The News Roundup is a regular feature of the blog where we select 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.
Not a National Security Crisis: The U.S.-Mexico Border and Humanitarian Concerns, Seen from El Paso
Contrary to popular and political rhetoric about a national security crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, evidence suggests a potential humanitarian—not security—emergency. This report, based on research and a field visit to El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico in April 2016, provides a dose of reality by examining one of the most emblematic of the U.S.-Mexico border’s nine sectors, one that falls within the middle of the rankings on migration, drug seizures, violence, and human rights abuses. At a time when calls for beefing up border infrastructure and implementing costly policies regularly make headlines, our visit to the El Paso sector made clear that what is needed at the border are practical, evidence-based adjustments to border security policy, improved responses to the growing number of Central American migrants and potential refugees, and strengthened collaboration and communication on both sides of the border.
Three Key Points about Mexico’s New Fiscalía
In 2014, the Mexican Constitution was amended to create theFiscalía due to the PGR’s lack of independence and results, and to ensure that the new criminal justice system, after eight years of reform, becomes a reality in the country. The Mexican Congress has yet to carry out a number of legislative actions for the Fiscalía to formally exist. In particular, Congress must make a fundamental decision to either: 1) create a new Fiscalía “from scratch” and appoint an independent and appropriately suited head, or Fiscal, and a team capable of carrying out serious and honest investigations; or 2) automatically transfer the current Attorney General and all of the PGR’s personnel to the new Fiscalía, and thus carry over to the new institution the vices and bad practices that have led to the collapse of Mexico’s criminal justice system.
As Nicaragua’s Election Draws Near, Concerns Grow Over Abuse of Power
The proposed NICA Act, if signed into law, would not be helpful in increasing U.S. influence. In fact, it is likely to diminish U.S. effectiveness. It feeds into the Nicaraguan narrative about U.S. interference, and is likely to cause a domestic backlash. Because it uses language and concepts lifted from the Helms-Burton Act enforcing the U.S. embargo on Cuba, it will lend itself to the notion in Nicaragua that critiques of the country’s human rights record are motivated by Cold War-style opposition to the Ortega government, rather than by concerns about democratic institutions. Additionally, it would encourage the United States to oppose all loans from international institutions, meaning it could have a dramatic impact on much-needed humanitarian and development projects. The reality is that the situation in Nicaragua is deeply concerning. But Cold War-era punitive measures that amount to collective punishment are not the solution.
Nicaragua’s New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
But the economic conditions that allowed Ortega to play democrat, economic savior and friend to the poor are coming to an end. Across Latin America, the end of the commodity cycle and fat government revenues has created serious fiscal problems and stoked inflation, leading to the fall of “pink tide” governments in Argentina, Brazil and Peru. Those economic headwinds are reaching Nicaraguan shores. Venezuela iscutting back cheap oil exports to the country as part of its Petrocaribe project and studies suggest the Central American nation has a $3.5 billion debt to Nicolás Maduro’s cash-strapped regime. The expected $50 billion investment in the proposed canal may never materialize given that its Chinese backer reportedly lost 80 percent of his wealth last year. By obtaining a two-thirds super majority in the coming elections, Ortega would be able to tackle tough economic times with little opposition. “Recent developments aimed at undermining the political opposition are simply a continuation of Ortega’s ongoing efforts to consolidate his control over all aspects of Nicaraguan political life – the courts, military and police, and expulsion of non-Ortega loyalists from the FSLN,” Mike Allison, a political science professor at Scranton University, told AQ.
US abstains from UN vote to condemn Cuba embargo for the first time
“The United States has always voted against this resolution. Today the United States will abstain,” the ambassador said, to loud applause in the chamber. The resolution was passed by 191 votes, with no votes against and only the US and Israel abstaining, emphasizing congressional isolation on the issue. However, the vote is not legally binding on member states. Explaining the abstention, Power said the administration had called on Congress to lift the embargo but not for the reasons laid out in the UN resolution, which suggests they are in violation of international law. Power said the embargo was legal, but ineffective. “[T]he resolution voted on today is a perfect example of why the US policy of isolation toward Cuba was not working – or worse, how it was actually undermining the very goals it set out to achieve,” Power said. “Instead of isolating Cuba, as President Obama has repeatedly said, our policy isolated the United States, including right here at the United Nations.”
