Colombia and Santos at 100 Days

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos completes his first 100 days in the Casa de Narino this week with a new Ipsos-Napoleón Franco poll from Colombia’s Semana showing some 73 percent of Colombians holding a favorable opinion of their current president. Sixty-six percent of those surveyed say Santos has moved to carry out to his campaign pledges thus far. Just 7% say the new president has governed “poorly” or “very poorly.” As Semana notes, those numbers are the second highest levels of approval for Santos over the course of his entire political career, coming close to numbers he reached when, as defense minister, he directed operations that successfully rescued 15 FARC hostages, most famous among them Ingrid Betancourt.

Curiously, however, Santos has yet to reach the popularity that his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, still enjoys in Colombia. Again, from the new Ipsos poll, 76% of Colombians still have a positive opinion of the former president – that despite having exhibited a much more confrontational and polarizing governing style than the reform-minded Mr. Santos , and despite the opening of numerous judicial investigations against Uribe and his allies since the former president left office.

Differences in governing style have been perhaps most notable in the area of foreign affairs where Santos has embraced regional integration and sought to mend fences with his neighbor Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. That move has the support of a quite amazing 84% of Colombians and the president’s foreign minister, María Ángela Holguín enjoys very high levels of approval for her work as well, says Semana.

On the latter issue – that of Uribe-linked scandals – Semana has a second interesting report this week, examining some nine such corruption scandals that have come to more full public view during President Santos’s first 100 days.

But it’s on the issue of security – both national security (i.e. the lucha against los FARC) and citizen security—where Colombians still feel least comfortable. Fifty-seven percent of those polled, for example, believe the struggle against the FARC could end sometime in the next 50 years – or never – despite ongoing military strikes against FARC camps (the most recent coming yesterday when 13 more rebels were killed in strike near the Ecuadorean border).

It’s also here where international attention remains squarely fixed. This week Newsweek runs a Q & A with Santos National Security Adviser, Sergio Jaramillo Caro – the first individual to fill the post which was created by Santos upon assuming office in August. Newsweek calls Jaramillo, a former deputy minister of defense, “a key architect of Colombia’s strategy against the FARC” and someone who oversaw the consolidation of the now famous Colombian strategy of “pairing military efforts with basic development.” Seen as a success by some, a nefarious militarization of development by others, the Newsweek interview highlights the current internationalization of the Colombian model, mentioning its adaptation in Afghanistan, in Mexico, and, it now appears, increasingly in Honduras where there are more reports this week of Colombian police directly training Honduran police in the country’s special investigation services (DNSEI). Focusing on Mexico, however, Jaramillo says the Mexican government has not yet been successful in replicating Colombia’s “successes” because it has yet to “regain authority” and put its “own house in order.” Interpretation of what exactly that means I leave to readers. On the US side of the equation, Jaramillo also says Colombia’s ally now has a “duty” to cooperate with Latin American countries struggling against traffickers and organized crime by supporting “regional efforts.”

To other stories:

· In the aforementioned Mexico, reports on the rescue, by Mexican marines, of over 100 Central American migrants and five Mexicans being held at a banana plantation in the state of Chiapas by alleged human traffickers. The Central Americans identified include 83 men and 25 women from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The AP adds another story on marines freeing 10 other migrants in the Tamaulipas city of Altamira on Monday. The “hostages” included three Mexicans, four Colombians, two Salvadorans, and an Ecuadorean. Three police officers are suspected of serving the migrants up to an armed gang. More on human smuggling and migration issues in Mexico in a new television documentary “Life and Death on the Border,” which apparently began airing yesterday on Current TV.

· A new piece from the Economist calls Ciudad Miguel Aleman the Mexican drug wars’ “first displaced persons camp” after “all but 200” residents of nearby Ciudad Mier fled to Miguel Aleman over the last week. The magazine frames the root of the problem in terms of ongoing turf battles between Los Zetas and the crime syndicate which brought them into being, the Gulf Cartel. The Economist, on life in Miguel Aleman:

“Around 400 people have already moved to the refuge [in Miguel Aleman], where they queue up to eat donated food rations three times a day, sleep on donated foam mattresses, listen to live bands play norteño music, and pray. A few children are learning to play chess, while others wrestle and, worryingly, toy with utility knives. Each day brings around 30 new arrivals—a pace that would fill the shelter to capacity in a week.”

· On the deepening internationalization of drug trafficking networks, the AP on the latest in intercontinental shipment methods: South American drug gangs “buying old jets and other planes, filling them with cocaine and flying them more than 3,000 miles across the ocean to Africa.” According to new series of US indictments, at least three syndicates have entered the African aviation business, frequently using Venezuela and Panama as a South and Central American departure points and Guinea, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau as stopovers before flying on to destinations across Europe. The traffickers themselves seem to be a combination of Colombians, men from Sierra Leone and other African nations, and a handful of Venezuelans – the much discussed and recently detained Walid Makled, among them. Makled, who up one week ago apparently still controlled his own airline (the Chavez government seized that operation last week), is accused by prosecutors of controlling various air strips in Venezuela to “launch drug flights.” Makled – whose destination for extradition is now in the hands of the Colombian Supreme Court – says again this week the Venezuelan military helped protect him. For its part, the Venezuelan police this weekend seized another major drug shipment – some 3 tons of marijuana – as it crossed into the country, by car, from Colombia. Some 60 tons of drugs have been seized by the Venezuelan police this year alone.

