Ecuador -- and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

Ecuador recently became the first in the world to ratify the “Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” Amnesty International praises the decision with a new press release yesterday, saying the protocol will allow “individuals and groups within the country to seek justice from the United Nations should these rights – which include the rights to adequate housing, food, water, health, work, social security and education - be violated by their government.” The human rights group is now urging others to “follow Ecuador’s example,” as part of the organization’s “Demand Dignity” campaign which seeks to “end human rights violations that drive and deepen global poverty.” Here’s Windy Brown, Amnesty’s Senior Director of International Law and Policy:

"Access to justice is an essential right for victims of all human rights violations. We encourage all countries to follow Ecuador's positive example and ratify within the shortest possible time (…) States that ratify the Optional Protocol will establish a vital tool for people, in particular for those living in poverty, to hold their governments accountable. They should also follow through on this commitment by strengthening national mechanisms for the enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights."

In many ways, Ecuador’s lead follows in a long history of Latin American commitment to economic, social, and cultural rights. (Latin American delegations, for example, were the principal advocates of the inclusion of such rights in the Universal Declaration in the late 1940s). But as Amnesty International argues in its press release on the matter, world-wide, “economic, social and cultural rights have historically been neglected and given less emphasis than civil and political rights.” Again, AI:

“States agreed at the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights that ‘The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair an equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis’. The Optional Protocol is a tangible development towards this end.”

Beyond that headline:

· First, mention of a new press release from the Washington Office on Latin America which denounces a series of death threats it and a number of its partner organizations in Colombia have received in the last month. The threats come from individuals claiming to be affiliated with the paramilitary group, the “Black Eagles.” In the most recent email, WOLA says it and 70 organizations were identified as “military targets” by the group. And according to WOLA senior associate Gimena Sanchez, “Since WOLA received the last death threat, two prominent defenders of the rights of victims and internally displaced persons were murdered.” In the WOLA statement Sanchez says:

“WOLA will continue to raise the critical plight of more than 4.5 million internally displaced Colombians. We will continue to bring Afro-Colombian, Indigenous and the internally displaced's voices and proposals for constructing a peaceful Colombia to U.S. policymakers. We will not be stopped by those who believe in resolving differences with a gun.”

Other organization’s which also being targeted by the Black Eagles include: the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), the Institute of the Study of Development and Peace (INDEPAZ), the national victims' movement (MOVICE), the Association for Internally Displaced Afro-Colombians (AFRODES) and Afro-Colombian organizations in the states of Chocó, Nariño and Cauca. WOLA’s demand is for the U.S. State Department to not certify that human rights conditions for military assistance have been met until “the current wave of killings and threats against human rights defenders, Afro-Colombian, Indigenous and internally displaced persons advocates are fully investigated and the perpetrators are brought to justice.”

· Also, from information posted at Just the Facts, a recent piece from Colombia Reports highlights the declining overt US military presence in Colombia over the last three years. “According to the latest available statistics,” says the magazine, “in March 2010 there were 227 U.S. soldiers and 257 contractors in Colombia - 30% of the total permitted (800 military personnel and 600 contractors). But as production of cocaine rises in Colombia’s neighbors, like Peru, a new BBC report examines whether or not Plan Colombia can really be called a “success.” The piece also begins to ask what future US aid to Colombia will look like under a new government – to be elected this weekend.

· In Mexico, meanwhile, the AP says this morning that the US has plans to extend the Mérida Initiative after 2012 Mexican elections in order to “support long-term reforms” of the country’s “security apparatus.” That news comes by way of a Dept. of State proposal sent to the US Congress this week, at the request of the Senate. The AP also got a full copy of the report and says DOS plans to put “more emphasis on institution building and support of local and state governments” while “continuing to combat arms traffickers, money launderers, and cartels” that operate within the US. DOS also says $420 million has currently gone into funding equipment, training, and technical assistance in Mexico.

· A couple of other stories again highlight the tremendous bloodshed the country has experienced in the last week – perhaps the most ever in a single week – as well as the Calderón government’s response.

· From the Latin Americanist, news that a number of Central American migrants were among those killed in a train crash in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico. The event highlights the issue of migration in the sub-region, which an Amnesty International report from late April discusses in-full.

· In Honduras, the IACHR has condemned the murder of journalist Luis Arturo Mondrágon, mentioned here yesterday. Good analysis of the killing can be found at Honduras Culture and Politics, which highlights the on-going state of conflict in the country. In what appears to have been a personal altercation, former Zelaya aide, Roland Valenzuela, was also shot and killed Tuesday night, at a hotel bar in San Pedro Sula.

· The Real News recently sat down with Larry Wilkerson, currently the chair of the New America Foundation’s US Cuba Policy Initiative (the two-part interview is here and here). Wilkerson lays out the state of the US debate over Cuba policy – and the strong case for serious change. [Former Sen. Mel Martinez does the opposite in the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin American Advisor this week]. He also mentions the need to cooperate with Cuba on issues related to the BP oil disaster, which Rory Carroll looks at with a good piece in The Guardian this morning. Venezuela, Carroll writes, is being called in by the Cubans to help prepare for the arrival of oil on Cuban shores. And, says the report, “Should oil reach Cuba it will be the latest twist to decades of toxic diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington.”

· A handful of reports look at the issue of regional integration which continues atop Latin America’s political agenda this week with UNASUR meetings in Ecuador. Brazil’s Lula da Silva and Peru’s Alan García also entered into a new set of bi-lateral relationships on “scientific and technical cooperation, territorial regulation and border integration, agricultural production and the comprehensive management of water resources” yesterday. And in Paraguay, the issue of Venezuela’s entrance into MERCOSUR has hit opposition from conservative sectors of that country’s parliament.

· In the Washington Post, a report on Hugo Chavez’s and his economic policies – coming out of an interview Chavez gave to the Financial Times. Excerpts here. Chavez on inflation: “Certainly, inflation is still high. But in the previous decade inflation reached 80 percent on average. There was a year when it was 100 percent, in 1996.” Chavez on poverty: “Poverty when we arrived was close to 60 percent … Today, it's 23 percent. Extreme poverty was 25 percent -- today it's 5 percent.” And Chavez on growth: “Venezuela had 22 consecutive quarters of growth in GDP … In the last six years, growth was 7.8 percent. . . . There was a year when growth was 12 percent. Only China was higher.”

