Juarez Youth in Revolt

At least 20 individuals were killed in yet another bloody weekend in the Mexican murder capital of Ciudad Juarez. According to the AP, the deaths included seven people gunned down outside a small family party Saturday night. Local estimates now put Juarez's death toll at more than 2,600 this year, already surpassing 2009 homicide numbers (2,575 killed), according to a figures collected by the local television station XHIJ. As so many have written, the fear of violence continues to disrupt daily life in the border city. The AP:

“Few residents now venture out to bars and restaurants. And like those attacked on Saturday, others have discovered that they aren't even safe in their own homes: Last month, gunmen stormed two neighboring houses and massacred more than a dozen young people attending a party for a 15-year-old boy.”

Given this situation, recent student protests against the militarization of Ciudad Juarez are particularly noteworthy. The largest such protest came last week when over one thousand university students marched through the streets of Juarez (see an impressive video up at You Tube which documents the march) in response to the Oct. 29 shooting of student activist José Darío Alvarez Orrantia by the Federal Police. As independent journalist Kristin Bricker reported at the Huffington Post last week, that shooting occurred during the International Forum Against Militarization and Violence in Juarez, and just before Alvarez Orrantia was scheduled to speak on a panel about “Youthicide.”

Over the weekend, the nascent, and very vocal, student movement that is demanding social and economic improvements in Juarez, as well as the removal of the military, gained the renewed support of the Juarez human rights community. In a statement, rights groups, including the Centro de Derechos Humanos Paso del Norte, offered their full support to UACJ students while also demanding justice in the high profile shooting of Dario Alvarez.

As Frontera NorteSur puts it, the mass protests of last week represented “a university movement that hasn’t occurred in Ciudad Juarez since the beginning or middle of the 1980s.” “We are trying to find an exit,” one Juarez student activist tells the New Mexico State University-based news organization. “Nobody has a manual on how to survive a social war, on how to survive the war of a government that doesn’t want to listen, that doesn’t want to see what it is causing-especially in the young part of society.”

On the last part of that statement – the high price being paid by Mexico’s youth in the drug wars – TIME also reports over the weekend, suggesting that only when social issues like youth unemployment are resolved will violence begin to decline.

In other Mexico-related stories this weekend:

· The AP reports on the growing incursion by drug cartels on the distribution of basic services and government activities in various pockets around Mexico. The AP: “Not only do [cartels] maintain checkpoints and kill police or mayors to control territory, they now try to keep everyone from midlevel officials to delivery truck drivers and meter readers out of rural areas they use to transport drugs, stash weapons and kidnap victims, and hide from authorities. In the process, they are blocking deliveries of gasoline, pension checks, farm aid and other services to Mexicans.” The CS Monitor takes the story further, writing on the increased influence that organized crime has over Mexican politics. Alberto Aziz Nassif, a specialist in democracy and civil society at the Center for Research and Higher Education in Social Anthropology in Mexico City says:

“Organized crime has not just penetrated police bodies but [also] government spaces at all levels.… It is one of the biggest problems complicating the fight against drug trafficking. There are no clear boundaries. The boundaries have been erased by corruption and impunity.”

· Mike O’Connor at Global Post says the Zetas have deepened their grip on power by establishing their own “public relations arm” which “issues stories the local papers are under orders to run.” In what Global Post says is the first such formal arrangement, Tamaulipas newspaper editor Marta Lopez is being obligated to publish press releases from the Zetas themselves, rather than conducting actual reporting.

· In Matamoros, reports on the killing of Gulf Cartel leader Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén by Mexican marines on Friday. In Guerrero, confirmation that the 18 bodies pulled from a mass grave in Acapulco are indeed those of Michoacan tourists who disappeared one month ago. [Two individuals have yet to be found]. And two reviews (New York Times and the Guardian) of veteran British journalist Ed Vulliamy’s latest book on the drug wars, Amexica.

· The CS Monitor says an attempt to crackdown on cartel activity in both Mexico and Colombia is sending the drug trade to the Dominican Republic, “the center of the Caribbean's drug-trafficking business and a turnstile for cocaine shipments reaching as far north as Massachusetts.” Approx. 10 percent of US cocaine and as much as 40 percent of European cocaine now passes through the Caribbean according to the report. And the balloon effect seems to be alive and well. Here’s Makila James, director of the US State Department's Office of Caribbean Affairs:

“As you are successful in [Mexico and Central America], you see drug trafficking pushed toward the Caribbean. Our partners in the region say crime is increasing at a rapid rate, and they're deeply concerned.”

· In Cuba, the “deadline” to release all 52 dissidents imprisoned in a 2003 crackdown came and went over the weekend. While most of the 52 were released after this summer’s deal brokered by the Catholic Church, 13 individuals have refused to accept the Cuban government’s conditions for release – namely accepting asylum in Spain. According to the BBC, the Ladies in White protested the unmet promise in Havana Sunday while Guillermo Farinas, the recent recipient of the EU’s top human rights prize, says he is prepared to restart his hunger strike as an act of protest.

· Other Cuba news in the major papers: the New York Times on US ballet performers who in Havana as part of a new wave of cultural exchanges between the US and Cuba. And, from the Miami Herald, a profile of Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski who traveled to Havana last week to attend the opening of the island’s first Catholic seminary since the 1959 Revolution began.

· Tim Rogers, for the Miami Herald, has a good report on the bizarre border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Also following the story closely, Boz on what role Google Maps may or may not have had in sparking the conflict.

