Effort to Annul Impunity Law in Uruguay Fails

I’ll be off next week on vacation so no posting. Back after Memorial Day. Thanks for reading. JFS

After 15 hours of debate, Uruguayan lawmakers voted at 5:30am this morning to keep the so-called “Ley de Caducidad” on the books. Uruguay’s El País has the first coverage of this morning’s vote against the nullification of the 1986 impunity law, reporting that 99 members of the lower house were present for the final vote which ended in a 49 to 49 tie. Deputy Victor Semproni, a member of the governing Frente Amplio coalition which had pressed for the annulment of the amnesty legislation, was the only lawmaker to abstain.

Last weekend, Frente Amplio party members agreed they would support a legislative vote against the 1986 law, despite the fact that Uruguayans voters had twice affirmed their desire to keep the impunity law on the books through referendums and despite significant tensions over the measure among sectors of the Broad Front.

All opposition party deputies voted against nullification. As El País notes, Uruguay’s chamber of deputies had approved annulment of the Ley de Caducidad last October before hitting a stumbling block in the Senate. This time the obstacle was reversed as the Senate approved annulment by one vote in mid-April.

In a press release this morning, Amnesty International says Uruguay has “missed a historic opportunity in the pursuit of justice for victims of human rights abuses committed during military rule by failing to overturn a controversial law that blocked prosecution of security officials accused of violations.” Guadelupe Marengo, Deputy Director of the Americas programme at Amnesty International, adds that “A chance to turn a very difficult page by removing a norm that in practice put those responsible for human rights violations above the legal system…has slipped through the hands of the Uruguayans.”

Today’s bullet points:

· All ten referendum questions put forward toe voters two weeks and supported by Ecuadorean Rafael Correa appear to have been approved. The final vote tallies still require a stamp of approval from the country’s electoral council, according to the BBC, and the opposition will have the opportunity to challenge the results, should they desire. However, the preliminary results show the “Yes” vote gathering between 44.96% and 50.46%. The “No” vote received between 39.25% and 42.56%. Full results on each referendum question at the CNE’s site here.

· In Colombia, AP has more on the Colombian Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday to dismiss evidence from the Raul Reyes laptops, allegedly recovered by the Colombian military after a cross-border bombing raid against the late FARC leader’s camp in neighboring Ecuador in 2008. The wire says cases against at least 15 people suspected of aiding a guerrilla group are in the process of “unraveling” because of Wednesday’s decision. The first such case was one against ex-lawmaker Wilson Borja. Borja tells TeleSur Thursday he could pursue a counter-suit against former President Alvaro Uribe for accusing him of aiding the FARC, based on evidence from the computers. Meanwhile, former Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba says she is considering a bid to regain her seat in the Colombian Senate after the Wednesday’s dismissal. Cordoba was banned from the Senate in November 2010 for allegedly “collaborating with and promoting” the guerrilla group. Cordoba has long denied those charges and Colombia Reports says her defense “could now rest upon how much of [Inspector General] Alejandro Ordoñez's evidence against her was contained in the FARC computer files.” Ordoñez says he will call for a review of this week’s Supreme Court ruling. According Supreme Court President Camilo Humberto Tarquino, evidence from the computers was dismissed because the documents were picked up in the neighboring country by the military, rather than by the judicial police. He adds the decision is not a statement one way or the other on the “validity” of the documents, but rather addresses their (in)admissibility in a court of law.

· Also on Colombia, the Panamanian government says it will not extradite former Colombian spy chief Maria del Pilar Hurtado back to Colombia. On Wednesday, Attorney General Viviane Morales officially requested that Ms. Hurtado be arrested for her role in the DAS wiretapping scandal. She sought asylum in Panama in late 2010 and will apparently be keeping it. BBC Mundo reports.

· Latin American News Dispatch reports on the life for one-time FARC guerrillas in Colombia who have since demobilized.

· AP reports on the murder of Honduran television station owner Luis Mendoza in the city of Danli this week. Mendoza is the 13^th media worker to have been killed in the last year. The Honduras Human Rights blog, meanwhile, highlights the killing of another peasant activist in Honduras’s Aguán region. Forty-five year old Sixto Ramos, a member of campesino cooperative Nueva Suyapa, was shot and killed on May 18. Two other members of the campesino movement were killed one week prior while a fourth individual disappeared over the weekend.

· Also, on Honduras, former president Mel Zelaya says he plans to return home on MAY 28. FNRP leader Juan Barahona says Zelaya will return from the DR with former members of his government and will be accompanied by Venezuela’s foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro. AP reports while CEPR’s Alex Main has an excellent recap of recent Venezuela-Colombian mediation in Honduras.

· Mel Zelaya was in Nicaragua this week for the annual Forum of Sao Paulo gathering which continues to bring together over left-wing parties from around the region and beyond. Nicaragua’s Confidencial reports on day one of the meetings at which the issue of Honduras took center stage.

· John Perry at the London Review of Books blog writes critically on the “Honduras: Open for Business” conference held recently in San Pedro Sula, as well as Pepe Lobo’s “Charter Cities” experiment.

· Guatemala’s Prensa Libre reports on a meeting of Central American leaders yesterday in Antigua to further define a regional strategy against organized crime. Central American countries plan to seek international financing for the regional project in the coming months.

· Spain’s El País looks at Keiko Fujimori’s “mano dura” citizen security plan to fight “common crime” in Peru. As the paper is the latest to highlight, Fujimori is now being advised by former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, who currently runs his own a private security consulting firm.