· The IACHR’s worries about media freedom in Venezuela, reported on yesterday, may have a somewhat unlikely ally. From El Colombiano: the president of Telesur (and former communications minister), Andres Izarra, called the sentencing of journalist Pancho Perez last week “an indefensible atrocity” on his Twitter page last week.

· And lastly, two recent opinions from the Right – Jaime Daremblum at the Weekly Standard and Frank Perley in yesterday’s Washington Times. Best read with Professor Greg Weeks’s analysis here.

IACHR: Worried about Freedom of Expression in Venezuela

In a letter to Venezuelan foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission’s commissioner for Venezuelan matters, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, and the body’s Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Catalina Botero Marino, expressed their “deep concern over the deterioration of the situation of the right to freedom of expression” Monday. The IACHR’s worries come after a series of events from the last week. First, journalist Francisco Perez was convicted of “defaming” public officials in a column exposing alleged corruption in the Carabodo mayor’s office. He was sentenced to over three years in prison, fined, and banned from practicing journalism last week.

Second, the IACHR cites a new arrest warrant issued against two outspoken Chávez critics: Globovisión owner, Guillermo Zuloaga, and his son of the same name. As reported previously, the warrant cites the illegal storage of 24 sport utility vehicles as the alleged crime. The possibility of declining judicial independence seems to be the inter-American body’s biggest concern. Pinheiro and Botero Marino write that, “the arrest warrant was issued [against the Zuloaga’s] on June 11, eight days after the President of Venezuela criticized the judicial branch because Zuloaga was still free.” [Update: on Zuloaga case this morning, the AP reports that the media mogul has fled Venezuela to an undisclosed country.]

And thirdly, the OAS’s human rights body says a June 7 incident in which demonstrators launched Molotov cocktails at the offices of Cadena Capriles is also troubling. The IACHR is particularly worried that the event may have been triggered by the statements of public officials against various media outlets and journalists. Again, the IACHR, in its own words: “The absence of model investigations and punishments in the serious and constant attacks suffered by media outlets and journalists in Venezuela due to their editorial stance or news coverage is worrisome.” More on this all, including an AP video report, at the LAHT.

Meanwhile, in what various reports have dubbed a “rare interview with a foreign journalist,” Hugo Chávez recently sat down the BBC’s Stephen Sackur, host of HARDtalk. The interview aired yesterday with a write-up and short clip here. The interview coincides with the upcoming release of Oliver Stone’s new documentary about the Latin American Left, South of the Border.

And, finally, while the IACHR had tough words for Venezuela in the area of media expression, the UN’s Refugee Agency representative, Mohammed Alwash, was also in the country Tuesday. According to EFE, Alwash had nothing but words of praise for the government’s “generosity” toward some 200,000 Colombians who have been displaced to Venezuela by on-going conflict in their own country. “I don’t feel that Colombians or other refugees face any problems of persecution in Venezuela – to the contrary,” said Alwash.

Beyond the headline:

· News on Mexico continues to fill morning papers today. Reuters reports that at least 15 suspected cartel members, likely linked to US-born drug lord Edgar Valdez Villarreal (aka “La Barbie”) were killed in a shootout with Mexican soldiers Tuesday near the city of Taxco. The Washington Post says “hundreds” have been killed over the last week and highlights the tough words President Felipe Calderón had for the United States in the 5,000 word statement he released Monday. The Post quotes Calderón:

“The origin of our violence problem begins with the fact that Mexico is located next to the country that has the highest levels of drug consumption in the world," Calderón wrote. "It is as if our neighbor were the biggest drug addict in the world.”

On Tuesday, that tough line continued when the president interrupted primetime television coverage to speak to his nation directly. His words suggest the Mexican government is in full-on war mode. “This is a battle that is worth fighting because our future is at stake,” Calderon said during the address which lasted 10 minutes “It's a battle that, with all Mexicans united, we will win.”

· Meanwhile, the AP adds to its reporting on Mexico with a separate piece on the country’s new restrictions on dollar cash transactions – what the news service calls “some of the toughest [banking] restrictions in its history.” “Tourists and Mexicans without bank accounts will be limited to exchanging a maximum of $1,500 per month,” says the AP. The measure is an attempt to fight money laundering as between $10 and 29 billion in “suspicious cash flows” enter the country each year. Much of that money is suspected of entering cartel coffers. The Wall Street Journal has more on the new banking rules, which some say may be very difficult to enforce. According to the paper, the government will limit “the payment of loans and services as well as well as foreign-exchange transactions in cash to between $1,500 and $7,000 a month.” The WSJ:

“Under the new rules, individuals can make deposits or payments for up to $4,000 a month through their bank, while those same transactions are limited to $1,500 in the case of foreigners and Mexicans who don't have bank accounts. Cash dollar deposits and payments by businesses will be restricted to those operating in tourist and northern border areas, and limited to $7,000 a month.”

· Also a correction to something published here yesterday. For those interested in getting on Molly Molloy’s Mexico email list, her correct email is mollymolloy@gmail.com.

· Moving on, Just the Facts gathers some interesting new numbers on security and narcotrafficking. The numbers include stats on Bolivia’s struggle against drug traffickers (also discussed by the BBC this morning); murder rate figures from Central America; and the aforementioned Mexico drug war death tolls.

· One of those countries highlighted in the Central America numbers is Honduras (58 murders/100,000 inhabitants). And one of the most worrying trends there over the last year has been a spike in attacks on journalists. As the AP reports today, the 9^th journalist this year was killed this week. Radio host Luis Arturo Mondragon was murdered by two gunmen Wednesday night, near Tegucigalpa. Colleagues says Mondragon backed the 2009 ouster of Manuel Zelaya but the police have no motive nor suspects in the case as of yet. The murder follows news that Karol Cabrera, another journalist who’s been the target of recent attacks, was granted asylum in Canada.

· In Guatemala, outgoing CICIG head Carlos Castresana made public Monday some of the corruption evidence his commission has against the now ex-attorney general Conrado Reyes. An AFP report here has a few of the details.

