Salvadoran Catholic Church Refuses to Turn Over Archives to Officials

After law enforcement authorities in El Salvador announced they had searched the premises of the shuttered Tutela Legal human rights office last week, advocates in the country were assured that the center’s archives had been safeguarded by the government. However, on Sunday the Archdiocese clarified that it had refused to allow police to view the records, and had eventually reached an agreement which permitted Church officials to hold on to them.

On Friday, the Salvadoran Attorney General’s Office announced that it had obtained a court order to search Tutela Legal in order to guarantee the safekeeping of the estimated 50,000 case files kept in the center. Attorney General Luis Martinez told El Faro that the office had been secured in order to guarantee that the records could be used in future trials related to human rights abuses in the country’s civil war. “We are taking action on the issue of massacres, and are defending the victims’ right to protection,” Martinez said. Nevertheless, El Faro noted that the nature of public prosecutors’ control over the archives, as well as their capacity to take stock of the inventory, was uncertain.

This was cleared up by the Archbishop of San Salvador, Jose Luis Escobar Alas, who told reporters yesterday that he had not permitted the Attorney General to assume control over the records.  “The archive belongs to the Church, and we are not going to allow anyone to take away any part of it,” said Monsignor Escobar. La Prensa Grafica reported that, despite Martinez’s announcement, Friday’s search of Tutela Legal had been merely “superficial,” and did not consist of a review of the records. The Archbishop had apparently reached an agreement with Attorney General’s Office to allow the archives to remain under Church supervision. According to the AFP, law enforcement officials only briefly inspected the archives and placed yellow tape on the doors in Friday’s operation.

The fact that the records will remain in the hands of the San Salvador Archdiocese will no doubt some rankle human rights activists in the country, many of whom have expressed concern about the Church’s motives for closing Tutela Legal. Some have suggested that it is an attempt to shield human rights abusers, pointing out that the move came after the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on whether the country’s amnesty law was constitutional. While the Church has said it will reopen a new office to take Tutela Legal’s place, it has provided a timeline for this. To fill the void left by the human rights center, a number of activists have laid plans to create a new organization in its place, to be named after deceased Tutela Legal director Maria Julia Hernandez, IPS reported last week.

News Briefs

• Though Uruguay’s Senate is not expected to vote on the country’s marijuana regulation bill until next month, the initiative appears to be taking shape already. Yesterday El Pais reported that the country’s National Drug Council has agreed on a commercial price for the drug, which will be sold for recreational use by pharmacies. According to Uruguayan Drug Czar Julio Calzada, marijuana will be sold at the price of around one dollar per gram, a low price which is expected to undercut the black market. To avoid “marijuana tourism,” the drug will only be available for purchase by citizens who have registered with an anonymous database.

• Guatemala’s Plaza Publica has published an editorial condemning the dominant approach to citizen security in the Central American country, which has increasingly relied on the military for law enforcement. The news site argues that this “criminalization of the urban poor” is due to the state’s “two hundred year history of considering its people as potential internal enemies.”

• The BBC offers a critical look at El Salvador’s anti-abortion laws, which are some of the toughest  in the world. As a result of the country’s unconditional ban on abortions, some women who suffer miscarriages or stillbirths find themselves jailed on suspicion of inducing abortions. In some cases they can even be charged with murder.

• After assessing the progress of police cleanup efforts in the country, last week the Mexican government proposed an extension of the vetting process by one year. El Universal reports that while the initial deadline was October 31, the National Public Security Council found that it could not realistically be met. According to NGO Causa en Comun, cited by Animal Politico, just 75 percent of the police force had been examined so far. InSight Crime notes that the police cleanup process has been complicated in some states by an absence of laws requiring the termination of officers who fail background checks.

• The Associated Press reports on growing opposition to pesticide use in Argentina, with some blaming the chemical glyphosate for an increase in cancer, birth defects and miscarriages in farming areas in the country. The same chemical has been the target of criticism in Colombia, where leading drug policy expert Daniel Mejia claimed that the government attempted to censor research showing that its use in coca eradication campaigns was contributing to health problems in the rural interior.

• New revelations about the extent of NSA surveillance in Mexico have come to light, with documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden showing that the U.S. intelligence agency hacked the email of former Mexican President Felipe Calderon while he was still in office. According to a report by Der Spiegel, this provided the NSA with “diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico's political system and internal stability.” The paper suggests that the news will trigger deeper controversy than allegations that the NSA monitored current President Enrique Peña Nieto's email communications while he was still a candidate, “since the NSA's snooping took place during the term of Peña Nieto's predecessor Felipe Calderón, a leader who worked more closely with Washington than any other Mexican president before him.” In a statement released yesterday, the Mexican government condemned the revelation, saying such espionage was “unacceptable, illegitimate and contrary to Mexican law and international law.”

• Imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori is back in court today to face charges that he gave state money to tabloid newspapers who supported his administration and attacked opponents during his time in office. The ex-president spent the weekend in a hospital after leaving court on Thursday for medical reasons. However, Peru21 reports that a video aired on local media last night showed Fujimori in seemingly good health over the weekend, energetically pacing around and ordering hospital staff to allow supporters to visit him.

• Roughly one year after peace talks with FARC guerrillas began, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos appears to have recognized that his original timeline for negotiations was too optimistic. “The discussions have advanced, but not at the speed I would have liked. I thought that in one year we could have finished the agenda points we agreed upon, but that hasn't happened,” Santos told other regional heads of state at the 23rd Ibero-American summit in Panama City. It is still unclear whether the talks will be put on hold during the upcoming election cycle, an idea that Santos floated earlier this month to mixed reception.

• The New York Times reports that 14 Caribbean countries have made plans to compile a record of the lasting damage they have endured as a result of the transatlantic slave trade, and ultimately to demand an apology and file a suit for damages against Britain, France and the Netherlands. To make their case, they have hired a London law firm that successfully sued Britain this year for damages on behalf of Kenyans who were tortured under colonial rule in the 1950s.

• Speaking before an Inter-American Press Association in Denver on Sunday, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez said Cuban President Raul Castro has stepped up official crackdowns on independent press. Sanchez said that while access to the internet is increasing, it remains prohibitively expensive for the majority of people on the island. The AFP reports that Venezuelan private media figures also at the conference complained that the Maduro administration was copying the tactics of state media in Havana, increasingly censoring material deemed threatening to national security.

• Venezuelan prosecutors are investigating a number of high-profile motorsports figures for violations of currency controls, in which they allegedly made dozens of fraudulent requests for US dollars at the official rate and then sold them on the black market for a profit.

• Security forces carrying out a manual coca eradication campaign in the northern Bolivian region of Apolo on Saturday were ambushed by armed coca farmers in the area, killing two police and taking at least eight hostage. The AP describes the incident as “the first fatal attack on an eradication team since President Evo Morales, a coca growers union leader, was first elected nearly eight years ago.” La Razon has more on the attack, noting that the government believes that coca growers in the area have links to a Peruvian criminal network.

Caribbean Bloc Condemns Dominican Court’s Nationality Ruling

After the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court issued a ruling last month denying citizenship to thousands of individuals of Haitian descent, the country is seeing increasing international backlash for the court decision.  

Immediately following the ruling, both the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)  issued press releases expressing concern over its potential to leave thousands of people essentially stateless. And in an opening statement ahead of a regional women’s conference in Santo Domingo on Monday, UN Women Director Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka urged the government to consider the women and children affected by the court’s decision. After a subsequent meeting with Presdient Danilo Medina, Mlambo Ngcuka told the Listin Diario that the president assured her he would seek a “humane solution” to the problem, though she did not say what that might be.

From the D.R.’s perspective, however, perhaps the most significant international blowback came on Wednesday, after the Caribbean Community (Caricom) bloc issued a statement on the ruling. Noting that the move flouted the recommendations of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (ICHR), and voicing alarm over “tens of thousands of persons being plunged into a constitutional, legal and administrative vacuum,” Caricom urged the Dominican government to adopt measures to protect the human rights of those affected.

The Caricom statement is particularly problematic for the country, as the D.R. has expressed a firm interest in joining the 15-member Caribbean grouping since 1989. Due to concerns over the country’s comparatively larger population and economy, the other members of the bloc have been reluctant to support its admission until recently. But as this appears to be changing, President Medina is likely eager to do everything in his power to smooth over relations with the regional organization.

The Medina administration has also come under intense pressure from domestic human rights advocates, many of whom have vowed to take their case to the Inter-American Human Rights system. Last week the president met with several local activists, including Ana Maria Belique of Reconoci.do and Antonio Polemil of the Dominican-Haitian Network. But while they later told reporters that Medina offered them a “glimmer of hope,” he did not announce any plans to remedy the situation.

Any solution to the current situation will likely involve the creation of a pathway to citizenship for individuals of Haitian descent in the country. But as the AP has noted, the government has failed to codify a means of obtaining state recognition nine years after a 2004 law called for its creation. It is also unclear how many of those who have been denied nationality by the recent court decision would actually be eligible for the process, and how many would still be left stateless.

News Briefs

• Today’s New York Times profiles a large demonstration held in Times Square yesterday, which brought Haitian- and Dominican-Americans together to protest the nationality ruling. The Miami Herald also picked up on the rally, but contrasted it with a nearly simultaneous protest in support of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and against the government of President Michel Martelly in Port-au-Prince.

• Edgardo Ayala of IPS reports on the struggle of Salvadoran human rights activists and lawyers to regain control over the archives of the Tutela Legal human rights center, which was unexpectedly closed by the Catholic Church late last month. While Church officials say they are preserving the files kept by Tutela Legal, they have reportedly been sent to other, undisclosed locations, fueling fears that potentially important case information could be “lost” in the process.