· And finally, on US policy toward the region. The New York Times ran a short report yesterday on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s apparently new desire to “improve ties” with Latin America. On Wednesday the Secretary hosted a private dinner with the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Panama and El Salvador. Over two years into the job Brookings Institutions’ Ted Piccone, an organizer of Wednesday dinner, said Clinton is now thinking about the “kind of legacy she’s aiming to leave” in the region. The first sign of what direction the administration will move over the next two years is likely to come through the selection of a new assistant secretary of state to replace Arturo Valenzuela. The names being floated thus far, like former US ambassador to Colombia and current assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement (INL), Bill Brownfield, suggest the nomination will come from inside the administration. Andres Oppenheimer comments in the Miami Herald.

Brazil Suggests Next IMF Chief Hail From the Global South

Dominique Strauss-Kahn officially resigned as managing director of the International Monetary Fund late Wednesday. The decision opens a bit of new space for the always interesting debate about who the next IMF chief should be. According to the New York Times, the early frontrunner to take over the position, traditionally given to a European (the World Bank’s head is historically from the US) is French finance minister and Strauss-Kahn ally, Christine Lagarde. The paper says former Turkish finance minister and longtime World Bank official Kermal Dervis could also be in the running.

Others are demanding the next head of the IMF be someone from the developing world, and unsurprisingly, it’s Brazil, along with South Africa, who has raised the issue most publicly. In an interview on Monday, former Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim said now was the time to end “the monopoly of Europe and the US” at the IMF and World Bank. Amorim, one of the architects of Brazil’s global rise, said such a decision would demonstrate that the Fund is “sensitive to global changes” and willing to make international organizations “more representative.” Another senior Brazilian official tells Reuters that selecting the next IMF head from Brazil or India would mark a significant shift. However, according to the report, the South American power is unlikely to actively push the matter given Europe’s historic “stranglehold” on the post. In fact, current Brazilian finance minister, Guido Mantega, suggested Tuesday that his first choice would be to see Strauss-Kahn retain his position at the Fund, calling the embattled Frenchman “one of the best IMF chiefs that we had in the past years.”

Another important South American economy, Chile, joined China in arguing the next IMF head should be selected based “on merit,” but neither put forward any specific names or countries, according to the Financial Times.

On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel became the first major European leader to indicate she would back a European candidate to replace Strauss-Kahn at the IMF. The head of Europe’s largest economy did say if she had specific candidate in mind but said acting quickly to replace the now former IMF chief was critical, given the current crisis in the eurozone.

Today’s bullet points:

· Continuing with economic news and analysis, former Chilean finance minister Andres Velasco has a thought-provoking new opinion, distributed by Project Syndicate, on growing worries that a major bust could follow the last decade of economic boom. He notes that because of improved macroeconomic management Latin America is not on the brink of another debt crisis –a la the mid 1980s – but says two notable similarities between South America’s current moment and the early 1980s or early 1990s are worth highlighting: record-high commodity prices and cheap international money. South America’s “terms of trade are higher and the relevant global interest rates lower than they have ever been,” Velasco writes, adding that these factors, more than any particular policies adopted in recent years, have fueled Latin American growth. The former finance minister says stark differences in growth between resource-poor Central America and resource-rich South America are evidence of this point. His conclusion: that South Ameican countries frist, rein in credit that is beginning to produce market bubbles in areas like housing and second, transition out of the sorts of expansionary fiscal policies that were widely seen as sheltering South American from economic crisis after 2008.

· In Uruguay, an historic vote will occur today in the country’s lower house, deciding whether or not to annul a 1986 amnesty law, the so-called “ley de caducidad.” AP has English language coverage this morning, focusing on how the effort has caused deep fissures within the ruling Frente Amplio coalition. While both opposition parties oppose annulling the law, on Wednesday, it was FA deputy Victor Semproni who said he would block the measure by refusing to vote with his party. More coverage from Uruguay’s La República which speaks with President José Mujica. While not actively supporting the measure, Mujica has said he will sign the bill nullifying the law, should it be approved by parliament. El País looks at a bit of the unrest over the measure within the country’s military. And the Uruguayan weekly Brecha talks with FA party chief, Jorge Brovetto about what some are calling the “worst crisis” within Frente Amplio since it assumed national power for the first time ever in 2005. In the US, meanwhile, the Washington Office on Latin America makes the case for why the 1986 impunity law – denounced by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights but twice upheld by Uruguayan voters– should be nullified.

· The LA Times reports on the arrest in Guatemala, mentioned yesterday, of former kaibil special-forces operative, Hugo Alvaro Gomez Vasquez, alleged to have taken part in the early Sunday massacre of 27 ranch workers in El Petén. President Alvaro Colom called Gomez “one of the principal leaders” of the Zetas operating in Guatemala. Mike Allison, who has been following the massacre closely, has more good analysis today, particularly regarding the need keep the Petén massacre in context, rather than jumping too quickly to the conclusion that any single incident is evidence of Guatemala becoming a failed or narco state.

· From Guatemala’s past, an investigation by the government into US syphilis experiments conducted on Guatemalans during the 1940s has revealed that some 1300 individuals were infected with sexually-transmitted diseases without their consent. The formal results of the investigation will be released in Guatemala this week. AP reports.

· Colombian foreign minister Maria Emma Holguín confirmed this week that Honduras was on the close to being re-admitted to the OAS after joint mediation by her country and Venezuela. Holguín said she “is almost sure” Honduras will be at the OAS’s General Assembly in San Salvador in early June. Meanwhile, an adviser to exiled former president Mel Zelaya said again this week that the former president could return to Honduras later this month, highlighting the weekend of May 27 specifically. El Tiempo, with EFE reports.

