Chavez Names Successor as his Cancer Returns

Venezuela has been thrown into disarray by the news that President Hugo Chavez’s cancer has returned, which came just days before regional elections and a month before Chavez is due to start a new six-year presidential term.

Chavez postponed emergency surgery to fly back to Venezuela on Friday to meet with top PSUV party officials. The next day he announced his successor - the first time since his battle with cancer began that he has publicly spoke of relinquishing power and the clearest sign yet of the seriousness of his health issues.

Chavez announced that Vice President Nicolas Maduro will take over the presidency if Chavez is unable to continue and  also urged Venezuelans to vote for Maduro in the elections that must be called within 30 days if he is unable to assume power or dies within the first four years of his term. “Elect Nicolas Maduro as president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, I ask you with all my heart,” he said.

The move ended the speculation that has been rife since news of Chavez’s cancer first broke and the PSUV is now likely to fall in behind Maduro, who stands a far better chance of electoral victory having received the boost of a emotive endorsement from Chavez.

However, some analysts believe a power struggle could still be likely, because if Chavez is unable to take office, National Assembly President and Chavez ally Diosdado Cabello should lead the country, not Maduro, during the 30-day transition period.

Maduro is a former union leader and foreign minister, and is considered to be from the moderate end of the PSUV. However, Cabello draws his support from the Venezuelan army and is thought to have strong ties to the so-called “Boligarchy” - businessmen who have used their ties with the Chavez government to amass huge fortunes.

If new elections are called, then it may pave the way for the early return to presidential politics of the defeated opposition candidate from September’s elections, Henrique Capriles Radonski, as he remains the de facto leader of the opposition. However, Capriles is standing for reelection as governor of the state of Miranda on Sunday in a tricky election against former vice president, Elias Jaua. The government and Chavez’s socialist party have made it a priority to defeat Capriles, hoping to weaken him politically and shake the fragile unity of the opposition.

Following Chavez’s announcement, Capriles criticized the president for not being open about his health problems during the elections and for handpicking a successor, saying “Here in Venezuela, when someone leaves office, the nation has the last word,” he said, “We’re in Venezuela, not Cuba, and here you can’t talk about successors.”

Chavez traveled to Cuba on November 27th to undergo hyperbaric oxygen therapy. While there, he said, inflammation and soreness led doctors to perform additional tests that found the “malignant” cells near the site of his original cancer.

The day after the president’s public announcement, over 1,000 Chavez supporters gathered in Plaza Bolivar in Caracas to show their support.

News Briefs

• Colombian prosecutors have announced they are to reopen the investigation into US banana company Chiquita Brands over payments Chiquita made to the paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the BBC reports. The original investigation was closed in March, with prosecutors accepting the company’s claims to have been victims of extortion despite the testimonies of demobilized paramilitaries, who insisted the relationship was voluntary and mutually beneficial. 

• The Times Education Supplement looks at the “autonomous and alternative” education system established at the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community in northern Colombia. The community has been left without state teachers since a 2005 massacre and so constructed their own “University of Resistance” combining normal academic subjects with teaching about Colombian rural culture, the community’s non-violent stance in Colombia’s conflict and the community’s values of resistance, solidarity, pluralism, transparency, freedom and justice.    

• Honduras Politics and Culture discusses the ongoing conflict between Honduran President Porfirio Lobo and the country’s supreme court over the decision to shelve a police clean-up law. Lobo is currently using a combination of political maneuverings and biblical-themed twitter insults in his attempts to push the law through, the blog reports.

• In the Miami Herald, Andres Oppenheimer looks at the flip side of the latest Corruption Perceptions Index. While most media have focused on how Venezuela and Haiti are viewed as among the world’s most corrupt nations, they have paid scant attention to the fact that Barbados, Chile and Uruguay rated among the 20 least corrupt nations.

• Seven hundred women have been killed so far this year in Guatemala, down from 834 last year, according to the Latin American Herald Tribune. While the drop is welcome, it has not been matched by a corresponding increase in prosecution rates, argues the Central America Politics Blog.

• The New York Times reports on the reopening of old alcohol prohibition era smuggling routes by Mexican cartels. The cartels have been moving contraband in small open hull fishing boats leaving for the US from Baja California as a result of a security crackdown along the border, according to the Times. Smugglers on this route were responsible for the death of a US coast guard earlier this month.

• The Inter Press Service reports on concerns over attempts to reform the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). On Friday, the Organization of American States (OAS) received a petition signed by more than 3,000 people including four past presidents, worried that new reforms “could irreparably weaken the IACHR’s independence, making it more difficult both for victims of human rights violations to access the commission’s powers and for the commission to ensure that its decisions are implemented.”

• Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera has died in a plane crash in northern Mexico, the BBC reports.

Argentina's Clarin Wins Extension on Monopoly Deadline

Argentine media group Clarin has won an extension on the time it has to sell off assets in line with an anti-monopoly media law, in a victory for the company and defeat for the Kirchner government.

