Ecuador Investigates Indigenous Leaders Following Protests

El Universo of Ecuador reports that Deputy Energy Ministry Gustavo Donoso asked judicial officials to launch a criminal investigation into ten leaders of the country’s largest and most significant indigenous organization, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). El Comercio notes that the public prosecutor’s office has accepted the request and opened a preliminary investigation into the accused -- which include CONAIE President Humberto Cholango -- over their alleged organization of unlawful protests and threats of violence against officials.

The charges stem from environmental and indigenous demonstrations outside the 11th Oil-Licensing Round in Quito in November, in which Chile’s ambassador to Ecuador and a Belarusian businessman were swarmed and briefly assaulted by protesters. Following the incident, the government ordered the immediate closure of the Pachamama Foundation, an environmental NGO which helped promote the protests.  

Like the Pachamama Foundation staff, the CONAIE leaders argue that they had no part in the violence. Cholango maintains that, for his part, he was not even present at the protests when the assault on the officials occurred. In remarks to El Comercio, he claimed that the judicial inquiry was merely a front to “continue criminalizing indigenous leaders” in the country.

The investigation is just the latest demonstration of the government’s apparent crackdown on dissent. Spain’s El Pais has a round-up of other similar incidents that have occurred recently, including a December 26 raid on the houses of lawmaker Clever Jimenez and journalist Fernando Villavicencio. The two are leading opposition figures that have accused the government of corruption, and in turn been denounced as spies by officials. The paper also details a clash between El Universo political cartoonist Xavier Bonilla and Ecuadorean officials who object to Bonilla’s depiction of the raid.

Still, it’s worth remembering that opposition to the government of President Rafael Correa is not a static, uniform bloc, as it is often portrayed by international media. CONAIE was in fact a vocal supporter of the Ecuadorean government’s controversial media reform law passed in June, which a number of international outlets and advocacy groups condemned as a restriction of press freedom. In a statement following its passage, CONAIE praised the law’s anti-discrimination language as well as its calls for redistribution of broadcast frequencies.

News Briefs

• Cuban ex-leader Fidel Castro made a rare public appearance in Havana on Wednesday night, his first since last April. The Washington Post and Spain’s La Vanguardia have a collection of photos of the 87 year-old’s appearance, which took place at the unveiling of a nonprofit cultural center and art gallery in Cuba’s capital. The Miami Herald reports that Castro walked with a cane, and the burly man seen hovering near the frail-looking former leader was his personal doctor.  

• The Associated Press has an update on the U.S.-Cuba migration talks which took place in Havana yesterday. According to the news agency, Cuban officials said the talks covered a series of migratory accords reached in the 1990s in which the U.S. agreed to issue 20,000 immigrant visas a year to Cubans. However, the Cuban government maintains that special exemptions from U.S. immigration law for Cuban immigrants such as the "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy are a threat to orderly migration, and should be discontinued.

• The Financial Times’ Beyond Brics blog looks at the various border disputes with Argentina, Peru and Bolivia that Chilean President-elect Michelle Bachelet will have to deal with upon taking office, on top of the domestic reforms she is expected to announce.  

• Americas Quarterly features two opposing views on the peace talks between Colombia’s FARC rebels and the Colombian government in Havana, Cuba. While Aldo Civico asserts that both sides have demonstrated helpful pragmatism at the negotiating table, Alfredo Rangel points to the guerrillas’ ongoing attacks and “arrogant” negotiation style as barriers to a lasting agreement.

• After the Colombian government revoked its extradition request for alias “'Julian Conrado,” the FARC political leader and musician captured in Venezuela in 2011, Semana reports that officials in Caracas have freed him from prison, paving the way for him to join the guerrillas’ delegation at the peace talks in Havana.

• Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced a cabinet reshuffle yesterday, after declaring that his entire cabinet had offered to resign. The president named replacements to head seven civilian ministries, as well as a number of military agencies, El Nacional reports.

• According to The Washington Post, the Mexican government has acknowledged deploying federal police to guard hospitalized Michoacan vigilante leader José Manuel Mireles, who was seriously injured in a plane crash this week. The Post points to this protection as an illustration of federal authorities’ awkward relationship with vigilante militias, which often puts it at odds with local governments.

• Local townspeople are protesting the recent seizure of the Michoacan town of Paracuaro by vigilante “self-defense” forces, Mexico’s Excelsior reports. According to Milenio, the town’s mayor has called on the federal government to assist in forcing the withdrawal of the armed vigilante group, and the AP notes that local rumors are circulating which link the self-defense group with the New Generation cartel.

• Following up on recent prison violence in Brazil in an op-ed for O Globo, Robert Muggah and Ilona Szabo de Carvalho of the Rio de Janeiro-based Igarape Institute argue that a “drastic change” in public attitudes is necessary for prison reform in the country. The two assert that this would hardly require the “reinvention of the judicial system,” bit could instead be complemented by a shift in drug policies and greater federal commitment to improving prison conditions. In a separate column for the Huffington Post, Muggah and Daniel Mack advocate for a "smarter" policing strategy in Brazil, one which targets illicit arms trafficking networks and crime prevention in at-risk communities.