• The Global Post has published the second in a two-part series by Simeon Tegel on coca production in Peru. While the first looked that the prospect of a violent response to a U.S.-funded counter-narcotics campaign in the coca-growing VRAE region, the second profiles the economic hardships faced by small-scale coca farmers in the VRAE, who say they cannot profit by growing other alternatives like coffee and cacao.

• The Wall Street Journal reports on a split in Argentina’s dominant Peronist movement, illustrated by two competing rallies held yesterday in Buenos Aires to commemorate Peronist Loyalty Day. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s Front for Victory Party appears poised to lose influence in congressional elections next week, and the paper suggests she will lose much of her support base as well in the coming months, in keeping with the saying: “Peronism forgives everything, except defeat.”

• As the Cuban government continues to unveil new economic reforms which authorize private businesses, the Catholic Church in Havana has begun to offer classes on entrepreneurship. Although the Church has been banned from participating in Cuba’s national education system, the AP notes that the Havana Archdiocese has launched a clergy-run two-year degree program as well as shorter, three-month workshops on “the basics of private business, including sourcing of materials, accounting and tax regulations.”

• Meanwhile, Cuba’s flourishing market for imported shoes, clothing, beauty products and other goods is set to take a hit in the coming months, as authorities begin enforcing a ban on selling imports. Critics of the measure say it goes against the spirit of recently-announced reforms, but the government maintains it is necessary in order to improve its regulation of the Cuban retail sector.

• The Guardian reports on the harsh conditions faced by workers in Peru’s illegal mining industry, which in some cases amounts to forced labor, according to U.S. nonprofit Verité. The group is pressuring Congress to pass legislation forcing companies to disclose whether they accepted illegally-mined minerals.

• Mexico’s lower house voted to approve a general overhaul of its tax system yesterday, which aims to boost government revenue by nearly 3 percent of GDP over the next five years, El Universal reports. Due to lobbying by business groups and conservatives, the bill included a number of exceptions as well as a modified top income tax rate, which Reuters reports will leave the government with a budget shortfall in the coming years.

• Rebecca Hanson and David Smilde of Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights have the latest installment in a series on insecurity and crime in Venezuela. Whereas the previous post looked at public opinion on who is most at fault for rising crime, this week’s post profiles popular attitudes towards remedies to insecurity in the country. Interestingly, despite the Maduro government’s emphasis on military deployment as a security strategy, most Venezuelans see emphasizing family values and reforming the police and judicial systems as more important.

• The government of Panama has announced that it will release the North Korean crew and ship detained three months ago for attempting to smuggle Cuban weapons through the Panama Canal. Panamanian prosecutors have found that 33 of 35 crew members were not aware of the contents of the cargo, and will be released without criminal charges, but the captain and his assistant may face trial. 

Colombia’s Lower House Approves Referendum on Peace Deal

Despite the fact that FARC rebels and the government appear no closer to signing a treaty to end the country’s 50-year civil war, lawmakers in Colombia’s lower house have voted to authorize a referendum on the terms of an eventual peace accord.

The Colombian Chamber of Representatives voted 105 to two in favor of allowing the referendum on Wednesday after several days of debate, Caracol reports. While normally the country’s laws prohibit referendums to be tied to general elections, the bill creates an exception for the peace treaty. It will now move on to the Senate floor, where it is expected to pass.

Because the specifics of an eventual peace agreement remain undefined, the content of the bill is relatively sparse. It simply paves the way for a referendum to take place alongside either the upcoming legislative election in March or the presidential election in May.  According to El Espectador, it also prohibits the use of public funds in campaigns for or against the peace deal, and charges the National Electoral Council with establishing further campaign regulations.

The AP notes that political opponents accuse President Juan Manuel Santos of using the referendum to leverage his re-election campaign. “One thing that is clear is that [Santos] is playing politics with the peace process, it doesn’t take a genius to realize it,” Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo of the Alternative Democratic Pole told the news agency.

These accusations seem off the mark, however, considering that Santos has consistently maintained that any peace agreement with the FARC should be submitted to a popular vote.  He first floated the idea in January, to counter FARC negotiators’ demands for a constituent assembly.

While tying the referendum to elections may seem like a political move, it may have more to do with maximizing voter turnout . In order for it to pass, the referendum needs 7.5 million votes, or 25 percent of the electorate.

News Briefs

• The New York Times’ Simon Romero looks at a Latin American trend: exhuming the bodies of deceased political figures to look for clues about their demise or further narratives of their heroism. While the recent exhumations of Pablo Neruda in Chile and Simon Bolivar in Venezuela have received significant media attention, Romero points out that the region has a long history of unearthing and studying bodies of historical individuals.

• The AP profiles the Jamaican government’s attempts to establish a presence in crime-ridden urban neighborhoods. In addition to increasing patrols in violent areas, Jamaican police have begun a campaign aimed at painting over murals and graffiti commissioned by gangs, part of an attempt to delegitimize local crime bosses, known as “dons.”