· Meanwhile, as the US (or Florida) Right prepares to take the reins of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in January, the extradition case of Walid Makled is already becoming a centerpiece on the conservative agenda vis a vis Latin America. The Miami Herald sat down with Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL), who will head the House’s Western Hemisphere Subcommittee and the congressman tells the paper he is asking the State Department to “stand up to Hugo Chavez” by demanding Colombia extradite Makled to the US, not his native Venezuela. Unfortunately, Rep. Mack’s interest seems to have little to do with Mr. Makled’s alleged crimes. Mack:

“It appears that the [Obama] administration's posture with Chávez is to give into Chávez, and make some attempt to reach our hand out to Chávez like that will get us somewhere. If we could get Makled here, I think he could provide a lot of evidence about the Venezuelan government's involvement in narco-trafficking.”

· From the North of Haiti, a series of reports (Washington Post, Reuters, CNN) on violent protests that broke out against UN Minustah troops in the country’s second largest city of Cap-Haitien yesterday. Another incident occurred in the central plateau town of Hinche where seven UN soldiers were injured. Protests targeted Nepalese troops who are being blamed by many for perhaps having brought cholera to the country. Also, a CBS 60 Minutes report on Haiti and growing frustrations over cholera, from last Sunday.

· The New York Times’s Deborah Sontag with a long feature piece this weekend on the place of education in Haiti’s reconstruction.

· Time Magazine profiles former Haitian first lady, Mirlande Manigat, the apparent frontrunner in a field of 19 running for the presidency in Haitian elections, still scheduled for a week from this coming Sunday.

· IPS previews the beginnings of presidential electioneering in Guatemala. The most notable information seems to be all the potential candidates who face legal barriers for even entering the race – including President Alvaro Colom’s wife, Sandra Torres, whose relationship with the current president may prevent her anticipated candidacy.

· CEPR’s Mark Weisbrot, AEI’s Roger Noriega, and Carlos Ponce of the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Democracy debate Hugo Chavez and Venezuela on the news show Ideas in Action, with Jim Glassman.

· The Atlantic magazine looks at Rio de Janeiro’s police “invasion” of favelas in the city, in preparation for the 2014 Olympics.

· Adam Isacson, in a new Just the Facts podcast, discusses the on-going Costa Rica-Nicaragua border dispute (among other issues), the OAS’s ruling in favor of Costa Rica over the weekend, and the new threats to withdraw from the OAS by Nicaragua which followed.

· And finally, the UN General Assembly has passed a resolution declaring March 24 as the International Day of the Right to Truth. The designation of the day is a tribute to slain Salvadoran Monsignor Oscar Romero, gunned down while he gave mass in the country on March 24, 1980. More at Central American Politics.

CICIG Comes Under Fire from Guatemalan Elites

The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) – the UN-backed investigative body which has been praised by many for its “highly effective” prosecution of criminals in a country where 96% of crimes go unpunished – is now coming under attack by some of Guatemala’s most recognizable political and economic elites. According to an excellent report from the AP this weekend, one of the newest critics of the international body is Eduardo Stein, Guatemala’s vice president from 2004 to 2008 and someone who actually helped bring the commission to Guatemala three years ago [Today Stein continues to direct an international truth commission in neighboring Honduras.] Stein says the CICIG is “going out of control,” by, in the AP’s words, “filing extra-judicial execution charges against top officials from his government over the allegedly pre-meditated killing of prison inmates.” The former Vice President and a group of prominent Guatemalan businessmen are even suggesting that the commission be placed under local political control for “overstepping its mandate” and perhaps even operating “outside the law” (the AP’s words).

For his part, the CICIG’s director, former Costa Rican Attorney General Francisco Dall’Anese, has rejected these recent statements, calling them “a dark campaign by powerful groups” in a country plagued by corruption and crime. The AP quotes Pedro Pablo Marroquin, editor of La Hora, who explains new fears among Guatemala’s elites this way:

“It is touching people we never expected it to touch. And the problem is, we live in a society where some people are untouchable.”

Some of the most high profile cases that could soon go to trial include an embezzlement case against former President Alfonso Portillo, as well as cases against a son of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, a one-time defense minister, two ex-interior ministers, three national police chiefs, two counter-narcotics commanders from the country’s police forces, and a director of Guatemala’s prison system.

It’s the investigation of a former Interior Minister, the director of prisons, and two former high-ranking members of the national police force which is causing the most recent stir. As the AP reports, the group of high-profile officials are being pursued for their involvement in the execution of multiple prison inmates while retaking control of the Pavon prison farm from inmates in 2006. The AP, with the graphic details of those alleged crimes:

“(Former Interior Minister Carlos) Vielmann and (former prisons director Alejandro) Giammattei were seen at Pavon after the inmates were captured, stripped naked and escorted to where they would be killed, prosecutors told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the case's political sensitivity. After they were executed, said one prosecutor, the killers dressed the men in clothes lacking bullet holes and planted inoperable weapons on them. Photos from the court case provided to the AP by prosecutors, and which the commission showed to foreign ambassadors this week, support those allegations.”

As Michael Deibert at the Guardian puts it this weekend, while the CICIG remains “imperfect,” it remains the “best hope that Guatemalans have in the fight against the corruption that is causing the future of their country…to vanish amid the din of automatic weapons fire.”

To other stories:

· Also on Guatemala, AFP reports that over 120 human rights activists have been killed by “criminal structures” in the country over the last half decade. Those numbers come from the private rights group, Unidad de Protección de Defensores y Defensoras de Derechos Humanos de Guatemala who also says it has documented some 2300 instances of human rights defenders being threatened and attacked.