• The New York Times reports on the personal library of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, which he donated to the country’s military academy before leaving power in 1990. The collection, which includes some 50,000 books and has been valued at around $3 million, was amassed using public funds. According to investigative journalist  Cristóbal Peña, who has written a book on the collection, “Pinochet was tormented by an intense inferiority complex, which he tried to deal with by collecting books."

Graphic Video Highlights Prison Violence in Brazil

Following the release of a highly graphic video depicting the bodies of three decapitated inmates on display in a prison yard after a December riot in a Maranhão state penal facility -- published on the website of Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo -- the footage has  sparked something of a national debate over prison conditions, both in Maranhão and nationwide.

Violence has recently spread from prisons to the streets of Maranhão capital São Luis, where authorities say street gangs orchestrated attacks on buses and police stations last week in response to a crackdown in Pedrinhas prison, the same facility where the video was recorded. Some 60 inmates were killed there in 2013.

On Wednesday, the mounting violence led the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to release a statement expressing concern over the “dire state of prisons in Brazil” and calling on authorities to restore order in Pedrinhas.

Local groups have also called on federal authorities to open an investigation into allegations of human rights abuses in the prison. In a letter sent to Brazilian Attorney General Rodrigo Janot on Tuesday, human rights NGOs Conectas, Justiça Global and the Maranhão Society of Human Rights argued that federal intervention would “enable a more speedy and independent investigation” of conditions in Pedrinhas. The organizations also noted that, ever since the state government ordered military police to take over the facility two weeks ago, there has been little information available about the state of affairs at the prison.

There is an element of local politics to the way the prison violence has gained a national profile as well. As Simon Romero writes for the New York Times, Maranhão is governed by Roseana Sarney, a member of the powerful Sarney family which has dominated politics in the state for decades. Sarney has taken to a state newspaper owned by her family to blame the violence on institutional problems with the Brazilian legal system and on resistance to reforms from prison guards. Romero notes that the video was leaked to Folha by members of the union of penitentiary workers, perhaps in a bid to lash out at Sarney’s attempts to assume control of the Pedrinhas facility.

News Briefs

• Yesterday saw a rare gesture of civility between Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Henrique Capriles, when the two shook hands during a meeting Maduro convened with state leaders in the capital yesterday. The gathering came in response to public outcry over the brutal murder of beauty queen Monica Spear and her husband on Monday night. While El Nacional reports that the opposition has demanded that the government reassess its security policies, the president did not announce any strategy shift or personnel changes among law enforcement, according to the AP.

• In Foreign Policy’s Transitions blog, Juan Nagel argues that Venezuela’s security crisis cannot be addressed without reforming lax gun controls and a weak court system with too few judges and prosecutors.

• According to El Universal, the administration of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has officially replaced Provictima, an agency to support victims of crime and violence created by former President Felipe Calderon, with the newly-launched Executive Commission on Attention to Victims. Animal Politico reports that, as part of the move, Provictima will hand off at least 2,300 unsolved cases of disappearances to the Attorney General’s Office.   

• Guatemalan daily El Periodico reported on Tuesday that its editor, Jose Ruben Zamora Marroquin, has been notified that a judge has barred him from leaving the country so that he can face criminal charges filed by President Otto Perez Molina. These include allegations that Zamora attempted unsuccessfully to extort the administration, and then published a number of articles and op-ed columns accusing the government of corruption and collusion with organized crime. According to the paper, the court order bans Zamora from engaging in any “verbal or written” actions which endanger the "integrity, security and liberty of the victim.”

• Even after former Salvadoran President Francisco Flores admitted to receiving upwards of 15 million dollars directly from Taiwan during his administration (see El Faro’s report on Flores’ testimony before a congressional panel), the Taiwanese government has declined to comment on the suspicious payments.  

• The Colombian Labor Ministry released a statement yesterday expressing regret over the murder of union leader Ever Luis Marin Rolong in the northern department of Atlantico, calling on police to investigate his assassination on Saturday. EFE notes that U.S. Congressmen George Miller and James McGovern released a report late last year which found that 83 percent of reported union murders went unpunished.

• In an address yesterday on Colombia’s inroads against poverty, President Juan Manuel Santos said that some 2.5 million Colombians had been lifted out of poverty since his administration took office in 2010, and that 1.3 million had escaped extreme poverty. While he noted that some 31 percent of the population still lives in impoverished conditions, he announced a plan to eradicate extreme poverty in the country over the next decade, El Tiempo reports.

• The United States Department of State has confirmed that it is continuing talks with Cuban authorities on migration between the two countries. According to the Miami Herald, the dialogues will take place today in Havana, rather than yesterday as initially reported.

