No Shift in U.S. Security Funding at SICA Conference

The Central American Integration System (SICA) hosts the International Conference in Support of the Central American Security Strategy today in Guatemala City. It will come to a close Thursday, when the region’s officials are expected to announce joint policy to transnational crime.

In the past several days, State Department officials have dismissed speculation that the conference will result in a major, U.S.-funded security package on the scale of the Merida Initiative. While officials may consider changing the specifics of how it is used, the U.S. is likely to pledge aid that Congress has already allocated to the region, according to the AP.

At a press briefing on Monday, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela told reporters not to expect any a major uptick in security funding for the region. "The secretary may announce how we're repackaging some of our own assistance. But ... this is not a donors conference," said Valenzuela.

Instead, the strategy will build off of a discussions held at previous meeting held last May, which was predicted at the time to cost around $953 million.

More on the conference will come later this week, after the full plan is disclosed.

News Briefs

·      Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced this week that he will meet with poet and anti-violence movement leader Javier Sicilia on Thursday.  According to CNN, Sicilia and other members of the movement will request specific changes in Mexico's approach to national security, as well as call on the government to devote more attention to victims of violence. El Universal has more on the meeting, which will allow five representatives of the victims of violence to speak, and may include testimony from the office of the UN High Commission of Human Rights.

·      A journalist, his wife, and their 21-year-old son were killed inside their home in Veracruz, reports McClatchy. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission claims that 70 journalists have been killed in the country since 2000, although it is not clear how they determine who qualifies as a journalist. They also say there have been 22 attacks on media organizations.

·      Mexican authorities announced they have captured Jose de Jesus Mendez, alias "El Chango," a leader of the once-mighty Familia Michoacana. It seems that officials took Mendez into custody in the central state of Aguascalientes, where he was detained at a roadblock. According to El Universal his arrest signifies the end of the Familia’s command structure, which has been hit hard since a major crackdown last December, when officials killed Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, alias "El Mas Loco.” However, the Familia has fractured into a number of cells, the most powerful of which is known as the Knights Templar and continues to operate in Michoacan.

·      Although rumors persist that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), director Kenneth Melson will step down in the wake of the “Operation Fast and Furious” scandal, he has yet to officially make such an announcement.  The Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee , Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), has repeatedly called on Melson to step down insists that responsibility for the operation, which allowed guns to flow south  across the border in an effort to track them, rests higher up in the Justice Department.  Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor reports on the issue that everyone seems to be ignoring in all of this: the role of U.S. gun shops in the region’s drug-related violence.

·      The Washington Post profiles the notoriously porous, 540-mile long Guatemala-Mexico border.

·      An important, yet underreported milestone occurred last week when Panama became the first Latin American country to recognize the rebel government in Libya. It is only the 15^th country in the world to do so.

·      CNN reports that France began proceedings Monday to extradite former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, where he is wanted for money laundering. The U.S. has apparently signaled their tacit consent for the move.

·      El Salvador's El Faro reports that President Mauricio Funes claims members of the Zetas have gone on “scouting missions” to buy weapons from corrupt police officers and soldiers, which he says underlines the need for a regional approach to citizen security.

·      InSight is the latest to write about fears of violence impacting Guatemala’s political life. So far, 20 murders have been linked to the September elections.

·      According to Spanish news agency EFE, 2,000 inmates in five prisons in El Salvador are suffering from food poisoning, although none have apparently been seriously harmed. The wire agency reports that –like elsewhere in the region– the country’s prisons are overcrowded and may be holding nearly 300% more inmates than their intended capacity.

·      The bishop of the Colombian city of Monteria, Julio César Vidal, told Caracol Radio on Tuesday that some 5,000 members of criminal gangs across the country are willing to surrender to authorities. In response, General Naranjo told El Espectador that the authorities will not consider dialogue with them.

·      Peru’s Ollanta Humala said Tuesday in La Paz that Venezuela and Bolivia are "the same nucleus," and of "the same nationality," and called for more bilateral cooperation between the two countries, according to El Deber. He did not, however, respond to his Bolivian counterpart’s calls for Peru to join ALBA.

·      The Wall Street Journal reports that Ecuador’s total foreign debt in April was $14.07 billion, up 3% from $13.67 billion in the same month of 2010. The newspaper claims the figure is now equal to 23% of the country’s GDP. President Rafael Correa  has deflected mounting concerns about the debt, pointing out that it is only a pittance compared to the U.S. deficit. The U.S.-trained economist then called on China to finance the debt in his country, as well as invest more in the region, according to Mercopress.

·      Speculation continues about Hugo Chavez’s health. El Teimpo says that the opposition Coalition for Democratic Unity, (MUD) is demanding daily updates on his health as an issue of national importance. As the Wall Street Journal notes, suspicious about his health were first raised after Chavez told a Venezuelan television station two days after his operation that there were no "malignant" signs found, a possible indicator of cancer.