The company had been given until December 7 to hand in a plan to reduce its holdings, including many of its cable assets, in order to comply with a 2009 law. Hours before the deadline, the Civil and Commercial Appeals Court ruled that the company did not have to act until a review of the media law was complete, reports Reuters.

In May, Clarin obtained an injunction against the media law, which was due to expire today. It has now been extended until a lower court rules on whether the law is constitutional. The Financial Times called the ruling an “11th hour reprieve.”

Government allies reacted angrily, criticizing the appeals court for holding up implementation of the media law, and said they would appeal to the Supreme Court. Martin Sabbatella, head of the AFSCA, the body in charge of implementing the law, threatening to have the appeal court judges disqualified, accusing them of being biased and accepting a Clarin-paid trip to Miami, reports the Financial Times. He said that the ruling was a disgrace, and hurt democracy.

The administration of President Cristina Kirchner is putting “tremendous pressure” on the judicial system over the case, according to the Wall Street Journal, with officials warning that granting extension of the injunction would be an “insurrection.”

Both sides accuse the other of acting in bad faith. Clarin has accused the government of trying to silence opposition voices through applying the law, while the government has claimed that its motive is to democratize Argentina’s media and prevent one company being too dominant. As the WSJ points out, Clarin had been widely viewed as “a heavyweight that either pandered to governments or bullied them to get what it wanted.”
Clarin enjoyed a warm relationship with the Kirchner faction until its coverage of farmers’ protests in 2008, and was allowed to carry out a controversial merger under the president's late husband, then-President Nestor Kirchner, despite anti-trust regulators ruling against it.

The Center for Economic and Political Research (CEPR) comments that there is reason to believe the government's line that the media law is indeed about “democratizing a media landscape dominated by heavily-monopolized media conglomerates that are often opposed to the forces of change under way in the country.” It notes that Frank La Rue, the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of the Expression for the UN, has described the law as “a model for the continent and other regions of the world.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists criticized Clarin’s move to launch a complaint against pro-government journalists, and commented that “it is clear what is at stake in a power struggle where freedom and processes of democratization are just part of a rhetorical strategy.”

The law sets allows a maximum of 24 cable licenses, and Clarin has 237. The company currently controls 42.8 percent of the radio market, 38 percent of open TV and 59 percent of cable TV, as BBC Mundo sets out. There are another 20 companies that also have to divest themselves of assets, according to the AFSCA.

Whatever the motives of the law, the debate has now moved into new territory. For the WSJ:

The outcome of the showdown, once seen as a political grudge match between the populist president and a media giant with a controversial past, seems likely to shape press freedom for years to come, and become a key test of legitimacy for the country's courts.

News Briefs

• President Hugo Chavez has returned to Venezuela, walking unaided from the plane, cracking jokes with journalists, and wearing a multi-colored tracksuit, rebutting rumors that he was confined to a wheelchair, reports Reuters. His absence from today’s meeting of Mercosur presidents has raised questions, however, given that it is Venezuela’s first summit as a full member of the trade bloc.

• Paraguay will remain suspended from Mercosur at least until presidential elections in April 2013, following the questionable impeachment of President Fernando Lugo, foreign ministers said at a preliminary meeting on Thursday, reports MercoPress. Bloggings by Boz notes that the summit will discuss the question of whether to let Bolivia and Ecuador join as full members, commenting that, “Having spent most of the year discussing who is in and out of the club, Mercosur hasn't gotten much else done.” More from BBC Mundo on trade among the group’s members.

• The AP looks at the prospects for legalization of same-sex marriage in Mexico, following the Supreme Court’s overturning of a law banning the practice in Oaxaca state, with rulings in favor of three couples who challenged the law. A total of five cases are needed to set legal precedent in a state. Gay marriage has been legal in Mexico City since 2010.

• The LA Times blog looks at the prospects for the new mayor of Mexico City, Miguel Angel Mancera of the leftist PRD party, who won July’s election with 63 percent of the vote. His party has now held the capital’s mayorship for 15 years, a post with has launched presidential bids for other former mayors. The report notes that Mancera takes office amid controversy over the alleged arbitrary detention and abuse of protesters during the Sunday inauguration of President Enrique Peña Nieto.

• The Mexico City human rights commission said in a report Thursday that 22 people had been arbitrarily detained by police during the protests, reports the AP. In the wake of the disturbances, The Economist asks, “Attacked on the street and lacking a majority in both houses of Congress, can Mexico’s new president get anything done?”

• The Center for Economic and Policy Research reports on a study on sexual violence in post-earthquake Haiti, which found that most rapes were carried out by people known to the victim, and not by strangers. It points to the “worsening economic picture,” with unsafe housing, food insecurity, and gang activity, as a “key engine of sexual violence.”

• Amnesty International has released a report on attacks against human rights defenders in the Americas by state security forces, paramilitary groups and organized crime, analyzing some 300 cases from 2010 onwards.