• Venezuela’s El Nacional has the content of the so-called “Enabling Law,” the bill that President Nicolas Maduro is pressuring Congress to approve, which would grant him the authority to pass certain measures by decree. Meanwhile, the ruling PSUV is still one vote shy of 99 it needs to authorize the bill in the National Assembly.  BBC Mundo looks at who among the opposition might support the measure, with the most likely candidate being the deputy representative of Congresswoman Maria Mercedes Aranguren, who could take her seat if she is stripped of her position as a result of a corruption investigation.

• Salvadoran news site El Faro, the first news outlet to break the story of the government’s involvement in the gang truce in El Salvador, was honored for its coverage this week at a journalism conference in Rio de Janeiro.  El Faro’s Oscar Martinez, Jose Luis Sanz, Efren Lemus, Roberto Valencia, Sergio Arauz and Carlos Martinez were awarded the annual Investigative Journalism Award by Transparency International and the Press and Society Institute.

• As part of the lawsuit filed by US oil giant Chevron against American lawyer Steven Donziger and other Ecuadorean indigenous and environmental activists, witnesses in court yesterday accused Donziger of fraud and misconduct. Reuters reports that Christopher Bogart, the head of a firm that helped finance Donziger's successful $18 billion suit against Chevron in Ecuador, said that he withdrew investment in the case because of legal concerns about the actions of Donziger and Ecuadorean lawyers.

• Following the Worker Rights Consortium’s publication of a report alleging that the Haitian garment industry routinely violates the country’s minimum wage laws, the Geneva-based Better Work organization has released a report finding that garment factories in the country fail to meet safety standards. In response to the criticism, the AP reports that Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe has released a statement saying that Haiti is “continuing to build an environment that holds ourselves and employers accountable for safe working conditions, competitive and growing wages, and opportunities for advancement.”

• The L.A. Times reports on discrimination that indigenous women face in Mexico, which was illustrated by several recent incidents in which indigenous pregnant mothers were turned away from hospital clinics and forced to give birth outside the facilities. Human rights advocates say that the cases underline the inferior quality of health care available to low-income indigenous communities in the country.

• The Guardian’s Mark Tran has an overview of the challenges faced by small-scale coffee and cardamom farmers in Guatemala. Their crops have been hit hard by a devastating outbreak of coffee rust disease, which some locals blame on global climate change.  Tran contrasts the fate of these monocrop  growers with that of subsistence farmers in the same area, whom he claims are doing comparatively better.

• In a sign of growing ties between Russia’s defense industry and Latin American militaries, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is visiting Peru and Brazil this week to promote the sale of Russian arms. On Wednesday, the Brazilian Defense Ministry announced that it was moving forward with a $1 billion purchase of anti-aircraft missile batteries from Russia.  

Brazil Seeks to Question Snowden

The Associated Press reports that Brazilian Federal Police as well as a Senate committee investigating the recent revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency’s surveillance programs in Brazil want to question former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Jose Alberto Freitas, director of the Federal Police’s intelligence division, told the Senate committee yesterday that questioning Snowden was a “top priority” for his office. Senator Ricardo Ferraco, the head of the committee, said that on Thursday he intended to ask the Russian government for permission to speak with Snowden via a video conference.

Brazil’s interest in speaking to Snowden is fairly straightforward. With Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff canceling a planned visit to Washington over the leaks, and new revelations suggesting that U.S. (and now Canadian) intelligence agencies are spying on economic actors in their country, Brazil is keen to get a better idea of the scope of these activities. And with even more leaks on the horizon, officials likely hope to gain some clues about the content of future disclosures.

For Snowden, however, the benefit of talking to Brazilian officials is far less clear, as it could land him in hot water. The U.S. has already charged Snowden with “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person,” and speaking to Brazilian authorities about the classified material would likely further bolster the case against him.

While Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist who has been most active in publishing Snowden’s leaks, has spoken to the Brazilian Senate committee about the leaks in general terms, even he took great care to avoid violating U.S. law. As the AP reported last week:

When the senators pushed him to provide the Brazilian government access to the leaked documents at his disposal, Greenwald balked and said there should always be strict separation between governments and journalists. 

Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, also appearing before the senators, added that the documents wouldn’t be given to the Brazilian government because it would be an “act of treason” that could prevent Greenwald from ever entering the U.S. again.

If Snowden does agree to speak with Brazilian officials, it may raise new concerns about the legitimacy of his whistleblowing, which has already been widely questioned. After all, denouncing the mass surveillance of private phone and internet communications around the world to journalists is one thing, but providing details of U.S. intelligence operations directly to a foreign government is a separate matter entirely.

 News Briefs

• The director of CONSEP, Ecuador’s national drug policy council, is in Montevideo for a series of meetings with his Uruguayan counterparts to discuss deepening bilateral cooperation on drug policy, La Red21 reports. CONSEP Director Rodrigo Velez told local press that his country is looking “with interest” at Uruguay’s marijuana legalization experiment, though he also claimed that his country’s location between the two largest coca-producing nations (Peru and Colombia) required it to be “very disciplined” in its approach to the war on drugs. “Otherwise, we would have the thousands of [cocaine] laboratories seen in our neighboring countries,” said Velez.