·      Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez, has officially announced that she will run for a second four-year term in the country’s Oct. 23 election, ending months of speculation about her presidential bid. As El Clarin notes, she has not yet mentioned who her running mate will be.

·      A lawyer for the Foundation of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo has admitted that there should have been greater controls over the group’s funds after Sergio Schoklender directed federal used intended for subsidized housing projects for personal enrichment. However, he blamed the recent corruption scandal on an abuse of trust rather than intentional corruption, says El Clarin.

·      AP says opposition lawmakers in Haiti on Tuesday rejected newly-elected President Michel Martelly's choice for the next prime minister of Haiti, adding to a culture of political uncertainty in the country.

Guatemala Releases 12,000 Civil War-Era Military Files

Starting this week, Guatemalan citizens and foreigners alike will have access to more than 12,000 classified military documents that were archived from 1954 to 1996. According to elPeriodico, the files are available electronically but anyone interested in viewing the files must first make a written request to authorities for the information.

The director of the Committee on Declassification of Military Records, General Eduardo Morales, has said that the documents can be used in criminal proceedings, which reflects the “starting point of a new era in Guatemala," TeleSUR reports.

As it turns out, however, such a national catharsis is pretty unlikely. Officially, the government acknowledges that 55 of the 12,342 files initially up for declassification were withheld for “national security” reasons, and there’s no telling how many weren’t even considered in the first place. Since Monday, human rights organizations have expressed skepticism about the release, as many suspect them to be of minimal legal value (clerical records, mundane memos, etc).

Nery Rodenas, director of the Archbishop's Office of Human Rights, told La Prensa Libre that he was concerned that any documents containing traces of responsibility for war crimes have long since been destroyed. Magdala Sarat of the National Coordinator of Widows in Guatemala echoed these concern. "We know that the army destroyed many of their files, as well as the testimony of survivors, and we believe that it is difficult to know how and why they did it," she said.

Although this weekend’s arrest of General Hector Mario Lopez was hailed as a major victory for human rights in the country, it will likely be quite some time before dark side of the country’s thirty-six year civil war is ever fully addressed.

News Briefs

·      Program Director Geoff Thale offers some biting commentary on the upcoming International Conference in Support of the Central American Security Strategy, which begins Wednesday in Guatemala. Thale draws a distinction between “serious leaders” who recognize the intersection of criminal and social justice as well as the complex societal nature of crime, and those who will largely use the conference to talk about the best military strategy to confront the tactics of drug trafficking organizations.

·      In the same vein, Plaza Publica highlights the hidden face of citizen insecurity in Central America: increased gender-based violence. The article cites official data which estimates that one in three women in Nicaragua who are either married or in a relationship will suffer physical or sexual violence.

·      Nicaragua’s La Prensa reports on the 127-kilometer-long border between Honduras and Nicaragua. In an area of the world where unemployment is drastically high, organized crime makes the region a land of opportunity for some.

·      Colombia’s Green Party continued to fracture on Monday, with former Medellin mayor Sergio Fajardo stepping down from its board of directors due to internal disputes about the party's organization. Colombia Reports says he will remain with the Greens, but just wants to distance himself from their leadership. The announcement comes just a week after Bogota mayoral candidate Enrique Peñalosa’s acceptance of an endorsement from former president Alvaro Uribe caused Antanas Mockus to leave the party. Meanwhile, El Tiempo reports that a faction of the U party wants Uribe to officially take on the role of party leader.

·      On Colombia’s FTA front, WOLA’s Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli has a critique in Sojourners of the labor rights provisions in the agreement.  According to her, passing the deal would not only overlook flaws in the recognition of human rights in the country, but also “reward paramilitary violence.”

·      Peruvian President-elect Ollanta Humala is in Bolivia today to meet with President Evo Morales, who is expected to ask his counterpart to join the ALBA bloc. According to Infobae, Humala has said he and Morales share “a similar vision of integration." Still, the domestic forces behind Humala’s moderate shift make this unlikely. Although Humala was slated to continue on to Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, TeleSur claims he has postponed his trip by a week due to the fact that Chavez is still recovering from surgery in Cuba.

·      NACLA has published an interesting article on social movements in Bolivia, which the author claims are part of political life in the country. Over the past 40 years, Bolivia has apparently experienced an average of one “social conflict” (ranging from street protests to general strikes, road blocks and regional mobilizations) per day, and the figure is on the rise under Morales.

·      Peru’s La Republica has an interesting rundown of the politics behind Humala’s likely top appointments to military posts. Like him, most of them will be 1977 military academy graduates.

·      Jorge Hank Rhon, the former mayor of Tijuana arrested last week on murder charges, denied rumors that his arrest was part of a political plot to discredit his party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).  

·      Venezuela's top anti-corruption official, Clodosbaldo Russian, died In Cuba yesterday while undergoing medical treatment, which the AP claims inspired rumors of a government conspiracy.