• Cuba continues to roll out new economic reforms. Reuters reports that new regulations published by authorities yesterday will partially privatize the country’s state taxi firm, allowing drivers to lease and maintain their own vehicles in an attempt to improve efficiency.

• La Razon reports that Bolivian President Evo Morales assumed the chairmanship of the Group of 77 in a ceremony yesterday, presenting ten proposals for the developing country bloc’s long term agenda. Among these are the eradication of hunger, “decolonizing” the world and guaranteeing basic social services as a human right. The AP notes that Morales also used the occasion to advocate for the removal of coca leaf from the banned substances list included in the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs.

• Talks to resolve a massively over-budget expansion of the Panama Canal hit a wall yesterday after an Italian members of the international private consortium overseeing construction demanded $1 billion from the canal authority to continue work on the project.

Mexico City Lawmakers to Present Marijuana Reform Bill

Three local lawmakers of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) in Mexico City are poised to present a bill next week which would expand marijuana decriminalization in the capital city. It also seeks to assert a constitutional justification for state and local governments to set their own drug policies beyond federal regulations, potentially paving the way for other states in Mexico to follow suit.

While the bill has been pending since last fall, Milenio reports that its sponsors, PRD lawmakers Esthela Damian, Daniel Ordoñez and Efrain Morales, will finally submit the draft law to Mexico City’s Legislative Assembly next week. Drug policy expert Aram Barra told Animal Politico that the bill was initially meant to be presented to the legislative body in December, but that some members of the civil society/legislative working group backing the bill suggested this be postponed to seek input from Mexico City health authorities. The bill’s supporters include academics from UNAM, the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) as well as drug policy and citizen security reform groups Espolea, the Collective for an Integrated Drug Policy (CUPIHD) and Mexico United Against Crime (MUCD), according to Barra.

The bill does not appear to be available online yet, but a version obtained by El Universal in December included provisions which would set up dispensaries around the city to provide users with safe access to the drug, as well as information about the associated risks and how to seek treatment for drug addiction. It would build off a 2009 federal law which decriminalized the possession of up to 5 grams of marijuana and small amounts of other drugs.

For drug policy reform advocates, perhaps the most important element of the bill is its inclusion of a constitutional basis for allowing the capital to create its own drug policy regime. According to Barra the legislation fits under the penal reforms guaranteed to state and local governments, “using the criteria enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution.”

Securing this could allow other jurisdictions in the country to relax their drug laws beyond federal law in the future. Although surveys suggest that only a minority of Mexicans currently support marijuana legalization, support is greater among Mexico's youth and an Excelsior poll published in November demonstrated that roughly three-quarters (74 percent) of the country is in favor of legalizing the drug for medical use.

News Briefs

• In other news on the drug policy front, the recently-implemented marijuana legalization initiative in Colorado has won a surprising endorsement from El Tiempo, the most widely-distributed newspaper in Colombia. In an editorial published yesterday, the Bogota-based paper called the Colorado law part of “an urgent and necessary reframing of the war on drugs.”

• Caracol Radio reports that in a new communiqué, Colombia’s FARC guerrillas have questioned the Colombian government’s commitment to peace talks, alleging that the recent Washington Post report on the extensive CIA collusion with counterinsurgency efforts “raises doubts about the true role of the fatherland-betraying Colombian oligarchy” in negotiations.

• Despite the fact that the two countries could barely agree to a meeting place for talks yesterday, the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic apparently found some common ground, EFE and Reuters report. According to the news wires, Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and Dominican Minister of the Presidency Gustavo Montalvo told reporters their countries had reached an understanding. The Listin Diario reports that Haiti has recognized the Dominican government’s sovereign right to determine its citizenship criteria, although Lamothe urged his counterpart to protect the rights of people of Haitian origin. The AP reports that Dominican authorities, meanwhile, have agreed to provide temporary papers to Haitians who work in the country.

• The scandal over allegations that former Salvadoran President Francisco Flores embezzled aid money provided by the Taiwanese government has deepened, after Flores told a congressional panel yesterday that he had received 15 or 20 million dollars from Taiwan in the wake of a devastating 2001 earthquake. However, Flores insisted that he never used the money for his own enrichment. President Mauricio Funes has recalled the Salvadoran ambassador to Taiwan, saying that the country had not been properly assisting an investigation into the donations.

• Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo reports on a highly graphic video leaked to the paper by a union of penitentiary workers, which purports to show the bodies of three decapitated inmates on display in a prison yard after a December riot in a Maranhão state penal facility. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the controversy following the video’s leak has focused attention on substandard prison conditions in the country.

• In compliance with a court order, Brazilian military and police officials have begun evicting illegal ranchers and loggers from land in the northeastern Maranhão state belonging to the Awá people. The move has been hailed as a rare victory for indigenous rights advocates, The Guardian reports.

• Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, who is visiting Cuba this week, has called on the European Union to revisit its restrictions on Cuban relations.  Timmermans signed an agreement with his Cuban counterpart to encourage diplomatic engagement, and remarked to reporters that dialogue is a more effective way to promote reforms on the island than isolation, according to Reuters.