· On violence in Mexico, two major weekend interviews in the US press. First, CBS News recently sat down with President Felipe Calderon. True to form, Calderon tells CBS the fight against Mexican cartels is, in fact, going quite well. “We are kicking them and kicking them really hard,” Calderon maintained, adding that those Mexican soldiers who have been killed in the fight “realized that they are working for the future of Mexico.” The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady, meanwhile, recently talked with Ciudad Juarez mayor Hector ‘Teto’ Murguia who demanded the US pay more attention to what is going on along its border. O’Grady’s lede quote from the mayor:

“I can't imagine how the U.S. can be so worried about Iraq and Pakistan while we don't sense that it is worried about the border here. We are together whether we like it or not.”

Murguia’s diagnosis of and offered solution to the violence, seem different from those of President Calderon. Murguia:

“The real causes that are generating the insecurity in Juárez and all over Mexico are lack of opportunity, lack of education, lack of [necessities], impunity, lack of justice. It is a mixture of a lot of problems where we Mexicans haven't done our homework. People who think they are going to fix [the problem] with policemen and arms are completely crazy.”

But as O’Grady and others note, there are few in Juarez who actually believe the mayor to be the clean operator he portrays himself to be.

· Also on Mexico, an AP report this weekend suggests drug cartels are recruiting younger and younger individuals into their ranks. Bill Conroy at Narco News with reporting on the US-Mexico strategy of targeting top capos, who can be held up as symbols of victory in the drug wars. The problem, as Conroy writes: “Any effort to cut off the heads of these narco organizations, only gives rise to more heads, like the mythical Hydra.” And the Houston Chronicle has an important story on how the terror of Mexico’s violence is not confined to major border cities like Juarez but rather extends to “an untold number of villages, towns and cities across Mexico” where “no matter how prosperous or poor, no one can expect to be spared.”

· In Bolivia last week, there were new hints of a potential thawing in US-Bolivian bilateral relations after a visit from US Ass’t. Sec. of State, Arturo Valenzuela. The Washington Post also runs a weekend report on counter-narcotics policies in Bolivia – policies with which the US seems to be still unhappy. And, from EFE, a report on the Bolivian military’s declaration this weekend that it is a “socialist” and “anti-imperialist” institution.

· From Al-Jazeera, news on the release of two more political prisoners in Cuba. The first individual released, Arnaldo Ramos, had previously refused asylum in Spain and, the Al-Jazeera report makes it seem like he will be allowed to stay in Havana, although that cannot yet be confirmed. Luis Enrique Ferrer, another dissident released on Saturday, says he will now go to Spain after reaching a deal with the government to give his home to family members remaining in Cuba. Laura Pollan of the “Ladies in White” adds that a third prisoner, Diosdado Gonzalez, has now been told he will be released within a month as well.

· MercoPress reports that the Colombian Senate has voted to accept UNASUR’s founding charter. The country’s Lower House must now vote on the matter – a vote which could come before UNASUR’s Nov. 26 summit in Guyana. Just one more country must officially ratify the charter for the organization to become “legally existent.” Uruguay is expected to take up the issue in its national legislature this month as well.

· The New York Times with more on Daniel Ortega’s controversial push for re-election in Nicaragua.

· Two looks at Haitian elections and some of the 19 candidates apparently running, in reports from the New York Times and Miami Herald. The latter features Rene Preval’s handpicked successor, Jude Célestin, who the Miami Herald gushes over.

· The Santiago Times runs a comparative piece on dealing with the legacies of human rights abuses in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

· IPS features the laudable work of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) which has now worked in some 40 countries around the world to identify the remains of individuals killed primarily in acts of political violence and state terrorism. It’s most recent work, however, has been identifying victims around Ciudad Juarez at the original request of the rights group, Justicia para Nuestras Hijas.

· And finally, also from IPS, a report on the governor-elect Gregorio Santos in the state of Cajamarca, Peru. The election of Santos, a left-leaning politician, has brought worries to mining companies in one of the country’s most heavily exploited regions. Hans Flury, president of the National Mining, Oil and Energy Society (SNMPE), the industry’s powerful private business association, put his reaction to Santos’s election as bluntly as possible, telling IPS, Santos’s election is “devastating news” given his anti-mining positions. Later in his interview with IPS Flury calls Santos a “staunch communist.” To that Santos has responded that if mining companies “comply with the law, they have nothing to be afraid of.” Santos:

“The real problem is that in Cajamarca everything revolves around what mining companies do or fail to do. But very soon this is going to stop.”

Migration Notes: Arizona, Mexico, and Central America

A new study on migration suggests as many as 100,000 Hispanics left Arizona as the state debated its controversial immigration law, SB 1070. As the AP reports it, the BBVA Bancomer Research study says the decline was likely due to both SB 1070, which partly entered into effect in July, and Arizona's own struggling economy – particularly its fledgling construction industry. In addition, the study highlights Mexican government figures which indicate significant reverse migration flows. Between June and September of this year, Mexico says some 23,380 Mexican nationals are believed to have returned to Mexico from Arizona.

Meanwhile, remittances from the US to Mexico also fell significantly over the two years. The Inter-American Dialogue’s Manuel Orozco, quoted by Bloomberg, says cash transfers to Mexico from the US totaled just $21.1 billion in 2009, down 19 percent from 2008. The BBVA Bancomer study, meanwhile, estimates that remittances – the second-largest source of foreign income in Mexico, after oil – will not recover to their peak level of $26 billion until 2012 or 2013.