• Chile has rejected Peru’s case for redrawing the countries’ maritime border before the International Court of Justice in the Hague, arguing that the matter was settled with a 1952 treaty, as the AP reports. Peru presented its case on December 3 and 4, and Bloomberg reports that the approval ratings of President Ollanta Humala have jumped in response to optimism that the country will win.

• The LA Times has a report on a new outbreak of violence in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which is attributed to revenge attacks between police and members of the PCC gang. A former Sao Paulo security official is quoted as saying that the violence was sparked by police executing gang members who had surrendered, “The ROTA [police special forces] broke a fundamental rule of living alongside criminals, that of allowing those who turn themselves in to stay alive."

• Puerto Rican independence fighter Avelino Gonzalez Claudio has returned to the island to finish serving his prison sentence for robbing a bank truck, and will be freed in February, reports the AP.

• An Israeli newspaper reported that Syrian President Bashar al Assad is considering seeking asylum in Cuba, Ecuador or Venezuela, reports the Miami Herald. See Wednesday’s post for further discussion.

• Software entrepreneur John McAfee was briefly hospitalized in Guatemala with chest pains, reports the AP. He is facing deportation to Belize for questioning over the murder of a neighbor.

Chavez to Miss Mercosur Summit

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will not attend the summit of trade bloc Mercosur in Brazil on Friday, which will increase concerns about his health as he prepares to begin a fourth term in January.

Brazil’s Foreign Ministry told the AFP that Chavez would not attend the summit, which will be his country’s first time since its accession as a full member was approved in July. Vice President and Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro will represent Venezuela instead. On Monday, Brazil’s ambassador in Caracas had said that Chavez’s attendance at the summit was confirmed.

Chavez is currently in Cuba receiving treatment which he said consisted of “sessions of hyperbaric oxygenation along with physiotherapy” to “consolidate” his health after finishing radiotherapy treatment for cancer six months ago. He flew to Cuba on November 27, in a trip which caused some concern as no images were released of him leaving Venezuela or arriving on the island.

The president has not been seen in public for nearly three weeks, since November 15, and has even stopped Tweeting. The last message from his account was sent on November 1. El Nuevo Herald reports that Chavez canceled two planned engagements this week, to do a press conference by phone and to film a video in Cuba. The newspaper said that the question of whether he attended Friday’s summit would be a “proof by fire” of the true state of his health.

Maduro said on November 29 that the president was doing well in Cuba, and demanded “respect” for his health, accusing the opposition of trying to take advantage, reports Venezuela Analysis. Reuters reported that Chavez aimed to be back in the country for his inauguration on January 10, and noted that:

His latest absence has put renewed attention on Maduro, his vice president, and on Congress head Diosdado Cabello, two close and powerful allies of the president who might look to replace him if Chavez were to leave power.

Chavez's absence from the country could hurt the chances of pro-government candidates in the December 17 gubernatorial elections, as Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights blog points out.

Hugo Perez Hernaiz and David Smilde looks at the prospects for the elections, going through the country state by state and discussing whether the governorship is expected to go to the government or opposition.

They note that many opposition supporters are disillusioned after Chavez’s victory in the October presidential elections, but that the government side is hurt by continued questions over the president’s health, and by his absence from the campaigns.


News Briefs

• The Cuban government has accused the US of lying about the health of Alan Gross, a contractor who has spent three years in a Cuban prison, saying that he does not have cancer and is receiving good medical care, reports the BBC. It also criticized the UN for ruling that Gross’ detention was arbitrary, reports Reuters. The Washington Post has an editorial which says that the US should not hand over five Cuban spies in exchange for Gross’ release, arguing that “better relations between Cuba and the United States must be conditioned on real steps toward democratization by Havana.”

• Amnesty International marked the 30-year anniversary of the torture and death of government opponents in Suriname under President Desire Delano Bouterse, who has returned to power and is protected by an amnesty law from being held responsible for his part in the killings.

• The LA Times blog reports that police in Mexico City are facing questions about their response to protests against President Enrique Peña Nieto’s inauguration on the weekend, when at least 100 demonstrators were injured. The Federal District’s human rights commission (CDHDF) has said that police dressed in civilian clothes carried out many arrests of protesters, reports Proceso.

• Mexico’s Supreme Court made a ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, striking down as unconstitutional a law in Oaxaca state which restricted marriage to heterosexual couples, reports the Associated Press. Colombia has also moved towards legalizing gay marriage, with Congress approving a bill on the issue in the first of four debates, as Colombia Reports reports.

• The AP has a report on Paraguay’s failure to properly investigate an incident in June in which 11 farmers and six police died in a clash over the land occupations. “Farmers and their supporters say the official investigation is a one-sided effort to make an example of the farmers, so nobody will dare challenge the interests of powerful landowners ever again.”

• The Argentine government claimed that an investment fund which partners with Clarin in its Cablevision TV network wants Clarin to sell up and comply with the government’s decision, reports the AP. Clarin has until December 7 to divest itself of much of its media empire, after the government decided to enforce an anti-monopoly law against the group.

