Santos Victorious

Colombians elected former defense minister and Uribe ally Juan Manuel Santos to be their next president Sunday. As in round-one, it was not so much Santos’s win which was surprising but rather his margin of victory. With nearly all votes tallied, Santos took 69% of Sunday’s vote, compared to just 28% for his rival, Antanas Mockus. As the AP reports it, those numbers point to “the largest margin of victory in a presidential vote in modern Colombian history.” [Three percent of ballots were nullified, in a show of protest against both candidates].

According to the New York Times, other headlines behind Sunday’s poll were the remarkably high levels of abstention and multiple clashes between security forces and guerrilla groups which took the lives of at least 10 over the weekend [AFP puts the number killed at 17]. On the former, Al-Jazeera’s Lucia Newman, reporting from Bogotá says the heavy rains and the World Cup kept many voters indoors. Others say Colombians believed the results were well-known in advance and thus stayed home Sunday.

On the issue of violence, the Northern province of Norte de Santander, on the Venezuelan border, was the site of Sunday’s most deadly clashes. There six police officers were killed by rebel explosives.

While most credit the security policies of the Uribe government for Santos’s victory, Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue, says “the social and economic agenda has to be a top priority” upon assuming office. “Nearly half the population lives in poverty,” Shifter tells the Times, “and Colombia has the region’s highest unemployment level. His overwhelming support in rural strongholds can be interpreted as a demand for more jobs and better social welfare policies.” Colombian political analyst Jorge Restrepo echoes those sentiments, saying “Santos is seen as someone who can be trusted with the economy.”

But Santos’s early months in office will also surely be marred by the dark side of Uribe’s popular security policies – namely, the murders of innocent Colombians in the country’s “false positives” scandal. According to Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), “[T]his whole issue is not going to go away.” The Huffington Post, meanwhile, throws doubt on the independence of Sunday’s vote, reporting on what it calls Santos’s “previously undisclosed role as a corporate officer of the company hired to run the nation's elections over the last decade.”

Behind the headline from a busy weekend:

· An important piece in the Sunday New York Times examines the plight of human rights defenders in Mexico. Marc Lacey reports, writing that “With a drug war raging around them and an unreliable judicial system in place, Mexico’s human rights activists have their hands full as they grapple with a growing new class of victims: themselves.” Rights groups are spending ever greater energy defending their fellow activists, the paper says. Meanwhile, as reports from international groups like Amnesty International show, threats and abuses continue to un-investigated by the country’s judicial system. “Although there are no precise tallies, human rights groups say that the number of activists who have been improperly singled out by the police, soldiers and government officials is in the dozens.”

· Besides human rights activists, the report also makes mention of the threats facing Mexican journalists, “silenced by shadowy gunmen.” In a recent NACLA interview, independent journalist Laura Castellanos, author of México Armado, discussed the threats she and others face for exposing drug war security abuses. And last week the issue of violence against journalists in Mexico (as well as in Honduras) made its way to Rep. Elliot Engel’s Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House Foreign Relations Committee. Alfredo Corchado at the Dallas Morning News has a good report on the hearing, which apparently moved quickly from issues of violence against Honduran and Mexican reporters to questions of censorship in Cuba, Venezuela, and Ecuador. [In fact, reading José Cárdenas at FP’s Shadow Government blog makes you think that press censorship in Venezuela was the only reason last week’s hearing was called. More on that later].

· Continuing with Mexico news though, the New York Times has another piece in its Sunday edition which says a new FBI report shows border violence on the US side of the US-Mexico border (as well as illegal immigration) actually on the decline. “While thousands have been killed in Mexico’s drug wars … F.B.I. statistics show that Arizona is relatively safe,” the paper writes. That’s unfortunately not the case in much of Mexico, however. Near Cancún, the latest “mass grave” was discovered over the weekend, containing at least 12 bodies. The Zetas are suspected of carrying out those murders. And finally, a new Time report (like an in-depth New Yorker piece from a couple of weeks ago) examines La Familia Michoacana, the messianic drug gang in the Tierra Caliente region of western Michoacan state which dominates the meth trade.

· Back on Colombia, Michael Reed-Hurtado head of the Colombia office at the International Center for Transitional Justice, discusses how the US extradition of Colombian drug lords is actually holding back justice. On the US extradition of Diego Fernando Murillo in 2008, Reed-Hurtado writes the following:

“As the United States poached these top criminals, it deprived Colombia's legal system of the chance to prosecute local crimes, robbed victims of the possibility for any resolution, sacrificed vital evidence that could be used in stopping further offenses, and might have pushed the country further away from building a lasting peace with its violent and virulent armed groups.”

Interestingly, Colombians now make up the second-largest group of non-US nationals in US prisons (at 57,000). [Mexican nationals are number one]. And while extradition was “once widely supported as a means of bypassing Colombia's massive legislative and judicial corruption,” Reed-Hurtado says “today it is so controversial that it has become the subject of a standoff between the [Colombian] presidency (Uribe has continued to support the policy) and the Supreme Court (which has tried to stay various extraditions).”