· The New York Times’ Simon Romero has an interesting piece this weekend on a new wave of immigrants who are coming to Venezuela – just as many businessman and professionals are on their way out. Romero writes that “[M]any new immigrants” – merchants and laborers, in particular – “continue to arrive [in VZ] on tourist visas…drawn by incomes that are still higher than those in some of Venezuela’s neighbors and by a broad array of social welfare programs for the poor championed by Mr. Chávez’s government.” This has included nearby neighbors like Haitians and Colombians [some 4 million now live in VZ], as well as individuals from as far away as India, China, and the Middle East.

· Also on migration, IPS has a good report on the “tens of thousands” of Central American migrants who have disappeared during their journeys North. Among those missing, the Network of Committees of Migrants and Relatives of Honduras (Red COMIFAH) says some 800 Hondurans have disappeared in Mexico over the last decade. Red COMIFAH joined migrant rights activists from around the world in Mexico City over the weekend for the Alternative World Forum for Peoples in Movement, says IPS.

· The UNDP released its annual human development reports last week. Among Latin American and Caribbean countries, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Brazil were among the UNDP’s “Top Movers” (country’s who have made the greatest HDI gains since 1970).

· Haiti dodged the worst of Tropical Storm Tomas over the weekend, but flooding keeps worries about cholera very much in the forefront of public health officials’ concerns. Latest figures show just over 500 individuals have died from the disease thus far while nearly 7400 have been reported infected.

· In a long editorial over the weekend, the Washington Post strongly criticized the slow movement of international aid to Haiti, arguing that Washington and other donor countries have treated the Haiti as “a routine development task, akin to improving an irrigation system or extending rural electrification” – an approach which “makes no sense given the extent of ruination, the scale of needed reconstruction and the ongoing humanitarian suffering in Haiti.” Other weekend opinions in the major papers: Peter Hakim on Brazil and Dilma Rouseff, in the LA Times, and Mary Anastasia O’Grady with her take on Argentina and “Big Labor” after Nestor Kirchner.

Clandestine Graves, You Tube, and Mexico's Violence

The New York Times this morning reports from Mexico on this week’s discovery of a mass grave near Acapulco – likely connected to the disappearance of 20 Michoacan tourists some five weeks ago. As the Times writes – and as I mentioned here yesterday – 18 bodies have been discovered thus far by investigators.

The find came after a phone call directed police to the grave site. There a note, signed by the little known Acapulco Independent Cartel (CIDA), said the murder of the men was a mistake. A You Tube video released Wednesday showed the interrogations of two of the missing men, as well as claims that the executions were revenge against the Michoacan cartel, La Familia – at the request of the Beltran Leyva cartel. This according to the LA Times.

If the bodies are identified as at least some of the tourists killed over one month ago, the whereabouts of two men would still be unknown. Investigations apparently are continuing, according to the Times.

Also, the Washington Post mentions and El Diario de Juarez reports that the body of Mario Gonzalez – the brother of former Chihuahua prosecutor Patricia Gonzalez – was found Thursday, buried next to three or four unidentified bodies near Chihuahua City. Like in the case of the Acapulco clandestine burial site, Gonzalez has become identified with an apparently new drug war phenomenon: the release of You Tube video messages by frequently the drug wars increasingly nebulous murderers. Quoted in the Post’s reporting, Martin Barron Cruz, a researcher at the National Institute of Criminal Science in Mexico City contends the new and twisted “media strategy” has been “learned from the Islamic terrorist organizations and brought to Mexico.”

And finally, also in Juarez, Reuters’ Julian Cardona reports on the now six Americans who have been killed in the city since last Saturday. University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) students Manuel Acosta and Eder Diaz became the latest victims when the BMW they were driving was “peppered” with gunfire, says Reuters.

To other stories:

· This week’s Economist reports on the judicial investigation into ex-Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and the role he played in the DAS domestic spying scandal. Congressional investigations on the matter began earlier this week, and Uribe will soon be testifying, under oath, before the committee carrying out the inquiry. But interestingly, the investigations have yet to touch Mr. Uribe’s national popularity. The Economist:

“Despite all this, the ex-president’s reputation has barely been tarnished. His approval rating a month after leaving office was 80%. And a recent poll found that were he to run for mayor of Bogotá, the capital—a post that interests him—he would get 56% of the vote.”

That’s not quite the case internationally. As EFE reports, Uribe was also summoned this week to speak about the relationship between US mining giant Drummond and AUC paramilitaries in Colombia from 1999 to 2007. The subpoena, from the law offices of Conrad & Scherer, was handed to Uribe by a Georgetown University law student as the former president finished a lecture in DC. On Nov. 22, in Washington, Uribe is expected to give testimony to lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the case, who include some 500 Colombians with family members who are believed to have been killed by the AUC. WOLA’s Gimena Sanchez says the event is “significant because it obligates Uribe to officially speak about the links between the armed forces and paramilitaries and their connection to the brutal murder of trade union activists.” The testimony could also influence US debate about a possible free trade agreement with Colombia. No comment from Uribe’s people on the matter as of yet.

· Also in Colombia, Colombia Reports says the country’s principal left-of-center party, the Polo Democratico, will oppose President Juan Manuel Santos’s proposed Victims Law. PD congressman Ivan Cepeda says the bill must include an independent truth commission, with members elected by the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the Constitutional Court. “As the bill stands,” says Colombia Reports, “the commission would fall under the jurisdiction of the national government.” In addition, the Polo Democratico complains the government did not consult victims or minority organizations when drafting the bill, and according to Cepeda, the legislation is also flawed because it “confuses social welfare with victim's reparation,” and thus is not “fiscally responsible.” For his part, the aforementioned Alvaro Uribe also has spoken out against the bill because it offers the “same compensation to victims of the state as to victims of illegal groups.” The bill was presented to Congress for an official vote on Tuesday.