The release of the new study on migration came as part of this week’s Global Forum on Migration and Development in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, which also addressed a variety of issues more frequently commented upon at this blog. Receiving perhaps the most attention was the launch of a new four part film, The Invisibles, documenting the journey of Central American migrants through Mexico. The film, co-directed by Gael Garcia Bernal (Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros), was aided in its production by Amnesty International, the human rights group, who, more than any other, has brought to light the plight of Central American migrants heading north. Earlier this year the group launched the premier human rights report on the issue, Invisible Victims, and now, to accompany the new film, Amnesty has just published a terrific new brochure on migrant travels through Mexico, entitled Viajes de Esperanza y Temor. As Amnesty writes about the film:

“Our team spent hours interviewing migrants who told us what was happening to people on their way to the US: how they had been prayed on by criminal gangs and sometimes public officials and how the gangs were killing, raping and kidnapping migrants. The stories were horrifying but the people we spoke to were determined to reach the US. We decided we had to find a way to draw the world’s attention to this human rights crisis.”

According to Amnesty, the Global Forum was the “perfect opportunity…to bring the issue [of Central American migration] to the attention of governments from around the world” and, specifically, to “engage with the Mexican government directly.” On the latter, Sarah Shebbeare, Amnesty International’s Mexico campaigner and executive producer of the films, says:

“The Mexican government has promised to improve protection for migrants. It is time to turn that promise into action. As a first step, we are calling on the government to establish a clear action plan and to collect and publish nationwide data on abuses against migrants and on the action taken to hold those responsible to account.”

Currently nine out of ten irregular migrants come from Central America, and Amnesty says Mexico is today “one of the few countries in the world that is both destination and transit route for migrants.”

Continuing in Mexico:

· More on Mexican migration, directly related to the country’s drug wars. From the Wall Street Journal this morning, Mexico correspondent Nicolas Casey with more on the flight of hundreds from the Mexican border town of Ciudad Mier. In the town of just 6000, more than 60 individuals have been murdered in 2010. And while there has been little direct information about what is occurring in the Tamaulipas town presently, as many as 300 individuals abandoned Ciudad Mier earlier this week, moving to nearby Miguel Aleman after traffickers (apparently Los Zetas) threatened to go on a new killing spree. As the paper notes, violence and fears of violence have spiked in the state of Tamaulipas after last week’s killing of capo Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén of the Gulf Cartel, which continues its turf battles with its one-time allies, Los Zetas.

· According to Mexico’s ambassador to the US, Arturo Sarukhan, such drug-related violence along the US-Mexico border has received excessive attention in the US media. In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York this week, Sarukhan suggested Americans were being denied news about positive developments in his country by the press, namely Mexico’s growing economic ties with the US and the rise of a strong Mexican middle class. “If it bleeds it leads,” the ambassador said of the US press’s coverage of Mexico – an opinion echoed by the Mexican ambassador’s US counterpart, Ambassador Carlos Pascual, who also spoke at the CFR event on Wednesday. Ambassador Sarukhan: “You could infer (from the coverage) that the country is burning from the Rio Grande to the border with Guatemala.” As Reuters reports, Sarukhan also called on the NRA to help in the fight against illegal gun smuggling to Mexico.

· A decidedly different take from veteran Dallas Morning News correspondent Alfredo Corchado who spoke at the Wilson Center in Washington on Monday. The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Joel Simon comments on the talk at the CPJ blog, quoting Corchado’s description of the grave situation facing journalists in areas most affected by indiscriminate violence. Corchado:

“For too long we've tried telling ourselves that as foreign correspondents we're afforded a measure of protection. We're fooling ourselves. The killings are so indiscriminate these days that you can die not just because of the work you do, the words you write, the questions you're asking, or what you may know--but because you may be in the wrong place, or wrong time, or yet become another victim of mistaken identity because the guy pulling the trigger is likely a young punk who doesn't know the difference. They can kill for 250 pesos to 1,500 pesos and they know they can get away with it. There are no consequences when you live in a country with an impunity rate of more than 95 percent.”

· The Miami Herald’s Jim Wyss reports on the ongoing debate in Venezuela over Major General Henry Rangel Silva’s verbal foray into the realm of civilian affairs this week. In an interview with Ultimas Noticias, Rangel, currently the head of the country’s Strategic Operational Command, suggested neither the armed forces nor many chavistas would accept the election of the opposition in 2012 presidential elections. OAS Sec. General José Miguel Insulza rejected those comments in an interview with Andres Oppenheimer earlier in the week. According to the Herald today, PSUV party chief Calixto García says Insulza is being used as “a useful idiot” by the opposition. And as for Rangel Silva, he has just been promoted to armed forces’ “general-in-chief” by President Hugo Chavez, reports Reuters’ Frank Jack Daniel today. Chavez says the promotion could be made official as soon as tomorrow.

· Also in Venezuela, Venezuelanalysis on demands being made on the Chavez government from its political left as workers took to the streets of Caracas this week to demand greater participation in the Venezuelan economy. Venezuela’s National Workers’ Union (UNETE) led the demonstrations which called for the “resolution of pending collective labor contracts, and the empowerment of workers within their unions, especially at worksites that now belong to the network of recently nationalized industries.”