• Thousands of protestors took to the streets in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro yesterday in support of striking teachers unions and an improved education system. While the protests, which coincided with Brazil’s national “Teachers' Day,” were largely peaceful, BBC Brazil reports that anarchist “Black Bloc” groups escalated tensions at the demonstrations, damaging commercial property and setting street fires. The group was profiled in a recently published report by Brazil’s Igarapé Institute, which provides an excellent overview of the group’s loose, horizontal structure as well as the relationship between police related violence and the movement’s emergence. According to the report’s authors, Brazil´s Black Bloc has only recently begun organizing on social networking sites, and only began establishing an online presence “during the first week of protest in June 2013.”

• Over at the Americas Quarterly Blog, Wilda Escarfuller and Adam Frankel offer a sobering look at structural racism in the region, pointing to the findings of AQ’s recently-released 2013 Social Inclusion Index. While Colombia and Brazil -- which have the largest Afro-descendant populations in the region -- are making inroads against racial inequality in recent years, persistent economic and educational disparities have kept progress limited on this front.

• Spain’s El Pais has an overview an electoral reform proposal submitted by Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which would among other things require political parties to use only public funds in their campaigns. Meanwhile, the World Politics Review has an interview with Mexican political analyst John Ackerman, who argues that the PRI is against meaningful electoral reform, “particularly in the areas of oversight of campaign spending, media independence and voter freedoms.”

• The New York Times profiles a new report prepared by the Worker Rights Consortium, which concluded that Haitian garment factories are systemically violating wage laws by avoiding overtime pay and setting unrealistic production quotas. While the report looked at only five of Haiti’s 24 garment factories, it found reason to suggest that “the majority of Haitian garment workers are being denied nearly a third of the wages they are legally due as a result of the factories’ theft of their income.”

• The owners of the U.S.-operated oil ship which was seized by the Venezuelan navy on Thursday have told reporters that the vessel and its crew were released. Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of Venezuela and Guyana (which both claim that the ship was in their maritime territory when it was seized) are set to meet Trinidad and Tobago tomorrow to settle the border dispute, Reuters reports.

• At Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights, Hugo Perez Hernaiz and David Smilde look at how the diverse makeup of the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition has led to divisions in local races ahead of municipal elections in December.

• In The Guardian, environmental reporter David Hill has a critical take on Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s recent decision to open the Yasuni Amazon reserve to oil drilling. Hill argues that Correa’s defense of the move was dishonest, and that the president overstated its potential economic benefits and minimized the local environmental impact it would have.

• After an effort by Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives to pass legislation averting a debt default and ending a partial government shutdown collapsed last night, governments around the world are watching the situation with increasing apprehension. While a U.S. debt default would have serious implications around the world, Latin America would be particularly negatively affected, according to The International Business Times.

• In March, the U.S. government signed a deal with Brazil’s São Paulo state, which Foreign Affairs recently described as “the first time that the U.S. State Department forged ‘direct relations’ with a subnational government in the southern hemisphere.” In the Miami Herald, columnist Andres Oppenheimer argues that this heralds a new era of U.S. diplomacy based on local and regional agreements rather than relations with national governments. This would be a major shift because, as Oppenheimer notes,  “many of the Latin American countries that are most hostile to the United States have their capitals or second-largest cities run by opposition leaders who would welcome more U.S. investments, trade and educational exchanges. The cities of Caracas, Buenos Aires, Guayaquil and Santa Cruz are just some of them.”

Honduras Deploys Controversial Military Police

A new security force, comprised almost entirely of former soldiers, has begun patrolling crime-stricken areas in Honduras. Reuters reports that some 1,000 military police officers were deployed in the country’s most violent cities on Monday (in San Pedro Sula and part of Tegucigalpa, according to El Heraldo).

The new police body, known as the Military Police of Public Order (PMOP), was created in August after a unanimous congressional vote. The measure was initially proposed by National Party Congressman Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is also a leading candidate ahead of next month’s presidential election. Polls show he is statistically tied with Xiomara Castro of the left-wing LIBRE party, who has opposed any military involvement in law enforcement. “Not only are [soldiers] trained for defense purposes, they are also professionals, they have experience,” Castro told local press last month. “They’re not meant to be monitoring traffic lights.”

The creation of the PMOP is in some ways an extension of President Porfirio Lobo’s anti-crime strategy, which has been marked by an increasing reliance on the armed forces for internal security.

 One of the strongest arguments for military involvement in policing presented by advocates of this strategy is the unreliability of the National Police. Honduran police are notoriously corrupt, and have been repeatedly accused of extrajudicial executions and other human rights abuses. Efforts to clean up the National Police have stagnated, as authorities have been slow to implement background checks and other vetting procedures for police officers. So while it is hardly ideal for the military to assume law enforcement responsibilities, supporters of this argue it is a necessary evil.