• In Venezuela, the Monday night murder of former Miss Venezuela and actress Monica Spear Mootz, along with her husband, is making waves. As the AP reports, the two were killed by unknown gunmen after their car broke down hours outside of Caracas. The incident has sparked a national debate over insecurity in the country, with President Nicolas Maduro calling it a “massacre” and Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez announcing a restructuring of police forces, according to the Wall Street Journal.

• NPR has an update on Venezuelan reactions to the recently-launched “Vice Ministry for the Supreme Social Happiness of the Venezuelan People,” which has earned criticism from government opponents as an example of the allegedly deepening bureaucracy in the country.

• In Foreign Policy, senior Human Rights Watch researcher Nik Steinberg writes on disappearances linked to Mexico's drug-fueled violence, and on the government’s alarming lack of commitment to effectively prosecuting cases of disappearances and setting up a functional database of individuals who have gone missing.

• The Chilean Supreme Court has closed an official investigation into the death of former President Salvador Allende, confirming the results of a 2011 inquest which determined that Allende’s death was a suicide. The BBC and El Mostrador report that the decision rejects several appeals for the investigation to be reopened. 

Dominican Republic, Haiti Resume Post-Citizenship Ruling Talks

After talks to restore diplomatic ties between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the wake of the D.R.’s controversial citizenship ruling in September, officials from both countries are set to meet today to discuss bilateral relations.

The Listin Diario reports that, while the meeting is expected to take place in Haiti today as planned, as of last night Haitian and Dominican representatives had not agreed on the location for their 11:00am meeting. According to the paper, Haitian authorities wanted the conference to be held at a public university in northern Haiti, while Dominican officials wanted to hold it at the nearby CODEVI industrial park/free trade zone. It appears that the two sides eventually settled on the industrial park, located in the town of Ouanaminthe.

The talks will address a number of trade and diplomatic issues, but the main sticking point will be the Dominican Constitutional Court ruling to deny automatic citizenship to tens of thousands of Dominicans of foreign (and mostly Haitian) descent. However, considering that the two countries couldn’t even agree to a meeting place until the night before the event, the odds of establishing full relations -- let alone some kind of bilateral accord on migration/citizenship -- seem remote.

This is the second attempt at repairing relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in following the court sentence, after the latter country pulled out of Venezuela-facilitated talks in November. This round will also be facilitated by Venezuelan authorities, as well as representatives of the United Nations, the Caribbean Communities and the European Union.

Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on Dominican authorities to ensure that those affected by the ruling are not left stateless. The December preliminary report of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, as well as the advocacy work of local human rights groups like Reconocido (referred to in a recent Miami Herald piece as the “Dreamers” of the D.R.) have succeeded in framing the sentence to an international audience as a violation of human rights rather than an immigration issue.  

As proof of this, the U.S. State Department publicly addressed the ruling for the first time on December 18, when deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters the U.S. had expressed “deep concern” over the ruling to Dominican officials. Harf also said that the U.S. had seen the Dominican plan to implement the ruling, announced in November, although the specifics of citizenship eligibility have not yet been made public.

News Briefs

• Elsewhere in the hemisphere, two other traditionally rival countries are set to hold talks this week as well. The Miami Herald reports that U.S. and Cuban officials will meet tomorrow in Havana for the second round of migration talks since the Obama administration resumed the dialogues in July with no official explanation for the shift.

• The Los Angeles Times looks at the work of Cuban doctors who have been sent to Brazil to provide health services to underserved communities, profiling the political controversy surrounding their arrival. Much of this is due to the way in which they are being compensated, which involves Brazil providing a lump sum to the Cuban government rather than direct payment to the health workers themselves. Still, as the paper notes, many doctors participating in the program support the arrangement, seeing it as a way of contributing to health and education programs back home.  

• The L.A. Times also has an excellent report on the shortcomings of Colombia’s much-lauded Victims Law. While the law attempts to guarantee land restitution to those displaced by armed groups, most of those affected are unable to return due to a lack of economic support and the government’s inability to guarantee their security.

• Peruvian drug czar Carmen Masias told local press that the country’s anti-drug agency is planning on eradicating some 30,000 hectares of illicit coca this year, up from the record eradication of 23,600 hectares in 2013.

• Supporters of embattled Bogota mayor Gustavo Petro are organizing what is to be one of the largest demonstrations yet in the city square this Friday. According to EFE, activist Jose Cuesta told local press that some 150,000 people are expected to participate in a show of support for Petro, with delegations arriving from across the country.

• Mexican daily El Universal yesterday published an in-depth investigation on the U.S. role in Mexico’s “drug war” from 2006 to 20/ 12According to official documents and interviews with U.S. and Mexican authorities, DEA and Department of Justice figures were authorized meet directly with high-level drug traffickers, often without informing the Mexican government. While this news may not be astonishing to some, it shows the unprecedented access afforded to U.S. anti-drug officials in Mexico under the administration of former President Felipe Calderon.