· Meanwhile, in Argentina, 1980 Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel testified for the first time in court against those who tortured him some three decades ago. While able to recount the violence committed against him, Perez Esquivel said too much time has passed for him to actually identifier his torturers. Perez Esquivel is one of various witnesses in the trial of 14 former prison officials charged with crimes against humanity at the Unit 9 torture center.

· An official from the Vatican arrived in Cuba yesterday and is expected to meet with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, “as well as take part in a church conference where Cuban intellectuals, including several exiles from the United States, will discuss key issues on the island.” This according to Reuters. Meanwhile, DC-based groups working to end the Cuba travel ban and trade restrictions have put together a terrific new set of resources, including talking points and public statements. See WOLA or the Center for Democracy in the Americas for all the information.

· Canada’s House of Commons passed a new free trade agreement with Colombia Monday. The Senate will now offer its final stamp of approval. The Globe and Mail writes that “A contentious aspect of the agreement will see the Colombian and Canadian governments each assess the impact of the deal on human rights in each other's country – a clause rights groups (including Amnesty International) say lacks independent scrutiny and fails to spell out consequences should abuses occur.” Eric Farnsworth has the case in favor of the agreement at AQ while, at NACLA, the case against the accord is up. Also, meeting with Colombian officials last week, US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton suggested she’d be working for a similar US-Colombia trade deal in Washington.

· In Brazil, news from Bloomberg that the government has approved “higher-than-expected” increases in pension payments.

· An finally, after recent reports that Uruguay’s José Mujica personal savings consist of a1987 VW Beetle – estimated value $1,960 – news today that the Uruguayan president has decided to sell the presidential vacation residence in the posh balneario of Punta del Este. The government will be putting the extra funds to good use, says Mujica – setting them aside for a new housing plan for low-income families, recently unveiled by the government.

Mexico's Bloodiest Days Yet

The 24-hour period between last Thursday and last Friday is being called the bloodiest 24 hours of Felipe Calderón’s three and a half year presidency. According to the New York Times’ Marc Lacey, 85 individuals were killed over the course of those 24 hours. And the wave of killings prompted a response from President Calderón. It wasn’t necessarily what you may have expected, however. Here’s how the Times describes it:

"Mr. Calderón responded with his most extensive defense of his administration’s drug war, a 5,000-word missive published on the presidential Web site and in local newspapers that shifted some blame for violence to previous administrations and to the United States and insisted that backing down was not an option."

“If we remain with our arms crossed, we will remain in the hands of organized crime, we will always live in fear, our children will not have a future, violence will increase and we’ll lose our freedom,” the paper quotes the president as saying.

But analysis of the president’s response had only just begun when news of more mass killings interrupted. In Zitácuaro, a town in the state of Michoacán (a stronghold of La Familia), the Wall Street Journal says at least 12 federal police officers were killed and dozens more injured in a shootout with suspected cartel gunmen. In a separate incident in Chihuahua, three officers were killed while on patrol. And, in a Sinaloa prison, 28 inmates were killed, along with three prison guards, when detained cartel members led a jail uprising.

More than 22,700 individuals have now been killed, according to government numbers, since Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006. In New Mexico, a university librarian, Molly Molloy, has been keeping her own tally on the number killed in Mexico’s bloody drug wars. The Wall Street Journal profiles her count this morning, which puts drug-related murders in Ciudad Juarez alone at over 1000 just this year. Apparently Ms. Molloy also has a useful email list to which she sends out news, numbers, and analysis of the Mexican drug war to over 300 subscribers daily [a Hemispheric Brief for just Mexico? On the New Mexico State Library website, it says you can just send Molloy an email at mollymolloy@gmail.com if you’d like to join her Mexico mailing list.]

Beyond the headline:

· The Miami Herald reports on rising military expenditures in Latin America, one week after the topic was discussed at the OAS’s general assembly in Lima, Peru. It begins with a discussion of Ecuador’s rising military budget (SIPRI says military purchases have risen 240% there from 2000 to 2009). According to Peruvian President Alan García, the host of last week’s meetings, “the cost of maintaining military bases in South America over the last five years has been $125 billion.” He maintains that with just $35 million of that money, drinking water, healthcare, and education could be provided to some 10 million Latin American families. As an interesting point of international comparison, the SIPRI report released a few weeks ago also notes that worldwide military purchases are up 49% over the last decade. In Latin America, such expenditures have risen 79% over that same period. Finally, the paper highlights that there was no mention in last week’s OAS declaration of new US military bases in Colombia – a controversial issue for most in the region.

· In Quito this week, new UNASUR Secretary General Nestor Kirchner is meeting with congressional presidents from around the region ahead of this weekend’s Summit of Parliamentary Presidents. The group will put together an agenda for increasing cooperation among the region’s various national parliaments while also discussing “options for a new South American financial architecture,” developments related to the Bank of the South, and the possibility of a regional payments compensations system. According to Infolatam, a draft of what would be the summit’s final declaration was approved by consensus yesterday. It’s focus: approval of treaty that would set in motion the creation of a UNASUR parliament. According to the president of Ecuador’s National Assembly, Fernando Cordero, “There is no doubt that that we have the political will to make a huge step forward, with optimism and maturity, toward strengthened integration.”

· In Colombia, AP news from yesterday that a fourth FARC hostage was released yesterday, in addition to the three others already reported on here.

· On Haiti, Al-Jazeera has a video report on the problems of human trafficking in the country. The annual US government report on trafficking “singles out” Haiti on the issue for the fifth year in a row. Also on Haiti, the AP has a new piece on how private foreign firms are salivating over reconstruction contracts, which have not yet been awarded. One of the companies which has been most open about its desire to make big money on reconstruction in Haiti has been AshBrit. “The company has formed a joint venture with the GB Group, a conglomerate run by one of Haiti's wealthiest men, Gilbert Bigio, and established partnerships with a number of smaller construction firms,” the AP says.

