's critical that the administration not repeat this nation's long, sad history of on-again, off-again attention to Haiti's suffering.”

· After narrowly surviving a no-confidence vote (30-28), Jamaican PM Bruce Golding said Tuesday he plans to launch what the AP calls a “sustained assault on [drug] gangs.” No time frame for the beginning of such operations was provided, however. Addressing the parliament, here’s Golding in his own words:

“Gunmen who no longer flee when the security forces approach but engage them with vicious firepower must be confronted with the full force of the law. The time for equivocation is over.”

· In Brazil, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, Gulnara Shahinian, says slavery continues in parts of the country – practiced by large landowners, businesses (the textile industry, in particular), and private contractors.

· Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim said his country will continue to oppose new UN sanctions on Iran – but would be forced to respect such sanctions should the Security Council as a whole approve them. Infolatam, meanwhile, has a very good recap of growing tensions/differences of opinion in the US-Brazil relationship.

· According to a new study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Brazil was first among Latin American countries for its military spending in 2009. Venezuela, often criticized for its military purchases, was the country who most reduced its military expenditures in 2009, spending 25% less than one year prior, and coming in fifth in the region in terms of overall military spending (behind Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico).

· Finally, the New York Times has coverage of the devastation in Guatemala after Tropical Storm Agatha took the lives of at least 153 in the country over the weekend. El Salvador and Honduras were also significantly affected by the storm. You may also be trying to figure out how and why the now famous 330-foot-deep sink hole formed in the middle of Guatemala City. CS Monitor has the brief science behind the phenomenon.

Round One: Advantage Santos

Juan Manuel Santos cruised to a round-one victory in Colombia’s presidential elections Sunday. However, the former defense minister and heir to current president Alvaro Uribe did not reach the 50% mark needed to prevent a run-off vote against second-place finisher, Antanas Mockus. The two men now prepare to square off once again on June 20^th. [In a distant third place was Germán Vargas and in fourth, Gustavo Petro. Noemí Sanin finished in fifth place].

The latest vote tally reported in the New York Times says Santos secured just over 46% of Sunday’s vote against Mockus’s 21.5%. In fact, Santos swept every state in the country, save one and the capital of Bogotá, both of which fell into the Mockus column. Those numbers came as a major surprise to observers and analysts after numerous pre-election polls showed the two men running neck-in-neck going into Sunday. [There appear to be no major reports of electoral fraud].

Analyzing the results, Cynthia Arnson of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington says the vote signals the co-existence of two demands: stability, on the one hand and clean government, on the other. [More pre-election analysis from Cynthia Arnson at CFR]. But it’s the former which seems to have won out over the weekend. Speaking to supporters late Sunday, Santos declared his first-round victory a victory for President Uribe. “Mr. Uribe, this is your triumph and of all those who want to defend your legacy,” he said. “Colombia has voted to defend your achievements and proposals.” More on the Uribe legacy in Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s weekend column in the Wall Street Journal, based on an interview with the outgoing Colombian president.

Below the headline:

· In Jamaica, security forces have yet to detain drug don Christopher “Dudus” Coke, although violence seems to have decreased over the weekend. The New York Times’ Kareem Fahim examines how the Jamaican state is attempting to replace the void left by arrested Jamaican drug lords in various parts of Kingston where drug lords had become the principal providers of social services and security. More good reporting on Jamaica from the Financial Times this weekend while Orlando Patterson, professor of sociology at Harvard, had an opinion worth reading in the New York Times on the matter. Patterson says the situation in Jamaica brings to the forefront questions about the co-existence of democracy and violence. He writes:

“Jamaica, to its credit, has by global standards achieved a robust democracy. However great the violence during elections, voting is fair and governments change at the national level regularly and fairly smoothly. The judiciary, if overburdened, is nonetheless independent and relatively uncorrupt. There is a vigorous free press, and a lively civil society. Freedom House has continuously categorized the island as a ‘free’ country.”

