¡Vivos los Queremos! Mexico Reacts to Missing Students

While Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has vowed that his government will pursue those responsible for the disappearance of 43 students in Iguala, Mexico, public outrage over the case has only grown since his promise.  

Yesterday, thousands of people marched in cities across the country in solidarity with the students, with the largest demonstrations being held in Mexico City and the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo. News site Animal Politico has some in-depth coverage of the DF protest, which was led by relatives of the disappeared carrying pictures of the victims, and attended by around 15,000 people according to official estimates.

The gravity of the Iguala disappearances has also earned a nod from the country’s guerrilla army turned social movement, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). A statement released by newly-christened Zapatista spokesman Subcomandante Moises announced plans for a “silent march” to be held in honor of the victims yesterday.

Leading daily El Universal reports that international civil society groups have joined with local human rights NGOs to call for justice in the case.  

Meanwhile, more details have emerged which cast suspicion on both authorities’ handling of the case and inaction in the face of repeated displays of corruption and abuse by the Iguala government.

Animal Politico notes that family members of the 43 students have accused the government of impeding the work of Argentine forensic specialists tasked with analyzing the DNA of remains in the recently-discovered mass grave in Guerrero. Investigators with the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), the relatives say, have not been permitted by federal prosecutors to access the grave so far.

As McClatchy’s Tim Johnson notes, the recent speculation over the at-large Iguala Mayor Jose Luis Abarca’s criminal links is not new. Ever since he took office in 2012, Abarca has faced accusations of abuse of power and drug ties, and a number of his most vocal critics have been kidnapped and killed. Today’s New York Times also features an in-depth look at rampant corruption in Iguala, revealing how the Guerreros Unidos criminal organization’s control “went all the way from collecting hefty parking fines to extracting extortion payments from businesses — with the endorsement of, if not leadership from, City Hall.”

News Briefs

• The party that backed defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva, the Brazilian Socialist Party, has confirmed that it will be supporting Aecio Neves in the second round, O Globo reports. According to Reuters, Silva herself is expected to announce her support for Neves later today. However, sources close to Silva have told O Globo that she will neither endorse Neves nor Rousseff, but rather stick to her campaign message of a “change” from traditional politics. The center-right candidate has also earned the endorsement of Green Party candidate Eduardo Jorge, which has surprised some analysts considering Jorge’s radically different views on drug policy and women’s’ rights (Jorge made waves for proposing to legalize drugs and abortion on the campaign). The left-wing PSOL, meanwhile, has announced that it will remain “neutral” in the second round, though its candidate Luciana Genro has called on supporters to abstain from voting for Neves, as Folha notes.

• The United States re-stated its support for Colombia’s peace talks twice in recent days. On Tuesday, SOCOM Commander General John Kelly urged the FARC to “be smart, take the deal” being negotiated in Havana, and yesterday President Obama spoke with his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos over the phone to express his continued backing for the talks.

• The Wall Street Journal profiles the newly-selected head of Venezuela’s opposition MUD coalition, Jesús “Chuo” Torrealba. Having been raised in slums across Caracas as the son of communist union leaders, Torrealba appears uniquely well-positioned to boost the MUD’s image among the Chavista base. He plans to launch a new outreach strategy aimed at poorer Venezuelans later this month.

• The AP reports that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has called for a full investigation into a Tuesday shootout between police and an armed Chavista collective in Caracas that left the head of a leading collective dead. The deaths followed an 8-hour standoff triggered by a police raid on a building occupied by the group. Authorities have not revealed the reason for the operation, but deny that it was related to the death of a left-wing congressman last week.

• Jailed Venezuelan opposition figure Leopoldo Lopez’s continued confinement has attracted the attention of the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. According to Ultimas Noticias the Working Group has released a statement calling for Lopez’s release, saying he appears to have been imprisoned “on the basis of discrimination towards his political choices and opinions.” And in other human rights news, Venezuelan human rights group PROVEA has announced that Maduro has finally issued a decree launching a National Human Rights Council. But while its creation was a key opposition demand during the wave of protests earlier this year, the fact that it will be headed by Vice President Jorge Arreaza seriously limits its independence and credibility.

• Uruguayan pollster Factum, the only firm that has been polling a likely runoff between Frente Amplio candidate Tabare Vazquez and the National Party’s Luis Lacalle Pou over the past eight months, has published its latest survey. As La Republica reports, it shows little change over the past month, with both candidates statistically tied with 48% for Vazquez and 47% for LacallePou.

• After coming under heavy fire from the opposition for his agreement to accept former Guantanamo detainees from the U.S., El Pais reports that Uruguayan President Jose Mujica has backed off the promise, saying he will have to “see what the incoming government thinks, and all that.”

• Guatemala’s Constitutional Court still has not taken up any of the various legal challenges presented recently to the country’s corrupt judicial nomination process. Meanwhile, El Periodico reports that an Appellate Court judge who spoke out in support of the recent resignation of her colleague Claudia Escobar Mejia over judicial corruption is now facing reprisal, with higher judges ordering a review of her courtroom. According to Prensa Libre, a bill presented two years ago by transparency advocates to reform the judicial nomination process remains shelved, with no signs of passing anytime soon.