The problem with this is that the Honduran army is not immune from criminal infiltration either. Current and former Honduran military personnel have been implicated in a range of illegal activities in recent years. In March 2012, for instance, Mexican officials arrested two former Honduran soldiers accused of providing military training to the Zetas. In November 2010, a plane seized in a drug trafficking operations was “stolen” by military personnel from an army base in San Pedro Sula. Eleven soldiers were arrested in connection with the incident, including a handful of mid-level officers and a lieutenant colonel.

The mixed record of the Honduran military has caused concern in the United States government as well. A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from 2008, for instance, cited an internal report finding that grenades and anti-tank weaponry sold to the Honduran military by the U.S. were later found in seized arms caches belonging to criminal groups in Mexico and Colombia.

News Briefs

• Writing for the Global Post, Simeon Tegel looks at increasing U.S. anti-drug aid to Peru, as well as Peruvian President Ollanta Humala’s plans to implement a mass forced eradication campaign in the coca-growing heartland of the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene Rivers (VRAE).  Citing local opposition to coca eradication, combined with a small but spirited guerrilla presence in the area, Tegel argues that Peru could turn into the next U.S.-supported “drug war debacle.”

• A new comparison of regional public opinion surveys by the Mitofsky polling firm provides an interesting snapshot of popular support for the various presidents of the Americas. The top three most popular presidents in the hemisphere are Danilo Medina of the Dominican Republic (with 88 percent support), Ecuador’s Rafel Correa (84 percent) and Ricardo Martinelli of Panama (69 percent). U.S. President Barack Obama is 11^th on the list with 44 percent approval, just below Uruguay’s Jose Mujica, who has a 45 percent approval rating.

• A New York judge will begin hearing arguments today in a suit filed by oil company Chevron against environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, over the oil giant’s allegations that Donziger obtained a $19 billion ruling against the company in an Ecuadorean court by bribing judicial officials.  The Miami Herald reports that Chevron is expected to present evidence showing that Donziger lied about the origins of an environmental damages report cited in the Ecuador trial.

• The latest round of peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC rebels has drawn to a close, and El Espectador reports that no agreements were made on political participation, the item currently on the agenda.

• Mexican officials say that an outbreak of cholera has killed one and sickened 154 individuals across five states, the first cholera epidemic that the country has seen since 2001.

• The Associated Press takes a look at kidnapping and extortion schemes in Mexico, which appear to be on the rise. Experts consulted by the wire service claim that this is proof that the country’s criminal landscape is becoming more unstable and fragmented as a result of government operations targeting cartel leaders and break their command chains.  

• The L.A. Times profiles the work of Brazilian sem-teto, or roofless activists, who have occupied nearly 50 abandoned buildings in São Paulo this year, fueled by the rising cost of living as well as a sympathetic local government.

• In the wake of revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been monitoring phone and online communications in Brazil, the Brazilian government has announced that government workers will be required to use a special, encrypted email service. However, it is unlikely this new service will prevent U.S. surveillance.  “The entire system is compromised if any user of an encrypted email sends a message to somebody on an outside program, like Gmail,” according to the AP.

• On Monday, the constitutional chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Court ruled that the Legislative Assembly's 2012 selection of Salomon Padilla as president of the Supreme Court was unconstitutional. This sets up the potential for the kind of constitutional crisis that the country saw last year, in which members of the Supreme Court refused to acknowledge a constitutional chamber ruling which annulled their election. Padilla, for his part, has said he will not challenge the ruling, although the ruling FMLN party has denounced the decision as overreach of the chamber’s powers.

Crisis Tests Independence of Colombian Drug Policy Commission

A crisis broke out for Colombia's much-lauded advisory commission on drug policy last week after its president, Daniel Mejia, announced his resignation in response to pressure from the government to withhold publication of a research paper on the negative effects of anti-coca aerial spraying. While his resignation was refused, the incident proved to be an important assessment of Colombia's commitment to maintaining the independence of the drug policy commission.

As mentioned in last Thursday’s brief, the conflict began on October 7, when Mejia gave an interview to W Radio in which he criticized the government’s response to a report he co-authored with Adriana Camacho of the Universidad de los Andes (available for download here). The report analyzes the harmful health effects of aerial spraying, as well as the limited effectiveness of glyphosate, the pesticide most frequently used for coca eradication. While rural Colombian villages are seeing a rise in breathing problems and skin conditions as a result of exposure to the chemical, Mejia and Camacho found that it was not fully effective at eradicating coca. For every square hectare sprayed with glyphosate, the authors found that the chemical produced only a 15-20 percent reduction of the crop.