· From Venezuela, the New York Times this morning reports on Venezuela-Cuba military ties which are “raising concern among critics of [President] Chavez.” In an interview with the paper, former Chavez aid and now retired brigadier general, Antonio Rivero, says, the country is “at the mercy of meddling in areas of national security by a Cuban regime, which wants Chávez to remain in power because Chávez gives them oil.” Carlos Romero, a political scientist at the Central University in Caracas puts the number of Cubans working with the Venezuelan military at around 500. But the impact of the Cuban military in Venezuela is frequently difficult to measure. Rocío San Miguel, a legal scholar who works on military affairs in Venezuela notes that “Cuba doesn’t sell weapons systems, setting it apart from the military cooperation agreements Venezuela has with Russia or China. What Cuba sells is intelligence and strategic planning, based on 50 years of experience in keeping a repressive regime in power.”

· Also, on rights issues in Venezuela, the AP says anti-Chavez media mogul Guillermo Zuloaga appears to be in hiding after state authorities issued a warrant for his arrest last week. And Human Rights Watch posts its statement before the UN Human Rights Council on declining judicial independence in the country. HRW highlights the case of Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni, who remains in pre-trial detention

· These reports comes as new Datanalisis poll numbers show Hugo Chavez’s popularity back on the rise over the last month. The president’s approval numbers shot back up to 48% for May, up six points from April. And while I don’t typically find the pro-Chávez site Venezuela Analysis to have the most interesting analysis, I recommend two recent interviews posted there, which give interesting insights about why/how Chávez remains an appealing figure to many Venezuelans. One focuses on the “comunas” system, another on the Chavez-centeredness of the Bolivarian project.

· The EU has said it will delay any revisions of its Cuba policy until September, allowing on-going discussions between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government to proceed further.

· The AP reports that the world’s two richest men, Bill Gates and Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim, are teaming up to donate $150 million “to fight malnutrition, dengue, malaria and other health problems in Mexico and Central America.” Each man has pledged $50 million to the new initiative while the Spanish government has said they will match the donations with $50 million of its own.

· A new study from Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation says at the current rate, by 2014 just 8% of the country’s population will remain in poverty. That would mean slashing the number who currently live in poverty from 30 million today to just 15 million four years from now. Structurally Mal-adjusted, meanwhile, has a good breakdown of recent unemployment numbers from Latin America, as reported by the CEPAL. While most saw marginal rises in unemployment numbers last year, Uruguay was the only Lat Am country which continued to reduce unemployment during the financial turbulence of the last year.

· Is the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador the new School of the Americas? A recent piece in Argentina’s Página 12 raises the question after two Argentine police officers traveled to El Salvador to take part in what the paper calls “counter terrorism and counter narcotics” coursework.

· Finally, in Chile, President Sebastian Pinera is under more criticism for comments made by his allies on the far Right. This time, however, it’s the president’s own brother, José, a former minister in the Pinochet government. Speaking with the Argentine paper, Perfil, the BBC reports on José Pinera comparing the trajectory of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government to that of Adolf Hitler.

Resurgence of Peruvian Coca

In a piece in the New York Times this morning, Simon Romero writes that coca production is “surging” in Peru. And what the paper calls “a major repositioning of the Andean drug trade” may soon push the country ahead of Colombia as the world’s number one exporter of cocaine (a “distinction” Peru held for much of the 1980s). Interestingly, Romero adds that the re-expansion of coca production comes as both Colombian and Mexican cartels push deeper into Peru. In addition, the country has seen the re-emergence of two factions of the Shining Path, also competing for control of the lucrative cocaine trade. The words of Gen. Juan Zaraté, charged with overseeing Peru’s eradication efforts, demonstrate the feeling of hopelessness among many counter-narcotics officials in the country. “The struggle against coca,” he says, “can resemble detaining the wind.”

The resurgence of the cocaine trade in Peru has many analysts invoking the so-called “balloon effect”: the idea that successful anti-drug efforts in one location merely squeeze production and/or trafficking to other areas. The statistics tell the story. Here’s what Romero writes:

The increased cultivation in central Peru contrasts with the situation in Colombia, where cultivation fell 18 percent in 2008, according to the United Nations. In Peru, cultivation climbed 4.5 percent that year, capping a decade in which areas under cultivation had increased 45 percent since 1998. Cultivation is also rising in Bolivia, though that country remains third in overall production.

According to historian Paul Gootenberg, author of the book Andean Cocaine, there’s plenty to blame in Washington’s anti-drug policies. “Washington’s policy of supply-oriented intervention inevitably improves the efficiencies and entrepreneurial skills of traffickers,” he says. And as the paper writes, while Washington announced a new drug plan in May that emphasizes prevention and treatment in the United States, it has “left financing for eradication projects in the Andes largely unchanged, despite debate over whether such efforts can sharply restrict the supply of cocaine or significantly increase the price in the United States in the long run.”

Beyond this morning’s headline:

· In Colombia, news, again from the Times, that three hostages held by FARC rebels were rescued by some 300 Colombian military personnel in the remote southern region of Guaviare this weekend. The three individuals rescued were all Colombian soldiers captured by the FARC in 1998. One of the men, Gen. Luis Mendieta, was thought to be the highest-ranking captive still held by the rebel group. The successful operation was announced by Colombian officials Sunday. The FARC still holds some 18 members of the Colombian security forces. More details and video of the announcement at El Tiempo and El Espectador.

· Two other significant stories from Colombia today. First, from the Miami Herald, a report on the struggle for social aid facing the country’s internally displaced. The paper says the Colombian government “officially recognizes that 3.3 million Colombians have been displaced by violence since 1997.” [Human rights groups like Codhes, the principal Colombia rights organization that works on issues of displacement, say as many as 4.9 million have been displaced since the mid-1980s, “including 2 million in the past eight years.”] But the government is increasingly turning away such individuals from government social aid agencies like Acción Social – what many rights groups call “an effort by the government to exclude people from the system, to try to make the problem go away.” In 2009, 43 percent of those who declared themselves as “displaced” were rejected when applying for government aid. In 1997, the average inclusion rate had been around 80 percent, says the paper.