Civil Society, Judges Team Up Against Judicial Corruption in Guatemala

The system by which Guatemala nominates candidates for its appellate and Supreme Courts is notoriously corrupt. As Steve Dudley has explained for InSight Crime, a process meant to guarantee that only the most qualified candidates become judges has been entirely overrun by special interests and backroom politicking.

Last week, Guatemala’s Congress selected appellate and Supreme Court judges from a vetted list of candidates, the last step in a process Dudley describes as a “free-for-all with various political, economic and criminal interests.”

This description fits well with the end results of the nomination vote. It has been widely reported that justices were appointed as a result of an agreement between the ruling Patriot Party (PP) and the largest opposition faction, the Renewed Democratic Liberty Party (LIDER).  

News site Nomada has more on the agreement, noting that it was struck in the wake of a Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) ruling that suspended the PP from political activities for 6 months over its early launch of its 2015 presidential candidate in September. According to Plaza Publica, PP head and Vice President Roxana Baldetti appears to be calling in favors already, taking advantage of her party’s appointments to challenge the TSE ruling in the newly-changed Supreme Court.

While the rampant state of corruption in Guatemala often leads to pessimism regarding its rickety justice system -- see the L.A. Times’ recent report, “Guatemala, once a leader in war-crime prosecutions, at a standstill” for an example -- there is room for hope in this case. Civil society advocates have spoken out about the shady judicial nominations, and not only are they being heard, but they have also gained support from local judicial actors and international organizations.

Claudia Escobar Mejia, who was chosen for an appellate court seat in the recent elections, made headlines on Monday when she announced that she would be resigning in protest of the “perverse” election process. On Tuesday she was joined by some 45 other judges who supported her decision, and together they called on the Constitutional Court to take up legal challenges to the appointments presented by Fundacion Myrna Mack and other Guatemalan groups. El Periodico reports that Escobar said she and her allies were prepared to hold a “partial strike” if the Court failed to hear these challenges.

Five international civil society groups -- the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), the Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF), the Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) -- have issued a letter to Guatemalan authorities praising Escobar’s decision and calling on them to fix irregularities in the nominations.

These calls have since been echoed by Gabriela Knaul, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers.

All of this activism is having an effect. Leading daily Prensa Libre’s home page today reports that international pressure is building on Congress to void the current nominations and start over.  And according to El Periodico, the office of Guatemala’s Human Rights Ombudsman is preparing to file a petition with the Attorney General’s Office alleging eight major abnormalities in the nominations proceedings.

News Briefs

• In a Miami Herald op-ed, Center for American Progress fellow and former Obama adviser Dan Restrepo takes Latin American pundits and analysts to task for obsessing over Panama’s decision to invite Cuba to the April 2015 Summit of the Americas. The summit, he argues, “must be about more than its invite list.”

• While Bolivian President Evo Morales’ victory is all but assured in the upcoming elections, the race has been more interesting on a legislative level. His MAS party is seeking to achieve a solid two-thirds legislative majority, which it currently lacks, but BBC Mundo reports that a wave of feminist/anti-chauvinist activism has challenged otherwise strong candidates of both MAS and the opposition.

• Mexican authorities have presented yet another version of events regarding the June killing of 22 suspects in the state of Mexico. Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told reporters yesterday that the majority of the suspects had been either wounded or dead in an initial shootout with soldiers, but that three soldiers then re-entered the warehouse where the shootings happened and killed those remaining. Murilllo said a witness had supported this version, even though the AP notes that she previously gave a different account to reporters.

• A new hypothesis for the disappearance of the 43 students in Iguala, Guerrero has emerged: that the protesters were targeted by corrupt police and criminals with links to the Iguala mayor’s wife, who feared their demonstration would disrupt a speech she was planning at an event nearby.\

• The AP reports that for the first time, Mexican officials have busted what amounts to a clandestine AR-15 semi-automatic rifle part factory. The operation, which took place on two farms in Jalisco, produced some rifle parts independently, in addition to purchasing others from the United States. The discovery takes on added significance amid the growing support for 3-D printed guns. As Wired magazine reported recently, libertarian gun rights activists have recently begun exploiting a legal loophole to produce and sell a $1,200 machine that allows anyone to make their own unregistered AR-15 receivers at home.

• Following a similar report in Estadão yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reports that sources close to ousted Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva say she is considering backing Aecio Neves in the runoff in exchange for his support for putting an end to presidential reelection.                                                                                                         
• The Global Post reports on the impact that Ecuador’s revised criminal code, which went into effect in August, has had on low-level drug offenders in the country. Since August 10, some 500 “drug mules” have been freed after the updated code was applied retroactively to their cases, and least another 2,000 are expected to follow.