• Mexican officials say they are investigating a small plane crash which injured Jose Manuel Mireles, leader of an high profile self-defense group in Michoacan state.  In an illustration of the increasing influence of vigilante groups there, Proceso reports that on Saturday some 100 armed members of a community self-defense group took over the Michoacan village of Paracuaro, a stronghold of the Knights Templar drug gang. Reuters has some amazing photos of the incident, including images of armed vigilantes forcing allegedly corrupt local police to surrender their weapons.

• Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro yesterday announced that his country’s minimum wage would be raised by 10 percent, in an effort to keep up with the country’s 28 percent inflation rate. Meanwhile, El Nacional reports that inflation has caused many electronics and clothing stores to cut back their hours of operation, and that traditional beginning of the year sales have been significantly cut across the retail sector.

• A dispute between the Panama Canal Authority and a consortium managing an expansion project appears to be nearing an end after officials announced that the two sides were discussing plans to split unforeseen costs between themselves. Meanwhile the head of the body overseeing construction on Nicaragua’s proposed canal, Deputy Foreign Minister Manuel Coronel Kautz, has said that construction on the project there will begin this year, contradicting earlier remarks about a  yearlong delay.  

• The Washington Post takes a look at Brazil’s troubled oil industry, noting that predictions for an oil boom have reined in significantly since billions of barrels’ worth of deep sea oil deposits were discovered in Brazilian waters in 2007.

Argentine Government Promotes Army Chief with Contentious Past

Over the past two administrations the Argentine government has made a name for itself as a champion of human rights, ending impunity for those responsible for torture and other abuses. But Cristina Fernandez, like her deceased husband Nestor Kirchner before her, is a deft politician, and has demonstrated flexibility on this front for her own political gain.

Perhaps one of the clearest examples of this was the June 2013 appointment of Major General Cesar Milani to army chief of staff, despite evidence linking him to dictatorship-era human rights abuses. Milani had served as head of army intelligence since 2007, and eventually became an important ally of the Kirchners.

The Center for Legal Studies (CELS), an influential local human rights group, opposed Milani’s appointment. While the military official has never been charged for any abuses, in July 2013 CELS released a report  documenting his alleged participation in human rights crimes during his career. The organization found that Milani had authored a case report on the “desertion” of a soldier from his unit in Tucuman province in 1976, though the man had actually been forcibly disappeared. Additionally, CELS unearthed testimony linking Milani to the arrest of a dissident in La Rioja province, which led to his subsequent disappearance. On these grounds, the human rights group opposed an attempt by Kirchner’s Front for Victory (FPV)Senate majority to promote Milani to lieutenant general. The report generated a wave of controversy, and the FPV was forced to put his promotion on hold.

This only proved a temporary victory for human rights advocates, however. On December 18, the Senate voted 39 to 30 to promote Milani, triggering backlash from local and international human rights organizations.

CELS has challenged the move, releasing a more comprehensive, 17-page report on the allegations against Milani.

News Briefs

• The Miami Herald reports on the growth of charter flights to Cuba, which have skyrocketed in the wake of the Obama administration’s 2011 reauthorization of people-to-people trips. Interestingly, while the move authorized Cuba-bound flights to depart from 15 gateway cities, the boom in charter services has not spread outside of Florida, according to the Herald.

• Despite questions over the constitutionality of his re-election bid, La Opinion reports that supporters of Bolivian President Evo Morales opened the office for his campaign ahead of October elections. In response, the AP notes that electoral officials have released a statement advising the public that it is illegal to carry out political campaigns outside of the designated 90-day period before the vote.

• Honduras’ El Heraldo reports on President-elect Juan Orlando Hernandez’s plans for organizing his administration upon taking office on January 27. Members of his transition team have told the press that Hernandez will split up the majority of the current government institutions  into seven “sectorial ministries,” including one which would oversee the work of the armed forces as well as law enforcement authorities.

• Although his political opponents have continued to batter him over his call for a legislative debate on media consolidation in Peru, Peruvian President Ollanta Humala has doubled down on his position on the issue. Nevertheless, Peru21 reports that he has been careful to tell reporters that submitting an anti-media monopoly bill to Congress is not a priority of his.

• In a column published in Semana magazine, Aura Patricia Bolivar Jaime of the Bogota-based human rights group Dejusticia critiques the dominant model of rural development being furthered by the Colombian government. According to Bolivar, recent agricultural reform initiatives presented by the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos have favored the interests of large landowners over traditional small-scale farmers, contradicting preliminary agreements at the peace talks in Havana as well as an accord reached with rural campesino groups in September after weeks of protests.