·      The AP says that attempts at retaking the Rodeo I and II prisons from armed inmates in Guatire, Venezuela were unsuccessful  yesterday, despite the presence of 5,000 security forces. El Universal reports that 36 more prisoners have been evacuated from their cells.

·      According to Mercopress, UNASUR ollowing the lost decade of the 1980s, and the disappointing next two decades. Mejia believes that the region “could double its GDP in the next 14 years which would enable the region to cut poverty from 32% to 10%.”

·      The ATF’s acting director, Kenneth Melson, is rumored to be resigning in the next day or two in response to pressure from Justice Department leadership following the “Operation Fast and Furious,” says CNN.

·      The Cuban dissidents who receive the most attention from the U.S. media were largely unknown to Cubans seeking to emigrate, American diplomats in Havana found in a survey taken in 2008, according to a cable obtained by WikiLeaks. Instead, they were more familiar with those who have opposed the Castro regime through violence.

·      Reuters reports that the Court of Appeals in the Chilean city of Puerto Montt halted all construction and permitting processes for five planned mega-dams in the Patagonia region, which received their environmental approval in early May, until the Court makes its decision about a pending appeal. 

·      The Inter-American Court of Human Rights recently published its 2010 annual report. Cristinel Buzatu at the Open Society Justice Initiative highlights three cases as particularly influential, which deal with discrimination, freedom of expression, and accountability for international crimes.

Prison Battle Rocks Venezuela in Chavez’s Absence

For the past week, security forces in Guatire (a city just twenty five miles east of Caracas) have been struggling to retake control of a prison that has been overrun by armed inmates. The conflict began on June 12 with a riot in the country’s Rodeo I prison, which broke out after troops broke up a clash between two rival groups and attempted a weapons search, and has since extended to Rodeo II, an adjacent complex. As Spanish news agency EFE reported, at least 19 prisoners were killed in the original riot, and scores more were injured.

Since the initial riots, officials have been engaged in a standoff with about 50 armed gang members, who the Venezuelan government has claimed are refusing to put down their weapons.  To further complicate matters, a “short circuit fire” broke out early Sunday morning. Although no one was apparently harmed in the fire, the AP says it sparked rumors –which the government denies – that state forces had started it in an attempt to smoke the prisoners out.

According to the BBC, some 4,000 soldiers are currently engaged in the conflict, and have managed to regain control over three quarters of the prison. On Friday afternoon, two Venezuelan national guardsmen and one prisoner were killed. In an effort to minimize harm to prisoners unassociated with the conflict, police have so far 2,500 prisoners from Rodeo, and will be relocating 1,000 more in the coming days.

Caracas Chronicles posted a video on Sunday which appears to show a heated gun battle between the national guard and prisoners, notable for its illustration of the surprising firepower that the prisoners have at their disposal. Venezuela, like Mexico and several Central American countries, has a long history of prisons serving more or less as safe houses for organized crime. Simon Romero, the New York Times’ Andean bureau chief, wrote an in-depth profile of one such prison several weeks ago, noting the availability of automatic rifles like AK-47s, AR-15s, and M-16s.

The violence has been condemned by the Inter-American Commission of Human rights, which cited figures by the Venezuelan Prison Watch claiming that 476 inmates reportedly died in 2010 and another 967 were injured. From 1999 to 2010, a total of 4,506 inmates reportedly died and 12,518 were injured. The organization’s director, Humberto Prado, told AFP that the entire El Rodeo prison complex houses more than 3,600 inmates although it only has capacity to hold 750, which has forced hundreds of inmates sleep on the floor, stairs and hallways.

Meanwhile, Hugo Chavez has been out of the country for all of this, and remains in Cuba, where he is recovering from a hip surgery. As the AP notes, Chavez’s influence seems to be on the decline lately, with domestic matters increasingly weighing down his ability to project his influence elsewhere in the region. The opposition seems to agree, and has ramped up its criticism of Chavez in his absence. According to Venezuela’s El Universal, Miranda state governor (and Chavez’s leading challenger in 2012) Capriles Radonsky delivered a scathing critique of the government’s handling of the prison riots on Sunday, and called for a dialogue with the prisoners. Adding to this criticism, the AP reports that the largest Venezuelan business chamber has spoken out against the government’s proposed attempts to ration electricity, saying the measure will hurt the economy and endanger recent growth. So far Chavez has not indicated when he’ll return to Venezuela, when he does it’s certain he’ll have to do some extensive damage control. 

News Briefs

·   El Universal and TeleSur report on Chavez’s visit with the Castro brothers on Saturday, with predictably different takes on the occasion. The former highlights the fact that the only news of Chavez’s state have come from official Venezuelan and Cuban government sources, whereas the latter emphasizes the officials’ calls for increased bilateral ties between the two countries.

·   A high-level official in the Cuban Catholic Church has claimed that the Church faring better there than in many other countries. As EFE notes, this may have something to do with President Raul Castro’s calls for a renewed respect for religious diversity in the country.