• IPS reports on demonstrations in Brazil to protest against the latest murder statistics in the country. Protesters organized by NGO Rio de Paz scattered 500,000 beans on carpets and on the Brazilian flag on Copacabana beach in Rio to mark the number of homicides in the last decade. One third of the beans were white and two thirds black, to reflect the ethnic make-up of the murder victims.

• ElPeriodico reports that the US company which won a contract to improve infrastructure in prisons across Guatemala was only legally established two years ago, and will subcontract 10 other firms in order to deliver on its contract.

• The Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer argues that the US Congress should learn from the accord signed between Mexico’s three main political parties, though he notes that the Pact for Mexico was not approved by the parties’ membership and so may be disregarded by legislators.

• Fugitive software entrepreneur John McAfee was arrested in Guatemala City for entering the country illegally, reports the AP. He is wanted by Belize authorities in connection with the murder of his neighbor, and the Guatemalan has announced that it will expel him, sending him to Belize, in the coming hours, reports EFE.

• Peru’s prison authority prevented French former Bishop Jacques Gaillot from visiting Shining Path rebel group founder Abimael Guzman in prison, citing the bishop’s “separatist, radical” positions, reports El Comercio.

• Oscar Niemeyer, a Brazilian architect who designed distinctive government buildings in Brasilia, has died at the age of 104, reports the NYT. The Guardian features a slideshow of his work.

Assad to Seek Asylum in Latin America?

Reports suggest that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is considering claiming political asylum in Cuba, Ecuador or Venezuela, a move that could drive a wedge between the international community and leftist governments in the region. According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, when Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Miqdad met with the governments of these three countries last week, he brought with him personal letters from Assad  in which the leader raised the possibility of seeking asylum. Although a source in Caracas confirmed to Haaretz that al-Miqdad delivered a letter to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez shortly before the he left for cancer treatment in Cuba last Wednesday, he could not speak to its content or Venezuela’s official response to a potential asylum bid. 

An attempt by Assad to obtain political asylum in Venezuela would not come as a total surprise, considering that Chavez has remained an outspoken ally of the embattled leader despite the uprising underway in Syria. Venezuela has sent numerous shipments of diesel fuel to Syria this year, and Chavez has maintained that the Assad regime is the “legitimate government” of the Middle Eastern country, blaming unrest on meddling by the US government. 

The governments of Cuba and Ecuador have voiced similar support for Assad, and the latter country has already demonstrated a willingness to shelter controversial figures with its August decision to grant asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Harboring Assad could seriously damage the international standing of any of these countries, however. In an interview with the Associated Press earlier today, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon opposed an asylum deal as a means of ending Syria’s civil war, saying the UN “does not allow impunity” to anyone. 

The revelation that Syria has been moving its chemical weapons stockpiles and preparing nerve gas adds a further element of gravity to support for Assad. The United States has said that the use of chemical weapons against Syrian rebels would be a “red line,” prompting a harsh response. As analyst James Bosworth notes, while the US has been relatively silent on the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) bloc’s backing of Assad, if Syria employs chemical weapons it could cause the US government to employ sanctions against countries which support the regime. 

For the moment the potential for Assad to seek political asylum remains a remote possibility, as the ruler has adamantly refused to step down and vowed to "live and die" in Syria. But if rebels continue to make headway against the army in the country, he may be left with no other choice.

News Briefs

• Argentina scored a temporary victory yesterday in its ongoing debt saga, after a US appeals court ruled that the country was not required to make a preliminary payment of $250 million to creditors who had refused to swap their debts for government bonds. The next hearing in the case, an appeal of a November ruling ordering Argentina to pay back $1.3 billion to defaulted creditors, will proceed on February 27^th. 

• Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa met with his Argentine counterpart Cristina Fernandez in Buenos Aires yesterday to discuss relations between the two countries. AP reports that Correa spoke with Fernandez about his country’s lawsuit against US-based oil giant Chevron in Argentina, which requests  that the Argentine government seize Chevron’s assets, oil sales income and bank accounts in the country as payment for contaminating Ecuador’s southern Lago Agrio region from 1964 to 1992. Correa also voiced support for Argentina’s struggle with foreign creditors, backing Fernandez’s proposal for UNASUR to take a stand against such instances of “judicial colonialism.” Telesur reports that while in Argentina, the Ecuadoran president accepted the Rodolfo Walsh Press Freedom Award from the National University of La Plata for his contributions to “popular communication.” As the AFP notes, this comes at a time when Correa is under fire from press freedom advocates for his combative stance against mainstream media outlets in Ecuador. 

• After meeting with congressmen as part of a visit to Colombia on Tuesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released a statement expressing concern over a proposed constitutional reform which would expand the military’s jurisdiction over cases of reported human rights abuses. El Tiempo reports that the Commission believes elements of the proposal break with Inter-American human rights standards and could afford impunity to military officials. 