• Foreign Policy’s Passport blog has a good roundup of Brazil’s announcement last month that it would award a multi-billion dollar contract to supply planes to the Brazilian Air Force to Swedish defense contractor Saab instead of the U.S. company Boeing. While the government cited the lower price of the Swedish offer as the main reason, officials have privately told members of the press that the decision was primarily a reaction to the revelations of potential U.S. economic espionage leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Meanwhile, in an open letter published by Folha de Sao Paulo on December 18, Snowden offered to assist Brazil’s investigations into U.S. spying initiatives, although he said he could not speak freely unless he was granted full political asylum.

• Just as a planned expansion of the Panama Canal has hit a stumbling block, work on its anticipated rival in Nicaragua has been delayed as well. On Friday La Prensa reported that the head of the canal authority, Deputy Foreign Minister Manuel Coronel Kautz, announced that more time would be needed to determine the project’s feasibility and route. According to him, construction will not begin until 2015.
• InSight Crime looks at the recent discovery of some of the largest mass graves seen in El Salvador since the country’s civil war, and questions whether the finds are a sign that the MS-13/Barrio 18 gang truce is failing. The site also points out that the number of disappearances doubled in 2013 and the homicide rate crept upward, which also seems to support this conclusion.

• On Friday the Washington Post published an op-ed by Elliott Abrams, a former national security advisor in the George W. Bush administration, on the danger that drug trafficking poses to Central America, and particularly to El Salvador. Abrams alleges that the main candidate of the leftist FMLN party ahead of El Salvador’s February elections, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, has ties with drug-running intermediaries associated with criminal elements in Colombia’s FARC. 

Humala Calls for Debate on Media Consolidation in Peru

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala has become the latest Latin American president to wade into a debate over concentrated media ownership, leading critics to accuse him of threatening press freedom. 

In a December 29 interview, Humala spoke out against a recent purchase by Peru’s largest media conglomerate, Grupo El Comercio, of a majority stake in press company Epensa. The acquisition, which increased El Comercio’s share of the Peruvian print media market to 70 percent up from 50 percent, was highly controversial. Several well-known journalists, including the director of rival newspaper La Republica, filed a lawsuit against El Comercio over the purchase in November, accusing it of establishing a near-monopoly. Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has been one of the staunchest critics of the acquisition, calling it “potentially a very large threat against democracy.”

In the interview, Humala said he was fully in agreement with Vargas Llosa, and called on lawmakers to hold a debate on media control. “It is shameful that in Peru we have one group that practically owns the media, it's dangerous,” said the president.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the remark has caused a stir. El Comercio covered it yesterday with front-page headlines and an editorial accusing Humala of disguising an attack on the media as concern for freedom of expression. The president’s main opponents joined in the criticism, with Keiko Fujimori and ex-President Alan Garcia releasing separate condemnations of his comments.

For now, the issue appears to be off the table. As legislators have pointed out, there are no media monopoly laws under consideration in Congress at the moment. Unless the Humala administration or the president’s Gana Peru coalition drafts and submits one, the controversy surrounding the president’s comment will likely die down.

If a bill does materialize, however, it will be interesting to see how it is covered in the U.S. press. A number of U.S. outlets were quick to frame media regulation laws passed in the region this year (see the WSJ on Argentina, or the Washington Post on Ecuador) as undemocratic attempts by leftist leaders to muzzle critics.  But Humala is not so easily pigeonholed. The Peruvian president has been praised for his 2011 swing to the center and his repeated efforts to distance himself from the ALBA bloc. This clashes with the narrative used for Argentina and Ecuador, which may spur a deeper analysis of the concentrated state of media control in Peru.

News Briefs

• Work on a planned expansion of the Panama Canal may soon be halted, the New York Times reports, as the consortium overseeing the project is seeking $1.6 billion from the Panama Canal Authority to cover extra costs due to “unforeseen circumstances.” If the money is not paid in the next 21 says, the conglomerate is threatening to suspend construction. According to the AP, Panamanian President Richard Martinelli has said he will travel to Spain and Italy this week to seek their governments’ help in urging the domestic companies involved there to resolve the dispute.

• On Wednesday evening, Venezuelan Communications Minister Delcy Rodriguez took to Twitter to publish a list of the international vacation destinations of some 27 opposition figures, an apparent effort to portray the opposition as out of touch economic elites. The list includes Henrique Capriles, Leopoldo Lopez and other leaders of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), who traveled to destinations like Panama, Miami, Madrid, New York and Paris over the holiday season. BBC Mundo highlights the response by some opposition figures, who called the move a violation of privacy. For analyst James Bosworth, the list is an illustration of the government’s flagrant abuse of intelligence to discredit its political opponents.

• The Miami Herald has an overview of the state of gay rights advocacy efforts in the region with a special emphasis on the Caribbean, where sexual relations between individuals of the same sex is illegal in many countries. It is punishable by prison sentence in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

• A recent report by Colombian think tank Fundacion Paz y Reconciliacion sheds some light on the FARC’s military activity since the group began talks with the government. According to the report, the rebels have adapted their campagn to the pace of dialogues, declaring truces or offensives based on the status of the Havana negotiations. The report also claims that the FARC have roughly 11,000 fighters, considerably higher than the 8,000 figure used by the Colombian government.