· Similarly, the Foreign Policy Association’s blog has more on something IPS reported on earlier in the week – the continued economic success of Argentina’s worker-run “recovered factories.”

· According to EFE, Spain has agreed to contribute an initial $1 million euros ($1.36 million US dollars) to Ecuador’s Yasuni-ITT environmental initiative, under which the country seeks international financial compensation to leave its oil in the ground. Spain’s foreign minister said Ecuador has Spain’s “political support” for carrying out what the foreign minister called an “intelligent and cutting-edge” project. However, prior to Spain’s commitment, only Chile had contributed to the fund ($100,000), suggesting Ecuador has a long way to go before reaching its goal of $100 million by the end of 2011.

· Also from the Puerta Vallarta Global Forum on Migration, AFP highlights a report presented by Chile, Ecuador, France, Germany Ghana, the Mauritius Islands, México, Switzerland, and the International Organization on Migration discussing expected increases in migration due to climate change.

· In the Guardian, an examination of Brazil’s potentially important role on international climate change issues, particularly as an intermediary between rich and poor countries.

· At the Guardian’s Poverty Matters blog a convincing case that political reform, not simply development aid, is necessary in Honduras if reductions in poverty are to be achieved. The Guardian: “What is really needed is an open debate drawing the poorest into a discussion about the future of the country. Predictably, this is not high on the present regimes to-do list. Instead, the elites fight over the spoils.”

· The Economist this week on the ongoing Nicaragua-Costa Rica border dispute – what the magazine seems to suggest is connected to President Ortega’s controversial bid for re-election.

· The AP says the first US reconstruction monies are finally being sent to Haiti, seven months after they were promised. According to the AP’s Haiti correspondent, Jonathan Katz, some $120 million – 1/10 of the total US pledge – will be transferred to the World Bank’s Haiti Reconstruction Fund in the coming days.

· And finally, on prisoner releases in Cuba, Reuters reports that one of the island’s principal dissident leaders, Laura Pollan of the “Ladies in White,” says she has information which suggests least one of the remaining 13 detainees from the group of 52 prisoners the Cuban government pledged to free will be going free in the next 2-4 weeks. Pollan also tells Reuters she thinks all the prisoners will be released in that time. The 13 detainees include Pollan’s husband, Hector Maseda.

Rights Abuses and Responses in Santos's Colombia

In a recent report from the Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA), Colombia’s left-leaning opposition party says some 50 political activists have been killed in Colombia since Juan Manuel Santos took office last August. As EFE reports, PDA party chief Clara Lopez says the cases are “verifiable” and represent a broader “extermination plan against social sectors and vulnerable populations” which has continued under the watch of the new Santos government.

In a separate report, Colombia’s CUT labor federation added Tuesday that at least 16 teachers have been murdered so far in 2010. Three more, the labor union says, have disappeared while some 20 teachers have been displaced from their homes because of violence. The most recent killing of a Colombian teacher occurred last weekend when Ligia Gonzalez was shot to death in the southwestern town of Tulua. According to EFE, a 30-year veteran of the teaching profession and a union member, Gonzalez was murdered by two unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle.

The Colombian government’s forensics department said this week that it has identified 18 new cases of suspected sexual abuse of minors by the Colombian soldiers and police. The investigations come after the recent murder of three children in the department of Arauca, allegedly at the hands of security forces. On those murders, Adam Isacson at Just the Facts comments, saying the handling of the heinous military abuses does seem to represent an important shift in how the military is responding to abuse claims. Isacson:

“Too often in the past, the Colombian military – often joined by civilian presidents and defense ministers – has responded to abuse allegations by circling the wagons, mounting campaigns to shield both the accused and their institution. Officers have covered up crimes, political leaders have publicly attacked the accusers, and both have blocked efforts to investigate abuses… Not so this time. The Colombian defense establishment’s reaction to the Arauca murders has – so far, at least – been proactive and transparent: a by-the-book model of ‘what to do after an abuse takes place.’”

And finally, from EFE, new revelations by an ex DAS intelligence chief that various ministers and advisers to President Alvaro Uribe –among them the foreign minister, the interior minister, and the Vice President— had direct knowledge of illegal agency surveillance on political opponents of the president, as well as numerous journalists.

To other stories:

· In Mexico, the AP reports on a letter allegedly released by La Familia Michoacana cartel on Tuesday in which the drug gang offered to dissolve itself if the government guaranteed the protection of citizens in the state of Michoacan. The letter:

“We have decided to retreat and return to our daily productive activities if the federal and local authorities ... promise to take control of the state with force and decision. If the government accepts this public commitment and lives up to it, La Familia Michoacana will dissolve.”

Investigators are currently attempting to verify the authenticity of the note – the first ever of its kind –and perhaps an indication that the syndicate has hit hard financial times. “This is a way to negotiate out of a business they're stuck in, with no greater cost to them,” says Jorge Chabat an expert on drug trafficking at Mexico’s CIDE. No matter, the government said Wednesday it has no plans to “negotiate.” The letter was dropped on the streets of various Michoacan towns on Tuesday.