· While charges against Zelaya have been set aside, at least for now, the president of the Honduran Supreme Court, Jorge Rivera Avilés, says possible charges against ex-officials in the Zelaya government remain active and could be pursued. La Tribuna reports. Honduras Culture and Politics, meanwhile, looks at an announcement this week from the official Honduran Truth Commission, headed by former Guatemalan vice president, Eduardo Stein. Stein has decided to push back once again the date when the commission will make its investigation into the 2009 coup official. HE says the commission’s goal is to not impact Honduras’s possible return to the OAS.

· El Faro reports that Salvadoran attorney general Romeo Barahona says he is investigating the “Cartel de Texis,” a significant drug trafficking operation allegedly controlled by prominent Salvadoran businessman, José Adán Salazar Umaña. El Faro broke the story earlier this week with a major investigative report.

· A Miami judge has granted asylum to Chavez political opponent Eligio Cedeño, arrested and imprisoned for 34 months for violating Venezuelan currency regulations. The Wall Street Journal says the move is “likely to further erode relations between Washington and Caracas.”

· In Venezuela, the body of newspaper columnist Wilfred Ivan Ojeda was found Tuesday in the town of La Victoria. Authorities say Ojeda died after being shot in the head. In addition to being a columnist, Ojeda was also a prominent Chavez critic with the Democratic Action party. AP reports.

· In Colombia, the Attorney General’s office has formally charged former DAS spy chief María del Pilar Hurtado, and ex-secretary general of the presidency, Bernardo Moreno, for overseeing illegal wiretapping against journalists, judges, and figures opposed to then-president Alvaro Uribe. Hurtado is currently in exile in Panama. BBC Mundo reports.

· Democratic congressmen are voicing new concerns about a US FTA with Colombia after an assassination attempt on Colombian labor lawyer, Hernán Darío. Rep. George Miller (D-MA) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), say the attempt on Darío’s life raises issues about the Colombian government's ability to guarantee labor rights. Darío, the lead attorney defending a group of sugarcane workers who went on strike in 2008, remains in critical condition after being shot five times in the city of Cali. The Hill reports.

· Colombia’s El Spectador with details on Colombia’s Victim’s Law, over which debate in the Senate looks to be wrapping up this week.

· Colombia Reports says the country’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that files from the Raul Reyes laptops are inadmissible as evidence in court as the material was illegally obtained. The ruling came in the case of former socialist congressman Wilson Borja, who had been charged with collaborating with the FARC. As quoted by Colombia Reports, the Colombian high court also questioned the “validity of the content” on the computers, saying the data “cannot be verified as the alleged emails [used in the Borja case] were copied into Word documents without indication of sender or receiver.”

· AP reports that 400 of the 513 migrants discovered in two truck trailers in Chiapas this week have already been repatriated to their native country of Guatemala. The remaining 113 are either minors or are from other countries, including El Salvador, Ecuador, India, Nepal, China, the Dominican Republic and Honduras.

· And finally, while votes continue to be tallied, two opinions on Ecuador’s referendum of almost two weeks ago, from Renard Sexton in The Guardian and historian Marc Becker at Upside Down World.

Over 500 Migrants Discovered in Southern Mexico

Mexican authorities in the state of Chiapas discovered 513 migrants from Central and South America, as well as Asia, crammed inside two trailers traveling north on Tuesday. The AP says the trucks were headed for the Mexican city of Puebla when an X-ray scanner at a highway checkpoint near Tuxla Gutierrez revealed the truck’s contents. In Puebla, some migrants say they were told they would be transferred to another set of vehicles for the final leg of the journey to the US border.

The individuals say they were charged approx. $7000 for the journey. BBC says four individuals have been arrested for running the smuggling operation. A police spokesman says the number of individuals recovered from the trucks was the “largest ever” to be discovered by Mexican authorities. Al-Jazeera’s Frank Contreras also reports, by video, from Mexico City.

Meanwhile, in a separate case in Chiapas, two more migration agents from Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM) were detained Tuesday for their alleged role in prostituting young female migrants from Central America. According to AP, those detained include the ex-assistant director of a migrant holding facility and a former assistant head of immigration services in a Mexican town near the border with Guatemala. Both will face human trafficking charges, along with charges of “corrupting minors.”

Today’s bullet points:

· The Wall Street Journal reports this morning on what is, for now, the final day of a 48-hour state of siege in the Peten region of northern Guatemala. The decree was issued by President Alvaro Colom after Sunday’s gruesome massacre of 27 laborers at a remote Peten ranch. In the Guatemalan press, El Periódico reports on the arrest of Hugo Gomez Vasquez, a man Guatemalan prosecutors allege is linked to the kidnapping and murder of three relatives of Otto Salguero, the owner of the Los Cocos ranch and the apparent target of this weekend’s brutal attack. According to the paper, officials suspect a link between the killings of those three individuals and the murder of day laborers employed by Salguero – perhaps related to some sort of unpaid debt owed by Salguero to the Zetas. El Periodicio and Prensa Libre highlight what may end up being the most significant element of the story: possible links between the Zetas in Guatemala (specifically the Zetas “Z-200 cell” cell which has operated in Guatemala) and former Guatemalan military men, including ex-members of the elite “Kaibiles” special forces. El Periodico says Hugo Francisco Chávez Méndez, an ex- sergeant in the Guatemalan military was also among those detained in recent days. For his part, President Alvaro Colom spokoe this week of evidence that “a lot of migration of ex-officials from the 1980s” joined groups like the ‘Zetas’” after the 1996 Peace Accords. Prensa Libre says Mexican authorities made similar claims about Zeta-Kaibiles connections in 2005. More from Mexico’s Proceso.