In his remarks to W Radio, Mejia accused the Colombian Foreign Ministry of pressuring him to delay the paper’s publication. He said this was so it would not coincide with an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on a lawsuit filed by Ecuador on behalf of rural farmers who had been affected by illegal cross-border spraying. The suit was eventually settled out of court, and a copy of the agreement obtained by news site La Silla Vacia reveals that aerial spraying campaigns on the Ecuadorean border will now be held to higher standards than in the rest of the country.

When Mejia refused to delay the publication the Foreign Ministry changed tactics, and criticized his findings before the ICJ, countering it with evidence allegedly furnished by former contractors of Monsanto.

Mejia was so appalled by this, Semana magazine reported, that he submitted a letter of resignation from his position as president of the drug policy advisory commission created by President Juan Manuel Santos. “Being an independent and academic commission, created by the Colombian government to undertake a thorough assessment of drug policy in Colombia and issue a series of policy recommendations on these issues, I cannot allow an institution of the same government to question me like this,” he wrote in his resignation letter to Justice Minister Alfonso Gomez Mendez.

On Friday, however, Gomez Mendez said he would not accept Mejia’s resignation, and expressed support for both his research and the independence of the commission. In a Twitter post yesterday, Mejia thanked the justice minister for his endorsement, and announced that he would stay on with the drug policy commission.

While the full impact of Mejia’s high-profile spat with the Foreign Ministry remains to be seen, it appears that it may have achieved some concrete policy changes. At the very least, it has forced the Santos administration to acknowledge aerial spraying as a controversial issue. On Friday, Deputy Justice Minister Miguel Samper announced that the government would review of its approach to coca eradication. The minister framed the current policy as inefficient in the long run, because spraying did nothing to build state presence in affected areas. “The review of this policy will come from an analysis of how to build links to historically coca-growing areas,” Samper said.

News Briefs

• Salvadoran news site El Faro reports that, after the controversial closure of the Tutela Legal human rights office (which was deftly covered over the weekend by Al-Jazeera English), the Catholic Church in El Salvador has announced it will create a new office that fulfills the same function. The Archdiocese of San Salvador did not say when the new office would be opened, however.

• A new Datafolha poll published over the weekend by Folha de São Paulo shows that in spite of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s reduced public approval rating, she is still far more popular than her two closest competitors a year ahead of the 2014 elections. The poll found that Dilma leads voting intention with 42 percent, compared to 21 percent for Aecio Neves and 15 percent for Eduardo Campos. As Reuters notes, if these numbers remain unchanged she will win re-election without a runoff vote.

• The Miami Herald profiles U.S. Congressman Joe Garcia, who has made a name for himself as an advocate of a less hardline approach to Cuba policy, breaking with other Cuban Americans in the House of Representatives.  As the Herald notes, however, Garcia rejects allegations that he is “soft” on Cuba, citing his support for the designation of Cuba as a state supporter of terror and his opposition to certain cultural exchanges promoted by the Cuban government.

• The Associated Press reports on fears of impunity for those responsible for Colombia’s “false positive” scandal, in which thousands of noncombatants were murdered and then registered as guerrillas killed in combat. As the AP points out, a controversial law passed in June could make it harder to prosecute officials accused of war crimes, ensuring that they face trials in the military justice system rather than in civilian courts.

• It appears that Uruguay’s marijuana regulation bill, which was approved in the lower house on July 31, will face a Senate vote sometime in November. In remarks to UNoticias last week, Congressman Julio Bango -- one of the bill’s sponsors in the lower house -- said that the ruling Frente Amplio (FA) coalition expects a vote next month. Still, his statement was decidedly cautious. “The idea is that in the course of November we should see the possibility of a vote,” said the lawmaker.

• As Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro continues to pressure the country’s National Assembly to pass a bill granting him decree powers he says are necessary to root out corruption, the government continues to crack down on abuse of power. El Nacional and the Wall Street Journal report that the mayor of Valencia, the country’s third largest city, has been arrested on corruption charges. The official is a member of Maduro’s ruling United Socialist Party.

• In a move that is sure to put further distance between his administration and civil society, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo dismissed allegations of human rights abuses committed by the government as part of an international conspiracy against him. “Many international organizations are trying to say that here we are at war, that there is political persecution and these are situations that aren’t true,” Lobo told local press, El Heraldo reports.

• On Sunday, the New York Times editorial board weighed in on the lawsuit recently filed by Haitian human rights advocates against the United Nations over the strong evidence that UN peacekeeping forces introduced a deadly cholera epidemic to the country. Whether or not the case proceeds, the editorial argues that the UN should “acknowledge responsibility, apologize to Haitians and give the victims the means to file claims against it for the harm they say has been done them.”

• On Friday, Venezuelan naval officials seized a U.S.-chartered oil exploration ship in the Caribbean, accusing the vessel of conducting "unauthorized scientific work" in Venezuelan maritime territory. The crew, which includes five U.S. citizens and two Brazilians, is being detained on board for questioning, the AP reports.

• After a successful operation to remove a blood clot on her brain, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has been released from the hospital and is recovering from the procedure at home, according to administration spokesman Alfredo Scoccimarro. It remains unclear, however, when she will be fit to resume her duties.