• The last leader of Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship, Reynaldo Bignone, was sentenced yesterday to an additional 23 years in prison on top of the life sentence he already received for crimes against humanity.  According to La Nacion, yesterday’s ruling stemmed from the kidnapping and torture of 32 factory workers.  The BBC reports that the victims say the verdict was bittersweet, as three of the accused were found not guilty.

Human Rights and Public Security Clash in Mexico

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for human rights and public security in Mexico.

After months of repeatedly denying any possibility of wrongdoing, military officials detained 8 soldiers accused of massacring some 22 people in the state of Mexico in the face of international and domestic pressure.  One day later, on September 26, police officers and masked gunmen opened fire on a crowd during a student protest in Iguala, Guerrero, killing six and leaving some 43 missing.

Since then, however, the circumstances around both of these cases have gotten worse. The investigation into the alleged military massacre has not moved forward since Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam vowed to prosecute three alleged suspects in a civilian court. As for the disappeared protesters in Iguala, hope is fading that they will be found alive. A mass grave containing 28 badly burned bodies has been found neraby, and two suspects in custody have confessed to teaming up with corrupt police to kill 17 of the 43.

While in recent years Mexicans have grown accustomed to hearing about mass graves associated with drug-fueled violence, the overtly political nature of the violence has shocked the country. President Enrique Peña Nieto vowed to investigate the disappearances, and El Universal reports that Federal Police have been sent to Iguala to secure the town. The local police chief has vanished, as had the town mayor, who according to Proceso is under investigation for alleged connections to the Beltran Leyva criminal organization.

On Friday, the Inter-American on Human Rights (IACHR) requested that Mexico take precautionary measures to locate and protect the missing students.

At least 30 suspects are in custody in Iguala, including 22 local police officers and a number of alleged members of a local gang. Meanwhile, the 28 bodies are too badly damaged to be properly identified, and a team of local technicians -- with the help of the The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) -- has been tasked with comparing DNA to that of relatives.

More on the case in today’s Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

News Briefs

• There have been a couple of noteworthy reactions to the Iguala killings and disappearances in Mexico in recent days. Animal Politico hosts an op-ed by Jose Antonio Guevara Bermudez, head of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights (CMDPDH), who profiles dissatisfaction with the country’s semi-governmental Human Rights Commission (CNDH ), and calls to impeach its director, Raul Plascencia Villanueva.  In a column for Sin Embargo, Maria Benitez of the Fundar Research Center offers a wholesale condemnation of the Peña Nieto administration, Mexico’s government institutions and its mainstream press for failing to properly recognize the scale of the violence. Writing for Mas Por Mas, Mexican journalist Diego Enrique Osorno also partially blames local press for the violence alongside Guerrero authorities, noting that on the day of the disappearances, the leading daily in the state ran the headline “At Last Order is Restored.”  He also traces the historical context of the student protests there, noting that the teachers’ college attended by the protesters has a proud tradition of radical activism.

• In a demonstration of the alarming extent of political corruption in Peru, the preliminary unofficial results of Sunday’s regional elections show that two governor candidates under investigation for drug-trafficking related crimes have won elections and two others will face runoffs.  One of the victorious candidates is Cajamarca Governor Gregorio Santos, whose detention in June did not legally prevent him from halting his re-election campaign. However, La Republica reports that if Santos is not freed by January he will not be able to take office.

• La Silla Vacia reports on concern over budget cuts to Colombia’s National Protections Unit, tasked with providing security to politicians, union leaders, conflict victims and other vulnerable individuals in the country. While authorities say the cuts should not affect victims’ group leaders or human rights defenders, some high-profile Colombian activists say they have already witnessed cuts to their security details.

• El Pais reports that Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is taking advantage of new revelations by Semana magazine that ex-President and peace talk critic Alvaro Uribe himself carried out secret negotiations with FARC rebels from 2006-2007. In a press conference yesterday, Santos said there had been “many” attempts to spark a peace dialogue during the Uribe administration, noting that Uribe himself had ordered current peace negotiator Frank Pearl to seek contacts with the rebels. As W Radio reports, Pearl has confirmed this, saying that Uribe asked him to write a letter to the late FARC leader Alfonso Cano in 2010 to arrange a secret meeting in Brazil.

• Defeated Brazilian presidential candidate Marina Silva has reportedly decided to endorse Aecio Neves in a second round, though it appears she has done so in keeping with her campaign theme of “new politics.” According to O Estado de S. Paulo, Silva has offered to give support for Aecio in exchange for a promise to support ending re-election if he is wins the runoff. Meanwhile, though some analysts have asserted that Neves has a better chance than Silva did of beating President Rousseff in a runoff, the AP reports that doing so will likely mean an uphill battle and a drastic change in the challenger’s outreach strategy.

• Brazil’s UOL points out that many of the politicians that were targets of the massive June 2013  demonstrations in the country, like then-heads of the Senate and lower house Henrique Eduardo Alves  and Renan Calheiros, won re-election on Sunday. Other examples of this trend include the reelections of São Paulo Mayor Geraldo Alckmin and disgraced ex-President turned Senator Fernando Collor, and -- of course -- President Rousseff’s strong showing. In a thoughtful blog post, Rachel Glickhouse profiles three main theories for this phenomenon put forward by analysts in the country.

