The News Roundup is a regular section of the blog, featuring 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.
Trump’s threat of mass deportation fills Mexican migrant towns with fear
The majority of undocumented immigrants in the United States are Mexicans, about 5.8 million people. They sent $26.97-billion (U.S.) in remittances home to Mexico last year – 2.6 per cent of GDP, according to the Centre for Latin American Monetary Studies. “The new Trump plan … puts Mexico in a difficult position because we’re not prepared for a massive return,” said Guadalupe Chipole, who runs the Centre for Care and Support of Migrants in Mexico City. Many of those who now face deportation have been living in the United States for years; they may have no homes here, and only fragile ties with the families and communities they left behind and could not visit through that time, she said. In many places, the conditions that drove them to leave have not changed.
‘I can’t believe how I used to live’: from gang war to peace treaties in Monterrey
Having demonstrated that local youths do have an alternative pathway, García hopes his preventative model will be adopted elsewhere in place of the federal government’s militarised strategy against crime. “You can’t fix this with more soldiers and police,” he says. “We need dialogue, love and affection. That’s what empowers young people, telling a kid that he’s important and has a future.”
Guatemala: Hydroelectric Dam Conflicts Bring Back Past Horrors for Indigenous Communities
Just weeks before the court made their 2017 announcement in favor of the residents of Cahabón, another community in resistance to the expansion of hydro energy received a major victory. On December 23, 2016, Hidro Santa Cruz, the subsidiary of the Spanish firm Ecoener–Hidralia, issued a press release announcing their decision to abandon the construction of the Santa Cruz hydroelectric dam in the Santa Cruz Barillas region. The company stated their decision was based on the levels of social conflict that had plagued the project since it was first announced in 2009. The project was met with constant protests by residents, and was accompanied by the criminalization and repression of anti-dam activists. Residents have celebrated the recent announcement, but they are still weary of the news…. Whether or not the project leaves for good, the decision to abandon the project sets a precedence for the value of resistance to the expansion of projects. But as Guatemala Sociologist Gladys Tzul Tzul points out, the region is still impacted by other major social conflicts over hydro, such as the project in San Mateo Ixtatan.
From El Salvador’s violence to a tenuous toehold in Trump’s America
“If I’m deported – my mother will die,” she said. There is no way, she said, that she could earn enough to cover her mother’s medication and care costs with the wages she would earn in El Salvador. “Trump says they’re going to deport everyone. Then, what are we going to do? I’m scared. We’re all so scared.” Mr. Trump popped up again on the muted television beside us. Helena bristled. “If all of us immigrants are gone, what happens to the U.S.?” she said in rapid-fire Spanish, making a dismissive gesture toward the screen. “We’re the ones working here, working like teams of oxen.” A little later, Helena softened again, and said it would all have been worth it – the debts and the threats, even if she is deported – if Fernando gets refugee status and the right to stay. “I don’t have papers, I will never have. They could come and get me. But he will have it. We’re going to get a lawyer and he will have papers – so it was worth it for me. Because you want the best for your family. If he can make something of himself here, I’ll be very glad.”
Honduras Authorities Covered Up Police Sending Weapons to FARC: Report
An El Heraldo report revealed that top security officials have suppressed internal investigations into a police network that allegedly sold weapons to a Colombian guerrilla group in the early 2000s, yet another illustration of the institutionalized corruption within the force. In March 2003, Estrada Izaguirre, a police officer on assignment in the southern department of Choluteca, sent a report to the director of Honduras‘ Preventive Police division detailing a police-criminal network operating in the area, according to an investigation by El Heraldo. An aide to the Preventive Police director then sent a note to the head of a separate police division requesting an investigation into Izaguirre’s allegations. Both whistleblowers were later killed; Izaguirre just months after filing the complaint, and the aide in July 2007, reported El Heraldo. Neither crime has been solved.
Funeral Mass for 20 prisoners who died in Haiti’s largest prison
Recurrent shortages of food and medicine as well as infectious diseases that flourish in packed Haitian prisons and jails have led to an upsurge in malnutrition-related illnesses and other preventable diseases. The large majority of the country’s 11,000 inmates haven’t been convicted of anything and wait years for a court date. UN Special Representative Sandra Honore said in a statement that 42 detainee deaths so far this year are linked to “the worsening of cruel, inhuman and degrading” conditions. She called on Haitian authorities to urgently improve the situation, saying it was “the responsibility of the state to ensure respect for the rights of detainees and access to basic services.” Similar calls have gone unheeded for years and dismal prison conditions worsened over the last year as a caretaker government was in power.
“Having topped the ADI for two years running, Colombia clearly has a strong grasp on the policy framework needed to enable affordable internet for its population,” said the Alliance for Affordable Internet in a statement. The organization is backed by a large group of public and private stakeholders, from Google, Microsoft, and Facebook to the U.S. State Department, the government of Nigeria, and the United Nations. It uses a metric called the Affordability Drivers Index (ADI) to gauge “the extent to which countries have implemented a number of factors that can lower the overall cost structure for broadband.” Namely, the index measures infrastructure, internet access, and the policies enacted to promote the expansion of both. Colombia’s overall score of 72.9, out of 100, was the best among the surveyed nations. The country did especially well in terms of access, with a score of 85.3, while its infrastructure mark, of 58.2, could still use improvement. But the combination of these factors and governmental commitments mean that it still outpaces everyone else.
La Paz adapts to a world without water
As temperatures rose, rivers and lake beds that once nourished fields and crops dried up. Countless farmers and other rural people who relied on the land fled into the cities. There, a woeful lack of infrastructure—a dearth of water-treatment facilities in La Paz, aging reservoirs, leaky pipes—failed to keep pace with the demand. La Paz has now entered a post-water world, where strict rationing is a way of life for many. For months, some of the city’s neighborhoods received water only once every three days for a few hours. (In mid-January, it increased to every other day.) When water does flow, people rush to fill anything handy—bathtubs, buckets, trash cans—so they can drink and cook and flush until they run out again. The crisis has cut most Bolivians’ meager daily use (an average 48 gallons compared with an American’s daily 100-gallon habit) by two thirds. To cope, people go without nonessential water activities, like laundry and bathing.
Protests over Morales expose divisions among Bolivians
Protestors took to the streets on Tuesday, exactly one year after Bolivia held a referendum on changing the constitution to enable President Evo Morales to seek a fourth re-election. The “No” vote won by a small margin, a decision that prevents Morales from running in the 2019 elections. Later last year, however, the Movement for Socialism (MAS), the party led by Morales, announced they were considering putting him forward for candidacy again anyway. The ruling party are pursuing legal loopholes that allow Morales to run again.