· In other Guatemala-related news, US Trade Representative Ron Kirk has asked an international commission to investigate the country’s failure to enforce labor rights protections under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The investigation would be the first labor case brought by the US against a free trade partner, according to Bloomberg. In an email Monday, USTR Kirk said, “While Guatemala has taken some positive steps over the past several months, its actions and proposals have been insufficient to address what we view as systemic failures.” The AFL-CIO labor federation and six Guatemalan unions first asked the U.S. to investigate the Guatemalan government’s failure to enforce labor laws in April 2008. It only took the US three years to respond – a fact that doesn’t bode well for labor groups in Colombia where an FTA could be completed this summer and where similar concerns about labor rights have continue to exist.

· The Obama administration also announced Tuesday that it will extend temporary protected status by one and a half years to Haitian immigrants in the US after last year’s quake. The extension will allow Haitians who arrived in the US as late as Jan. 12, 2011, and have lived here continuously, to apply for TPS. AP reports.

· AP also reports that Sweden and the U.S. will provide $2.6 million in aid to Haiti, specifically aimed at preventing sexual assaults in the country’s numerous camps for the internally displaced. The monies will be administered by the International Organization for Migration.

· Prosecutors in Ecuador say they will pursue an investigation against President Rafael Correa over alleged evidence pulled from the Raul Reyes laptops and published last week by a British think tank, suggesting the Ecuadorean president accepted campaign funds from the FARC in 2006. Both Correa and his foreign minister Ricardo Patino, have strongly denied those charges. The former has said he is willing to take a lie-detector test to prove his innocence. BBC reports.

· In Venezuela, new economic numbers released this week show the country’s national economy expanding by 4.5% over the first quarter of 2011—more confirmation that the country has, in fact, pulled itself out of an economic recession. According to central bank figures, the public sector grew 3.3 percent while the private sector grew at a rate of 4.6 percent over the quarter. AP and Bloomberg report. For its part, the Washington Post this morning reports from Brazil on what it describes as Venezuela’s “waning” regional influence, both economically and politically. As evidence Post correspondent Juan Forero highlights a still-stalled joint oil refinery project that was to be built by Venezuela and Brazil in the latter’s historically impoverished Northeast.

· A group of Latin Americanist right-wingers, among them Roger Noriega and former US Florida Republican congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, gathered this week to discuss Peru’s upcoming elections and denounce the “international conspiracy” in favor of the left-leaning candidate Ollanta Humala. A former assistant secretary of state under George W. Bush, Noriega says that of the two Peruvian candidates, it’s only Humala who is “trying to hide his past and his dangerous ideas” and it’s only Humala’s political career which is “due to the ‘caudillo’ Hugo Chavez.” La República has an entertaining photo from a 2000 conga line which suggests Noriega’s candidate, Keiko Fujimori, has also gotten close to the Venezuelan president in the past. Meanwhile, Peruvian writer and pundit Alvaro Vargas Llosa joined his father, novelist Mario Vargas Lllosa, this week, announcing that he is backing Humala’s candidacy. Humala needs all the help he can get right now as Fujimori’s lead has grown to six points according to most recent poll numbers.

· Mexican anti-drug war poet Javier Sicilia is this week’s interviewee on TeleSur. In Mexico, meanwhile, Sicilia received a somewhat strange endorsement from the Beltran Leyva gang, which unfurled a banner in Cuernavaca saying the poet can “count on their support.” Insight and Proceso report in English and Spanish.

· Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is interviewed this week by FP’s Elizabeth Dickinson about Plan Colombia, Twitter, and his decision to remain active in politics.

· Former congressman David Bonior (D-MI) speaks with WOLA on significant changes in Cuba after recently returning from the island. President Obama, on other hand, said this week he has not yet seen any “significant changes” in Cuba.

· Plaza Pública has a long report on the Alfonso Portillo embezzlement case in Guatemala. Portillo and a number of other former high ranking officials were acquitted last week, but the former president still faces possible extradition to the US in a separate money laundering case.

· And Colombia has quickly appointed a new ambassador to Caracas. Ricardo Montenegro, former business attaché at the Embassy, will take over for Jose Fernando Bautista who resigned at the beginning of the week because of his ties to a Bogotá construction company currently being investigated for offering bribes to Colombian politicians. Colombia Reports with more.

Colom Declares State of Siege in Peten

As details emerge, various reports this morning finger the Zetas as responsible for the late Saturday/early Sunday massacre of over two dozen rural laborers on a ranch in the Guatemalan province of Petén. In a nationally broadcast address Monday Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom suggested a drug cartel was behind the killings and said a state of siege would be declared in the province to root out the perpetrators.

According to AP, the president said he’d even personally travel to the Petén to “direct operations."

Meanwhile, the details of the gruesome killings were retold to journalists, including AP, on Monday by an individual who appears to have survived the massacre by pretending to have been killed. Another pregnant woman present at the ranch was also spared by what most now say were 30-50 assailants who arrived at the ranch by truck late Saturday. AP says the intended target of the attacks was the ranch’s owner, Otto Salguero. His whereabouts is currently unknown.

Mike Allison at Central American Politics has a good rundown of what is known about the massacre at the present moment, based on a variety of press reports. He notes that while the assassins did not identify themselves to their victims, there are some indications that the group's leader called himself “Kaibil,” the name of Guatemala’s notorious special forces unit during the country’s dirty wars of the 1980s.

Insight Crime also raises some interesting questions about who the Zetas in Guatemala actually are. El Periodico, on the other hand, looks at who the innocent victims killed Sunday were.

Today’s bullet points:

· Guatemala’s Plaza Pública reports on a new far right wing candidate in Guatemala’s election campaign, industrial magnate Ricardo Sagastume Morales, aligned with the Frente de Convergencia Nacional (FCN) of retired general José Luis Quilo Ayuso. The report suggests one of the Frente’s principal gripes has been the work of the UN-backed anti-impunity commission, the CICIG.