· US-Cuba migration talks restarted last Friday, reports AQ. The US is likely to use the forum to press the Cubans on the release of US contractor Alan Gross, analysts say. Doubts remain that “significant progress” will be made through the talks, however.

· On the island itself things are slightly more hopeful as Raúl Castro, dressed in a suit rather than his military fatigues, met with the Vatican’s foreign minister Sunday. Cuban state news said the two spoke of “an international agenda” during their meeting, which the Vatican’s foreign minister called “very positive.” Human rights groups are hopeful that a new round of prisoner releases may be forthcoming.

· IPS has a new report on “severe setbacks” in rights abuses cases in Peru, involving that country’s military. IPS: “Since early 2009, the Sala Penal Nacional, the highest-level court dealing with the human rights cases against armed forces and police personnel, has acquitted 65 members of the security forces and convicted only 15, according to human rights organisations that defend victims of the 1980-2000 civil war.” Of those 15 sentenced, 10 belong to the army, four to the police, and one to the navy. And, say many human rights groups in the country, the aim of a concerted military campaign against prosecution is ultimately to get former President Alberto Fujimori out of prison.

· The Financial Times says Brazil is pulling out of its attempt to broker the much discussed nuclear deal with Iran. More criticism of those efforts from the Economist this week as well.

· And finally, opinions. On Cuba, Carlos Saladrigas of the Cuba Study Group writes in the Miami Herald on the letter from 74 Cuban dissidents supporting an end to the US Cuba travel ban – and the reaction of anti-Castro hardliners. Here’s Saladrigas:

“At the core of this letter [from the 74] is the fact that, for the first time, a large number of notable figures ofCuba's internal opposition have come together to express their personal opinions on an important current debate about U.S. policy toward Cuba. They recognize in their letter that while U.S. policy is not their competence, they are clearly disproportionally affected by it. While the exile community has always played a key role in promoting U.S. policy toward Cuba, the signers are reminding us that there is no parity in the consequences and impact of those policies. They bear the brunt of the impact.”

A Scripps News editorial, meanwhile, also calls for the passage of Peterson bill, which would end the travel ban while also “allowing direct transfers between U.S. and Cuban banks. A New York Times editorial says the US and the international community must focus on keeping women and children safe in Haiti while also pushing for election planning. And back to press censorship with Andres Oppenheimer who focuses on the Zuloaga case in Venezuela but expands his argument to include other forms of “indirect censorship” which he believes are popping up around the region. “It's time for the OAS and nongovernment watchdog groups to expand their definition of censorship, going beyond the necessary investigations into the murder or legal actions against critical journalists,” argues Oppenheimer.

"Brutal Passage" for Central American Migrants

In the Washington Post this morning, William Booth looks at the “brutal passage” Central American migrants facing traveling through their northern neighbor, Mexico. The piece cites human rights groups who, in the Post’s words, report that migrants are “routinely robbed, raped and kidnapped by criminal gangs that often work alongside corrupt police” and display an overt xenophobia toward their neighbors to the South. According to Mexico’s National Migration Institute, some 64,000 undocumented migrants were detained and deported in 2009. That number is down from over 200,000 just a few years ago – a change which the Post attributes to a combination of factors, including “tougher enforcement on the U.S. border, the global economic slowdown and … the [risk of] robbery and assaults migrants face in Mexico.” Approximately 20,000 more Central American migrants are suspected of being kidnapped annually as well, says Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission – many at the hands of drug gangs operating together with corrupt officials.

Here’s one such migrant, interviewed by the Post, who’s experienced first-hand the horrors of being kidnapped by a drug gang (the Zetas):

“They put a plastic bag over your head and you can't breathe. They tell you if you don't give them the phone numbers" [of family members the kidnappers can call to demand payment for a migrant's release] … next time we'll just let you die.”

The United Nations, meanwhile, has described the kidnapping of migrants in Mexico as “an epidemic.” Women, in particular, have faced the most troubling sort of violence. Six out of every ten migrants traveling through Mexico are believed to be sexually assaulted during their trip. And for its part, Amnesty International, which published a report on the matter in late April, says some hypocrisy is embedded within Mexico’s response to draconian immigration laws in Arizona. “We have a government in Mexico that emphatically criticizes the new immigration law -- which is perfectly valid, to criticize a law with widespread consequences -- but at the same time doesn't have the desire to address the same problem within its own borders,” says Alberto Herrera, executive director of Amnesty International in Mexico.