· EFE reports on the OAS’s mediation of the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border dispute. More good analysis of the situation from Boz.

· Tim Rogers reports for the Tico Times on the possibility of a new “political pact” between President Daniel Ortega and Liberal Constitutional Party chief and ex-president Arnoldo Alemán. The rumors come as the de facto president of Nicaragua’s Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) recently called for general elections to be held one year from tomorrow (Nov. 6, 2011). In a closed-door announcement this week, the CSE also said parties must register by tomorrow in order to be eligible to participate in next year’s vote. More from Tim Rogers.

· The Wall Street Journal says Venezuela has resumed designating a portion of its oil profits to a special fund for social spending directed by President Hugo Chavez. According to oil minister Rafael Ramirez, with Venezuelan oil prices sticking above $70 a barrel, the so-called “Fonden tax” has been “re-imposed on all oil sales.” The tax, says Ramirez, adds to a fixed amount PDVSA already provides to social projects.

· From Cuba, the AP on the opening of the island’s first Catholic Seminary since the 1959 Revolution. Joined by Raul Castro, Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega, the individual responsible for negotiating the terms of release for some 52 political prisoners jailed in a 2003 crackdown on dissent, opened the doors to the new institution this week. Interestingly, the inauguration was also attended by a U.S. delegation, led by Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami.

· In Chile, the Santiago Times reports that the reopening of torture file logs under President Michelle Bachelet has revealed some 5000 new cases of politically-motivated torture under the Pinochet regime (1973-1990). The additional cases – which will be included in a new version of the report on Pinochet era rights abuses planned for release in February – raises the number of documented victims of torture and imprisonment to 33,000.

· At Foreign Policy, links to Radio Netherlands recent and rare interview with Dutch FARC fighter Tanja Nijmeijer – considered to be the only “non-Latin militant” active in the FARC.

· In Paraguay, Bloomberg reports on a huge titanium deposit discovery in Paraguay – potentially the largest ever discovered. The rights to the deposit are controlled by American explorer-geologist David Lowell, 82, and his CIC Resources, Inc. In a recent interview about the discovery, Lowell says the deposit “could control the world titanium market, a big enough piece of production that whoever operates it would dictate what the price is going to be.” As far as Paraguay’s mining laws go, Paraguay’s congress recently passed, at the request of Lowell himself, a new law to “strengthen mineral claims.” The legislation is currently before the Senate.

· And finally, in Haiti, disaster has arrived yet again, this time in the form of Tropical Storm Tomas. International groups attempted to evacuate those living in tent camps on the coastal plain over the last few days, before the storm made landfall last night. But the New York Times reports on the “standoff” between international groups and “confused and frustrated residents, some doubting a storm was coming and placing little trust in any authority” – a revelation of the “stark hurdles for efforts to provide relief for crises and disasters in a country growing weary of them,” in the Times words. Time, meanwhile, asks where evacuees would even go in a country where so much was destroyed, where so little has been reconstructed, and where disease will now no doubt spread more rapidly. What capacity does the Haitian government have for responding to this all? The New York Times reporting requires no commentary:

“President René Préval made it plain that people were largely on their own, warning them on local radio Thursday, ‘You have to help yourself.’ He encouraged people in the camps to stay with friends or relatives. But Claudette Pierre, a resident of a camp in the capital, Port-au-Prince, had an answer that spoke for many. 'The friends I had to go to died in the earthquake,' Ms. Pierre said."

*Note correction on yesterday’s post: UNASUR's "democracy clause" has not yet been approved. It has only been proposed and will be taken up officially at a UNASUR summit in Guyana later this month.

US Midterm Election Fallout: Latin America Edition

With the dust settling after the Republicans “shellacking” of Democrats Tuesday, a summary this morning of the almost obligatory – but ultimately speculative – commentary on what US midterm election results could mean for US-Latin American relations.

As Josh Rogin at The Cable writes, the biggest shift will likely be on the House Foreign Affairs Committee where anti-Castro hardliner Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) will take over the chairmanship of the committee come January. According to Rogin, Ros-Lehtinen “has staked out firm positions on several issues that stand in contrast to now outgoing chairman Howard Berman (D-CA)” and “her ascendancy will….change the tone and agenda of the committee.” On Latin America in particular, Ros-Lehtinen seems “poised to thwart Obama's efforts to move toward repealing sanctions on Fidel Castro.”

Anya Landau French, director of the Cuba Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation, adds more on Ros-Lehtinen at the Havana Note, writing that “no engagement-oriented Cuba bills will move through” Ros-Lehtinen’s committee. And, in fact, the incoming chairwoman “might well choose to move legislation…that would tighten the embargo.” But, to be sure, that does not preclude other committees from taking action. She notes that Arizona Republican Congressman Jeff Flake was able to send “various incremental reforms on appropriation bills” through a Republican-controlled Congress at the beginning of the decade, even while the late Henry Hyde, an embargo supporter chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House. Landau French also says some incoming freshman conservatives, many of whom have espoused anti-government government spending platforms, “will be hard pressed to vote against a measure that a) restores a basic freedom (travel) to Americans, and b) eliminates needless government spending.” (Certainly the newly elected Marco Rubio (R-FL) seems to be an example of the opposite).