·   Perhaps as further proof of Chavez’s declining influence in the region, AP says a new Ipsos Apoyo poll proves Peruvians want a Lula and not a Chavez as their head of state. According to the poll, 61% of respondents would prefer Humala to model his government on ex-Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, while only 11% said they’d like Humala's government to resemble that of Chavez. Apparently 28% percent didn't specify, but frankly I’m willing to bet most Peruvians would prefer it if their president to developed his own leadership style instead of looking to other countries in the region, regardless of which ones. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that 70% of Peruvians have a favorable opinion of Humala, who will kick off a second regional tour this week on Tuesday, when he will meet President Evo Morales. From there he will head to Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.

·   Despite the recent controversy regarding Antanas Mockus’ departure from the Colombian Green Party,  a recent El Tiempo poll puts Bogota’s mayoral candidate Enrique Peñalosa more than 12 points ahead of his nearest rival in the capital's October elections.

·   A car bomb went off late Saturday in the southwestern Colombian city of Popayan on Saturday, killing one and leaving 16 people injured. Despite the tragedy, officials were able to intercept the vehicle before it was planted in a large crowd celebrating a soccer victory, said Reuters.

·   the government has sent in its national police force to the Amazon region to protect the families of small farmers who have received death threats.

·   IPS reports that, with the appointment of two women this month to cabinet positions, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is only two female positions away from meeting her goal of having a cabinet composed of 30% women. Although this shuffle was far from planned out in advance, it is being heralded as a significant step forward for gender equality in the country.

·   About 750 Brazilian military police raided the Morro da Mangueira, Morro dos Telegrafos and Candelaria neighborhoods in northern Rio de Janeiro over the weekend, seizing 32 vehicles and large amounts of marijuana. Despite the large number of officials involved in the operation, CNN reports that only three suspects were arrested. Because there were no gun battles, Brazilian authorities have deemed it far more successful than last year’s deadly raid of the Alemao favela in November, in which 35 people were killed.

·   On Friday, Mexican officials announced they had arrested a man who is allegedly responsible for the kidnappings of 72 Central and South American migrants found slain in a mass grave in northern Mexico last year. Mexico’s El Universal claims that the man is a former member of the military who was recruited by the Zetas.

·   The L.A. Times reports on the Mexican National Commission of Governors’ weeklong anti-crime initiative known as CONGEGO-1, which was met with skepticism across Mexico. According to La Jornada, the operation resulted in the arrests of 3,705 people, the seizure of 131 firearms.

·   Contralinea has just published a report (complete with this intriguing graphic) which maps out various ties that Mexican cartels have with criminal organizations around the world. With the decline of Colombian cartels abroad, their Mexican counterparts have stepped up their operations abroad, especially in Spain and Portugal, European officials warn. The authors claim that the most strategic alliances maintained by Mexican drug trafficking organizations are with the Japanese, Indian, Peruvian and Italian mafias.

·   After the death of a second local political candidate last week, Amnesty International released a plea for Guatemalan authorities to fully investigate the killing, claiming that from January to May 2011 there were 20 killings related to political violence in the country.

·   On Friday, Guatemalan police arrested the highest-ranking official yet to be detained for ordering massacres of civilians in the country’s civil war. A former military chief of staff, Gen. Hector Mario Lopez, 81, was allegedly involved in about 200 massacres committed between 1982 and 1983. According to La Prensa Libre, Lopez will face a hearing today on genocide charges.

·   AP with a long report on Puerto Rico’s mixed reactions to Obama’s visit last week. Particularly controversial for Puerto Ricans is the fact that he did not offer any major solution to the island’s rising crime rate and economic woes.

Uribe's Much-Anticipated Testimony Postponed in Wiretapping Case

Just hours before former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was scheduled to face the congressional Accusation Comission on Thursday to defend against allegations that he ordered the illegal wiretapping of opposition figures, his testimony was postponed indefinitely.

According to El Tiempo, the delay was caused by ex-Senator Piedad Cordoba, whose lawyer requested on her behalf that those affected by the wiretapping scandal be allowed to directly question Uribe about his testimony. Cordoba, herself a victim of illegal monitoring, did not attend the proceedings in person, apparently as an act of protest. Additionally, Cordoba’s lawyer claimed that two of the commission’s members were (Heriberto Escobar and Acuña Yahir) were "unfit" to participate.

In response to these concerns, it seems that the commission has adjourned to assess the matter, and now has to decide whether or not to accept the accusations against Escobar and Yahir. This is likely to occur after July 20^th when the new legislative term begins, El Tiempo reports. If the body decides to accept the objections, then it will have to replace the two representatives with new investigators, which could draw out the process even longer.