He concludes that the presence of both democracy and violence is hardly an anomaly in the region. Rather, it is becoming the norm – and one which must be considered trans-nationally:

“Jamaica, though an extreme case, is more in line with other democracies of the hemisphere, including Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico and even Brazil, where the treacherous joint transition to democratic maturity and economic security has been accompanied by horrendous levels of crime… The problem of Jamaica might not seem so insoluble if Americans were to have a more sympathetic understanding of the transitional plight of this little country, brought on in large part by its unwavering struggle toward a more mature and equitable democracy.”

· In Mexico, the BBC says between 20 and 25 bodies were found in an abandoned mine in the state of Guerrero, Mexico over the weekend. Investigators say the bodies were thrown into the mine over several months and are likely the work of drug gangs. In Northern Mexico, meanwhile, the Washington Post reports on the new presence of pirates on Falcon Lake, a massive reservoir on the US-Mexico border, popular with sportsmen. “The pirates claim to be ‘federales,’ or police, but instead are brigands -- with the letter ‘Z’ tattooed on their necks and arms -- from the notorious drug cartel Los Zetas,” says the paper’s William Booth.

· Bolivian President Evo Morales spoke of increased narco-infiltration within the Bolivian state. Among the institutions being co-opted by traffickers, Morales singled out the police, judiciary, and the fiscalía, says BBC Mundo. The president also placed blame squarely upon the US for the increased presence of drug traffickers [ditto from Fidel Castro in a column in Granma this weekend]. Ass’t. Sec. of State Arturo Valenzuela will be in Bolivia today, but little is known about Valenzuela’s official agenda. The Andean Information Network suggests that the assistant secretary “jumpstart efforts to reach and sign a new bilateral framework agreement between Bolivia and the U.S.”

· Also in Bolivia, news that the famous Spanish jurist, Baltasar Garzón, currently suspended from practicing law in Spain, will be advising the Bolivian government in its judicial reform process.

· The Washington Post last Friday reported on an April 20^th letter from the US to Brazil and Turkey, regarding Iran negotiations. Brazil claims the letter signaled one-time US support for the negotiations. The US has a slightly different take. As El País reports, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at the Brookings Institution Thursday, said Iran was using Brazil to “buy time” and allowing Iran to buy time “makes the world more dangerous.”

· In Haiti, the Wall Street Journal says the majority of US troops stationed in the country are on their way home today, “leaving United Nations forces and civilian groups to help the country rebuild its devastated capital in the wake of January's deadly earthquake.” The exit is in accordance with an agreement between the Haitian and US governments, reached several months ago. According to State Dept. spokesman, PJ Crowley, “The military played an essential short-term role, but now this is getting back to where the focus is on development, and that expertise rests in the civilian sector.”

· Argentina’s La Nación publishes an interesting interview with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. Correa has some interesting points about what he sees as the principal similarities and differences between himself and Hugo Chavez (Chavez has a clear geostrategic plan while Correa’s focus is Ecuador’s national economy, for example) and the pleasant surprise of new Chilean president Sebastian Pinera who he says shares his own “Latin Americanist” vision of regional integration.

· In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega last week hinted that he would not be opposed to dissolving the National Congress in order to overcome the confrontation between the opposition and the FSLN.

· Over 100 have been killed by a deadly tropical storm that struck Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador over the weekend.

· And in the New York Times, a fascinating Saturday profile of young Dutch FARC militant Tanja Nijmeijer who, the paper says, may have risen to the top of the guerrilla group’s inner circle as the personal assistant to top commander, Mono Jojoy. The 32-year-old Nijmeijer (nom de guerre: Alexandra) joined the FARC in 2002 while teaching English in Bogotá.

· Finally, a few opinions. Roger Noriega in AEI’s journal, The American, supports adding Venezuela to the state sponsor of terrorism list. In the Miami Herald, Andres Oppenheimer writes of “new political winds” passing over the region. “After a decade of radical leftist populism,” he argues, “we are entering a new era of centrist pragmatism.” A similar opinion is offered from Infolatam which looks at similarities between Mockus and Chile’s Marco Enriquez-Onminami – both of whom represent a “new politics” (heavy on youth participation and social networking), according to the news service.