The bottom line on US-Cuba policy during the next Congress, according to Landau French: few real changes, “other than that there is likely to be a discernable drop, at least initially, in pro-reform enthusiasm and momentum.”

Adam Isacson at Just the Facts says the new Republican majority in the House will mean a “tougher stance” toward Latin American leftists in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, as well as Cuba. In addition, Isacson speculates, more vigorous movement on “free trade” deals with Colombia and Panama can be expected (unless US unemployment continues to remain high) and “calls from some quarters to increase ‘drug war’ aid” are also likely crop up. Isacson also notes that another hard-line Florida Republican, Connie Mack will be replacing Eliot Engel (D-NY) as the chair of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee – perhaps another sign that Cuba policy (and Latin America policy more broadly?) has become little more than an extension of domestic interests (or just Florida interests).

Picking up on Venezuela, Eric Farnsworth at AQ says the “troika” of Ros-Lehtinen—Mack—Rubio (and potentially other conservatives) may push for the “renewal of an effort to sanction Venezuela as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’” while perhaps pushing for new sanctions against Iran’s economic allies in the region as well – Brazil among them.

In the Miami Herald Andres Oppenheimer says the Republican pledge to slash spending will hit Latin America’s foreign aid budget while the anti-immigration sentiment that binds together many of the Tea Party types means there is almost no chance of passing “comprehensive immigration reform” that would give an earned path to citizenship to the more than 11 million undocumented foreigners living in the US. Also, according to Oppenheimer, incoming-chairwoman Ros-Lehtinen apparently no longer supports placing Venezuela on the “state sponsor of terrorism” list – something I, for one, was unaware of.

Moving along:

· Additional post-mortem analysis on Prop. 19 in California. In an op-ed in the LA Times the Drug Policy Alliance’s California director, Stephen Gutwillig, again emphasizes the historic nature of the defeated initiative, which, he argues, has “placed marijuana legalization squarely in the mainstream of American politics.” Of long term interest to drug policy watchers may be the unique coalition that was formed around Prop. 19. Here’s Gutwillig:

“Another highly significant accomplishment of the Proposition 19 phenomenon is the unprecedented coalition it forged. Longtime drug policy reformers such as my organization were joined for the first time by mainstream civil rights groups, organized labor and the largest contingent of dissident law enforcement figures ever publicly assembled on this issue.”

More from John Walsh at WOLA, who provides a slightly more Latin America-centric analysis of what Prop. 19’s defeat means.

· On the other major hemispheric vote this week – the election of Dilma Rouseff in Brazil – a bit more from Just the Facts, who has a new podcast interview with security analyst Sam Logan. At The Nation, Kenneth Rapoza, a former Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal Brazil correspondent, says, like many others have, that the successful handling of the domestic economy by Lula da Silva is the principal reason behind Dilma Rouseff’s victory. And at Foreign Policy in Focus, Steve Fake, provides a critique of Rouseff from the left, arguing that by continuing down the trail Lula has blazed, there is a “significant danger” that [Dilma’s] administration will “facilitate the assimilation and neutering of the social movements,” particularly the MST.

· In Ciudad Juarez, the AP says another US citizen was killed Tuesday night – the fifth American killed in Juarez in the last six days. The victim – a 23-year-old UTEP student – was killed when his car was attacked by gunmen. On Wednesday four other young people were shot by gunmen outside the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez’s (UACJ) Institute of Biomedical Sciences. Two have died while two others remain in critical condition. Nevertheless, students at the UACJ seem determined to continue on with their public demonstrations against violence and the militarization in their city. The demonstrations of the last week have amounted to the most significant acts of citizen protest against Juarez’s growing insecurity in some time.

· Also on Mexico, the New York Times reports on the discovery of a new smuggling tunnel from Tijuana to San Diego, filled with approx. 30 tons of marijuana heading into California. And in Acapulco, the AP writes on the discovery of a new mass grave with the bodies of 18 individuals. There are early indications that the bodies could be those of a group of 20 tourists kidnapped in Acapulco about one month ago. The location of the grave was announced via You Tube by men claiming to represent the little known Acapulco Independent Cartel (CIDA). In the video, the CIDA says the killings were an act of revenge against La Familia.

· In Colombia, Senator Piedad Cordoba was officially dismissed from the Colombian Senate Tuesday – this after the Colombian Inspector General barred her from office for 18 years for alleged ties to the FARC last month. More on disputed dismissal of Cordoba from Constanza Vieira at IPS.

· AFP with more on joint Colombia-Venezuela anti-drug cooperation, which will include the moving of some 15,000 Venezuelan troops to the Colombian border to root out traffickers, extortionists, and kidnappers.

· And the New York Times reports on the suspension of seven Colombian military officers and soldiers for “failing to control their troops in connection with the brutal murders last month of three impoverished children near Colombia’s northeast border with Venezuela.” As Simon Romero writes, “the suspensions…raised new questions about abuses by Colombia’s armed forces, which are a major recipient of security assistance and training from the United States.”

· Venezuela Analysis makes note of a new “School for Human Rights” which opened in Caracas Saturday. According to a release from the Venezuelan ombudsman’s office, the center will seek to “complement the academic training and research of various professionals in the field of promotion and defense of human rights with a critical and progressive approach.” Also from Guyana’s ambassador to Venezuela, more on the recently proposed UNASUR “democracy clause,” aimed at preventing the occurrence of coups in South America and specifying concrete actions to be taken by member nations against offending regimes.

· IPS reports on the extradition of Peruvian army officer Telmo Hurtado from the US back to Peru where he will face human rights abuse charges related to a 1985 massacre of 69 people in the village of Accomarca.