• The NYT’s Open Source blog reports on an election-day video that has gone viral in Brazil, featuring a Senate candidate slapping a female voter in the face for challenging his attempt to cut into the line at the voting center in Alagoas. The candidate reportedly went into hiding Monday, and public outcry eventually pressured officials to order his arrest.

• The Venezuelan chapter of the Press and Society Institute (IPYS), a press freedom watchdog, has released a new report on the extent of censorship and self-censorship based on the responses of 225 mostly private-sector journalists in the country. El Nacional reports that 79 percent reported that the government had denied them access to information in the public interest, and that 34 percent identified the executive branch as the biggest culprit of press censorship in Venezuela.

• The Washington Post looks at Cuba’s medical response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, noting that it has the largest medical presence in Sierra Leone of any foreign country, and that Cuban health workers will also be sent to Liberia and Guinea in the coming weeks.

• In The New Yorker, Laurent Dubois reflects on what the death of Haiti’s Jean-Claude Duvalier means for the country, and how his brutal regime should best be remembered in a historical context. Intellectuals and writers of Haiti’s diasporic community in places like New York, Miami, Boston, and Montreal, Dubois notes, will play a key role in ensuring “a serious reckoning with the inheritance of the Duvalier regime.”

Silva Out, Rousseff and Neves head to 2nd Round Brazil Vote

The results of yesterday’s general election in Brazil are in. Much to the chagrin of Marina Silva, the environmentalist candidate came in a distant third place behind President Dilma Rousseff and Aecio Neves.

With 100 percent of ballots counted, the Workers’ Party (PT) Rousseff beat Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) by eight points, 41.5 to 33.5 percent. Silva came far behind, with 22.1 percent of votes cast. A runoff between Neves and Rousseff will be held on October 26. 

In addition to presidential candidates, Brazil voted for lawmakers at the federal and state levels as well as governors of all 27 states. O Estado de São Paulo notes that the Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) is poised to remain a considerable legislative force, taking the largest bloc of seats in the upper house. The malleable big-tent party could also increase its share of governors from seven to ten.

Folha has a particularly useful breakdown of the results at the state levels. In São Paulo, PSDB Governor Geraldo Alckmin has been re-elected with 57 percent of the vote, while PMDB Rio Governor Luiz Fernando Pezão (who received roughly 40 percent of the vote) will face a second-round race with Marcelo Crivella of the PRB (20 percent). The PT won an important symbolic victory in Minas Gerais, Neves’ home state and a traditional PSDB stronghold, with the first round victory of Fernando Pimentel in the gubernatorial race.

Today’s U.S. headlines are full of analyses of Silva’s surprisingly poor showing compared to Neves’ last-minute surge. In the New York Times, Simon Romero chalks up the results to Silva’s failure to deliver concrete proposals and her decision to revise her platform on issues like same-sex marriage. The Wall Street Journal frames the vote in the context of Brazil’s slowing growth, concerns over Rousseff’s handling of the economy, and the emerging Petrobras corruption scandal. The L.A. Times has a roundup of various analysts interpreting Neves’ success as a result of voters believing he has a better chance of beating Rousseff in a runoff.

Moving forward, the Rousseff camp is expected use an attack strategy against Neves similar to the one it used successfully against Silva, portraying the PSDB candidate as an elite figure out of touch with the demands of Brazil’s poor majority. Neves, for his part, will likely seize upon allegations of corruption against Rousseff, and seek Silva’s support for the runoff. When asked about whether she would remain neutral in the second round, as she did in 2010, Silva told reporters yesterday that she had a “commitment to change,” which O Globo interprets as a likely indication of support for Neves.

Beyond all the forecasting and regional vote-analyzing taking place, yesterday’s elections are also important for one underreported fact: the relatively high levels of abstention and blank ballots. According to the official tally, 11 million people submitted blank or null ballots, and 27.6 million did not vote. In total that makes 38.6 million, well above the 34 million votes received by second-place challenger Neves.

News Briefs

• In more election news in the hemisphere, Peru voted for new mayors, governors and municipal councils on Sunday after what the AP describes as “the most violent campaign since 2000.” It also saw an alarming level of corruption allegations and at least 1,500 candidates with criminal records, as InSight Crime reports. In the capital city of Lima, former mayor  Luis Castañeda beat out incumbent Susana Villaran, La Republica and the WSJ note.

• And in even more election news, a new Ipsos poll shows Bolivian President Evo Morales winning Sunday’s first round vote with 59 win percent of ballots, beating Samuel Dorina Medina by 46 points. Nick Miroff of the Washington Post has an excellent analysis of Morales’ political power in the country, noting how his Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) has built a broad coalition as well as a reputation for pragmatic economic policies.

• Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, also known as “Baby Doc,” died on Saturday of a heart attack. The Washington Post has an overview of his rule, noting that under Baby Doc, “living conditions for Haitians dipped even lower than their already dismal standing.” The Miami Herald, meanwhile, reports on the reaction to his death among international human rights activists, who lament Duvalier’s success in avoiding a trial for his government’s abuses since returning to Haiti in 2011.