• Colombia’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the country’s tradition of granting diplomatic passports to congressmen is unconstitutional and amounts to a violation of the principle of equality before the law, according to El Colombiano. The practice has been abused by legislators in the past, most notably by notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, who upon being elected as an alternate representative in 1982 used his diplomatic passport to travel freely to the United States.

• Venezuela’s National Assembly yesterday approved the Chavez administration’s budget proposal for 2013, which according to El Universal calls for a 33 percent increase in government spending from this year’s budget. 

• The New York Times profiles the trend among poor Haitian parents to turn over their children to orphanages as a means of ensuring a better future for them. According to the government of Haiti, the vast majority (some 80 percent) of children in orphanages there have at least one living parent. To combat the trend, officials are implementing stricter adoption regulations and reducing the number of orphanages in the country, although some analysts say the move is premature. 

• While Alan Gross, the contractor jailed in Cuba on espionage charges, is suing the US government in an effort to pressure the Obama administration into negotiating his release, US officials remain adamant that they will not accept Cuba’s proposal to trade Gross for five Cuban intelligence officials being held in the United States. According to an unnamed State Department official cited by the Miami Herald, the US rejects “the notion of linkage” between the two cases.

• The L.A. Times takes a look at the United States’ expanded role in promoting security in Central America, as well as concerns that the US is repeating its Cold War-era strategy of allying itself with corrupt governments at the expense of human rights. 

• The Inter Press Service has an in-depth report on growing opposition in Guatemala to mining ventures headed by multinational corporations. Although mining companies are attempting to downplay anti-mining protests, they are becoming increasingly frequent in the country’s rural areas. In the latest incident, which took place on November 19^th, residents of the southeastern town of Mataquescuintla set fire to five cars belonging to a subsidiary of a Canadian mining firm. 

• Honduras’ La Prensa reports that the mayor of the western Honduran town of Dolores Meredon was killed by gunmen wearing military uniforms yesterday while the official was driving with his family. The motive behind the murder of the mayor, who was elected in 2009 on the ticket of the ruling National Party, is still unknown. 

• Anti-corruption advocacy NGO Transparency International has released its 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures the perceived level of corruption in countries around the world. According to the report, Haiti and Venezuela are tied as the most corrupt countries in the region and are among the most corrupt in the world, coming in at 165^th in the 176 countries surveyed.

Violence Continues in Colombia Despite Peace Talks

Colombian military air raids killed at least 20 guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) over the weekend, in the largest single blow military against the insurgents since peace talks began in October.

The attacks were carried out on three guerrilla camps in the provinces of Narino, Meta and Cauca and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to continue pursuing the guerrillas militarily even after the FARC declared a unilateral ceasefire.

The FARC have been accused several times of breaking their own ceasefire, most recently on Monday when Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon suggested the guerrillas may be behind bomb attacks carried out on a Bogota police station over the weekend.

Also on Monday, the guerrillas were accused of being behind violence that has displaced 400 indigenous Embera people in western Colombia, as the war continues around the country.

On the same day as the raids, President Juan Manuel Santos declared a deadline for reaching an agreement on talks, saying they would not continue after November 2013. InSight Crime speculates that Santos may be thinking about the 2014 presidential elections and wants to give his re-relection campaign time to repair any damage from failed negotiations.

Meanwhile, Colombia’s second largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), confirmed it is in preliminary discussions over joining the peace process, but called for a bilateral ceasefire before full negotiations begin.

News Briefs

• The Wall Street Journal looks at Brazil’s increasing participation in the region’s “drug war,” which has recently seen it adopt “a controversial U.S. tactic: reaching across borders to stop cocaine at the source.” Bloggings by Boz takes exception with one of the article’s claims, saying “we should distinguish between the war on drugs (where the goal is reducing drug trafficking) and the fight against violent and organized crime (where the goal is reducing criminal influence and violence).”

• A new report shows 149 people have died at the hands of the Honduran police in the last 23 months. The rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras, who presented the report, used it to attack the ruling from the Constitutional Branch of the Honduran Supreme Court that reforms aimed at cleaning up the country’s police force were unconstitutional. Over the weekend, President Porfirio Lobo called the court an “enemy of Honduras,” in a speech that the Honduras Culture and Politics blog believes is designed to intimidate the full court into overturning the decision. 

• The Miami Herald reports on the ruling of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta in a drug case, which that found that the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act could not be used for prosecuting drug smugglers arrested within the 12-mile territorial waters of foreign countries such as Colombia, Panama, Guatemala and Honduras. The ruling could have a serious impact on US maritime interdictions in the region, according to InSight Crime.

• A Colombian senator is sponsoring an attempt to organize a referendum to recall the country’s congress and hold new elections, Colombia Reports, reports. Senator Camilo Romero wants to utilize a section of the Colombian constitution that states ‘’the people have the power to revoke, at any time, lawmakers of their constitutional term,” and force the country’s politicians to stand down because it has “committed wrong and arbitrary acts,” highlighting the approval of a controversial justice reform.