· In other news on drug-related violence in Mexico, a report on what appears to be a complete takeover of the Tamaulipas town of Ciudad Mier by Los Zetas. Some 300 people evacuated the town this week, moving across the border to Miguel Aléman, after Zetas members went through the streets after a Friday murder, threatening to kill off all the town’s residents. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission is urging an investigation into the murder of journalist Carlos Guajardo, who was killed during the large-scale anti-drug operation against the Gulf Cartel in Matamoros over the weekend. And from Human Rights Watch, a new letter to the Mexican Senate and House of Deputies outlining the rights groups serious concerns with the “scope” of proposed legislative reforms to the country’s Military Code of Justice, proposed by President Felipe Calderon late last month. HRW Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco:

“The proposal would subject three types of human rights violations-enforced disappearance, rape, and torture-to civilian jurisdiction, while other serious violations would continue to be investigated and prosecuted within the military justice system. While the transfer of any cases of human rights violations from the military to civilian jurisdiction represents a step in the right direction, the proposed reform will still leave a significant gap in accountability for most abuses committed by members of the military, and should be amended by Congress.”

· An international forum on migration ends today in the Mexican city of Puerto Vallarta. The AFP has more on the UN-sponsored event which has brought together delegates from some 125 countries. In a statement sent to the event, UN Sec. General Ban-Ki Moon said international groups must work to promote “secure migration.” For his part, Felipe Calderon, through whose country some 500,000 are believed to pass each year, has said the issue must be addressed under the framework of “shared responsibility.”

· The New York Times’ “Climate Wire” previews upcoming climate change talks in Cancun, profiling Venezuela’s climate negotiator Claudia Salerno. Venezuela and the ALBA bloc, the Times says, worked to successfully block the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from adopting the Copenhagen Accord last year, protesting the closed-door, exclusionary “method” by which the accord was produced. Also, more on the upcoming Cancun talks from Laura Carlsen of the Americas Program, at Foreign Policy in Focus.

· On a different Venezuela matter, OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza tells the Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer that he strongly rejects statements made by Venezuelan major general Henry Rangel Silva this week, which suggested the military would not accept the election of an opposition government in 2012. More from Adam Isacson at Just the Facts who says that in a region where military incursion upon civilian institutions remains a threat, the major general’s words demand “universal condemnation.”

· Finally, opinions and essays. Alex Main of the Center for Economic and Policy Research analyzes the right turn on the incoming House Foreign Affairs Committee, breaking down the records of chairwoman-elect Ilean Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and incoming Western Hemisphere subcommittee chairman, Connie Mack (R-FL). Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) posts part of a recent speech on US-Latin American relations, at the Huffington Post. The AP’s Jonathan Katz has a powerful, if not disturbing, narrative piece on the emergence of cholera in Port-au-Prince this week. And, at the New Republic, writer David Rieff also comments on Haiti, with a stinging critique of the human rights movement and the failures of humanitarianism, more generally.

US-Mexico Military Cooperation Deepening

The US military has opened up a new phase in its cooperation with counterparts in the Mexican armed forces. According to the Washington Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan this morning, officials from both the US and Mexican military now confirm they are “sharing information” and collaborating on soldier training in “an expanding effort to help [Mexico] battle its violent drug cartels” – an admission that the US military has been “hesitant to discuss” previously because of Mexico’s wariness about foreign interference. That wariness, however, may be changing. Here’s the Post:

“Current and former officials say the U.S. military has instructed hundreds of Mexican officers in the past two years in subjects such as how to plan military operations, use intelligence to hunt traffickers and observe human rights. “

Sheridan’s reporting suggests a program that is significantly larger than what the Post’s Bill Booth reported on last February. It may also add to what both the El Paso Times and Milenio were reporting on in late October. Those programs, according to Booth, included embedding US intelligence agents with Mexican law enforcement units charged with going after cartels, but it seems to have been run primarily through the DEA. To the contrary, the Post’s latest reporting shines new light on the role of the Pentagon in Mexico, noting the Defense Dept. has tripled its counternarcotics aid to the country since 2008 (up from $12.2 million then to an estimated $34 million in 2010).

Meanwhile, at the State Dept., still the principal source of US anti-drug aid to Mexico, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton has continued to allude to increasing US concerns about drug-related violence in the country – the most famous of which being her depiction of cartel activity as an “insurgency.” In fact, it’s that model – and its opposite, counterinsurgency – to which US military officials are now referring with increased regularity.

Gen. Victor Renuart, who recently retired as head of the U.S. military's Northern Command, tells the Post that recent changes in the relationship between the US and Mexican militaries are “historic.” He continues:

“We have tried to share many of the lessons we've learned in chasing terrorist organizations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, Mexico is on President Obama’s mind as well. A senior official tells the paper that the president himself has instructed a group, “at a very high level,” to “really think hard about how we can up our game, do more to support” the Mexican government. One plan allegedly under consideration includes would involve shifting “$50 million in funds from the Pentagon's 2011 budget to improve security along Mexico's southern border.” Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), currently the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has also suggested increasing the joint deployment of aviation, surveillance and intelligence assets along the border. But, again, changes are already well underway. Once more, the Post, on new US-Mexico security training:

“Among those traveling to Mexico to give seminars to the military are staff members from the Joint Special Operations University, a sort of ‘college’ for U.S. Special Operations forces. Mexico's army has stationed a permanent liaison officer at the Northern Command, which is based in Colorado. And for the first time, a Mexican officer is serving as assistant commandant at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Ga., formerly known as the School of the Americas.”