Fujimori on Facebook

The Associated Press has the story today on imprisoned former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori’s use of social media sites Facebook and Twitter, and the headache this is causing the government.

The problem is that Fujimori is not directly controlling either his Facebook or Twitter accounts himself. He has no access to the internet in his facility. Instead, he relies on third parties to post for him, and transmits messages to them via telephone. These facilitators have also recorded his voice, and posted short audio clips of his statements to YouTube.

Last month, Justice Minister Daniel Figallo has called on penal authorities to “regulate” Fujimori’s use of social media, implying that the former president was receiving special privileges not usually granted to most inmates.

But the head of the National Penal Institute (INPE), Jose Luis Perez Guadalupe, told Peru21 that Fujimori’s access to the telephone was in keeping with his rights as a prisoner, and current INPE regulations. As such, Perez Guadalupe recommended that the communication rights given to inmates in Peru be reassessed.

The AP reports that government lawyers are “hustling to come up with legislation that adapts, for the self-broadcasting Internet age, laws that let prison authorities restrict inmates’ speech.” This opens up the potential for serious infringement on individual rights of persons deprived of liberty, however.  In “Principles and Best Practices on the Protection of Persons Deprived of Liberty in the Americas,” the OAS Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons Deprived of Liberty recommends guaranteeing inmates the right to free expression, with minimal constraints that are “strictly necessary”  to guarantee security, the rights of others and public order. It’s difficult to see how restricting the former president’s telephone access fits falls under this, while it may be politically expedient at the moment.

In the meantime, the former president continues to use his online presence to blast the administration Ollanta Humala in a way that, as UNC Professor Greg Weeks points out, bears a similarity to Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe.

News Briefs

• A proposal to modify Ecuador’s criminal statute to decriminalize abortion has caused a stir in the country, with a vocal bloc of lawmakers in the ruling Alianza Pais party supporting the measure, El Comercio reports. However, President Rafael Ecuador has come out strongly against abortion decriminalization, accusing these legislators of engaging in “betrayals and disloyalties.” As AFP reports, Correa announced yesterday that if his party supported the measure and it were to pass in Congress, he would step down as president.

• The AP profiles the work of artists and educators in the Dominican Republic who are challenging discrimination towards Afro-Dominicans, part of a broader movement to fight historic racism in the country.

• The Panamanian government has cast doubt on the Cuban government’s claims that the arms shipment it sent to North Korea earlier this year included obsolete weaponry. While much of the equipment was outdated, McClatchy reports that Panamanian officials say two Cuban MiG-21 jet fighters were found on board in good condition, with “brand new” jet engines.

• IPS looks at the root causes of hunger in Haiti, where 1.5 million face “severe” or “acute food insecurity,” twice as many as last year. Among the main factors identified by the news service are an influx of cheap agricultural goods from foreign countries, as well as declining investment in the country’s agricultural sector.

• In Colombia, the government’s Special Administrative Unit for Victims Assistance has announced that some 12,000 union members have either been killed or faced death threats in the country’s armed conflict since 1986. According to official figures, the worst years for union murders in this period were 1992, 1998 and 2004.

• At Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights, David Smilde and Rebecca Hanson look at the political fallout from the country’s high crime rate. Surprisingly, despite the opposition’s consistent attempts to blame citizen insecurity on the ruling PSUV and President Nicolas Maduro, most Venezuelans see it on social and cultural factors rather than political ones. And while polling data shows public perception of insecurity has risen under Maduro, 56 percent of the public believes crime would be the same under a different president.  

• President Maduro is still pressuring Congress to pass a law giving him decree powers, which needs to gain the support of one opposition lawmaker in order to be approved. El Nacional reports that National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello has told the press that he expects it to be passed in two or three weeks, indicating that the government still does not have the votes it needs. Meanwhile, civil society organizations have expressed alarm at the law. The director of human rights group Provea, Marino Alvarado, told Spanish news agency EFE that the law could “further restrict” fundamental human rights in the country.

• In yet another illustration of deeply-entrenched corruption in Honduras’ police force, a Honduran police official has told the press that a high-profile drug trafficking ring was tipped off about a recent operation meant to dismantle its finances. According to Seized Property Administration Office director Humberto Palacios, the Cachiros drug trafficking gang had received advance warning of the operation, and cleared out all of the effected properties and bank accounts ahead of time.

• Elba Esther Gordillo, the Mexican teachers’ union leader whose arrest earlier this year was widely hailed as a demonstration that President Enrique Peña Nieto was willing to go after “untouchable” corrupt political figures, has filed an innocent plea on the fraud charges against her, El Universal reports.

• Bolivian President Evo Morales has unveiled plans to build a new presidential residency and office space to replace the current Bolivian Presidential Palace. La Razon reports that Morales said the move was necessary because the current presidential office was too small, and he also criticized it as a legacy of the country’s colonial past.