• In The Atlantic, Peter Kornbluh and William Leogrande assess the long odds of an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba in the future. Taking on recent remarks by Hilary Clinton, who blamed the Cubans’ 1996 downing of two U.S. civilian planes for complicating efforts to lift the embargo, the two detail Bill Clinton’s capitulation on the Helms-Burton Act that same year.

• Semana journalist Daniel Coronell has unveiled documents detailing the extent to which peace talk critic and former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe undertook secret communications with FARC rebels as president. In a particularly ironic twist -- highlighted in English by Colombia Reports -- it appears that in 2006 Uribe was actually open to offering the rebels a demilitarized area  and to preventing the extradition of FARC leaders, two proposals he has loudly and publicly condemned in recent years.

• The Los Angeles Times looks at the state of the Rios Montt genocide trial in Guatemala, noting that it has been delayed until next year and that its main proponents in the judiciary have been sidelined. While the paper questions the government’s commitment to trying human rights abusers, Mike Allison points out that several high-profile cases have moved forward recently, including the current trial of the massacre at the Spanish Embassy in 1980.

• The mystery of Mexico’s missing students in Guerrero state has taken a dark turn. On Saturday authorities announced they had discovered a series of unmarked mass graves near where the students were disappeared, the L.A. Times and Fusion report. The graves contain the remains of 28 individuals, though they are too badly damaged to be identified immediately. And El Universal reports that prosecutors in the state say suspects have admitted to cooperating with police in killing 17 of the 43 students.

• Today’s New York Times features an excellent report on the perils faced by Central American migrants along the journey northward, tracing the steps of one Guatemalan 16 year-old from Huehuetenango to Miami. She, her relatives, and even distant contacts of hers are extorted multiple times during the journey, illustrating what one expert describes to the paper as a “pyramid scheme.”

OAS Secretary General Race Update: Peruvian Candidate Withdraws

Peruvian ex-Foreign Minister and current Inter-American Human Rights Court Judge Diego Garcia Sayan’s candidacy for OAS Secretary General didn’t last long. Less than two months after announcing his bid, Garcia Sayan has withdrawn it, according to La Republica.

To be fair, the Peruvian jurist didn’t have much of a shot. Just one week after announcing its support for his campaign, the administration of President Ollanta Humala backed away from Garcia Sayan as part of a deal to secure opposition approval for a cabinet shuffle. Without the clear and open support of his own government, it is been difficult for the Peruvian to lobby regional governments for theirs.

El Comercio reports that Garcia Sayan has called out the Peruvian government for essentially throwing him under the bus. In an interview with a local radio station yesterday, he remarked:

“I don’t doubt that the Foreign Minister may have telephoned other foreign ministers. But that's not the issue. The issue is that, consistently, the message we have received [from other countries] is that so long as they do not receive a clear and public display of support for the candidacy, they are not going to compromise their vote.”

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Gonzalo Gutierrez has issued a statement lamenting Garcia Sayan’s withdrawal, and claiming that he personally lobbied 17 of his counterparts in the region on his behalf.

Garcia Sayan’s departure leaves just two candidates to replace outgoing Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza next year, at least for now. So far the only certain contenders are Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro and former Guatemalan Foreign Minister Eduardo Stein. While the former is seen as being closer to Venezuela and the ALBA bloc than some human rights advocates -- and the U.S. -- would like, the latter has flaws of his own, having spoken out against the genocide trial of ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt.

In recent weeks, the Uruguayan candidate seems to have gained ground. In South America, Almagro has obtained the clear support of the governments of Chile, Brazil,  Paraguay, Ecuador, and has received positive signals from Argentina. In Central America, Belize has endorsed the Uruguayan candidate directly, and there have also been reports that Nicaragua and El Salvador are also breaking from their neighbors to support Almagro. Montevideo-based political commentary magazine Busqueda has reported that diplomatic sources say the Uruguayan is “viewed positively” by Canada and the United States.

Eduardo Stein, for his part, has been backed by Costa Rica and Panama.  But there is no denying that the Guatemalan has stronger -- or at least more visible -- allies in the United States than his South American rival. In addition to enjoying the support of  Guatemala’s Washington lobbyist and Cold Warrior Otto Reich, Stein has been endorsed by influential syndicated columnist Andres Oppenheimer as the “strongest supporter of democracy and human rights” of the candidates.

Oppenheimer has been following the race closely, and earlier this week  published a five-question interview with Almagro in which the foreign minister defends his support for Cuba’s participation in the next Summit of the Americas, speaks up for the independence of Inter-American human rights mechanisms, and responds to criticisms that he is too close to “Venezuela and its allies.” 

Other candidates to succeed Insulza in May 2015 may still emerge. For the past several months, rumors have been floating that Mexico intends to nominate either its current OAS Ambassador Emilio Rabasa or ECLAC Secretary Alicia Barcena to the position. But with countries throughout the hemisphere committing themselves to candidates already, time is running out for new names to enter the race.