· The School of the Americas Watch says two speakers invited to their annual SOA Watch Vigil – one Honduran and one Costa Rican – have been denied visas to the US. The Costa Rican, Gerardo Brenes, is a former student at the SOA and would be the “first graduate of the SOA to speak out against the school in front of his Alma Mater,” says SOAW.

· And finally, the AP’s Jonathan Katz talks to public health experts about cholera in Haiti – and the fact that the disease increasingly appears to have entered the country by way of a Nepalese UN base. The CDC, World Health Organization and United Nations continue to say “it's not possible to pinpoint the source and investigating further would distract from efforts to fight the disease” – an argument some public health experts say looks more like “politics” than science.

*note correction: UNASUR's "democracy clause" has not yet been approved -- it has only been proposed and will be taken up in Guyana later this month.

Californian Voters Reject Prop. 19

California voters rejected Proposition 19 Tuesday, a ballot initiative which would have made the state the first in the US to allow limited amounts of marijuana to be sold legally for recreational purposes. With ninety percent of precincts reporting this morning, some 54% of voters voted against measure. Some 46% came out in favor.

According to the LA Times, the principal failure lay in the the fact that voters under the age of 25 – the initiative’s principal backers – “did not turn out in unusually high numbers” on election day. In fact, the San Francisco Bay area was the only part of the state to see a majority favor Proposition 19 – and even there the majority appears to have been slimmer than expected.

Nevertheless, drug policy advocates saw many bright spots in the California campaign which, using the LA Times words once again, “transformed talk about legal pot from a late-night punch line into a serious policy matter.” Stephen Gutwillig, the California director of the Drug Policy Alliance says Prop. 19, even in defeat, marked a “watershed moment” by “moving marijuana legalization into the mainstream of American politics.” Legalization advocates are expected to bring the measure up for a second vote in California in 2012 while it’s likely that similar initiatives will be placed before voters in Washington, Colorado, and Oregon as well. But to win two years from now, advocates may have to harvest more targeted in-state support. As I have written here, the measure drew significant national and international attention over the last months, but, quoting the Times:

“[T]he opposition was broad…Men and women opposed it. Voters of every race opposed it. The campaign had hoped black and Latino voters would see the measure as a way to end disproportionate arrests of minorities caught with marijuana.”

Meanwhile, in Mexico, the country perhaps most closely monitoring the California vote on Tuesday, there has been no public statement from the government as of yet. But yesterday afternoon, President Felipe Calderon, by way of Twitter, did reiterate his belief that policies on the “production, transportation, and consumption of drugs” should be reconsidered within a “global and integrated” regulatory framework, rather than locally. If nothing else, Prop. 19 has gotten people talking.

In other news today:

· Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos met in Caracas Tuesday where they agreed to strengthen ties through a series of joint initiatives. The AP reports such projects included the resurrection of an idea to build a natural gas pipeline from Venezuela to Central America as well as an oil pipeline from Venezuela to the Colombian coast. The Venezuelan president also said his country would resume fuel sales to Colombian border states, and he even went so far as to invite Colombian oil company Ecopetrol to enter into an oil pumping deal in Venezuela’s Orinoco River basin. El Tiempo also highlights the significance of a new accord committing both countries to cooperation in the “fight against the global problem of drugs.” The meetings lasted three hours and, according to President Santos, marked a very important moment in re-founding relations between the two countries. “We've gone from good-intentioned statements to concrete accords,” Santos said Tuesday. For his part, Chavez added that “no foreign force is capable of provoking any type of damage in these fraternal relations.”

· Meanwhile, in Colombia, the AP writes on a new investigation that was opened this week, examining possible corruption at the country’s National Narcotics Directorate. The agency, housed within the Interior Ministry, has “managed assets seized from drug gangs over the last two decades” and there are now growing “suspicions” that some of those assets have gone missing.

· In Ciudad Juarez, El Diario de Juarez has a brief report on a mass demonstration Tuesday which brought somewhere between 500 and 1000 participants – mostly students – onto the streets of the city. The students’ demands, according to El Diario: the demilitarization of their city. AFP adds that the student demonstrators demanded punishment for two police officers accused of shooting a student at a protest last week. “We're tired and fed up with suffering from the same. It's time to act,” one medical student who took part in Tuesday’s protests tells AFP.

· Costa Rica has asked the OAS to address an “alleged incursion by Nicaraguan troops onto Costa Rican soil.” The border river (the San Juan) where the incursion is said to have occurred has been at the center of disputes for “nearly two centuries,” says the AP. The most recent conflict stems from Nicaraguan dredging in the river.

· IPS’s Thelma Mejía says Honduras will be forced to answer to the UN Human Rights Council about rights abuses that occurred during and after the June 2009 coup which toppled President Manuel Zelaya. Honduran officials will go before a UNHRC panel in Geneva tomorrow for their first ever “Universal Periodic Review” (UPR). IPS says that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has documented “more than 4,000 cases of violations of fundamental human rights…since the coup, ranging from censorship and the closure of media outlets to brutal crackdowns on protesters, curfews, and reports of torture and rape.” In addition, the IACHR says at least seven murders have been “politically motivated.” Human rights groups in Honduras put that figure much higher. Bertha Oliva of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras tells IPS that her group has documented 23 “politically motivated” murders in addition to 200 individuals being forced into exile. Those representing the Lobo government are expected to outline their work in the area of human rights protection – including granting the human rights unit in the Attorney General's Office a budget of its own for the first time and creating a ministry of justice and human rights. The Lobo government will also argue that human rights violations committed since President Lobo took office do not reflect “state policy,” but have rather been “isolated incidents.” For their part, human rights groups will present a formal proposal to the Council, asking that the UPR focus specifically on the June 28, 2009 coup and that it reject amnesty for human rights violators.