· And from the Washington Post this weekend, Juan Forero reports on the 30-year sentence handed down against Col. Luis Alfonso Plazas Vega for his role in disappearing 11 individuals during the 1985 siege of the Palace of Justice. Both Amnesty International and the UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights, Navi Pillay, applauded the decision last week – urging President Alvaro Uribe to respect the ruling. But the Post’s reporting examines the story “from below,” profiling the “tireless” work of Catholic Priest-turned-investigator, Javier Giraldo, in helping to bring to justice those responsible for abuses committed during the siege – as well as various other human rights violations in the country. Time and again, Giraldo has been attacked by the Uribe government for his work [Most recently, Uribe himself called the priest a “useful idiot” for his role in bringing out accusations of collaboration between paramilitary groups and Uribe’s brother, Santiago]. But, the work Giraldo has been indispensable for many rights groups. “He’s incredibly important -- a moral figure who is not linked to any armed groups,” says Gimena Sanchez, a Colombia specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America.

· In neighboring Venezuela, a new arrest warrant against media magnate, Guillermo Zuloaga, was issued by Venezuelan authorities Friday. According to the AP, “Intelligence agents arrived at a home owned by Guillermo Zuloaga seeking to arrest him and one of his sons Friday night, but their whereabouts were unknown.” The accusations against the president and majority shareholder of the anti-Chavez Globovisión stem from allegedly keeping “24 new Toyota sport-utility vehicles” stored at a home owned by Zuloaga. According to Chavez officials, that falls under the category of illegal “hoarding.” Zuloaga, who also owns several car dealerships, says he keeps the cars at his home out of fear of being robbed. As the AP notes, the attempted arrest of Zuloaga came on the same day Venezuelan journalist Francisco Perez was sentenced in a separate case for “slandering” the government. A columnist for the paper, El Carabobeno, Perez “called it a blatant violation of free speech and said he would appeal.”

· In Cuba, state officials freed one political prisoner Saturday and began transferring six others to jails closer to their respective homes [Update: LAHT reports this morning that five of the six transfers have taken place, as of Monday morning]. The release and transfers are part of a deal negotiated with the Roman Catholic Church, and the AP calls it “the most important sign yet that the government may be softening its hard line stance on organized dissent.” The individual released, the wheelchair bound Ariel Sigler, was one of 75 individuals detained in a 2003 crackdown. IPS has more on continuing discussions between the Church and the Cuban government – this ahead of a four-day annual conference organized by the Church, which this year will go beyond Church issues alone to also discuss “the economy, migration and the relations between Cubans at home and abroad.” Also, word from the AP that US and Cuban officials will hold a new round of immigration talks in Washington “within days.” The meetings follow similar discussions held in Havana last February.

· From the drug war in Mexico, the New York Times reports on the gruesome massacre of 19 men at a drug rehab center in Chihuahua last Thursday night. The Wall Street Journal reports on a recent wave of abductions of PEMEX workers and accusations that drug cartels are behind the kidnappings. The paper writes: “The abductions mark a twist in Mexico's fight against drug gangs, raising worries that cartels are increasingly infiltrating parts of the company in order to smuggle oil products.” And this morning the AP reports on the arrest of a former homicide detective, suspected of becoming a “top enforcer” for a US-born trafficker in Mexico. Irvin Solano, former state police detective, allegedly recruited hit men and procured weapons for Edgar Valdez Villareal (aka “La Barbie”), one of Mexico's most-wanted cartel suspects. Solano was arrested last Friday in the central state of Morelos.

· In Brazil, debate has erupted over a new oil revenue sharing bill which would divide oil profits equally among all the country’s states. However, the bill is unlikely to become law, says the New York Times, as President Lula da Silva said over the weekend that he plans to veto it, should the bill reach his desk.

· Opinions. The LA Times ran an editorial on Brazil over the weekend, saying the Obama administration must not let a growing list of political differences with the South American power derail the full US-Brazil relationship. In the Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O’Grady also has Brazil on her mind. She’s less diplomatic, however, calling Lula a “resentful, Third-World ankle-biter” with “lunatic foreign policies.” [Brazil’s vote against Iran sanctions at the UN being her most recent “evidence.”] She also argues that it’s on foreign policy issues where Lula plays to his left wing base. Of the differences between the US and Brazil (and much of the region for that matter), Honduras still remains one. The Journal takes a stab at that issue as well today, anointing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton its newest ally for her words on Honduras last week. The Journal., in its own words:

“While she still refers to Mr. Zelaya's removal as a ‘coup,’ it is impossible to ignore the deeper message contained in her remarks: The Chávez method of destroying democratic institutions using street mobs is not a model for regional peace and prosperity. Her remarks were also a welcome response to Brazil, which has been pursuing an increasingly anti-American foreign policy and has championed Mr. Zelaya."

429 Arrested in US/Mexico Drug Raids

In a coordinated effort that crossed some 16 states, US law enforcement officials arrested 429 individuals Wednesday, all of whom are accused of participating in “smuggling and transportation networks” run by Mexican drug cartels. Speaking to reporters Thursday, US Attorney General Eric Holder called the raids a “very significant blow” to the capacity drug traffickers working within the United States. According to the New York Times, Holder also labeled the sting the “most extensive and successful” ever. And beyond the arrests made, the paper says $5.8 million in cash was seized along with 2,951 pounds of marijuana, 247 pounds of cocaine, 17 pounds of methamphetamine, 141 weapons and 85 vehicles.

The Washington Post’s coverage of the event, the apparent capstone of a 22-month inter-agency/cross-border investigation (“Project Deliverance”), adds that 2,200 individuals have been arrested in the US over the last two years, as part of the operation – among them Carlos Ramon Castro-Rocha, a notorious heroin trafficker from Sinaloa who was detained by Mexican authorities in late May [The LA Times says Castro Rocha’s extradition to Arizona is pending. He faces $4 million in fines and a life sentence.] Wednesday’s mass raids also included 15 people in the Washington, DC area, “charged with running a cocaine trafficking network that funneled drugs from Mexico to Virginia and three other states.”

Meanwhile, in Mexico Thursday, security forces announced the arrest of an important Zetas leader, Hector Raul Luna Luna. Luna Luna was detained in the city of Monterrey by Mexican security forces. But “in response, writes the BBC, “gunmen hijacked cars and temporarily set up at least 10 roadblocks in Monterrey.” Armed men also launched attacks on various Monterrey police stations following Luna Luna’s arrest.