• Two Mexican men have been charged with killing a US Coast Guard after a collision with a suspected smuggler's vessel about 180 miles (290km) north-west of the US-Mexico border, the BBC reports.

• The strange saga of American internet pioneer John McAfee continues, with Vice Magazine apparently accidentally giving away the runaway McAfee’s location by not removing the metadata from a photo after being granted an interview. McAfee, who is wanted for questioning over the murder of an American neighbor in Belize, claims he doctored the photos to show he was in Guatemala and throw the police off his scent. 

• Al Jazeera features a video of their investigation into a psychiatric hospital in Guatemala City, which reveals evidence of sexual and physical abuse by staff.

• The Miami Herald looks at a recently captured “narco-sub” in Colombia, which, it says can carry eight tons of cocaine and would be “virtually undetectable.”

• The Council on Hemispheric Affairs looks at Uruguay’s legalization of abortion, pushed through by President Mujica. The article concludes that despite the bill’s flaws, “President Mujica’s adamant support for abortion decriminalization stands alone as a grand statement to the Uruguayan people, and places a greater value on women’s rights than on religious complaints.”

• The IPS continues its examination of Cuban feminism with an interview with Midiam Lobaina, who “describes herself as a “Christian militant” who takes a feminist reading of the Bible to workshops and religious services around Cuba, to discuss gender equality and a culture of peace.”

• Bolivian president, Evo Morales, has confirmed Bolivia’s willingness to join the Mercosur as a full member when the trade block meets in Brasilia later this week, Merco Press reports.

Peña Nieto Promises Change, Protesters Fear Return to Past

Mexico’s new President Enrique Peña Nieto was inaugurated on Saturday against a backdrop of fierce clashes between police and protesters who oppose the return of his PRI party.

Hundreds took to the streets in Mexico City to protest against the PRI, which held the presidency for 71 years until 2000, and ran the country as an effective single party state. The demonstrators threw petrol bombs and vandalized shops, reports the Associated Press, and some 29 were hospitalized, amid clashes with police armed with tear gas. Peña Nieto opponents have claimed that he purchased the election through voter handouts.

There were also anti-Peña Nieto sentiment on display in Congress, where representatives protested against him, brandishing with a banner saying "Imposition accomplished, Mexico in mourning." As he took his oath of office, “supporters chanted 'Mexico! Mexico!' drowning out wailing whistles of disapproval from leftist lawmakers,” reports the AFP.

The PRI party is trying to reassure the public that it will not bring about a regression to the past, representing itself as “a new, chastened party bent on promoting efficiency and economic change,” even choosing not to hold a public celebration to mark the inauguration, as the New York Times points out.

The new president worked to give the message that the PRI’s return would not mean a return to autocracy, declaring “I will run an open government that speaks with honesty, seeks opinions, listens to its citizens.” He also said that he would work to improve security, saying "My government's first aim will be to bring peace to Mexico," as the BBC reports.

However, the president has strong links to the traditional wing of his party. His choices for his cabinet represent “a mixture of young technocrats and familiar faces from PRI governments of the 1990s,” as the Economist Americas View blog reports. It notes that the post of Interior Minister, to be held by former Hidalgo Governor Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, will be especially important, as Peña Nieto intends the Interior Ministry to absorb the Public Security Ministry. For the NYT, the cabinet relied mostly on “PRI stalwarts, including five former governors. But he also placed several foreign-educated technocrats from his inner circle.”

The Washington Post said that the president’s speech set out “an ambitious agenda of reform,” promising to improve the education and justice systems, as well as the economy, and make Mexico “the magnificent place it deserves to be.”

Americas Quarterly sets out the top challenges for Peña Nieto, while Bloggings by Boz looks at the legacy of outgoing President Felipe Calderon.


News Briefs

• Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff signed a law to redistribute oil royalties to non-producing states, but vetoed a part that would apply to oil wells already in production. This section had been strongly opposed by Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo states, with Rio’s government warning that the state could go bankrupt before the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, the BBC reports. The country reported disappointing GDP growth of only 0.6 percent in the third quarter, half of what was expected by economists, the NYT reports. The newspaper points to the need to address structural problems, including “byzantine bureaucracy and woeful public schools.”

• The WSJ has a piece arguing that growth rates have been more lasting in Latin American countries that have followed free market policies, like Colombia and Mexico, than those which have increased the state’s role in the economy, like Brazil and Ecuador.

• The NYT has an opinion piece on the recent outbreak of violence in Sao Paulo, where repressive policing methods have sparked a series of retaliatory killings of police officers. It points out that low-ranking officers make the easiest target for criminal gangs, as they often live in the same neighborhoods as criminals, making them very vulnerable when they are off-duty, to the point that some ry to conceal their profession. Graham Denyer Willis calls on the authorities to increase police wages and remove barriers to advancement for officers who have less education.