To other stories:

· The LA Times also with US-Mexico drug war coverage. The paper says a new US inspector general’s report has determined a federal program (Project Gunrunner) intended to thwart gun smuggling from the US to Mexico is “unwieldy, mismanaged and fraught with ‘significant weaknesses.’” According to the damning assessment of ATF anti-gun efforts (paraphrased by the Times), “agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives focus only on small gun sales and do not share information with law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.” Meanwhile, “even the cornerstone effort of tracing U.S. guns in Mexico too often comes up short because of missing data and the lack of U.S. training for Mexican police.” The paper calls the report the first to find “systemic problems in a once highly praised project,” adding that “it mirrors concerns of many on the border that weapons from the U.S. are helping the violence spiral out of control.”

· A new Monterrey Institute of Technology study on impunity in Mexico says 98.5% of crimes currently go unpunished in the country. “Out of 7.48 million crimes – both federal and common – committed in Mexico this year, the study says the conviction rate has been only about 1 percent. Meanwhile, EFE also reports that a new study by the Private Security Council – a group composed of some 200 private security firms – shows drug related crimes and kidnappings on the rise in the country’s capital, Mexico City.

· And in Washington, Milenio and the Latin Americanist report on a hunger strike being staged by women activists in front of the White House, demanding the US focus attention on the border region’s social ills, rather than security, narrowly defined.

· In Paraguay this week, EFE says US Asst. Sec. of State Arturo Valenzuela renewed a security cooperation agreement with the Paraguayan government. Meeting with President Fernando Lugo, Valenzuela highlighted the United States’ willingness to continue supporting anti-drug efforts, as well as efforts against common “criminality,” in the country.

· All the major US papers this morning are reporting on the arrival of cholera to the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The New York Times says authorities are telling residents to “brace for a more severe epidemic than previously thought,” as at least 73 cholera cases have now been confirmed in Port-au-Prince. I’m not sure where these estimates come from, but, according to the Times, “medical officials” also add that the disease could afflict as many as 270,000 people over the next several years. Jacqueline Charles at the Miami Herald quotes the director general of Haiti’s Ministry of Health who is now calling the epidemic “a matter of national security.” But as US State Dept. spokesman PJ Crowley indicated Tuesday, the rise in confirmed cholera cases does not necessarily mean a spike in infections – it also implies improved monitoring and detection by medical groups in the country.

· On the Walid Makled case, reported here yesterday, Venezuela’s El Universal adds more on the likelihood that Makled will eventually be extradited to Venezuela, rather than to the US. According to Makled’s own lawyer, Miguel Angel Ramirez, part of Venezuela’s extradition claim includes murder charges against the businessman-turned-trafficker. [The US only has trafficking charges on its extradition claim]. And according to Ramirez, “When two countries require an individual, the requested government, according to the law, should first take into account the most serious crime.” The extradition process, however, could take up to a year.

· Also in Venezuela, EFE reports on the birth of a Green Party movement in the country, sparked by citizen activists who are tired of the country’s polarization. EFE: “The Venezuelan Environmental Movement, or Movev, has managed to unite ‘people of judgment who have taken the decision to vote for a new alternative.’”

· The UK’s Telegraph says Great Britain will support Brazil’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. This as the US backed a similar bid by India earlier this week.

· Mercopress, by way of O Estado de Sao Paulo, says Brazils current Central Banker Henrique Meirelles could end up as the country’s ambassador to Washington rather than having his term at the Central Bank renewed. According to Brazilian press, Rousseff may not support another term for Meirelles at the country’s Central Bank because of his “aversion to cutting interest rates” – a topic of significant debate within Brazil and within the PT itself.

· IPS with more on the 13 Cuban dissidents who have not yet been released as part of the Catholic Church brokered deal that was supposed to free 52 individuals detained in 2003. Also, the Miami Herald with more on the economic agenda on tap for Cuba’s Communist Party Congress in April.

· Finally, opinions and reviews. In the Guardian, La Jornada opinion editor Luis Hernandez Navarro with an excellent piece on Mexico’s growing list of nameless civilian drug war victims. Hernandez Navarro: “The population is equally afraid of the drug dealers and the men in uniform. Young people are suspect simply by virtue of being young; they are stopped in the street and threatened at gunpoint. The police break into private houses without a warrant and terrorize those who live there. The first victim of the war against the drug traffickers has been human rights.” An editorial in the Washington Post looks at life after Lula da Silva and Nestor Kirchner. Michael Shifter reviews a new book by Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, What if Latin America Ruled the World?, for the Post. And New York University’s Tamiment Library released the papers of famous Latin America CIA operative-turned-defector Philip Agee yesterday. Robert Baer, at Foreign Policy, has few good things to say about the man who offered historians and journalists an inside look at CIA activity in the region during the Cold War.

Bogota, Between Caracas and Washington

Speaking in Havana Sunday, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos had agreed to extradite businessman and accused drug lord, Walid “the Turk” Makled, to his native Venezuela, rather than to the United States where Makled is also wanted on drug trafficking charges. Makled has been in Colombian custody since his arrest in a joint US-Colombia operation last August. According to Reuters, shortly after his arrest the head of the Colombian police said Makled would be sent to the US for prosecution – making what Hugo Chavez said Sunday quite significant, if it’s indeed true.

The AP on Sunday notes that while Juan Manuel Santos recently signed a new series of bilateral accords with Venezuela, including one related to increased bilateral counternarcotics collaboration, the two men did not publicly address the issue of Makled’s extradition during their meetings last week. Addressing those talks with Chavez over the weekend, Santos, somewhat jocularly, referred to Chavez as his “new best friend” but again avoided any discussion of the Makled case.