For his part, Uribe seemed determined to cast himself as the victim of a politicized process by FARC-sympathizing elements. As El Espectador details in its minute-by-minute coverage of the event, he dismissed prosecutors’ concerns about the safety of victims who might testify against him, calling this a "habit" of those who wish to defame him. "Today they assign me blame for murders, when it was the government that protected the human rights defenders, journalists and trade unionists," he said. "This is the continuation of a long string of outrages against those who recovered security.”

Uribe has little reason to worry, however. As Colombia Reports has pointed out, the commission is made up largely of pro-Uribe legislators, and a number of withdrawals from the body have put its objectivity into question.

Despite the setback, if and when Uribe finally gets his “day in court,” it will be interesting to see where he places the blame for the wiretapping. Although it is likely that he’ll claim the scandal was simply the work of officials in the intelligence community acting on their own accord, recent events have made this claim less politically easy for him. Recently, the beleaguered former intelligence director Jorge Noguera told a court on Monday that he is only a stool pigeon for Uribe, who wants him to be convicted in order to take the pressure off of him.

More on this in the coming months.

News Briefs

·         Venezuelan authorities have been tracking the private e-mails of thousands of Venezuelans both in the country and in Miami with the help of Cuban intelligence specialists since as far back as 2005, says El Nuevo Herald. The newspaper allegedly has a copy of a list that officials used from 2005-06 which details email addresses, passwords and IP numbers of these individuals, many of whom are opposition activists. According to James Bosworth over at Bloggings by Boz, the country is home to large numbers of hackers-for-hire, who sell this kind of material to intelligence agents. While the article cites members of the Venezuelan opposition who maintain this is the work of Cuban intelligence, Bosworth claims it is “more likely they're just buying it from the black market.”

·         Voices from El Salvador has published an extremely helpful rundown of the development of Decree 743, the controversial new law which requires the country’s Constitutional Court to make decisions unanimously rather than by majority vote, which many say weakens the Salvadoran judicial system. As El Mundo reports, the bill continues to be a political hot potato, with the FMLN now accusing the PCN of “hijacking” the wording of the law after it was voted upon.

·         The former marketing chief of Cuba’s Bucanero beer shares insights with Ad Age Hispanic on what advertising would be like in a post-Communist Cuba. As he puts it, Cuban consumers respond better to inspirational ads, rather than those that “reflect reality.” According to IPS, Cuba’s recent economic reforms are disproportionately harming Cuban women.

·         The Brazilian Supreme Court ruled this week that recent attempts by authorities to quell public protests in favor of cannabis legalization are unconstitutional, says the AP.

·         An analysis of Brazil’s 2010 Census has revealed that more and more Brazilians are self-identifying as “pardo,” reports CNN. As a result, the white population in the country is now below 50%.

·         The Office of National Drug Control Policy released updated data regarding cocaine production in Latin America. According to the statement, Colombia has reduced the amount of cocaine produced in the country from an estimated 700 metric tons potential cocaine production in 2001 to 300 metric tons in 2010, which amounts to a 57 percent drop.  However, the statement fails to mention that coca production in Peru and Bolivia is on the rise, making up for this decrease.

·         Meanwhile, a new RAND Corporation report commissioned by the U.S. Air Force reinforces the stunningly obvious: U.S. drug policy has not significantly reduced the overall level of narcotics production in Latin America. The report also details the harmful effects that aerial spraying has on legitimate crops, and recommends that officials stop encouraging this practice. Ironically, these conclusions are exactly what WOLA researchers have been arguing for years.

·         Former President Jimmy Carter offers his two cents regarding the drug war debate in a recent op-ed in the New York Times.

·         Honduran police have discovered at least 13 bodies in a mass grave located in the northwest department of Cortés.  El Tiempo claims that the grave was allegedly used by the Mara 18 gang to bury their victims. As InSight points out, this significantly undermines recent calls by M-18 to negotiate an end to street violence with authorities.

·         Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom extended the “state of siege” in the Peten region on Wednesday, going against the recommendation of his Defense Minister, Juan Jose Ruiz.  La Prensa Libre claims that Ruiz publicly denounced the move, saying it wouldn’t be appropriate considering the “political period in which we live,” which is a clear reference to the upcoming September elections.  According to the Guatemalan paper, local officials, neighborhood groups and civil society organizations have all backed the extension, due to a noticeable decrease in the amount of crime. CNN says that Mexican and Guatemalan prosecutors on have agreed to share more information on relating to the Zetas, the main criminal organization in the Peten.

·         Good news for the region’s oil producing countries: according to the International Energy Agency, world consumers will become increasingly dependent on North and South American crude oil in the next half decade. As the New York Times reports, the vast majority of the growth in demand  is expected to come from Asia and the Middle East, while the agency predicts that demand in Europe and the United States will stay flat through 2016.