• The governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic are taking steps to resolve the current diplomatic crisis between the two, which stems from the D.R.’s controversial Constitutional Court ruling on citizenship in September. Dominican presidential advisor Gustavo Montalvo told reporters yesterday that the government will send representatives to January 7 talks with Haitian officials in dialogues facilitated by Venezuela, the United Nations, the European Union and CARICOM, EFE reports.

• The recent Washington Post investigation into the U.S. role in providing smart bombs for Colombia’s aerial campaign against FARC rebels, which revealed that the controversial 2008 bombing that killed FARC chief Raul Reyes in Ecuadorean territory was carried out with tacit U.S. approval, is making a splash in Ecuador. Yesterday, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa told reporters that he had asked U.S. officials to clarify their role in the bombing, alleging that it was part of an attempt by the “extreme U.S. right” to damage his country’s ties with Colombia and the peace talks in Havana.

• While 2013 saw its fair share of landmark court decisions, this year promises to be just as significant. O Globo reports that Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal is set to take on a series of important issues in 2014, including private funding for political campaigns.

• In The New Yorker, Mattathias Schwartz has an in-depth piece on the United States’ military-heavy approach to counternarcotics efforts in Honduras, using the controversial May 2012 DEA-backed operation in which several civilians were killed to reflect on the cost of the war on drugs.

• Following up on a paper on inequality in Latin America by three World Bank economists, The Economist’s Americas View blog takes a look at uneven economic development in Latin America, characterizing the region’s tradition of mixed progress the “’yes, but’ syndrome.” The Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics blog makes a similar point, noting that inequality in Latin America is “better, but still terrible.”

• In a column for El Faro, Salvadoran journalist Hector Silva Avalos writes a scathing critique of President Mauricio Funes’ anti-corruption and transparency efforts, accusing the president of using an investigation into former President Francisco Flores’ alleged graft as political theater, while at the same time ignoring widespread corruption in the police and the political clout of the military command. 

Bogota Mayor Challenges Removal Order

Bogota Mayor Gustavo Petro has filed an appeal against the Colombian inspector general’s recent decision to order him out of office and banned from politics for 15 years over his handling of a dispute with garbage collectors in 2012.

On December 31, El Tiempo reported that Petro presented a challenge against Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez’s order to the Attorney General's Office, alleging that Ordoñez is biased against the mayor because of his conservative Catholic views.  “For Alejandro Ordoñez, I represent 'atheistic communism,' one of the fundamental enemies of 'the re-Christianization of the world' that the inspector general proposes,” reads the mayor’s complaint. Petro also accused Ordoñez of having “the most intimate conviction that a good 'soldier of Christ' must combat with all possible weapons the impiety represented by the leftist ideology that the mayor represents.”

Meanwhile Petro has continued to seek support for his case, holding mass protests in Bogota’s central square, earning the backing of Colombia's chief prosecutor and raising his profile in the international press.  On December 28, the New York Times published an op-ed by the Bogota mayor, in which he lays out the case for a reform of the inspector general’s authority. Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla, also frames Ordoñez’s order as a potential blow to the peace talks with FARC rebels in Havana. As he points out, many observers -- including U.S. President Barack Obama’s ambassador-nominee Kevin Whitaker -- have suggested that his removal would send a message to leftist rebels that they would only be marginalized if they ever made it to power using democratic means.

The centerpiece of Petro’s strategy continues to be a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), on the grounds that his political rights have been violated. As Nelson Camilo Sanchez of the Bogota-based research center Dejusticia notes, Petro’s appeal to the IACHR is not surprising. Ever since taking office in January 2011 the mayor has been a staunch supporter of the commission, even as other leftist leaders in the hemisphere have sought to weaken the human rights body.

Sanchez suggests that the 2011 Inter-American Court decision in Leopoldo Lopez v. Venezuela sets a favorable precedent for the mayor, as the court found that only a criminal judge can suspend an individual’s political rights. However, this seemingly applies only to the 15-year ban on Petro holding office, not necessarily to his removal from office.

Even if the mayor somehow manages to overcome Ordoñez’s order, his political future is uncertain. Last month Petro’s struggle to stay in office took a new turn, when election officials announced that his opponents had presented enough signatures to trigger a recall vote, to be held in late February or early March. While Petro’s popularity has risen in the wake of the inspector general’s order (his favorability rating now stands at roughly 50 percent), a resounding victory in the polls is far from guaranteed.

News Briefs

• On December 15, Chileans voted overwhelmingly to return former President Michelle Bachelet to office for a second term. Beacuse voter turnout was unusually low at 41 percent, her opponents have begun to question whether Bachelet’s commanding lead serves as a valid “mandate” for her to pursue some of the progressive reforms she promised on the campaign trail. The ex-president took 62.2 percent of the vote, compared to 37.9 percent for her opponent, Evelyn Matthei. Writing for the Washington Post, Peter M. Siavelis and Kirsten Sehnbruch argue that if she can overcome this, Bachelet’s win creates “a genuine opportunity for her government finally to end Chile’s long and ongoing transition to democracy.”