· In neighboring El Salvador, El Faro published yesterday its most significant investigative report to-date on organized crime in that country– an epic report on the so-called “Texis Cartel” operating in Salvador’s northwest and controlled by 62-year-old businessman José Adán Salazar Umaña, aka “Chepe Diablo.” El Faro’s report is based a series of intelligence reports obtained by the independent news site. The reports go back over a decade and give first-time details of perhaps the most important cocaine smuggling routes through El Salvador, connecting Honduras with Guatemala, and implicating numerous government officials and security officials.

· In Peru, Reuters with more on the addition of former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani to Keiko Fujimori’s list of informal advisers – an attempt, according to some, to distance herself from her father’s highly controversial security policies. A new issue of Revista Ideele also has a number of articles on the upcoming Peruvian second-round vote which look like they are worth reading, among them Jo-Marie Burt on the legacy of “Fujimorismo” and Gustavo Gorriti on Fujimori vs. Humala.

· AP reports that a new MINUSTAH chief in Haiti was named Monday. Replacing outgoing MINUSTAH chief Edmond Mulet will be former Chilean foreign minister Mariano Fernandez, UN Sec. General Ban Ki Moon announced yesterday.

· Colombia’s El Tiempo reports on the resignation of that country’s ambassador to Venezuela, José Fernando Bautista, because of apparent connections to the Nule group, currently being investigated in a major corruption scandal. More from Semana and Colombia Reports.

· BBC Mundo reports on the creation of a new presidential commission on gun control in Venezuela – an attempt to reduce the number of weapons in circulation in the country. According to BBC, the commission will be include officials from the Defense Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the Supreme Court, the National Assembly, the Ministerio Público, the country’s customs administration, as well as civil society representatives from NGOs working on human rights and arms control issues.

· WOLA highlights an attack on labor rights lawyer Hernán Darío in the Colombian city of Cali late last week. Darío is currently the lead lawyer in a case defending sugarcane workers who participated in a strike in 2008 from criminal charges. As a US FTA with Colombia moves toward possible approval in the coming weeks, WOLA says the shooting “underscores the continuing and serious labor rights problems in Colombia” and “calls into question whether there has been real progress on the labor rights situation” in the country

· AP mentions the first reports of independent transportation workers in Cuba beginning to unionize as part of the country’s economic reform process.

· IPS reports on Amnesty International’s country report on Brazil, released as part of its annual report last week, and highlighting the serious problems of inequality which have persisted, despite important taken to reduce poverty.

· And on Honduras, the DC-based Center for Democracy in the Americas has released a new report on the need for a new social pact in Honduras to overcome serious problems of social exclusion in the Central American country. The report comes after CDA participated as an observer to the recent National Assembly of the Honduran Resistance (FNRP).

Massacre in El Peten

Officials now say at least 29 individuals were killed on a coconut ranch in the Northern Guatemalan province of Peten, their bound, decapitated, and tortured bodies discovered early Sunday. AP calls the mass killings “one of the worst massacres” since the country’s nearly four-decade long civil war came to an end in 1996. Similar comments from police spokesman Donald Gonzalez who referred to the murders Sunday as the “worst massacre we have seen in modern times.”

The LA Times says the killings were carried out by a “small army” of some 200 gunmen who, according to witnesses, arrived at the ranch on buses but have otherwise been unidentified.

The victims all appear to have been laborers on the Peten ranch where they were found. Police are investigating whether or not the mass killings are connected to the Saturday death of Haroldo Leon, the brother of late Guatemalan drug boss Juan Jose “Juancho” Leon, himself killed in 2008. The Zetas, have long been suspected of being involved in the latter’s murder, which is said to have allowed the Mexican drug gang to gain control over transshipment routes in neighboring Alta Verapaz.

Officials found one wounded survivor of the massacre – an individual who says he evaded murder by pretending to have been killed. No details have yet been released about what specifically that individual is said to have witnessed.

More Spanish-language coverage from Guatemala’s El Periódico, highlighting the suspected relationship between Sunday’s massacre and the recent killing of Heraldo León.

This weekend’s bullet points:

· In Port-au-Prince Saturday, former pop singer Michel Martelly was sworn in as Haiti’s next president. AP reports while the Miami Herald looks at the various challenges the new president faces. The outgoing head of Minustah, Edmond Mulet says Martelly inherits a “failed state,” adding that in the coming days Martelly is likely to discover that “the state institutions, ministries, government agencies that should implement the vision and plans of the new government cannot deliver.” On Sunday, those close to the new president said the first major personnel announcement would be nominating businessman Daniel-Gerard Rouzier as the country’s next prime minister. Haiti’s parliament must approve the nomination. The prime minister will also serve (with UN special envoy Bill Clinton) as co-chair of Haiti's Interim Recovery Commission.

· Mexican immigration officials said Sunday they are prepared to subject migration agents to psychological, drug, and lie detector tests as part of a new effort to combat corruption in the country’s National Immigration Institute (INM). At a press conference Sunday, National Immigration Institute Commissioner Salvador Beltran del Rio said 40 agents are currently being investigated for a variety of abuses – this after the dismissal of seven regional immigration directors late last week. AP reports.

· The number of bodies at a mass grave site in the northern Mexico state of Durango jumped again over the weekend to 218, making it the largest such grave to have been discovered thus far in the country, according to AP.

· In the Mexican state of Oaxaca, AP says violence “motivated by an electoral dispute between indigenous communities” has left at least eight dead. The incident occurred near the town of Santiago Choapan.