· The New York Times writes about growing examples of cultural exchange between Cuba and the US – Cuban jazz in New York and US ballet in Havana being the primary examples – since Washington took small steps toward loosened travel restrictions over one year ago.

· Haiti is still preparing for Tropical Storm Tomas to come ashore. The storm, which could regain its hurricane status by Friday, would be the first big storm to strike Haiti since the Jan. 12 earthquake. Already the US has dispatched its amphibious warship, the Iwo Jima, to the country. But disaster looms in the country’s many tent cities, says the AP.

· The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) has a good analysis of Brazil, regional integration, and UNASUR in the post-Lula era.

· And finally, two more post-election opinions on Brazil. In the Miami Herald, Glauco Arbix, a member of Brazil’s National Council of Science and Technology, says the country’s “main challenge…will be to continue Lula's effort to build a new relationship between the public and private sectors -- a model capable of combining transparency and proactive measures that neither devolves into centralizing statism nor surrenders to the markets”— and one which improves innovation and moves the country toward the production of competitive, value-added goods. And at the Huffington Post, professor of Latin American history, Jeffrey Rubin echoes many of those points, arguing that “understanding the origins of Brazil's success” will be the “key to forging policies that will enable the country's economic and political reforms to endure.” What are those origins, according to Rubin? First, “a broad and long-lasting surge of radical grassroots activism” that accompanied the transition back to democracy in the late 1980s. Second, the emergence of an inclusive, non-vanguardist left-wing party, the PT, during that same period. And third, the creation of a state-oriented market economy that has produced a healthy “tension between private sector and government initiative.” Rubin:

“Enduring reform in the developing world needs active social movements and adherence to democratic procedures, state economic planning and investment and commitment to markets. President Rousseff would be wise to continue to challenge political and economic orthodoxies as she promotes equality and inclusion in what could continue to be a pioneering global success story.”

Brazil in Transition

The transition is underway in Brazil, with the Wall Street Journal reporting this morning that Dilma Rousseff has begun the task of putting together a government that can carry out her “mandate” to “continue the policy mix of market-friendly economics and generous social programs.”

Indeed, the economy seems to be top on nearly everyone’s discussion about a post-Lula Brazil.

The Journal reports that former finance minister Antônio Palocci, the “architect” of Lula’s “market-friendly” economic policies, along with PT chief José Eduardo Dutra will most likely head Dilma’s transition team. Their focus: how to deal with rising economic concerns – a “soaring currency” which potentially threatens export competitiveness, high interest rates, and public spending, among them – while also holding together a diverse political coalition that the PT has relied on to govern. As independent journalist Michael Fox points out, that coalition scored a resounding victory in the congress and senate giving the PT perhaps the most “substantial majority” in democratic Brazil’s history. But even so, other reports, suggest that voters who elected that majority are significantly less enthusiastic about the PT this time around than in the past.

The first step in the transition will likely be deciding on a new finance minister and central bank chief. As Folha de São Paulo reported on Monday, Dilma may decide to keep current central banker Henrique Meirelles and current Finance Minister Guido Mantega – something the paper says Lula himself has asked his delfina to consider (although neither would confirm those rumors).

Mercopress confirms the speculation about the transition team, writing that Palocci and Dutra will be joined by former Belo Horizonte mayor Fernando Pimentel and Lula’s top foreign policy adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia in helping Dilma fill out her cabinet.

On the international agenda, reports indicate that Dilma will have her international coming out party in South Korea, just over a week from today. There she will accompany Lula to his last G-20 meeting, the focus of which will be rising global currency tensions.

CFR’s Julia Sweig writes in the new issue of Foreign Affairs that in the long-term Ms. Rousseff’s foreign policy will likely deepen the agenda set by her soon-to-be predecessor. “[L]ook for Rouseff to deepen Brazil's regional commercial dominance and diplomacy, continue if not expand Brazil's presence in Africa, and play a major role in the G20 on climate change and in other multilateral settings,” says Sweig. The development of Brazil’s pre-salt oil reserves – the 8^th largest in the world – will no doubt lead to an ever further Brazilian rise on the global stage – while also bringing new and potentially serious environmental and social concerns (The recent reorganization of Petrobras allocates 50 percent of the state's share of pre-salt oil revenues to financing education in science and technology, Sweig writes).

And on US-Brazil relations, Peter Hakim suggests foreign policy differences will continue to crop up after Lula’s exit. Nuclear and trade issues are among the “global” rather than regional issues that will “most seriously jar” the US-Brazil relationship, says Hakim But, at the same time, he argues it is “the international arena” which “may provide some opportunities for cooperation as well.” Sweig adds that “the bilateral relationship is likely to hover in this undefined space of neither friend nor adversary.” Obama and Lula have used the word “global partnership dialogue” to describe their relation, what Sweig sees as “a fuzzy way of acknowledging some interest in building up layers of scaffolding around a house in the very early stages of construction.” Meanwhile, David Rothkopf at Foreign Policy argues now is the time for the US to approach Brazil as a global power deserving of its own “policy” (rather than merely dealing with Brazil within the framework of a larger Latin American policy). Rothkopf:

“Brazil deserves to be broken out of the Latin policy ghetto and, just as the United States has a China policy or Russia policy or India policy, perhaps it is time we really developed an independent, sufficiently complex and flexible, forward-looking, globally oriented, not-for-or-by-beginners Brazil policy.”