• Spain's El Pais reports that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has used his decree powers to steadily expand the influence of the military in the country. In the past month, Maduro has authorized the creation of a bank, a construction company and even a television channel, all under the control of the armed forces.

• Colombian conflict expert Virginia Bouvier has a helpful overview of the 18^th round of peace talks in Havana, where FARC and government negotiators are tacking the issue of illicit drugs. The round ended on December 20, and the next cycle of talks is expected to begin on January 13.
• On December 24, Uruguayan President Jose Mujica signed his country’s marijuana regulation bill into law. The government now has until April 9 to determine the specific regulations of the Institute of Regulation and Control of Cannabis (IRCCA). While El Pais, the Associated Press and other international outlets have mistakenly reported that it is now legal for individuals to grow up to six cannabis plants in their homes, all cultivation must gain the approval of the IRCCA to be considered legal.  

• For the first time ever, in its latest issue The Economist has chosen a country of the year for 2013. Citing its progress on marriage equality and marijuana regulation, the magazine bestowed the title upon Uruguay, applauding the country for adopting “path-breaking reforms that do not merely improve a single nation but, if emulated, might benefit the world.”

• Following up on a trial balloon he first sent up in February 2013, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has reopened a debate on regulating opium poppy production in his country, Prensa Libre and the International Business Times reported last month. On Decemebr 16, Perez Molina told reporters that his government has started “exploring the capacity that we could have for controlled planting” of poppy. Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez explained to reporters that the practive would be heavily monitored by authorities, and that the government would complement the policy with crop substitution programs. “This is what is already being done in other countries such as India and China, that is to say identifying hectares clearly, seeing how they are grown, carrying out the harvest, taking control of the commercialization and above all making sure this serves mainly the pharmaceutical industry,” said Lopez.

• In a move that is sure to please human rights activists in the Central American country, on December  19 outgoing Honduran President Porfirio Lobo dismissed controversial National Police Director  Juan Carlos Bonilla. Lobo told the press that he made the decision after consulting with President-elect Juan Orlando Hernandez, who will take office on January 27. RNS of Honduras Culture and Politics notes that the move was part of a series of shakeups in the cabinet, with several notable changes in the security ministry and military high command.

• The New York Times takes a look at the work of the more than 4,500 Cuban doctors that have been hired by the Brazilian government to provide medical services to isolated rural villages and poor urban communities around the country. While the move has been portrayed as a humanitarian gesture, the NYT notes that it reflects Brazil’s growing influence in Cuba, part of a “sophisticated projection of soft power” on the island.

• In another indicator of Brazil’s increasingly muscular approach to regional affairs, the AP reports that Brazil is helping Uruguay undercut an Argentine attempt to control shipping in the South Atlantic by funding the majority of a deep-water port construction project in the southeastern department of Rocha.

• The Washington Post has a good outline of the growing controversy surrounding the work of Brazil’s development bank (BNDES), which has been accused by transparency advocates of making shady dealings. Brazilian news site Agencia Publica has more details on the BNDES’s lack of oversight and contract irregularities, especially in the Amazon region.

• On December 21, the Post published an excellent in-depth investigation detailing a U.S. multibillion-dollar "black budget" funding covert action in Colombia, which is outside the $9 billion Plan Colombia. The report found that the program, which includes funding for enhanced intelligence initiatives and smart bomb technology, began under President George Bush in the early 2000s and has continued under President Obama. One of the report's most interesting findings is that nine anonymous U.S. and Colombian officials acknowledge that the controversial 2008 bombing that killed FARC chief Raul Reyes in Ecuadorean territory -- and subsequently strained Colombia's relations with Ecuador and Venezuela --was carried out with tacit U.S. approval.

• Mexico’s guerrilla army turned indigenous social movement, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), celebrated the 20^th anniversary of their January 1, 1994 armed uprising yesterday with several ceremonies in autonomous communities across Chiapas. The guerrilla group’s symbolic leader, Subcomandante Marcos, has penned a communiqué on the anniversary of the uprising, in which he criticizes the private Mexican media’s coverage of their organizing work.  Italian journalist Gianni Proiettis has a long and thought-provoking essay on the EZLN’s relevance today and their role as a moral authority on the Mexican left in La Jornada, and Reuters looks at the EZLN’s skillful use of social media and revolutionary imagery to gain international sympathizers. In remarks to the AFP, Enrique Peña Nieto’s appointed Peace Commissioner Jaime Martinez Veloz claimed that the government is preparing legislation to bring its legal framework in line with a UN declaration on indigenous rights, though this will likely fall short of the EZLN’s demands for state recognition of full autonomy.