Between Chavez’s pronouncement and Santos’s silence is where the intrigue over the Walid Makled is found. Here’s STRATFOR Global Intelligence which has been investigating the Makled case for some time:

“When Colombia and Venezuela restored diplomatic and trade relations in September, shortly after Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos took office, STRATFOR raised the question of what additional leverage Bogota might have had. The rapid rapprochement between Bogota and Caracas was not solely due to Colombia's need to alleviate pressures on businessmen on the border who depended on trade with Venezuela for their livelihood, nor was it simply the result of a personal power struggle between Santos and his more hawkish predecessor, as many erroneously speculated (Santos and former President Alvaro Uribe Velez, in fact, have worked very closely together on Venezuela, among other issues). When STRATFOR began receiving reports of the Venezuelan military quietly shutting down Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) camps and flushing FARC members back across the border into Colombia, it was evident that Bogota was holding something big over Chavez's head."

That “something big,” STRATFOR argues, is Walid Makled. A former Chavez ally who fell out with the regime in 2008, Makled has since maintained that he holds information implicating senior Venezuelan government officials “in money-laundering and drug-trafficking.” Should those allegations be pursued further in a US-based trial against Makled, the Colombia-Venezuela rapprochement would no doubt be threatened. On the other hand, his extradition to Venezuela would likely be rebuked by the US, who is in the process of reworking the status of its relationship with Colombia, “including how to proceed with an expanded military basing agreement.”

No conclusions yet on what will transpire in the coming weeks. But, at the very least, the Walid Makled case seems an important bellwether to watch in assessing Juan Manuel Santos’s seriousness about and capacity for balancing new relationships with both the United States and neighboring Venezuela.

To other stories:

· Also on Venezuela, an interjection into civilian politics by the head of the country’s Operational Strategic Command, Major General Henry Rangel Silva. In an interview with the Caracas paper Ultimas Noticias published Monday, Rangel Silva said the idea of an “opposition government is hard to swallow,” adding that “it would mean selling the country, and that is not going to be accepted, not by the Armed Force and much less by the people.”

· Meanwhile, in Cuba, BBC Mundo reports on President Chavez’s trip to Cuba over the weekend where the two countries commemorated the 10 year anniversary of a bilateral cooperation agreement that has, most notably, sent thousands of Cuban doctors to Venezuela in return for Venezuelan oil being sent to Cuba. The agreement also marked the beginning of alternative Latin American regional integration through ALBA.

· On domestic politics in Cuba, the AP says that on Monday Cuban President Raúl Castro announced the date of the country’s much-anticipated Communist Party congress. The congress – the first since 1997 – will be held this April, and according to Castro will “make fundamental decisions on how to modernize the Cuban economic model and adopt the paths for economic and social policy of the party and the revolution.”

· In Argentina, the man the AP calls the “intellectual author” of military repression during the country’s brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship, naval officer Emilio Massera, died Monday in a Naval Hospital. Massera is suspected of being the architect of the military’s plan to murder some 30,000 members of the opposition. He also directed the notorious clandestine torture facilities at the Escuela Superior de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA). In 2005, prosecution against Massera was suspended after the court determined he was suffering from “dementia.” Massera was 85. More from Argentina’s Clarín.

· Meanwhile, in neighboring Uruguay, reports on the imprisonment of Uruguayan general Miguel Dalmao, convicted for his role in the murder of a left wing activist in 1974. Dalmao’s detention marks the first time an active member of Uruguay's military has been jailed for human rights violations committed during the country's 1973-85 dictatorship. Dalmao, however, is expected to appeal the decision – a process which “will likely take months.”

· Mexico is the fifth more dangerous country in the world to be a journalist, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (by way of the CS Monitor). It follows only Iraq, Iran, China, and Russia. That as Latin American media leaders met in Merida for the 66th assembly of the Inter American Press Association where much of the discussion focused on violence against journalists in the host country, according to a report from Mercopress. The Guardian reports, meanwhile, that another Mexican journalist was killed Friday – the 10^th this year. In the border city of Matamoros, the paper reports, reporter Carlos Alberto Guajardo Romero, was shot and killed while he witnessed the shootout that led to the murder of Gulf Cartel capo Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillen.

· On another major target of drug violence – Mexican mayors – Reuters reports that the mayor elect in a small Veracruz town was kidnapped and killed, along with two others, on Monday. No motive as of yet for the killings.

· Laura Randall, the editor of Changing Structure of Mexico: Political, Social and Economic Prospects, writes at Mexidata.info on the effects of decentralization on Mexican citizen security. According to Randall, “the notion that ‘democracy’ is the same as ‘decentralization,’ and the ill-managed decentralization of government contributed to the breakdown of law and order at the municipal level in much of rural Mexico.”

· The Central America Politics blog has two short breakdowns on recent spikes in violence in both El Salvador and Guatemala. WOLA’s Morris Panner and Adriana Beltrán write on the latter – with a particular focus on organized crime – in the latest print edition of Americas Quarterly.

· In Honduras, In these Times on a new round of teacher strikes against the Lobo government, protesting, among other things, the “gutting of a minimum wage law that was supposed to take effect in January.”

· IPS reports on the continued success of worker-run cooperatives, formed out of the 2001/2002 economic crisis, in Argentina. According to a new study, today there are some 205 “recovered” companies, with a total of 9,362 workers -- up from 161 companies with 6,900 workers in 2004.

· New worries that cholera has reached the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

· And in the Miami Herald this morning, former Chilean president – and now the first Under-Secretary-General for UN Women – Michelle Bachelet lays out her objectives at her new post.