·         Peruvian President-elect Ollanta Humala left Chile for home on Thursday, wrapping up his weeklong trip to Latin American countries. According to Chile’s La Nacion, Humala and Chilean President Sebastián Piñera promised to improve relations between the two countries, with Humala promising to engage more directly with Chile regarding their maritime border dispute at The Hague. As AFP reports, next week the future president begins another regional tour, this time to Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia. Although meeting with Chavez, Morales and Correa is likely to set off media hysteria about the region’s “pink tide,” it will be interesting to see if these encounters will in fact provide Humala with an opportunity to show just how much of a lefty he’ll be in office.

·         After rumors emerged that Humala was considering pardoning Alberto Fujimori, Human Rights Watch has issued a statement urging Peru not to afford the former president any special treatment.  According to La Republica, although Humala has said he would consider pardoning him if he were mortally ill, freeing Fujimori is “not on the agenda.”

·         In what is sure to be an uncomfortable get-together, El Comercio reports that Alan Garcia and Humala will meet this afternoon for the first time since the elections. No word on the specifics of their discussion.

·         Time published a piece on the Bolivian government’s lax attitude towards mining safety in the country with a focus on Cerro Rico, one of its oldest mines.

·         The New York Times highlights the recent series of nationwide protests in Chile against the country’s plan to construct a hydroelectric dam in the unspoiled Patagonia region.

·         The prosperous Mexican city of Monterrey continued to be afflicted by drug violence this week, with 33 murders committed on Thursday alone, according to El Proceso. Two of those killed were bodyguards working for the governor of Nuevo León, Rodrigo Medina. Apparently the bodies were left with a note from the Zetas which threatened Medina and claimed that the two – who were members of Nuevo Leon's state police – took money from them. Historically Monterrey has long been considered one of Mexico's safest urban area, and has only recently become caught up in the country’s drug war. As Reuters reports, more than 650 drug-related homicides have occurred in the city so far this year, which is more than occurred in all of 2010.

·         Meanwhile AP reports that Union Pacific, the largest rail shipper on the U.S.-Mexico border, is refusing to pay more than $388 million in fines for failing to prevent drug cartels from hiding drugs and other illicit goods in its train cars. 

·         On a more humorous note, Mexican authorities arrested “El Brad Pitt” on Thursday, who is not to be confused with the Hollywood star. AP says that the man, whose real name is Marco Antonio Guzman, led the security wing of the Juarez Cartel in northern Mexico. 

Ex-Tijuana Mayor Walks Free

Jorge Hank Rhon, the former PRI Tijuana mayor who was arrested on charges of weapons possession and murder last week, was finally freed on Tuesday.  As El Universal reports, first a federal judge dismissed the charges of weapons possession, saying that prosecutors did not present enough evidence.

Then, Hank Rhon was turned over to state prosecutors in Baja California, who are investigating allegations that he was linked to the August 2009 killing of his son’s girlfriend, Angelica Munoz. According to El Milenio, this case hit a major roadblock when, despite the fact that the killer claimed to have acted under the ex-mayor’s orders, a state judge refused to hold him for 40 days so prosecutors could complete the investigation.

The release is particularly problematic for Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his PAN party, who now find themselves fighting back against their rivals’ allegations of abusing the justice system. El Universal reports that the 50^th Inter-parliamentary meeting between U.S. and Mexico legislators today in Washington, the PRI Senate leader Manlio Fabio Beltrones called on the administration not to "politicize justice,” and said that Mexico was being plagued by abuse of authority.

For its part, the PRD has seized on this opportunity to strike out against both of the larger parties. In an interview with El Milenio, the PRD president Jesus Zambrano claimed that Hank Rhon’s release highlighted the "alarming crisis being faced by institutions of justice, which involves irresponsible behavior by the federal government and the Mexican military.” He also claimed that the case was influenced by the PRI’s notoriously corrupt political influence.

There is a fair amount of anecdotal evidence to support this theory. Not only is Jorge Hank Rhon one of the wealthiest businessmen in Mexico, he is also no stranger to legal controversy. As InSight’s Steven Dudley points out, as mayor of Tijuana he was linked to the Tijuana Cartel, was accused of murdering of a journalist, breaking customs laws by trafficking ivory, and numerous other shady operations.  In addition, Reuters claims that U.S. authorities suspect him of money laundering as well.