News Briefs

• Also on the OAS Secretary General race: Almagro appears to have taken his campaign to the United Nations this week. In remarks before the General Assembly, AFP reports that the Uruguayan foreign minister proposed the creation of a joint OAS disaster fund, pointing to the need for climate change-fueled relief efforts in Caribbean countries. According to Radio 180, Almagro also renewed his support for the Inter-American human rights system, endorsed a new “strategic vision”  proposed by the OAS earlier this month and called for the organization to rid itself of a “Cold War logic.”

• Ahead of Sunday’s first-round presidential vote in Brazil, the race is making all of today’s top headlines. Last night, the candidates sparred in their final debate before the vote. Folha describes it as the “most tense debate of the campaign,” and the AP notes that President Dilma Rousseff came under heavy fire for an emerging Petrobras kickback scandal. But the Rousseff camp is no doubt pleased by the latest Datafolha survey, which shows that the president’s rebound in the polls has widened significantly. As Reuters reports, the new poll shows that Rousseff would beat Marina Silva in a runoff by seven points, and that the environmentalist is now just three points ahead of PSDB candidate Aecio Neves.

• The Brazil race is also in two major U.S. papers today. The L.A. Times reports on the recent data showing that the country is in an economic recession, describing the news as evidence of a consensus that an economic shake-up is in order, whoever wins the election. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, has published the latest of a series of notably pro-Marina Silva articles on the elections, this time profiling her Internet-heavy campaign strategy to compensate for a lack of TV airtime.

• The WSJ also has the most in-depth U.S. coverage of the case of the missing 43 students in Guerrero, Mexico. Witnesses have said that they were arrested by police, then put on a bus and taken from the scene of protests last weekend in the city of Iguala. Yesterday, El Universal reported that state officials were looking “door to door” for the students, and the federal government announced it is sending security forces to help with the search.

• Also in El Universal, Fundar researcher Oscar Arredondo Pico has an excellent counterpoint to Peña Nieto’s problematic narrative on public security.  Weaving together the missing students with the alleged massacre of 22 suspects, Arredondo argues that the country is facing a serious security crisis, fueled by a lack of accountability for police and soldiers.

• In this week’s issue, The Economist looks at the difficulties of conducting accurate polling in Brazil, and joins with a newly-released Council on Foreign Relations report in arguing that Mexico’s recent economic reforms should cause the U.S. and Canada to deepen their commitment to regional integration and NAFTA.

• The AP reports on a new Cifra poll in Uruguay, which shows that the percentage support a deal to receive six Guantanamo detainees from the U.S.  has fallen from 50 percent in July to just 18 percent. The rejection likely has to do with the increased exposure of the plan ahead of the upcoming elections, as opposition candidate Luis Lacalle Pou has seized on the deal to criticize the Mujica administration.

• More details have emerged regarding the Wednesday murder of Venezuelan PSUV congressman Robert Serra and his partner, Maria Herrera. Neighbors have told the AP that they were surprised to find that Serra’s bodyguards were not with him on the night of his death, Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres told reporters in a press conference that the murder was “an intentional homicide, planned and executed with great precision.” Ultimas Noticias and El Nacional report that President Nicolas Maduro has accused unnamed right-wing assassins of committing the murder.

• The Serra-Herrera murder has attracted attention elsewhere in the region as well. Ex-Colombian President and UNASUR Secretary General Ernesto Samper yesterday pointed to the killing as a sign of mounting “infiltration of Colombian paramilitarism” in the country.

Mexico Nabs Another Kingpin

There can no longer be any doubt: Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has gone from criticizing his predecessor’s “kingpin strategy” to actively embracing it. And while he has touted a drop in homicides under his administration, high rates of kidnapping and extortion persist.

Certainly, officials’ announcement of the arrest of Beltran Leyva Organization head Hector Beltran Leyva is an important achievement for law enforcement. But it is only the latest in a string of high-profile catches made under the Peña Nieto administration. Since he took office, Mexico has captured Zetas leader Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, arrested the Sinaloa Cartel’s “Chapo” Guzman, and killed La Familia’s Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, to name a few big fish.

Yet the government’s continued emphasis on arresting top cartel figures as a security strategy is ironic, given that in December 2012 top officials in the Peña Nieto administration specifically blamed the approach for fragmenting criminal groups and turning them “more violent and much more dangerous.”

Compare this to a Washington Post interview published last week, in which the president held up big-name arrests as one measure of success: “At the beginning [of my term], we had 122 targets we identified as leaders of criminal organizations; 84 have been detained. This is quite encouraging, but there is a lot to do still,” Peña Nieto said.

Also in the interview, the president pointed to a drop in homicides under his administration, an achievement he has boasted about in the past. State statistics agency INEGI has found that the total number of homicides in 2013 stands at 22,732, compared to 26,037 in 2012. Peña Nieto has also claimed that the murder rate for the first half of 2014 is 27 percent below the same period in 2012.