• A report from Brazil’s Presidential Bureau to Promote Racial Equality found a massive discrepancy in the murder rates of white and Afro-descendant Brazilians, with a rate of 15.5 per 100,000 for white people and 36 for black people, rising to 72 per 100,000 for black citizens aged 12-21, reports EFE. See full report here.

• In Rio de Janeiro, hundreds marched in protest against plans to privatize the city’s Maracana stadium, which has been undergoing renovation for the World Cup and Olympics. Many of the protesters were from indigenous groups that object to the destruction of an indigenous museum on the stadium grounds, reports the BBC.

• Speaking in Havana, where the FARC is holding peace talks with the government, a rebel representative said that the group was still holding “prisoners of war” who would be handed over, reports El Nuevo Herald. Following the comments, President Juan Manuel Santos set a deadline of November 2013 for talks to be completed, reports the BBC.

• The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on the Colombian authorities to act after journalist Guillermo Quiroz died of injuries he received while in police custody in the northern Sucre province. Police reported that he had been injured falling from their vehicle. Three officers have been suspended in connection with the case.

• William Neuman reports for the NYT on the Colombian government’s efforts to return displaced people to their land.

• In Paraguay, land activist Vidal Vega was shot dead by men riding a motorbike. He was a leader of the landless campesino movement whose bloody clash with police precipitated the ousting of President Fernando Lugo in June. The movement told the AP that Vega might have been killed in order to impede their fight for land.

• The NYT looks at the battle between Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and media company Grupo Clarin, as the December 7 deadline for the group to sell off many of its assets approaches. The conflict relates back to “festering official resentment” over the group’s power to form public opinion, according to the NYT. The group contends that Kirchner is attacking it as part of a plot to change the constitution to stay in office for a third term, for which she needs an obedient media. Reporters Without Borders issued a statement warning of an increase in attacks on journalists in Argentina’s increasingly polarized climate.

• The Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council warned of serious threats to the independence of the judiciary in El Salvador, following the constitutional crisis that took place there earlier this year. Gabriela Knaul said that the legislative assembly’s appeal to the Central American Court of Justice against a decision of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber showed a “profound disrespect” for the chamber, as Tim’s El Salvador Blog reports.

• Damien Cave at the NYT asks how capitalist Cuban citizens are, following reforms to allow more private enterprise.

• There were reports Sunday that John McAfee, a US software tycoon who went on the run from police seeking him in connection with the murder of another US citizen in Belize, had been captured on the Mexico-Belize border. The NYT has a report, published before the reports, on the man who “has turned lamming it into a kind of high-tech performance art.”

• The NYT reports from the Mexico-Arizona border, where tightened security has made it harder and harder for Mexicans to cross going north, hurting businesses in the US.

Assessing Calderon’s Presidency on his Last Day in Power

Mexican President Felipe Calderon prepares to leave office tomorrow after six years in which he battled drug cartels, unleashing a tide of violence which may only now be on the point of receding.

His presidency was defined above all by security, as he launched a head-on attack on the organized criminal groups that had been able to operate relatively unmolested under his predecessors. Calderon sent more than 50,000 troops onto the streets of Mexico to fight drug gangs, starting in his first month in office. The resulting violence left some 60,000 dead in killings linked to the drug war, with an estimated total of 101,000 murders during his term, about a third higher than in the previous administration, reports the Associated Press. InSight Crime quotesofficial statistics which show that the number of murders nearly doubled from 10,300 in 2007, Calderon's first year in power, to 22,500 this year.

The real figure may be even higher, as some 25,000 people have gone missing in the last six years, according to figures from Mexico's Attorney General’s Office, as the Washington Post reports.

The drug war did have some successes, taking down many of the country’s biggest crime lords. With the death of Zetas boss Heriberto Lazcano in October, Calderon pointed out that the government had captured or killed 25 on a list of 37 cartel leaders which it published early in his term. A notable absence is Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquin Guzman, alias “El Chapo,” perhaps the world's biggest trafficker, who remains at liberty as Calderon leaves power.

The chaos and violence has failed to have a significant impact on the supply of drugs passing through Mexico to the US, and decapitated criminal groups have splintered to from a larger number of smaller and often more aggressive organizations.

Incoming President Enrique Peña Nieto is expected to take a different tack in fighting cartels, focusing not on pursuing capos or intercepting drugs but on bringing down the levels of violence.

There are signs that the tide may be starting to turn, and that the violence may be slowing. Places like Ciudad Juarez, the most dangerous city in the world at one point in Calderon’s presidency, have seen a dramatic security improvement in the last year and a half. Security analyst Alejandro Hope, who closely follows the phenomenon, wrote recently that 2012 was on course to be the first year to see an annual drop in homicides since 2007, while reports of large-scale massacres and dismembered bodies seemed to have slowed. If his analysis is correct and the turning point has already been reached, then Peña Nieto will be the one to reap most of the political benefits.