· The New York Times profiles Mexican poet and anti-drug war organizer Javier Sicilia. According to the Times, Sicilia has “achieved what others have failed to do” in provoking “serial public responses from the Calderón administration” about the government’s prosecution of the drug wars. Calderón met with Sicilia privately one week ago, the Times reports. According to Sicilia, the Mexican president admitted in the meeting that he had “made a mistake” while adding “I can’t go back now.” Meanwhile, CNN reports that Sicilia and others are now in the process of planning a follow-up demonstration to last week’s anti-drug war march from Cuernavaca to DF. The demonstration is set for June 10 in Ciudad Juarez. The plans come as the Calderon government announced Thursday it would be sending hundreds of new troops to the border state of Tamaulipas in the coming days.

· Major protests against a planned hydroelectric dam in Southern Chile brought some 30,000 demonstrators to the streets of the Chilean capital of Santiago over the weekend. BBC Mundo reports that as many as 70 individuals were arrested during the demonstrations. A new poll shows that nearly ¾ of Chileans oppose the dam project.

· AP reports that a new effort to declassify US intelligence documents related to Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship has failed in the US House. An amendment re-proposed by New York Democratic congressman Maurice Hinchey, calling for the U.S. intelligence agencies to declassify all of their files on Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship, was rejected in a 214-194 vote Friday. A similar bill proposed by Hinchey in 1999 aided in the release of similar intelligence files on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the wire reports.

· In Uruguay, the left-leaning Frente Amplio coalition decided during a party plenary Saturday that it would go ahead with a contentious parliamentary vote later this week about whether or not to annul the country’s 1986 amnesty law. The so-called “Ley de Caducidad” continues to protect human rights violators from prosecution for abuses committed during the country’s 1973-1985 dictatorship. Notably, the decision to hold the vote was opposed by the country’s President, José Mujica, vice president Danilo Astori, and former FA president Tabaré Vázquez, all of whom fear the issue could cause irreparable divisions in the coalition. Uruguay’s two opposition parties have long opposed annulling the law. Mercopress reports in English; Uruguay’s El País in Spanish.

· Amnesty International released its 2011 annual report last week. The Americas section can be linked to here.

· In Ecuador, it looks increasingly like all ten of the referendum questions voted on last week and supported by President Rafael Correa will be approved. Current vote tallies available here as vote totaling continues.

· Two new polls from Ipsos and CPI in Peru show Keiko Fujimori continuing to extend her slim lead over Ollanta Humala before a June 5 runoff. The former has Fujimori obtaining 51.1% against Humala’s 48.9% while the latter poll shows Fujimori at 52.9% compared to Humala’s 47.1%. AP also reports on the most recent addition to Ms. Fujimori’s campaign team: former NYC mayor and one-time Republican presidential contender, Rudy Giuliani. The wire says Fujimori announced over the weekend that Giuliani was advising the campaign on citizen security issues and would be coming to Peru briefly sometime over the next few days.

· Finally, the New York Times front-page report Sunday on Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s new mercenary army in the United Arab Emirates has Latin American implications. According to the Times, an unspecified number of Colombians are among the 800 or so mercenaries who have been trained by retired American soldiers and veterans of the German and British special operations units and the French Foreign Legion employed by Prince’s new company, “Reflex Responses,” or “R2.” More on the Colombia-specifics from Colombia Reports. For other articles in recent years on itinerant guns-for-hire from Colombia, see the AP and CNN on Colombian mercenaries appearing in post-coup Honduras, as well as US-trained Colombian military and police officials working for Blackwater in Iraq, as reported by the LA Times and Mother Jones in 2005 and 2008, respectively.

Mexico Dismisses Top Immigration Officials

Just days after a group of recently rescued Central American migrants identified six Mexican immigration officers as the perpetrators of their kidnappings and their eventual hand-off to criminal gangs in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute (INM) announced Thursday it has fired seven top migration officials. The individuals include the director of migration operations in the state of Tamaulipas as well as individuals holding similar posts in six other Mexican states – Mexico state, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, San Luis Potosi, Tabasco, and Veracruz.

The six lower-level agents fingered by the group of abductees rescued in Tamaulipas were also arrested earlier in the week.

In the state of Oaxaca, where many of the 40+ Central American migrants abducted last December remain missing, Alejandro Solalinde, a Catholic priest who runs a migrant shelter in there and helped organize last week’s anti-drug march from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, said Thursday’s dismissals were little more than a “Band-Aid” over more systemic problems. In an interview with Milenio Television yesterday (quoted in the AP’s coverage), Farther Solalinde said immigrant agents must be subject not only to dismissal but also criminal investigations.

A statement from Mexico’s Interior Ministry said the firings of state migration directors this week was just the beginning of a major immigration overhaul that would also include the removal of those migration agents believed to be involved in corruption. It looks like such decisions, however, will only be made after new state directors are appointed.

According to AP, at least 168 of the immigration institute's 5,000 employees have been fired or suspended since September for alleged abuse and corruption. At least 11,333 foreign migrants were reported kidnapped between April and September in 2010, most of them Central Americans, according to a recent report by Mexico's National Commission of Human Rights. More coverage of the Thursday announcement from the LA Times.

Today’s bullet points:

· After a number of reports from the IMF over the last two years praised Latin American governments for steps taken to prevent the Southern spread of an economic crisis, the Fund this week says the region could be on the brink a “full-blown crisis” if governments do not cut public spending and take measure to ensure monetary stability. At a conference of central bankers in Brazil, the IMF’s director for the Western Hemisphere, Nicolas Eyzaguirre, had particularly sharp words for Brazil, saying the government must act to “rein in the economy” or else its economic success “could end in tears.” Reuters calls the former Chilean finance minister’s words “some of the strongest warnings to date by a senior official of the near-term dangers posed by Latin America's recent run of prosperity.”