Even with these numbers, however, Mexico’s security situation remains in dire straits. As Reuters and the Wall Street Journal report, a new INEGI survey of crime trends in 2013 found that kidnappings had risen to 123,470 reported cases, roughly 30 percent up from 94,438 the year before. And the overall crime rate, excluding homicides, has risen 19 percent to 33.1 million crimes. According to INEGI, less than 10 percent of these crimes were reported to police, due to widespread lack of faith in law enforcement.

However much Peña Nieto wants to cast his administration’s security strategy as a radical break from the past, it can’t be done honestly. With citizen security indicators faltering and the president deemphasizing them to focus on kingpin arrests, the administration’s security approach increasingly resembles that of ex-President Felipe Calderon.

News Briefs

• Venezeula’s youngest lawmaker and a rising star in the ruling PSUV, Robert Serra, was shot dead yesterday in Caracas. Ultimas Noticias reports that Serra and his partner were found dead in their home yesterday night. Attorney General Luisa Ortega has charged a special prosecutor with investigating their deaths, and El Universal notes that President Nicolas Maduro released a statement via Twitter lamenting the loss.

• Also in Venezuela, opponents of President Nicolas Maduro have begun the monumental task of collecting signatures from 15 percent of the electorate -- roughly 3 million people -- in order to trigger a recall referendum. However, as the AP notes, most analysts have low expectations for the initiative, as it lacks the full support of the MUD opposition coalition and many are skeptical of the impartiality of Venezuela’s electoral institutions.

• The AP looks at Venezuela’s more colorful version of the Mexican “Santa Muerte:” a pantheon of long-dead criminal figures known as the “Santos Malandros.” The cult has risen in popularity in recent years, and the figures are revered by believers as protectors of the poor from crime.

• Days ahead of Brazil’s first round presidential vote on October 5, the Washington Post reports on the recent Petrobras scandal that Dilma Rousseff’s opponents have used to fuel allegations of corruption against the Workers’ Party and its legislative coalition. But the WaPo story does not mention the fact that, as The Economist noted when the allegations were first made, Marina Silva’s deceased running mate Eduardo Campos was also accused of receiving kickbacks.

• Throughout his re-election campaign, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos insisted that his second term would be devoted not only to ending the country’s armed conflict, but also to improving development and public education. One of his cornerstone promises was to fund 400,000 new scholarships at the university level. However, El Espectador notes that yesterday the president announced plans to fund just 10,000, and it remains unclear if the other 390,000 will be paid for.

• Yesterday the government of Ecuador issued an historic apology to the indigenous Sarayaku people, stemming from its 1996 concession of drilling rights to a foreign company without first consulting with the Sarayaku community living on the impacted land. The apology, which was delivered by Justice Minister Leidy Zuñiga, was mandated by an Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling in 2012.

• Writing for NACLA, Emily Achtenberg has an excellent overview of the upcoming Bolivian national elections on October 12. She offers a thorough explanation of why dissatisfaction with authoritarian elements of Evo Morales’ MAS party is far outweighed by popular support for its economic policies, despite the campaign efforts of the badly fractured conservative opposition.

• Outgoing OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza called on Latin American governments this week to receive Guantanamo Bay detainees from the United States, saying the continued detention of individuals at the base without criminal charges was a “serious humanitarian” issue.

• With Uruguay’s narrow presidential race and the ruling Frente Amplio coalition’s continued slim majority in Congress in doubt, the exact future of the country’s marijuana law is somewhat unclear, as this author has detailed at InSight Crime. Now, even President Jose Mujica has conceded that there is some uncertainty about the law’s future. As El Pais reports, Mujica said it was impossible to know the future of the law, but he called for the public to have faith in the authorities working on its implementation, saying: “While many may not be convinced, I will ask respect for the people who have worked on the issue, and -- at least as a testing ground -- Uruguay is making a very serious effort.”

• Also on drug policy, this week Jamaica is one step closer to decriminalizing marijuana. Jamaican Justice Minister Mark Golding announced on Tuesday that lawmakers will vote to legalize marijuana use for religious purposes and make possession of 2 ounces or less a petty offense before the end of the year, with regulations for medical marijuana and scientific research to follow.

• Confirming what analysts of Haiti’s legislative gridlock around an elections law have long predicted, Haitian Prime Minister Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe conceded before the UN last week that long overdue local and legislative elections will not occur this year. Still, he  reassured the international community that a vote would take place by early next year, as the lawmakers holding up the vote will see their terms expire in January.

• In an op-ed for Fusion published yesterday, well-known Latin American security analyst Douglas Farah warns of increasing Russian influence in the region, noting Putin’s increasingly close relations with the governments of Argentina, Venezuela  and Cuba.

Yes, Mexican Soldiers Murdered Suspects: Officials

Public prosecutors in Mexico are filing charges against three soldiers accused of murdering civilians in the San Pedro Limon on June 30. But authorities are still presenting a contradictory narrative of the events, and the shakiness of the official story seems to suggest at least a partial cover-up.