Beyond the headline:

· The AP reports that Guatemala’s Constitutional Court has removed recently appointed Attorney General Conrado Reyes “amid allegations of corruption.” According to the wire service, the ruling means Reyes “must hand the reins of the Attorney General's Office back to an interim top prosecutor who was in charge before his nomination.” On Monday, Carlos Castresana cited Reyes’s appointment as one of the reasons for his resignation from the UN-backed CICIG. On the same day of the court’s decision, suspected gang members dropped off four human heads in front of the Guatemalan Congress and around other parts of the capital city, along with messages warning against a crackdown on organized crime.

· Also on drugs and security, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton finished her Lat Am / Caribbean visit with a stopover in Barbados Thursday. Clinton, participating in meetings that there with regional foreign ministers, announced the administration’s new $124 million Caribbean Basin Security Initiative. “We all know well that addressing transnational security challenges in the 21st century requires a comprehensive approach,” the AP quotes Clinton as saying. The Washington Post has more on the new US-funded security initiative in the Caribbean, a region the Obama administration now apparently refers to as the United States’ “third border.” The report emphasizes Clinton’s description of new security efforts in the Caribbean as an extension of other US-backed plans in Colombia, Mexico, and Central America.

· On the first of those countries, Just the Facts posts interesting new data and figures on the US military presence in Colombia. “The original July 2000 ‘Plan Colombia’ appropriation stated that a maximum of 500 U.S. military and 300 U.S. citizen contractor personnel could be in Colombia at any given time. This was changed in January 2002 to 400 military and 400 contractors, and increased again in October 2004 to 800 military personnel and 600 contractors,” says Adam Isacson. But data recently released by the State Dept. to Just the Facts shows “an appreciable downward trend in both military and civilian presence since the high points of 2005-2007.”

· Meanwhile, on electoral politics in Colombia, new poll numbers from Gallup and the Centro Nacional de Consultoría both give Juan Manuel Santos a commanding over Antanas Mockus one week before next Sunday’s runoff. Santos, according to Gallup, leads Mockus 66.5% to 27.4%. The Centro Nacional de Consultoría poll gives Santos a 60.8% to 28.3% edge.

· Also, a report from the AP looks at the sentencing of retired army colonel Luis Alfonso Plazas to 30 years in prison this week. Plazas was charged for his role in the disappearance of 11 people in 1985, following the storming of the Palace of Justice to retake it from leftist rebels.

· In Cuba, 74 opposition activists sent a letter Thursday to members of the US Congress, declaring their support for an end to the US travel ban on Cuba and an increase in US food exports to the island. “We share the opinion that the isolation of the people of Cuba benefits the most inflexible interests of its government, while any opening serves to inform and empower the Cuban people and helps to further strengthen our civil society,” the letter reads. Signers of the groundbreaking letter include dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez, the hunger striker Guillermo Fariñas, and Cuban human rights leader Elizardo Sánchez, and Oscar Espinosa Chepe. More from the BBC and the Havana Note.

· The Wall Street Journal reports on an end to electricity rationing in Venezuela. “We are now coming off of our electricity diet,” said Hugo Chavez, announcing the changes Thursday. Speaking of diets, the Economist has a piece critical of Chavez’s food policies in the country.

· And finally, another Economist report this week looks at citizen security policies in Brazil’s favelas. Focusing on Rio (and the famous shantytown, City of God, more specifically) the magazine says the area is experiencing “a renaissance” of sorts.

“Last year the police took control of Cidade de Deus—this time for keeps, they say. A force of 318 officers, backed by 25 patrol cars, is based in a new community-police station in a side street between two fetid, litter-strewn drainage channels. The result has been dramatic. In 2008 there were 29 murders in Cidade de Deus. So far this year there has been just one, and it involved a beating rather than a firearm, says José Beltrame, the security secretary in the Rio state government who is in charge of policing in the city. Other crime has fallen too.”

Interestingly, the piece adds that, under the city’s “pacifying police units,” “the police’s objective is not so much to abolish the drug trade as to drive the armed gangs from the streets, and thus to open the way for other branches of the state … The authorities are trying to consolidate security with legality and infrastructure” – what the Economist calls an “experiment, albeit a promising one.”

Whispers of a Coup

We’re just 18 days shy of the one year anniversary of the 2009 coup d’etat carried out against the government of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. And, as various reports over the last week indicate, coup rumors are swirling once again. This time, however, President Porfirio Lobo Sosa is the target and a small cadre of unnamed National Party leaders (possibly in collaboration with sectors of the military) is the group under presidential suspicion.

The AP has the first English language report I’ve seen on the matter thus far. It’s short but quotes Lobo who Wednesday told potential golpistas in somewhat cryptic of terms that “I'm warning you that I know who you all are. I have information, and you were wrong about me.” Lobo said the words were directed toward three leaders within his own party, but names he did not provide. The head of the party, Fernando Anduray, did respond, however, calling Lobo’s warning “imprudent.” Nevertheless, the AP continues, security for Lobo, his family, and his closest advisers was doubled Wednesday.

Honduras Culture and Politics has a wrap-up of coup rumor stories which found their way into all the Honduran papers yesterday. Proceso Digital, for one, highlights a directive Lobo issued to all governmental ministries Tuesday demanding that they neither align themselves with the far right (Unión Cívica Democrática) or the left (Frente Nacional). In this morning’s papers, stories on the matter highlight a speech given yesterday by the head of the Honduran Congress, Juan Orlando Hernández. Tiempo says Hernández promised that the body would not lend its support to any plot seeking the removal of Lobo Sosa from office. Hernández also rejected charges from other members of the Honduran Congress, accusing him of meeting with the military to discuss the possible removal of Supreme Court chief justice, Jorge Rivera Avilez.

Many congressmen are also now calling on President Lobo to reveal the names of alleged coup plotters.

Perhaps the strongest words of the day come from Celín Discua, head of the nacionalistas in Congress, quoted in Tiempo as saying: “There are extremist groups here [in Honduras] that look like Hamas, never changing their positions.”

Behind the headline:

· Hillary Clinton was in Colombia yesterday, continuing her Latin American tour after the OAS General Assembly in Lima, Peru. Her husband joined her for this leg of the trip in which the Sec. of State pledged on-going support for Colombia as it heads toward a change of leadership. According to the AP, Clinton met with outgoing President Uribe, as well as the two candidates (Santos and Mockus) who face off in a June 20 run-off. On questions about Venezuela, and potential FARC-Venezuela links, Clinton said that “Colombia is the best judge of the threats it faces and the way that it wishes to go about meeting those threats.” But, in what the AP calls “an apparent reference” to Hugo Chavez, Clinton added that “I want to underscore for anyone who is listening or watching that the United States will stay a strong partner with Colombia in meeting the security needs that Colombia faces.” Chavez’s response (which he apparently performed in song): “She’s free to like me or not. But I don’t like her either.”