InSight Crime’s Patrick Corcoran points to some errors of the Calderon era that Peña Nieto should avoid, including showy efforts to reorganize government institutions or create new police bodies which are “typically little more than a distraction; the efforts needed to pass legislation and then create the new force would be better spent investing in the existing police bodies and addressing their specific shortcomings.” The new president has revealed plans for a security force modeled on the French National Gendarmerie, and to disband the Security Ministry, putting police and security bodies under the control of the Interior Ministry. The Miami Herald points to possible risks of this, noting that the Interior Ministry was long used by Peña Nieto’s PRI party “to co-opt or pressure opponents, rig elections and strong-arm the media.”

For Corcoran, however, “many of Calderon's initiatives were philosophically sound, and simply require more patience or persistence,” including police vetting, targeting kingpins, and justice reform.

The reforms to justice institutions in particular have not been carried out in full, with the oral trial system still mostly unimplemented four years after it was approved, as the AP comments. And, as the Washington Post notes, “not one of the dozen top cartel leaders captured alive has been put on trial and convicted in Mexico using police-gathered evidence or witness testimony,” pointing to deep weaknesses in the justice system.

Calderon had more success when it comes to the economy. The AP sums up his term as having saved Mexico from collapsing during the global financial crisis by ensuring fiscal stability, though it left the country with no improvement to poverty levels, and insufficient job growth. Calderon saw out his term by passing a labor reform law on Thursday.

Peña Nieto is promising to bring in free market reforms, including opening up the state-run oil industry.

For the Washington Post, during Calderon's term, “modest gains were made, but his center-right government was consumed by the drug war,” which has now reached a stalemate.

The LA Times highlights Calderon’s openness to cooperation with the US, saying that he “essentially rewrote the rules under which foreign forces could act here in matters of national security.”

Now, Calderon is planning to go to Harvard University as the first Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, as the New York Times reports, following a tradition of ex-presidents leaving the country.


News Briefs

• After Colombia's stated its intention to pull out of the International Court of Justice in the Hague in protest over a ruling giving sea territory to Nicaragua, Bloggings by Boz comments that the withdrawal of Colombia’s Navy would leave the waters open to drug traffickers, as Nicaragua’s force doesn’t have the same capacity. For Boz, the idea of excluding either country is at fault; “When the hemisphere starts dividing up the ocean and fighting over who controls which area, especially when most countries do not have the resources or capabilities to do so, that's a scenario in which the criminal groups prosper.” The Economist’s Americas View blog also looks at the issue, noting that disputes with Nicaragua could hurt the FARC peace process, as Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is facilitating the negotiations.
  La Silla Vacia says that the withdrawal from the Hague will hurt President Juan Manuel Santos’ prospects of asserting himself as a regional leader, undermining his ambition to become a mediator between the US and leftist Latin American countries.

• The trial of politicians involved in the “mensalao” corruption scandal has come to an end in Brazil, with the court handing down sentences for the final three of 25 defendants on Wednesday, as the NYT reports. The Federal Supreme Court will meet next week to decide questions including whether the sitting politicians convicted in the case should lose their seats, reports O Globo. 

• Meanwhile the NYT reports that a new political corruption scandal is breaking in the country, with officials in the government of previous President Lula da Silva again accused of bribery. Rosemary Noronha, a chief of staff to da Silva, is accused of acting as a coordinator for those who wanted to buy favors from officials. Another Lula chief of staff, Jose Dirceu, was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison as part of the mensalao case. As the WSJ reports, government supporters are painting the latest case as a sign of President Dilma Rousseff’s determination to bring corruption in the country to light.

• Human Rights Watch called on Brazil to act against extrajudicial killings by police, and implement a resolution issued on Wednesday by the country’s Human Rights Defense Council on steps that should be implemented to to properly investigate these deaths.

• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights told Guatemala’s government to improve conditions in a mental health facility in Guatemala City, following reports that it is controlled by gangs who enter from a nearby prison, abuse the patients and subject them to commercial sexual exploitation, reports the NYT.

• The Economist reports on hold-ups in Venezuelan ports, which it links to inefficient management and poor infrastructure maintenance since they were nationalized nearly four years ago

• IPS reports from Veracruz, on Mexico’s Pacific, painting a dark picture of a state it calls a “black hole” because of organized criminal violence, with women, migrants and journalists all targeted. One in every three migrants who go missing in the country reported last seen in Veracruz, according to the report.

• InSight Crime has a three-part special on how migrants are targeted by organized crime in the Americas, where they are  “especially vulnerable as they move north through what is a veritable gauntlet of gangs, large criminal groups and corrupt officials.”

• Negotiators from the FARC rebel group and Colombia’s government are taking a week-long break in peace talks held in Havana in order to consult with their respective leaderships, reports the Miami Herald.

• The Guardian has a report on Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, winner of the Artes Mundi prize, who creates work related to drug violence in her country, including one piece using bloody floor tiles from the house where a friend was murdered.