Behind the headline:

· The Economist this week has a piece on the resignation of Carlos Castresana from the UN-backed CICIG in Guatemala. The magazine writes that the decision came as a “shock” after a “string of [CICIG] successes” which included the arrest of former president Alfonso Portillo, the apparent resolution of the Rosenberg case, and the forced removal of over 2,000 corrupt police officers, ten prosecutors, and an attorney general. On the prospects for the future, the Economist writes:

“As Mexico and Colombia crack down on them, drug gangs are finding refuge in Guatemala. In the jungle state of Petén, the Zetas, a Mexican drug-trafficking group, have hung up signs recruiting soldiers. A report from America’s state department says that “entire regions of Guatemala are now essentially under [their] control.” The country’s lawlessness exposes it to the appeal of a strongman. Otto Pérez Molina, a former general who promises an ‘iron fist’ against crime, leads the opinion polls for the next presidential election in September 2011. Much-needed change is unlikely to come from the left: the candidate most likely to run for Mr Colom’s party is Sandra Torres, his wife.”

· Also on the impact of organized crime, globally, UN Sec. General Ban Ki Moon spoke yesterday on the matter, at a meeting organized by Mexico and Italy. The Sec. General insisted on more “severe” legal instruments to fight global organized crime.

· In Nicaragua, the AP reported Thursday on the arrival of Colombian Ruben Dario Granada to Managua where he was granted political asylum. Granada is the brother of the FARC’s “foreign minister.” Infolatam also has a piece on Daniel Ortega and still simmering “institutional crisis” in the country he governs. One of the interesting points the piece highlights: the possibility that Ortega could anoint his wife, Rosario Murillo as his successor, should he be unable to find a vehicle for re-election. A new trend in Latin America?

· AQ reports that OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza has put together the “high level commission” that will study the possibility of Honduras’s re-integration into the organization. The group will apparently include “two members from South America, two from Central America and one each from the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean” (although no names have yet been released). The commission is expected to meet separately with both representatives of the ousted Zelaya government and the current government of Pepe Lobo Sosa.

· Meanwhile, on the still deteriorating human rights situation there, Adrienne Pine posts the translation of a recent interview (by Sirel) with COFADEH national coordinator, Bertha Oliva. On the general state of human rights under Lobo Sosa, Oliva says:

“What we have managed to piece together over the past four months under Porfirio Lobo's government is terrifying. It is another testimony to the fact that human rights in Honduras continue to be systematically and selectively violated and this is in line with the state's subtle and silent policy which is very dangerous and worrying.”

“Before the coup d'état there was repression, but it was mainly through the abuse of authority. Now the majority of human rights abuses are politically motivated and the perpetrators have perfected their methods. It is getting more and more difficult for human rights organizations to work in such a violent atmosphere. The tactics of the perpetrators are far more systematic and they are more vigilant about covering up their tracks.”

· In the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin America Advisor, a discussion with four analysts about last week’s OAS meetings in Lima – at which the issue of Honduras was center stage.

· In an interview with the Financial Times, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa warned he would respond militarily to another Colombia cross-border raid of any suspected FARC camp in his country’s national territory.

· IPS has an update on US-Bolivia relations, which appeared to be on the road to recovery. However, the report says that may have changed. “At the inauguration of a congress of coca farmers in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba Jun. 5, [Evo] Morales complained that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is financing non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and foundations that actively oppose the government.” The president has threatened to expel USAID.

· There’s optimism in Cuba where the Catholic Church is holding a major conference and where the Vatican’s foreign minister, Dominique Mamberti, sat down for talks with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez , this week. Blogger Yoani Sánchez offers her thoughts on developments, by way of the Huffington Post.

· WOLA, the Latin America Working Group, the US Office on Colombia, and CIP have just released a new report on the DAS spy scandal in Colombia. Entitled “Far Worse than Watergate,” a short release accompanying the report says “Research…indicates that operations did not target alleged terrorists, but rather people carrying out legitimate, democratic activities, including: Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judges, presidential candidates, journalists, publishers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the United Nations and human rights defenders in Colombia, the United States and Europe.”

· Lastly, an opinion today from Mark Weisbrot at the Guardian on electioneering in Brazil. The piece looks at the Brazilian opposition’s attempt to make the country’s Lula’s foreign policy an election issue. PSDB candidate José Serra recently remarked that “eighty to ninety percent of the cocaine [here] comes from Bolivia” and accused the Bolivian government of “being complicit in the drug trade.” There have also been new attacks on Mercosur, Lula’s Iran talks, and the country’s relations with Venezuela. Weisbrot see’s Lula’s economic success as the reason behind the opposition’s electoral strategy:

“José Serra is not a rightwing politician by nature; as health minister he stood up to powerful foreign pharmaceutical companies backed by the US in order to secure lower prices for generic essential medicines. So why would he, and his party, promote such a rightwing foreign policy?

The answer is most likely that the economy has done much better during Lula's eight years than during the previous eight years of the PSDB, including its growth. With major real increases in the minimum wage, an expansion of the bolsa familia programme for the poor and a mortgage credit for home buyers of modest means, it won't be that easy to campaign against Dilma and the Workers' party on economic issues.”

Ecuador -- and Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

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

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

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

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

Beyond that headline:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IACHR: Worried about Freedom of Expression in Venezuela

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond the headline:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mexico's Bloodiest Days Yet

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond the headline:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resurgence of Peruvian Coca

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

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

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

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

Beyond this morning’s headline:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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