News Briefs

• The LA Times has an optimistic piece on the future of public defense in Mexico City. Apparently a new clinic associated with the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) is seeing promising results, especially among the country’s urban poor. So far the group has successfully represented indigenous residents of Chiapas, challenged a state ban on abortion in Guanajuato, and defended soldiers who were punished for speaking out against perceived injustice.
• The fifth activist was killed this month on Tuesday in the Brazilian state of Para, a region that is increasingly becoming a hotspot for land conflicts. As the AP reports, the latest victim is a 31-year-old peasant who had lived with his family on a landless settlement on unused farmland since 2008. According to the local head of the Catholic Land Pastoral, a group that monitors the conflict, the region is home to "a really dangerous group of loggers."  The group apparently maintains a list of activists whose lives are threatened, which it says totals 125 people.
•  Colombian defense minister Rodrigo Rivera presented a fifteen-point plan this week to strengthen the military’s compliance international humanitarian law. On Monday he told El Tiempo that the plan will speed up the country’s numerous unresolved cases of "false positive" killings, or extra-judicial killings of civilians by military forces. According to the newspaper, more than 3,000 soldiers are being investigated for these incidents.
• The AP paints a sobering  picture of what it is like to live on the Amazonian frontier during the ongoing gold rush in Peru’s Madre de Dios region.
• The U.S. Supreme Court reached a split decision on Monday in what had potential to be a landmark case on citizenship law.  Because of a 4-4 ruling (Justice Kagan dismissed herself from proceedings because she had previously worked on the case), the court did not overturn immigration charges against a man who was born in Tijuana to an American father and Mexican mother. As the AP notes, had his parents’ nationalities been reversed, he would be an American citizen. While American mothers only need to have lived in the United States continuously for a year before their child’s birth, this rule is longer for American fathers.
• Salon has the latest on Alabama’s controversial new immigration law, and what exactly makes it the “harshest immigration law in the country.”
• “A planned corporate merger between Peru and Colombia’s stock markets has been put on hold until Peru’s President-elect Ollanta Humala has a chance to look over the proposal, the two exchanges said in a joint press release Monday.”
• A newly-released WikiLeaks cable cited by ElFaro offers insight into El Salvador’s political climate. According to El Faro, the cable claims that two months after the selection of Rodrigo Avila as the ARENA presidential candidate in mid-2008, part of the party gave up on the 2009 election and began to structure what a group of politicians and businessmen called a "plan B" strategy to prevent a possible FMLN government.
• While the U.S.- Colombia FTA seems to have reached a temporary impasse over Republicans’ rejection of the inclusion of a job-training program in the bill, Colombia has moved its trade relationship with China forward. As the Wall Street Journal reports, Colombian lawmakers have passed the “Chinese Trade Promotion and Protection" bill, which affords China certain legal guarantees on its investments in Colombia and may propel talks with China to build a cross-county that could one day challenge commercial traffic through the Panama Canal.
• Laura Chinchilla has signed into law Monday a free trade agreement with China, which now means that 70 percent of the country’s exports fall under free trade agreements. As Bloomberg News notes, trade between China and Costa Rica has grown 14-fold since 2000, reaching $1.3 billion last year, the government said.
• Cuba’s highest court has granted a major victory to the Cuban Juridical Association (CJA), allowing them to take the first step toward officially registering their organization.  The Miami Herald reports that the CJA intends to provide free legal services to anyone who needs them, including dissidents. If the government approved their formation, it would make them the island’s first truly independent NGO.
• IPS highlights Venezuela’s eco-woes, particularly focusing on the issues of deforestation and air pollution. According to environmental advocates in the country, although over 40% of the country has “protected” status, only one percent of the government budget is allocated to the Environment Ministry. 

One-Sided Merida Initiative Debate as a Metaphor for U.S.-Mexico Relations

A number of different civil society groups led by poet-turned-activist Javier Sicilia signed a “Citizens’ Pact” in Ciudad Juarez on Friday in which they set forth a number of ambitious demands, including the cancellation of the Merida Initiative. Now, the Merida Initiative is in the news once again, as select members of the legislatures of both countries will discuss it at the 50^th annual U.S.-Mexico Inter-Parliamentary Meeting in Washington, D.C. this Wednesday.

El Universal reports that the meeting will herald a “new stage” in the Merida initiative, and it’s clear that many Mexican legislators feel similarly. According to the head of the PAN party in the Senate, José González Morfin, Mexican legislators will present “from our point of view our mutual problems in an environment of equal respect and work in coordination [to fix them]." The Mexican delegation will be headed by the chairman of the Senate and leader of the PRI caucus, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, and most of the heads of the caucuses of the two legislative chambers, according to El Milenio.

Among other things, it seems that their top priorities will be to discuss the role of U.S. arms in Mexico’s security crisis, as well as Alabama’s controversial new immigration law.

In the lead-up to these meetings, several high-profile members of Mexican society have spoken up about the Merida funds. In a recent statement, the head of Mexico’s Marines, one of the most heavily relied upon branches of the military for counternarcotics operations, sought to downplay the role of the U.S. security funding. He emphasized that the vast majority of Mexico’s military operations are funded by its own government, and claimed that the money from Merida is “not a determining factor in the fight against drugs.”

Former president Vicente Fox also added to the Merida controversy, referring to the U.S. security assistance in the Merida Initiative as “a tip” that Mexicans get for bearing the cost of the United States’ demand for drugs. He also called on both U.S. and Mexican officials to consider the legalization of drug use.

Unfortunately, on the U.S. side, things don’t appear to be matching the Mexicans’ expectations. Despite the massive coverage that the upcoming meetings are receiving in the Mexican press, I could not find a single English language news source that even mentioned them. While this may be due to the fact that the meeting is unlikely to result in major policy changes, it is at least partly representative of a serious disconnect in the public discourse on U.S.-Mexico relations in the two countries.

