Guatemala Anna Vogt/MCC
The News Roundup is a regular feature of the blog where we select a number of news articles from various sources around the web, with the goal of providing an overview of the weekly conversation about the countries where MCC works in the region. Quotes in italics are drawn directly from sources and do not necessarily reflect the position of MCC.
Former Latin American leaders urge world to end war on drugs ‘disaster’
Three former presidents of Latin American nations have urged the world to end the “unmitigated disaster” of the war on drugs, and denounced the United Nations for secrecy and shortsightedness ahead of the first special assembly on drugs in 18 years.“Outdated drug policies around the world have resulted in soaring drug-related violence, overstretched criminal justice systems, runaway corruption and mangled democratic institutions,” wrote Fernando Henrique Cardoso, César Gaviria and Ernesto Zedillo, respectively the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.
Use of Armed Forces in Drug War a ‘Mistake’ Says Mexico Military Chief
The points raised by General Cienfuegos echo the concerns of human rights monitors over the trend towards militarization of citizen security in Latin America. While using soldiers in the fight against crime can be an attractive option in the short term, it often leads to an increase in human rights abuses, while taking resources and momentum away from police reform. In Mexico, the military has been accused of a range of abuses, including excessive force, extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances, and reports of these abuses have risen considerably since the military was deployed in the drug war, according to human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Despite these concerns, Mexico is far from alone in pursuing a military solution to its security crisis. Currently, El Salvador has deployed military units to fight the growing gang violence in the country, while Honduras has also significantly expanded the role of the military in citizen security.
In World’s Most Violent Country, 30 New Firearms Registered Daily
In 2015, El Salvador registered more than 6,600 homicides, according to police statistics. In January of 2015, President Sánchez Cerén announced that he had rejected all possibility of dialogue mechanisms with gangs to try to stop the escalating violence. 2016 has started with an even higher rate of homicides than last year: an average of 23 per day. With an upward trend in the registered homicide rate, in the rate of homicides committed with firearms, and with the amount of money spent annually on guns, it does appear that there is one indicator going in the opposite direction: the number of seized firearms. Looking at the time period between 2007 and 2015, last year is shaping up to have seen the lowest number of weapons confiscated, down about 30 percent.
Ortega vs. the Contras: Nicaragua Endures an ’80s Revival
That war ended more than 25 years ago, when Mr. Ortega lost at the polls. But since being re-elected in 2006, Mr. Ortega has come to rule over this Central American nation in sweeping fashion. He has developed the economy and minted new millionaires, but also outraged an array of opponents who condemn his tight control over elections, Congress, the police, the military and the courts. Mr. Ortega’s family, friends and allies enjoy newfound luxuries like beachfront homes and expensive cars. They control fuel companies, television stations and public construction projects, which has many critics comparing his family to the right-wing Somoza dynasty that Mr. Ortega helped topple in 1979.
It Takes Two Dead Activists for Banks to Suspend Funding for Honduran Project
If the murder of Honduran activist Berta Cáceres was not enough to convince European development banks to pull their funding from the massive dam project she had protested, the killing of one of her colleagues seems to have done the trick. Nelson García, who worked with Cáceres before she was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen two weeks ago, was himself shot and killed outside his mother-in-law’s house at lunchtime Tuesday. His murder prompted two European development banks, Netherlands Development Finance Co., or FMO, and FinnFund, to suspend their funding of the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project that Cáceres spent a decade protesting.FMO released a statement Wednesday saying that the company was “shocked” to hear of García’s murder and would suspend all activities in Honduras.
Jimmy Morales Can’t Fix Guatemala
Morales hasn’t yet said much about Aldana’s work. But as the nation struggles to embrace an era of waning influence for those accustomed to impunity, merely declining to impede high-profile prosecutions for war crimes won’t be enough. For Guatemala to move forward, Morales will have to help uproot the entrenched military-criminal enterprises (dubbed the “hidden powers”) that still wield outsized influence, and challenge the grip of powerful business groups such as CACIF that vigorously resist a reckoning with the bloody past. He also will have to ferret out corruption at all levels, strengthen weak institutions, and attend to the impoverished and disempowered majority. Judging from his leadership so far, his cheerful campaign slogan aside, it’s hard to be sanguine. But, even if Morales doesn’t have a major role to play in ushering in a brighter future, the newly mobilized civil society that helped bring him to power is sure to continue pushing Guatemala beyond the dark shadow of its past.
UN’s own experts chastise Ban Ki-moon over handling of Haiti cholera outbreak
In a withering letter to the UN chief, the five special rapporteurs say that his refusal to allow cholera victims any effective remedy for their suffering has stripped thousands of Haitians of their fundamental right to justice. The letter is believed to be the first time that the UN’s guardians of human rights have turned their spotlight onto the UN hierarchy itself, as opposed to individual nation states that are the usual target of their criticism. The five experts tear apart the secretary-general’s insistence that the UN is immune from any obligation to compensate victims despite overwhelming evidence that UN troops brought cholera to Haiti five years ago from an infected area of Nepal. Such an approach, the rapporteurs write, “undermines the reputation of the United Nations, calls into question the ethical framework within which its peace-keeping forces operate, and challenges the credibility of the organization as an entity that respects human rights”.
“CONCENTRATION ZONES”: THE PERPLEXING KEY TO A BILATERAL CEASEFIRE IN COLOMBIA
A major part of the ceasefire arrangement will be a concentration of guerrilla forces in specific zones around the country. Colombia’s armed forces will not be allowed to enter these zones, and for some time the guerrillas assembled there will be allowed to keep their weapons, as they begin what may be a long process of “leaving aside arms.” These areas will eventually become the sites where guerrillas undergo demobilization and disarmament, after the signing of a final accord, which is likely to occur in mid-2016…..A violent incident could derail the post-conflict recovery process, perhaps permanently. Plans for preventing one are currently being negotiated by a “sub-commission” of guerrilla and Colombian military negotiators in Havana. The general details of this plan are unclear, but the experience of the Patriotic Union—an unarmed political party that the FARC established during a 1980s peace process, which saw thousands of its members killed—makes clear that implementing it will require heretofore unseen levels of resources, manpower, political will, and creativity.
Bolivian Town Drifts From President Evo Morales, Despite Promises Kept to Left
Much as President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took the United States and Britain down a more conservative path, leaders like Mr. Morales made a commitment to diminishing inequality that is expected to remain even as governments come and go. “No leader in Latin America today can afford not to focus on inequality and go back to the neoliberal formulas of the 1990s,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy institute in Washington. “Whatever criticism you might have of the leaders of the left, they put their finger on the legitimate grievance of Latin Americans: that they had been excluded from the political system.”For some of the opponents now taking power, the question is not about razing the leftist models, but about making repairs and adjustments to them.