· In other economic news, Dow Jones reports on the World Trade Organization’s decision to accept a Brazilian proposal to begin a two-year study on the relationship between trade and currency valuation. According to Roberto Azevedo, Brazil's representative at the WTO, the decision is an historic one, as it’s apparently the first time the WTO has ever agreed to discuss the relationship between currency and trade. Brazil has blamed indirect and direct currency manipulation in both the US and China for the appreciation of the Brazilian real.

· Nation contributor Dave Zirin has a very critical up at The Nation’s website on Rio de Janeiro’s construction push ahead of the Olympic Games and World Cup. Meanwhile, ESPN publishes a long story on concerns over gangs and violence in the run-up to both international sporting events.

· Honduran President Pepe Lobo says he will order the Interior Ministry to investigate any potential assassination plots against former president Mel Zelaya. Just one day after an aide to Zelaya said the exiled former president was preparing to return home this month, Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro suggested her husband remained worried about his personal safety, should he return. The former president of Honduran Supreme Court, Jorge Rivera Avilés, called claims of an assassination plot “speculation.” In the Guardian, meanwhile, Viviana Krsticevic, executive director of the Center for Justice and Law has an opinion on Honduras worth reading today. Krsticevic criticizes the very judiciary Jorge Rivera Avilés once headed, arguing that Honduras’s readmission to the OAS should not occur until “an autonomous, unbiased and efficient judicial system” is installed which can “ensure that officials who took part in the coup are replaced” and “rule of law” restored.

· After being acquitted of embezzling $15 million in defense funds earlier this week, former Guatemalan president Alfonso Portillo has begun to fight his pending extradition to the US on a separate set of money laundering charges. AFP with coverage.

· In Chile, some 20,000 students and teachers marched Thursday in the capital of Santiago, demanding increased state funds and resources for public education. Similar protests were held in other major cities around the country. Nearly 70 individuals were arrested during the protests, some of the largest student demonstrations since President Sebastian Pinera took office. La Tercera reports.

· In Cuba, both a Cuban medical examiner and the family of Juan Wilfredo Soto say the late dissident showed no signs of physical beating after he was detained on May 5. Soto, who suffered from other health problems, including diabetes and heart issues, died shortly after his detention last week in the central city of Santa Clara. Dissidents continue to claim his death was the result of an excessive use of force by Cuban security officers, despite the statements from medical officials and Soto’s family. AP reports.

· Uruguay’s La República and El País report on alternatives being weighed by Frente Amplio lawmakers this week re: the country’s 1986 amnesty law, the Ley de Caducidad. After the Uruguayan Senate voted to overturn the law one month ago, the parliament’s lower chamber must decide next week whether it too will make a similar decision. The decision has divided the Broad Front ruling coalition, a number of whose members say voting to overturn the law would go against the will of voters. Uruguayans rejected annulling the law for a second time in a national plebiscite in 2009.

· The Miami Herald reports on this weekend’s inauguration of new Haitian President Michel Martelly while AP reports on the silence of Jean-Bertrand Aristide since his return back to Haiti in March.

· David Cole at The Nation on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives’ decision to give its first annual Human Rights Activism award to Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who famously sought to hold Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet accountable for human rights abuses in Chile but has since come under serious fire for opening an investigation into human rights crimes committed by the Franco dictatorship in his native Spain. Garzón also speaks with Democracy Now.

· And finally, both Americas Quarterly and NACLA have new issues out, both looking at hemispheric power, Brazil. Among the highlights in the former, some “Reflections on Brazil’s Global Rise,” by former Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim and a roundtable on “The New Brazil in the Changing Hemisphere.” In the latter, commentary by and an interview with eminent Brazilian sociologist and CLACSO executive secretary, Emir Sader about current President Dilma Rousseff and the foreign policy of Lula da Silva.

Zelaya Preparing to Head Home?

An aide to Mel Zelaya says the exiled former Honduran president plans to return home sometime within the next month. Confidant Rasel Tomé said in an interview with the AP Wednesday that Zelaya has “the will and desire to return to his homeland” after a Honduran appeals court dropped all remaining corruption charges against the former president last week. The deputy coordinator of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), Juan Barahona, says that the precise date of Zelaya’s return is still under consideration but added it’s expected to come before the June 5 General Assembly of the OAS.

The move would appear to open the door for Honduras’s return to the OAS, something for which the US has been lobbying for quite some time. “Now that the obstacles to former President Zelaya’s return to Honduras have been removed, I am confident that we will soon welcome Honduras back as a full member of the inter-American system,” remarked Sec. of State Hillary Clinton Wednesday, speaking at the 41^st Conference on the Americas in Washington.

But there remain doubts about whether, in fact, the Zelaya saga, which began with the ouster of the democratically-elected leader in June 2009, is a closed book. After receiving word that charges had been dropped last week, Zelaya indicated that, should he return, he’d still be subject to intense “persecution” in his native Honduras. Today’s El Heraldo suggests that much. According to the conservative paper there’s nothing to stop Honduran prosecutors from resurrecting the corruption charges against Mel Zelaya at some point in the future.