News Briefs

• Speaking of U.S.-Mexico relations, three U.S. Senators have authored a new government report on the role that U.S. weapons play in fueling Mexico’s drug war. Of the 29,284 firearms recovered by officials in Mexico in 2009 and 2010, 20,504 (70%) came from the United States, according to data provided to the senators by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. As AP notes, this figure is slightly lower than previous reports –which have placed the percentage of U.S. guns at around 85%–have suggested. Although useful in terms of releasing updated information, the report is not much of a “game-changer.” The debate about gun smuggling from the U.S. has been raging for years now, with Republicans and the gun rights lobby largely dismissing these reports as attempts by Mexico to divert blame for the violence there.
• President Obama arrives in San Juan, Puerto Rico today to make a much-awaited visit to the island. As the first official presidential visit in 50 years, the visit is a major symbolic victory for the island. Although as previously advised the island to hold another statehood referendum, it is unlikely that he will make that the central theme of his visit. Instead, as the Washington Post’s Jerry Bacon points out, the move is likely an early attempt to reach out to Latino voters.
• As part of a weeklong tour of South America that likely has something to do with his intention to seek re-election, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stopped in Colombia over the weekend, where he was there for the passage of the historic Victims’ Law. The secretary-general then went on to Argentina on Monday, where he was received by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. According to MercoPress, the he will meet with Argentina’s foreign minister today, and the two are expected to talk about the Falklands/Malvinas issue. He will also travel to Uruguay and Brazil, bringing his tour to a close on Friday, June 17.
• The former director of Colombian intelligence agency DAS, Jorge Noguera, is on trial for alleged ties to paramilitary groups this week. According to Colombia Reports, Noguera told the court Monday that the former government of Alvaro Uribe wants him to be convicted in order to take the pressure off the ex- President. Uribe himself will also face a special hearing on Thursday into allegations that he ordered the illegal wiretapping of opposition leaders.
• Reuters has the latest opinion poll results for the upcoming October Argentine presidential race. Although President Cristina Fernandez still has sizeable lead over her challengers, the numbers indicate that her support may be slipping.
• As El Informador reports, the “Slut Walk” phenomenon, a series of marches that U.S. women have used to raise awareness of sexual violence and double standards in sexuality, has taken off in Nicaragua. Apparently, women in Mexico have also recently used the concept to stage protests against machismo there as well.
• In Venezuela, BBC reports that the government is moving to encourage less energy consumption after a series of major power shortages in the country’s West.
• It seems that Israeli central banker Stanley Fischer is out of the running for the top IMF position. According to the New York Times, the IMF board will only consider French finance minister Christine Lagarde and Mexican economist Agustin Carstens as candidates. Because Mr. Fischer had worked as the IMF's second-highest official for seven years, many speculated that his entry would preclude Carstens’ candidacy, which is currently backed by developing nations and much of Latin America.
• In Brazil, A poll by Datafolha suggest that President Dilma Rousseff’s recent corruption scandal has not significantly hurt her in the polls. In fact, as the Latin American News Dispatch mentions, she may even even be enjoying increased popularity
• The Wall Street Journal highlights Brazil’s credit banks, which it says endangers the country’s developmental trajectory. “For a sense of the scale: The development bank's loans last year, just within Brazil, totaled triple the amount the World Bank lent to more than 100 countries.”
• Authorities in Chiapas, Mexico found 210 migrants being transported northward in a truck on Sunday, many of which were from Southeast Asia. El Universal  says this is the third largest migrant apprehension in Mexico after last January’s find of 219 people in a trailer and the discovery last of 502 undocumented Asian and Central Americans.
• In an oddly sudden development, Peru’s outgoing Garcia announced that he wants to build a 37-meter high Rio-type Christ the Redeemer statue over Lima. According to the AFP, the idea is strongly opposed by the mayor of the capital, Susana Villaran.
• Despite rumors to the contrary, Humala has said that pardoning ex-president Fuijimori senior is “not on the table,” according to La Republica. Still, some analysts have said that President Garcia may consider pardoning him as a kind of parting shot at Humala. But as the BBC notes, Garcia and Mr. Fujimori have a long history of less-than-friendly relations.
• Meanwhile, Peru’s former anti-corruption prosecutor Luis Vargas Valdivia has said that former officials of the Fujimori regime who have been prosecuted for influence-peddling could seek acquittal by invoking the proposed amendments to the Penal Code supported by President Alan Garcia. 
• According to La Prensa Grafica, El Savador’s ARENA party is still short of the votes needed to overturn Decree 743, which requires the country’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court to make decisions unanimously rather than by majority.
• The LA Times reports on Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes’ idea of mandating military service for at-risk-youth.
• El Faro with an insightful piece on the North Atlantic Autonomous Region of Nicaragua, which has been considerably altered by the drug trade.