To other stories:

· California’s Prop. 19 may be the most watched “Latin Americanist” issue on today’s electoral schedule. WOLA’s Coletta Youngers has some final thoughts on the marijuana legalization initiative at Foreign Policy in Focus. “The likely outcome of Tuesday’s vote on Prop 19 is too close to call. But regardless of the final results,” says Youngers, “the genie has been let out of the bottle.” [Interestingly new GCE poll numbers in Mexico show 58% of Mexicans opposing the legalization of drugs in their country and 52% still opposing international legalization.] At Atlantic Monthly, five drug policy experts offer their thoughts on how marijuana legalization in California would/would not affect Mexico. And perhaps the most interesting analysis on the matter comes from the CS Monitor which says Prop. 19 may show how serious (or not) the Tea Party is about state’s rights. “Some commentators are seeing anecdotal support among many tea partiers for marijuana legalization in California,” the paper writes.

· From Mexico, news that October was the deadliest month of 2010 in Ciudad Juarez. The city registered 350 murders last month, up from 289 in September. Ten of those murders came on the last day of the month. More from El Diario de Juarez. Meanwhile, on the first day of November, the AP reports four Americans were among those killed in separate Juarez attacks on Monday.

· In Uruguay, the AP reports on the Supreme Court’s historic Monday ruling which said amnesty was unconstitutional in a number of cases involving human rights violations committed during the country’s 12 year dictatorship. The ruling on the amnesty law – twice maintained in national referendums – means some 19 murders in a case against former dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry can be investigated, a court spokesman tells the AP. More from Uruguay’s La Republica.

· The Catholic Church in Cuba announced Monday the release of three more political prisoners. EFE notes that the freeing of five others, announced a little over a week ago, is still pending. But the latest announcement includes one of the country’s most well-known prisoners, Adrian Alvarez Arencibia. Alvarez Arencibia was arrested in 1985 and, says EFE, is “considered to be the longest-held political prisoner” on the island. Again, however, none of the new releases are among the 52 Cuba agreed to release in July (only 39 of those individuals have been freed thus far).

· In Haiti, Al-Jazeera and the AP report that scientists have confirmed that the strain of cholera which has killed at least 337 did in fact come from South Asia. “The finding puts the spotlight on a UN base above a tributary to the Artibonite River that is home to soldiers from Nepal,” Al-Jazeera says. The UN continues to await a separate set of test results that it has been conducting. Meanwhile, the AP adds that Haiti is also preparing for a potential hurricane to hit later this week, adding even more complications to relief efforts. More on Haiti from the US Institute of Peace which hosted former Haitian PM Michele Pierre-Louis last week to discuss reconstruction and relief efforts. Audio available.

· Bolivian President Evo Morales was in Iran last week and has announced that Iran will partner with Bolivia to develop its lithium reserves. Finance Minister Luis Arce rejected rumors that Bolivia would enter a uranium deal with Iran, although Iran has agreed to help Bolivia build a nuclear power plant. The AP adds that the two countries also signed a letter of intent on an aircraft deal that could send Iranian-made planes and helicopters to the Andean country.

· And finally, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hits his one millionth follower on Twitter, Información Cívica has a great analysis of internet censorship across Latin America.

Dilma Cruises to Victory in Brazil

The PT’s Dilma Rousseff defeated former Sao Paulo governor Jose Serra in Brazil’s second round of presidential voting Sunday becoming the country’s first-ever female leader – and arguably “the most powerful woman in the world.” According to the New York Times, with nearly all votes tallied, Ms. Rousseff, 62, took 56% of the vote compared to Mr. Serra’s 44%.

In its analysis of the victory, the paper says “in choosing Ms. Rousseff…voters sent a message that they preferred to give the governing Workers Party more time to broaden the successful economic policies of Mr. da Silva, whose government deepened economic stability and lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty and into the lower middle classes.” Dilma herself, in a victory speech late Sunday echoed the need to deepen the outgoing government’s economic and social agenda. In particular, she said her administration would focus on eradicating poverty -- “an abyss that still keeps us from being a developed nation.” In the final debates of the campaign, Dilma also turned her full attention to the issue of education calling it “the most important issue facing Brazil.”

The Washington Post’s reporting highlights some of the achievements which made Lula da Silva one of the world’s most popular leaders. The former trade unionist, who remains in office until January 1, brought “more than 20 million Brazilians rose out of extreme poverty” during his two terms as president. Another 30 million joined the lower middle class and “the country's historic, yawning gap between rich and poor got a little smaller,” the Post says. [Although, as the paper suggested on Saturday, there remains debate between Lula and his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, over who began the policies that created such impressive results. The latter has long claimed he created the conditions for Brazil’s economic success by bringing economic stability, particularly currency stability, to the country.] Mercopress, meanwhile, looks at some future job possibilities for the outgoing president – speculation which will no doubt continue in the coming weeks. The Mercopress suggestion: Lula as the new secretary general of UNASUR.

Among the criticisms of Dilma Rousseff is her lack of political experience. In fact, Sunday’s victory was the petista’s first ever election victory, of any sort, and her only national political experience has been as Lula’s energy minister and chief of staff, running the day-to-day operations of the administration.

Over the coming months, the Wilson Center’s Paulo Sotero tells the Wall Street Journal, the relationship between the Dilma and Lula will be closely watched by many analysts.