· Clinton’s visit came as the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) released its latest annual survey on global murders of trade unionists. Of the 101 unionists killed in 2009, the ITUC says 48 were Colombians (22 of which were high level union leaders). That number was part of a 30% increase in trade unionist murders around the world, when compared to 2008 statistics. In addition, the next three countries on the list are all Latin American countries as well. Sixteen were killed in Guatemala last year, twelve in Honduras, and six in Mexico, the group reports.

· The UN Security Council voted 12-2 in favor of new sanctions against Iran Wednesday morning. Brazil and Turkey were the only two Security Council members to vote against the measure. Clinton’s response, from Colombia, to those dissenting: “We disagreed with their vote. But I can understand from a diplomatic perspective why they might be able to make a convincing case for how they voted today.” The New York Times highlights how Iran has been the number one thing on Clinton’s mind while trying to make it seem like she’s interested in Latin America. And an interesting take, from Boz, on what the Security Council vote could mean for Brazil and its quest for more equitable international institutions.

· On that topic, the Wall Street Journal has a piece today on the new role of Latin America within international financial institutions and in discussions about global financial reform. The paper writes that “In the past year, Latin American countries have wielded their economic heft to gain a stronger voice on the world stage.” While Brazil has been most discussed, it is not alone. The head of the IMF has also held recent meetings with leaders and ministers from Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, and Bolivia. And, the paper suggests that the IMF, long one of the most despised global institutions in Latin America, may be seeing the winds change – at least in some parts of the region. The WSJ: “Mr. García [Peruvian President Alan García], once a critic of the fund, joked in a speech in Lima that ‘the monetary fund has changed.’ He conceded that that he, Peru, and much of Latin America also had changed.”

· In economic news from Venezuela, a new tightly regulated currency market opened Wednesday – an attempt to strengthen the bolívar and keep rising inflation at bay. The Central Bank has been charged with administering the new market, “setting prices and determining who gets to buy the dollar-linked bonds,” according to the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday those interested in buying dollars saw prices set by the bank at somewhere between 4.5 bolívars to 5.4 bolívars per dollar. The new market, says the paper, “replaces an eight-year-old, unregulated, free-floating market that Mr. Chávez's government shut down last month, arguing that speculation was artificially weakening the bolívar and adding to inflation.”

· A piece at Foreign Policy, meanwhile, also takes up issues related to the Venezuelan economy, in connection with the release of Oliver Stone’s new film, South of the Border. CEPR co-director and economist Mark Weisbrot helped write the screenplay for the movie, and he spoke with the magazine recently about his take on the Venezuelan economy. Weisbrot has long been more optimistic than most on the economic situation in Venezuela. And while critical of some of Weisbrot’s analysis, the piece is worth a look to get an idea of where significant differences on the Venezuelan economy exist.

· WOLA has a press release out on the resignation of CICIG head Carlos Castresana in Guatemala. “In a part of the world where criminal justice systems have never worked well, and where influential people often manipulate the police, the prosecutors, and the courts, the CICIG represents an unprecedented effort to prosecute sensitive cases of organized crime and corruption,” says WOLA organized crime expert Adriana Beltrán. “Now it looks like that effort has been stymied.”

· On Haiti, the Miami Herald reports that a group of eight US members of Congress have sent a report to Haitian President René Preval, urging the Haitian leadership to move faster in scheduling presidential and parliamentary elections. In a statement from Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says, “Our government is sympathetic to the plight of Haitians, as demonstrated by the assistance our military, diplomats and development experts provided in the wake of the disaster. But the positive effect of assistance programs will be limited if Haiti lacks a responsible, popularly-elected government.” The Wall Street Journal also reports on how Haiti may lose US judicial funding because of the alleged massacre of Haitian jail inmates revealed by a NY Times investigative report.

· The AP reports on growing distrust between US border agents and their Mexican counterparts after US agents shot and killed a 15-year-old Mexican boy on the banks of the Rio Grande earlier in the week.

· A comprehensive piece at the Migration Information Source by two Inter-American Development Bank employees looks at the changing dynamics of migration in the Americas.

· Andres Oppenheimer, like others before, writes in the Miami Herald about how the Gulf oil disaster presents a chance for US-Cuba cooperation.

· And finally, three new and useful posts at the Just the Facts blog: 1) a primer on the South American Defense Council, created back in December 2008; 2) a briefing on the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s new numbers on coca cultivation in Colombia (down 16% from 2009); and 3) a look at changes in income inequality across the region.

US Military Aid to Honduras Continues. Rights Violations Do Also

Diplomats from around the region got around to passing the Lima Declaration Tuesday, officially closing the 40^th OAS General Assembly in Lima. As an OAS press release puts it in diplomatic-speak, the document “emphasizes the obligation of the Member States to avoid the use of force except in cases of legitimate self-defense; the strengthening of inter-American cooperation for integral development; the importance of continuing to promote in the Hemisphere an environment propitious to the control of weapons; the overcoming of situations of tension and the solving of crises; and other aspects related to the theme of the annual assembly, ‘Peace, Security and Cooperation.’” At the official site of the Peru meetings you can also find a full listing of the additional 80+ resolutions adopted by OAS member states. To highlight a couple that may be of interest to readers, a resolution was passed supporting a multilateral evaluation mechanism of the Inter-American drug abuse control commission; there was a resolution calling for a “regional strategy to promote hemispheric cooperation in dealing with criminal gangs;” the hemisphere renewed its commitment to fighting poverty through the “social charter of the Americas;” and “hemispheric plans” related to transnational organized crime and regional drug strategy were also passed.

On the most covered issue under debate in Lima – that of Honduras’s re-integration into the inter-American body – the OAS also agreed to send a “high-level commission” back to the country to assess the “evolution of the situation.” Recommendations regarding re-admittance are due back to the OAS no later than July 30, 2010.