Yesterday Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam announced that his office would be charging three military personnel with homicide, as Milenio reports.  Murillo said that the warehouse where 22 individuals were killed had been secured by the whole team of eight soldiers after brief firefight. Then, the three suspects allegedly opened fire in “a new series of gunshots that had no justification whatsoever.”

The AP notes that the attorney general did not mention witnesses’ claims that most of the 22 were killed after surrendering to the soldiers. Nor did he provide details on how many had been murdered vs. killed in an exchange of gunfire. 

Murillo also failed to explain why it took his office two and a half months to arraign the men, only doing so in the face of pressure from human rights advocates, the United States and UN officials.

As the New York Times points out, the narrative of events is “not likely to satisfy critics.” Indeed, holes are already appearing in the official story. Mexico security analyst Alejandro Hope points out to the NYT the absurdity of claiming that a group of 22 gunmen was subdued by a team of eight in less than ten minutes, all while the soldiers suffered no casualties.

What’s more, Murillo’s assertion that the firefight was over in a matter of minutes directly contradicts recent remarks by National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) head Raul Plascencia. Last week, Plascencia told reporters that a CNDH investigation found that the clash between soldiers and the alleged gang members lasted roughly two hours.

Despite the suspicious inconsistencies in the story, the attorney general’s investigation should be seen as a major victory in the battle for greater civilian oversight of the Mexican military. In April, the country passed reforms to its Military Code of Justice to allow civil authorities to investigate and prosecute abuses, even if an internal army investigation is underway.

According to Animal Politico, this is the first case since the reforms where Mexican soldiers will be tried under the civilian system and not by military tribunals.

More from El Universal, the L.A. Times and Wall Street Journal.

News Briefs

• Two new polls have been published on Brazil’s electoral landscape, and the results appear to confirm that President Dilma Rousseff has rebounded, while support for Marina Silva is falling fast, as Reuters reports.  Datafolha shows Rousseff beating Silva in a second round vote by 49 percent to 41 percent, while Ibope has 42 percent for Rousseff and 38 percent for Silva.

• Honduran newspaper La Tribuna has published a leaked copy of the “Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle,” the report that El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have presented to request a comprehensive aid package from the United States to address the root causes behind the recent wave of northward migration. As has been reported, the plan is heavy on infrastructure projects, specifically regarding electricity and natural gas, though it does not lay out a total price tag.

• The head of Mexico’s largest opposition party, Gustavo Madero of the PAN, has temporarily stepped down from his position to run for a congressional seat, El Universal reports. Reuters notes that Madero has been battling in an internal power struggle in the PAN over his cooperation with President Enrique Peña Nieto’s policy agenda.

• In Guatemala, El Periodico reports that police official Pedro Garcia Arredondo will stand trial today in connection with the burning of the Spanish Embassy in 1980 after it had been occupied by dissidents, which killed 37 people. Plaza Publica has the reaction to the case from Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, whose father died in the fire, and the AFP notes that the court handling the case is the same one tasked with looking into the genocide charges against Efrain Rios Montt.

• The government of El Salvador appears to have begun a new security strategy, breaking with the Funes administration’s past support for a gang-facilitated truce in favor of a comprehensive civil society-assisted effort. As El Pais and InSight Crime report, on Monday the government launched National Council for Citizen Security (CNSCC), which is to be comprised of Church representatives, security experts and political party figures as well as security officials. The CNSCC will also receive support from international organizations, namely the EU, UN and OAS.

• The AP profiles the rise of Pentecostal churches as political powerbrokers in Brazil, noting the clout of televangelist preacher Silas Malafaia. While Silva’s Pentecostalism and decision to back away from LGBT issues has won her the support of evangelists like Malafaia, the news agency notes that the fact that most Pentecostal Brazilians are poor means they will also have a strong incentive to support Rousseff’s Workers Party.

• Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has gave one of her most confrontational speeches yet regarding her country’s ongoing debt fight, in which she directly accused the United States government of conspiring against her with U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa. Griesa’s decision to hold Argentina in contempt of court for not honoring his ruling was met with defiance from Argentine officials, who proceeded with plans to pay bondholders locally. “I am not naïve. This is not an isolated senile judge in New York, because the vultures appear as the eagles of empires,” Fernandez said. “If something happens to me, do not look East, but look North.”  Newspaper La Nacion has a roundup of US coverage yesterday, noting with some perplexity that no major outlets picked up on Fernandez’s jabs at the Obama administration.

• The New York Times reports on new revelations on U.S.-Cuba relations, unearthed by the National Security Archive. According to recently unclassified record, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pressured the Ford administration to respond to Cuba’s military foray in Angola by invading the island. Kissinger even went as far as to draw up plans to send Marines to Guantanamo Bay and strike military targets in Cuba.

• Yesterday, the Obama administration announced the launch of a new program to give refugee status to young people who apply in U.S. consulates in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, to dissuade them from making the dangerous trek north. However, the impact of this program will likely be limited, as the NYT notes that officials say the program does not increase the number of refugee visas slated to be granted for the year.