“Lula could be very helpful to Dilma, or he could be very damaging. The question is, does he give her the political space to operate?”

Meanwhile, as the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Mark Weisbrot writes, the tone of the campaign – with its focus on issues like religion and abortion – may have concealed particularly important economic issues from being discussed more substantively. Weisbrot:

“Brazil's financial elite, which dominates the central bank, has an influence on economic policy that is at least as bad – and as powerful – as that of Wall Street in the United States. This is one reason why Brazil, even under Lula, has had, for many years, the highest or near-highest real interest rates in the world.”

In addition, says Weisbrot, capital investment and public investment have lagged under the PT, specifically when compared to the other BRIC countries.

To other stories:

· On last week’s bloody violence in Mexico, the Guardian has a good round-up over the weekend. The Guardian:

“Fifteen people killed in a car wash, 14 massacred at a teenager's birthday party, 13 shot dead at a drug rehabilitation centre, seven mowed down in the street, four factory workers killed on a bus and nine police officers killed in an ambush. Even by Mexican drug war standards, it has been a hellish week, crystallising the burgeoning sense that the violence has reached a new stage and fuelling dissatisfaction with the cost and efficacy of President Felipe Calderón's military-led offensive against the cartels. The massacres have shocked Mexicans so deeply less because of the number of victims than the fact that most of the men, women and children killed were obviously unconnected to any of the cartels fighting each other around the country.”

· The Washington Post, meanwhile, reports on the kidnapping of Mario Gonzalez, a lawyer and sister of Chihuahua’s former state attorney general, Patricia Gonzalez. “Gonzalez's kidnapping and his forced video ‘confession’… represent a stark escalation in a drug war that has left 30,000 dead over the past four years,” the paper writes – even going so far as to compare the video with similar ones made by al-Qaeda.

· In Juarez Friday, a college student participating in a peace protest was shot by two federal police officers.

· The New York Times publishes a letter from Virgilio Munoz Alberich, a member of Mexico’s National Security Cabinet, who presents the case in favor of President Calderon’s proposed military justice reform bill. “President Calderón’s government has an unwavering commitment to guaranteeing the rule of law and to safeguarding human rights for all,” Munoz Alberich claims. For its part, the Washington Post this morning says a recent boom in violence, particularly in the apparent “success-city” of Tijuana indicates that “Mexico needs more help than it is getting from the United States, which,” the paper claims, “does far more to help the traffickers - through demand for drugs and supply of guns - than it does the government.”

· And tomorrow California voters will finally decide on that state’s much-watched marijuana legalization initiative, Proposition 19. Time looks at why the initiative has received so much attention in Latin America. One of the newest and most outspoken allies of drug policy critics, former Mexican president Vicente Fox, offered his final words of support for Prop. 19 last week, pleading “May God let [Prop. 19] pass.” His logic: “The other U.S. states will have to follow step.” WOLA senior associate John Walsh writes that no matter the outcome Tuesday, Prop. 19 has “sparked a debate far beyond [California’s] borders” – one which is “set to grow rather than subside in the years to come.” Mitchell Koss, an executive producer for Current TV, writes in the LA Times that legalized pot in California would have little effect on Mexico’s drug wars. And the LA Times editorial board repeats its case against Prop. 19 – and notes that the latest poll numbers show the initiative failing by about 10 percentage points.

· The Economist reports on the recent acceleration of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, specifically highlighting a wave of expropriations announced by the Chavez government. On October 3rd, Chavez announced the expropriation of Agroisleña, a locally owned agricultural-supplies and credit firm. Last week Owens Illinois, an American-owned bottle manufacturer, became the 200th company to be taken into state hands in 2010, the magazine writes. Yesterday it was Venezuela’s largest steel producer, Sidetur, which was ordered into state hands [along with six housing projects which the president says will be handed over to the “middle class” upon their completion]. And Bloomberg reports that the expropriation of various Venezuelan golf courses could be next on the president’s agenda.

· From the National Security Archive, news that Héctor Roderico Ramírez Ríos and Abraham Lancerio Gómez, the two Guatemalan National Police officers accused of abducting and disappearing labor activist Edgar Fernando Garcia, were found guilty of forced disappearance and received the maximum sentence of 40 years in prison late last week. The indictments in the case were the first to come out of documents taken from the country’s Police Archives.

· Lisa Haugaard at the Huffington Post writes on last week’s high-level meetings between US and Colombian officials, highlighting the fact that extrajudicial killings of displaced Colombians and activists have continued since Juan Manuel Santos took office. [Interdisciplinary Group for Human Rights says 22 activists were killed in Santos’s first 75 days]. While Santos support of a new land bill and a victims’ reparations bill represent “positive developments,” 2010 has seen “steps backwards in achieving justice for killings of civilians by the army,” Haugaard argues. “The transfer of cases from military to civilian courts has slowed to a trickle, and in civilian courts, there were far fewer convictions.”

· In Honduras, Al-Jazeera reports on the massacre of at least 14 individuals after unknown gunmen opened fire on a group of people playing soccer near San Pedro Sula over the weekend.

· New opinion polls in Argentina show strong support for a re-election bid by current Argentina president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner following the death of her husband last week. Although elections are still one year away, a Nueva Comunicación poll shows that, if presidential elections were held now, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner would garner 31.8% of the vote, followed by Ricardo Alfonsín from the opposition Union Civica Radical with 15.9%.

· And finally, a new report on inequality published by the UN Development Program ranks Haiti, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Chile all among the fifteen most unequal countries in the world. Latin America’s most egalitarian country, according to the UNDP: Uruguay.