That decision comes amidst various new and interesting developments in Honduras.

First, on Monday the Inter-American Human Rights Commission released its preliminary observations from its most recent visit to Honduras (May 15-18). The IACHR maintains that “violations of human rights in the context of the [June 2009] coup d’etat continue.” [The fact that time and again the report puts such violations “in the context of the coup” is notable]. The organization also mentions lingering impunity for such violations and calls on the Honduran government to reconsider the amnesty decree of last year, “taking into consideration the State’s obligations under international treaties – particularly its obligation to investigate and punish serious human rights violations.” Finally, the IACHR notes how worrying it is that various golpistas from the military now occupy “high-level management positions within public institutions.” More on the report from Infolatam, as well as some fascinating quotes in a Mercopress report on the matter. The latter quotes Honduran Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati who called on the OAS to “act with a spirit of neutrality” in assessing the Honduran situation. It then quotes the country’s golpista Human Rights Commissioner, Ramón Custodio who seems to still have nothing but contempt for the OAS. Here’s Custodio, in his own words:

Here we don’t need any witnesses of what’s going on because all is working normally. Sending an OAS committee is a hypocritical attitude of international diplomacy… Honduras has shown the world how a small country can subsist without the OAS.

The U.S. also seemed quite uninterested in what the IACHR had to say. On the same day the IACHR released its preliminary findings, the US decided to restart military aid to the country. It’s first new delivery: 25 military trucks (totaling approx. US $812,000), courtesy of SouthCom, whose deputy commander, Gen. Ken Keen, visited Tegucigalpa on Monday. Poor timing on that one.

And finally, RNS at Honduras and Culture and Politics has had some recent posts that are well-worth reading. The blog’s been following growing frustration with the Lobo Sosa government – frustrations which have some worrying about the possibility of another coup (here and here). The latter post highlights Lobo Sosa saying this week he knows who those who seek his ouster are. Also, a great post from RAJ on the issues surrounding the controversial removal of four anti-golpista Supreme Court judges.

Behind the headline:

· The New York Times reports on Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s meeting with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, following her time in Peru. “I don’t know any two countries that agree on everything,” Ms. Clinton said after speaking privately with Correa for over two hours. “From our perspective, we have reached out and feel very much as though we are forging a new set of relationships.” To that Correa rejected notions that the Latin American Left, of which he considers himself a member, is any way “anti-American.” “The new left that I represent is not anti-anything. We’re not anti-American; we love America.” He added that his years of studying economics at the University of Illinois had been some of the best of his life. Infolatam highlights Clinton’s promise to Correa that UNASUR will be informed of all proceedings regarding the United States’ new military base deal in Colombia. Following the meeting, Clinton also spoke at a museum in Quito (full speech here). Interestingly, one of the major focuses of a recent CEPAL report (which I again recommend) – namely tax reform –was atop Ms. Clinton’s list of recommendations for the region. “It is also a simple fact that the wealthy do not pay their fair share,” said Clinton. “We can’t mince words about this. Levels of tax evasion are unacceptably high – as much or more than 50 percent in some of this region’s economies when it comes to personal income tax.” Hillary Clinton is in Colombia today (where she is joined by her husband, coincidentally).

· Staying in high politics, Clinton also announced in Quito that a new round of UN sanctions on Iran were about to be approved by the Security Council. Clinton said the sanctions would be “the most significant” Iran has ever faced. More specifics on the new sanctions at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times (as well as the text of the final draft resolution), but on the Latin America side of things, the LA Times reports that the US has been lobbying Brazil to abstain from the sanctions vote, rather than voting “no,” so as to maintain the appearance of “international unanimity.”

· Another New York Times piece today says the Obama administration is delaying the release of a new Justice Department report on the “high and increasing” availability of meth coming from large-scale production sites in Mexico. According to the Times, the delayed release sought to “minimize diplomatic turbulence with the Mexican government.” However, the Times got a leaked copy of the report and links to it at its site. It says the report, apparently completed in mid-May by the National Drug Intelligence Center at DOJ, “portrays drug cartels as easily able to circumvent the Mexican government’s restrictions on the importing of chemicals used to manufacture meth, which has reached its highest purity and lowest price in the United States since 2005.” And, interestingly, the report was so close to being publicly released that copies were “printed and boxes of it were shipped to San Diego to be distributed to law enforcement officials at a meth conference.” White House officials, at the last minute, held the report back, not wanting it to overshadow Felipe Calderón’s recent visit to Washington.

· The AP reports on the resignation of Chile’s ambassador to Argentina, Miguel Otero. Otero came under intense criticism this week when he told Argentina’s Clarín [audio from CIPER Chile] that “most of Chile didn't notice the dictatorship of [Augusto] Pinochet. On the contrary, they felt relieved.” According to the AP, “the ambassador also claimed that any human rights violations during the 1973-1990 dictatorship didn't reflect official policies, but rather were individual abuses of authority.” The appointment of the longtime pinochetista was seen as a “bow” by President Sebastian Pinera to the right wing of his coalition. More commentary on the matter from Patricio Navia in his La Tercera column this week.

· In Colombia, Reuters reports on a recent video released by the FARC, showing five kidnapped members of the country’s security forces calling on the Colombian government to negotiate with the rebel group. The five are among 22 members of the security forces who are believed to be still in FARC hands. More links at Latin American News Dispatch.

· In Bolivia, the national congress has approved judicial legislation that includes support for “indigenous justice” – a notion which has come under scrutiny after the lynching of four Bolivian police officers two weeks ago.

· And from Venezuela, IPS has a good report on a brewing food scandal. Tens of thousands of tons of food, says the report, sat in shipping containers last year, never delivered to supermarkets for public sale. It has many Venezuelans perturbed, and it forced a response from President Hugo Chavez last week. “One might think it is carelessness or negligence. If that is the case, there should be a sanction, but it could also be corruption,” Chávez said. “We will get to the bottom of this case.”

· Finally, two opinions. The New York Times has an editorial, again criticizing the slow delivery of much needed shelter to Haiti. In the Miami Herald yesterday, AEI’s Roger Noriega offered his thoughts on Clinton’s visit with Rafael Correa. My guess is that he was probably not satisfied with the discussion.