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.
Latin America: Evangelical Churches Gaining Influence
The evangelical phenomenon reflects a double dynamic: the unstoppable surge in non-Catholic faithful poses an enormous challenge for the region’s deeply rooted bishops conferences, and the growing distrust for political leaders and parties has facilitated the emergence of new options, including evangelicals, with barely articulated platforms. The faithful who profess the tenets of evangelicalism are disciplined, and pastors’ positions have a lot of influence over them. Even if not linked directly to candidates through the parties, voters’ evangelical affiliation and their churches’ recommendations have a strong influence over them. The evangelical vote, moreover, is highly desired by all candidates and at least indirectly influences campaigns. Candidates in Colombia, Brazil, or Mexico, as in other Latin American countries, are making that increasingly obvious as elections approach.
US agent on trial in cross-border killing of Mexican teen
A rare murder trial of a U.S. Border Patrol agent accused of shooting across the international boundary into Mexico in 2012 and killing a teenager started Tuesday with jury selection. The trial in in U.S. District Court in Tucson comes amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration and his promise to build a wall along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) U.S.-Mexico border.
Mexico Journalists Face Violence From Both Officials and Crime Groups: Report
Like most crimes in Mexico, virtually every instance of attacks on journalists remains in impunity, and family members seeking justice often face revictimization and criminalization by government institutions. According to Article 19, Mexico’s impunity rate of 99.6 percent for crimes against journalists is likely due to the fact that almost half of all cases of aggression towards journalists are allegedly committed by government officials who have no interest in improving the mechanisms for holding perpetrators to account. As the organization put it, “Silence derived through violence is convenient for political power.”
Prisons in Honduras have been home to numerous massacres since the early 2000s, many involving the ruling National Party and state security involvement—often attributed in mainstream media to gangs in order to justify tough-on-crime crackdowns—including at supermax facilities. One such massacre was the Valentine’s Day 2012 Comayagua prison fire, in which nearly 400 prisoners were killed when guards refused to release them from their burning cells, instead shooting directly into cells to prevent prisoners, most of whom were in pre-trial detention, from surviving. There has been international interest in the development of such facilities, particulary from both Israel and the United States. U.S. government advisors have played a clear role in their construction and development. But public-private funding mechanisms and post-coup secrecy laws governing the management of security tax (Tasa de Seguridad) funds used for prison construction have effectively shielded information about both supermax donors and private contractors from the public.
MS13 Is a Street Gang, Not a Drug Cartel — and the Difference Matters
Conflating the gang with the sophisticated cartels currently waging a bloody war in Mexico likewise serves the administration’s goal of tightening border controls. It makes the MS13 seem like a foreign invader, not a homegrown threat. I suspect this rhetoric may also help Trump make the case that the United States should impose longer jail sentences for drug trafficking-related crimes. What harsh law enforcement tactics aimed at ending immigration and breaking up drug cartels won’t do is address the real problems posed by the MS13 and other very violent, very American street gangs.
Guatemala Changes Army’s Role Amid Political Crisis
However, such organizational changes are unlikely to have any significant effects. Systematic corruption within the military also begs the question of whether positioning soldiers in border areas to combat drug trafficking will have a positive effect, or if it will simply make them an easy target for bribes by criminal groups. In the meantime, the army remains supportive of Morales, and several of its members will continue to have significant influence on the country’s politics.
On Sunday, March 4, El Salvador’s governing party, the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), suffered massive defeat at the polls in nationwide legislative and municipal elections. The FMLN now faces one of its most serious crises since its negotiated transition from guerrilla army to political party at the close of the country’s bloody US-backed civil war in 1992.
Nicaragua pays Costa Rica for environmental damages
Nicaragua has paid Costa Rica $378,890 in damages related to the occupation of a disputed border territory, the Costa Rican government confirmed Tuesday. The payment was ordered Feb. 2 by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague. Costa Rica’s Foreign Ministry announced in a press release that the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister, Denis Moncada, informed his Costa Rican counterpart, Manuel González, that the funds had been transferred, and that the transfer has been verified.
Meet the New Haitian Military ― it’s Starting to Look a Lot Like the Old One
Moise “vowed that the new military would be different” and would focus on protecting the country’s borders, responding to natural disasters, and civil engineering projects. But the appointment of six former FAdH officers to the new command ― all of whom are around the same age and were in same promotional class ― sends the wrong message, according to Concannon, the human rights lawyer. “Filling the new High Command with people who played key leadership roles in Haiti’s de facto dictatorship demonstrates a determination to revive the brutal practices that caused so much suffering and undermined Haiti’s democracy and economy,” he said. Rather than a modern force, the new military is starting to look a lot like the old one.
10 things threatening the peace in Colombia
Bolivia’s Morales in The Hague to petition World Court over Chile sea access
Bolivia has asked the court, formally known as the International Court of Justice, to order its Latin American neighbor Chile to enter negotiations on the issue, over which it filed a lawsuit in 2013. Bolivia, which lost former coastal territory during a war in the 19th century, argues that Chile has not kept later diplomatic promises and obligations under international law to negotiate over “sovereign access” – possibly in the form of a land corridor and a port under its control. But in opening arguments, Bolivian lawyers said the country was not asking “the court to rule on how sovereign access should be arranged… but simply (to ensure) that Chile return to the negotiating table in good faith”