Practitioners of traditional Mayan medicine have a lot to teach modern doctors
In August, Guatemala’s health minister announced an initiative to recognize supernatural illnesses in the public healthcare system. Through this program, practitioners will work with traditional Mayan healers to determine a medically and culturally comprehensive approach to a health problem when a patient comes in complaining of “el susto” or “mal de ojo” rather than deny it. “Within the Mayan system, they believe that you cannot separate the spiritual world from the physical world, so diseases and illnesses are affected by both physical or spiritual situations,” says Walter Flores, director of the Research Center for Equality and Governance in the Health System. By rejecting the legitimacy of these diseases in health centers, practitioners are isolating patients, he adds. This behavior chips away at the trust that is so crucial in the doctor-patient relationship.
Environmental Activists Face Renewed Repression in Honduras
“We are concerned for the life of the COPINH leaders and organizers and human rights defenders in Honduras,” CARECEN’s statement reads. “We call on the Honduran presidency of Juan Orlando Hernández to conduct a full and exhaustive investigation of the assassination attempts against Tómas Gomez Membreño and Alexander Garcia Sorto and guarantee their safety to live and organize in the country.” CARECEN has also demanded that the Obama administration “withhold all aid to the Honduran government until the human rights violations against COPINH and the over 200 environmental rights activists murders, many of them indigenous peoples, are effectively investigated and those responsible are brought to justice.” As the climate in Honduras becomes increasingly more dangerous for human rights and environmental leaders, the continuation of U.S. security aid to Honduras will continue to be a point of contention moving forward. “It is clear that only withholding aid for Honduras’ security forces will send the kind of message that the Honduran authorities will actually hear,” Beeton said.
So far, barely a quarter of a $119m (£98m) appeal launched by the UN for instant hurricane relief has been raised. Even less successful has been the $400m appeal launched by the UN in August to eradicate cholera. A portion of that appeal, directed at helping families already harmed by the disease, has so far attracted just $1m of the $200m needed. In the meantime, there is growing evidence that the destruction caused by the hurricane in the Grand-Anse, Sud and Nippes provinces at the hard-to-reach tip of the long peninsula that is southwestern Haiti is already helping to exacerbate the cholera outbreak, which since 2010 has infected 800,000 Haitians and killed more than 9,000 people.
New Colombia peace deal could be ready by end of November: Santos
A new peace deal with FARC rebels could be finished by the end of November, Colombia President Santos told Spanish press agency EFE. To ratify this renegotiated deal Santos said a second referendum is “one of the alternatives I have at my disposal.” According to the president, the Constitutional Court “determined that I could call a new referendum without permission from Congress. The other alternative is sending the renegotiated deal to Congress where Santos’ peace efforts counts on the support of all parties, with the exception of that of his main political rival, former President Alvaro Uribe’s Democratic Center.
Climate Change Has Turned Bolivia’s Glaciers Into Time Bombs
The paper is among the first to measure significant glacial changes across the Andes, and its authors believe their findings could help to predict which lakes pose the greatest risk to rural communities. “We talked to a village leader who recounted an event that his father had seen,” Simon Cook, the study’s lead author and a lecturer at the Manchester Metropolitan University, told me. “His father had witnessed a flood from one of these glaciers, only it wasn’t documented, wasn’t in any scientific paper, and wasn’t reported locally. It was just one of those things that people would see.” When massive glaciers recede, several things can happen. Meltwater runoff, which provides drinking water, hydropower, and irrigation for local communities can disappear. Some 2.3 million urban residents living in La Paz and El Alto, for example, receive around 15 percent of their water from glaciers, according to the study. A 2009 New York Times profile of climate change in Bolivia speculated that El Alto, the country’s second-largest city, could become “the first large urban casualty of climate change.”