Today’s bullet points:

· Human rights concerns in Honduras continue to extend beyond Mel Zelaya. In northern Honduras, two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed a journalist outside his home in the city of Morazan Tuesday night. Reports indicate Medina, 35, was followed home by two men on a motorcycle after his evening television show. At least one of his colleagues says the murder stems from his work as a reporter – which included recent reports critical of the Honduran national police and private security firms hired by major landowners in the region. Medina’s brother adds that police forces in the area refused to escort the ambulance carrying Medina to the hospital. AP reports. Earlier in the week, Latin America News Dispatch posted an excellent, comprehensive report on the rising number of Honduran journalists killed over the past 18 months. Of the ten journalists killed during that time period (before Medina’s murder this week, which was #11), seven are said to have been known members of the Honduran Resistance. That fact makes violence against journalists in Honduras particularly unique in a region already considered to be one of the most dangerous for reporters. Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, quoted by LAND: “In other parts of Latin America where violence against the press is endemic – Mexico, for example –it’s tied to drug trafficking. In Honduras, at least as far as CPJ can determine, the violence against the press appears to have a political dimension. That’s an extremely alarming development for the entire region.”

· In neighboring El Salvador, community radio journalists at Radio Victoria in the department of Cabanas say they have received new threats from a death squad that has targeted the organization for a half-decade. The radio station has opposed mining projects in the region, and in 2009, two environmentalists connected to the station were killed. The organization currently receives police protection because of the incident, according to the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Amnesty International, in a new press release, demands Salvadoran authorities increase their protection of Radio Victoria’s staff and “launch an independent, thorough and impartial investigation” into the most recent threats.

· Also in El Salvador on Tuesday, representatives of Central American governments agreed to solicit the international community for new economic and technological support, totaling just over $950 million, in an attempt to bolster a new regional anti-crime/anti-drug plan. SICA Secretary General Daniel Aleman tells AP the plan and accompanying financial request will be discussed with the European Union later next week. For his part, Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez highlights the new four-pronged approach to regional security based on prevention, criminal prosecution, re-insertion, and re-habilitation.

· Earlier in the week, Costa Rica and Nicaragua agreed to new bilateral cooperation against organized crime. Insight Crime and Confidencial report on the details.

· In Caracas today, Latin American energy and oil ministers are set to meet for the second of multiple planning meetings scheduled before the July summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Telesur reports, noting today’s meetings on the integration of energy networks in the region will coincide with a a meeting of Petrocaribe member states. Interestingly, it also comes on the heels of a new energy woos in the host country. Earlier this week, Venezuela’s Energy Ministry announced a new national rationing plan that will cut off power for three hours a day in 19 of the country's 23 states. The most recent blackouts have been caused by failures in transmission lines, according to the government. Critics contend the government has not done enough to invest new electricity projects. BBC reports.

· While Hugo Chavez was forced to cancel what would have been his first bilateral meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff this week because of a “wounded knee,” Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicolas Maduro did meet with his counterpart, Antonio Patriota in Brasilia. El Universal reports on the beginning of a new deal which will see increased participation of Brazilian construction firms in Venezuela’s ambitious national plan housing plan. Speaking from Venezuela, Hugo Chavez also extended an invitation to Lula da Silva to attend the July CELAC summit in Caracas.

· In Brazil, AP says the Brazilian Senate has approved a new measure that will significantly increase payments it makes to neighboring Paraguay for excess energy produced by the country’s bi-national Itaipu dam. The changes, finalized Wednesday, will increase the amount Paraguay receives annually for its share of energy sold to Brazil from $120 million to $360 million. Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo says the new funds will go toward agrarian reform.

· Reporting from Brazil’s Northeast, the Washington Post examines the Brazilian government’s attempt to eradicate extreme poverty. Government officials are expected to roll-out the details of a new anti-poverty program, “Brazil Without Poverty,” in the coming weeks. The program will expand health, education and cash-transfer programs and direct increased development aid to some of the country’s most impoverished regions. Brazil’s Minister of Social Development, Tereza Campello, calls the new initiatives “strategic decisions for redistributing wealth” by “promoting big works in regions where poverty was concentrated.”

· The flipside of the “development-based” anti-poverty strategy can be seen in reporting from the New York Times today. The paper covers debates in the Brazilian Congress about whether or not to amend the country’s 1934 Forest Code so as to ease restrictions on development in parts of the country’s protected forests.

· IPS reports on new attempts by Mercosur member states Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina to curb foreign land speculation. All three are weighting measures that would impose new “limits” on how much rural property foreign companies or citizens can hold. The moves are motivated by concerns over food sovereignty. However, according to the report, none of the plans under consideration proposes to “ban land sales to private or public foreign capital, nor to regulate land use, nor to repossess land that has already been sold.”

· Latin America News Dispatch on statements Wednesday from Senate Finance Committee Chair, Max Baucus (D-MT), who says he is pushing for passage of the Colombia FTA (along with Panama and South Korea FTAs) in June. Also worth browsing through, a new policy brief prepared by Kevin Gallagher on concerns over what the signing of an FTA with the US could mean for Colombia’s ability to regulate in-flows of speculative financial capital.

· In Haiti, election officials announced Wednesday they are reversing all but four of 19 legislative races contested by the international community after results from a second-round of balloting were announced last month. Wednesday’s changes, says the AP, redistributed seats away from outgoing President Rene Preval’s INITE party and toward a number of lesser-known parties. The US Embassy still seems dissatisfied with the changes, saying the three seats which will still end up going to INITE should have gone to other candidates. New president Michel Martelly takes office Saturday.

· In Cuba, the Miami Herald reports on USAID democracy promotion programs on the island, which continue to be funded to the tune of $20 million and are the subject of on-going scrutiny and criticism in Havana.

· New poll numbers in Peru show Keiko Fujimori extending her tight lead over Ollanta Humala, 40.6% to 37.6%, according to a new Datum poll. Peru’s La Republica reports on a new anti-Fujimori human rights campaign, “Fujimori Nunca Más,” launched this week by the country’s Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDDHH). And Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl writes up a recent conversation he had with former presidential contender (and ex-president) Alejandro Toledo about round-two voting in Peru.