The News Roundup is a regular section of the blog, featuring news articles from various sources around the web, with the goal of providing an overview of the weekly conversation about the countries where MCC works in the region. Quotes in italics are drawn directly from sources and do not necessarily reflect the position of MCC.
15 Years After Bolivia’s Gas War, Victims Find Justice in a U.S. Court
Bolivia’s government has sought without success to extradite Goni and Sanchez Berzain from the U.S. to stand trial in Bolivia. The State Department turned down its first petition in 2008, and a second application presented in early 2016 has received no response to date. After the Florida verdict, the human rights commission of Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of its legislature, announced that it believed the outcome provided an incentive to continue pushing on the extradition demand. The normally deeply divided Chamber of Deputies also issued a unanimous statement praising the decision and demanding that Goni and Sanchez Berzain return to the country to face trial.
The mood in Bolivia has been exuberant. When the families of the victims arrived back at El Alto airport two days after the verdict, they were covered by garlands of flowers, amid tears and shouts of “Justice!”
Venezuelans Flee to Colombia to Escape Hunger, but Find Little Relief
“The Colombian state has many different problems: guerrillas, Colombian returnees, corruption, implementing the peace accords,” says Monsignor Hector Fabio Henao, director of Caritas Colombia, which has been running relief programs for Venezuelan migrants. “This uses a lot of energy and money.” Programs that were assisting the migrants are now running out of resources. Just a five-minute drive from Yackeisy Uzcategui’s shack, a community kitchen stands locked up and unused. It used to feed 200 people a day, before the organization operating it ran out of money. “I’ve visited a number of these centers now,” the WFP’s Hines told News Deeply. “They don’t have sufficient resources.” And she acknowledges there is a funding gap, partly because of local government budget restrictions.
Dire Outlook for Colombia Peace Process After FARC Leader’s Arrest
While Santrich’s pending extradition is also likely to shake confidence in the government’s commitments, this news is just the latest in a series of recent blows to the legitimacy of the FARC peace deal. Authorities have discovered a kickback scheme related to peace deal contracts, a top transitional justice official has resigned, and many coca farmers are on the fenceabout withdrawing support for the accord. Events that delegitimize both the deal and the FARC party are likely to give momentum to the political opposition in the final weeks leading up to presidential elections. Right-wing candidate Iván Duque has already promised “structural changes” to the peace deal, including the peace courts, if he is elected.
U.N. mission in Haiti extended for another year by Security Council
Disagreement in the international community over whether Haiti remains a threat to the region’s peace and security overshadowed the decision Tuesday by the U.N. Security Council to extend its support mission in the Caribbean nation for another year. Both Russia and China abstained during the vote to continue the U.N. Mission for Justice and Support in Haiti — known by the acronym MINUJUSTH — for another year when its mandate expires on Sunday. The resolution also calls for the gradual reduction of U.N. police presence, based on Haiti’s security situation, beginning in October. But the United States’ insistence on widening the scope under which UN forces can be deployed to Haiti beyond the mission’s security operations to restore peace under Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter divided council members.
Nicaragua fires: aid from Costa Rica rejected as blaze destroys rainforest
Fires have raged in one of Nicaragua’s most important protected areas of tropical forest for more than a week, but the government has rejected an offer of assistance from neighbouring Costa Rica. Environmentalists in the Central American country have called on the government to appeal for international help to battle the blaze, which broke out in the Indio Maíz biological reserve on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast on 3 April and is estimated to have consumed more than 5,000 hectares (12,400 acres) of tropical rainforest. “This is possibly the most dramatic ecological disaster ever experienced by Nicaragua, because it’s affecting a tropical rainforest – a very delicate and valuable ecosystem,” the prominent environmentalist Jaime Incer Barquero told the newspaper La Prensa.
Radio Progreso: Honduran journalists under threat
“When the mainstream media talk about the election, they argue that there was no electoral fraud but a successful campaign by Juan Orlando Hernandez. This narrative conceals the real dynamics of the repression, the constitutional breach and the control of the state by an alliance between the oligarchy, political power and multinationals,” says Moreno. Four months since the November election, Radio Progreso has not stopped demanding answers, and its persistence has put it in the crosshairs of opponents.
Cortez is just one of dozens of women who have been victimized under the legal climate in El Salvador, where abortion is banned in all cases and where women are imprisoned following miscarriages and other birth complications. But her case has taken on greater significance because at the hospital, she informed health professionals that her stepfather had raped her repeatedly from the age of 12 until 19. It then took almost a year to get the DNA test that proved Cortez’s stepfather had fathered her baby; prosecutors have continued to stall on obtaining other necessary evidence.
It was the Guatemalan version of a form of information warfare now familiar the world over, with a homegrown name: the net center. Interviews conducted in Guatemala with researchers, journalists, activists, and other sources, as well as reports in the Guatemalan press, show how net centers are now used routinely and relentlessly to harass and intimidate opponents of Guatemala’s entrenched elite. They also reveal what precious little intelligence has been gleaned on the ground about these shadowy operations, which leave little or no paper trail and which appear to operate with protection from the nation’s powerful business interests, long allied with the military.
Widespread killings of candidates cast shadow over Mexican elections
There were no assassinations of mayors during the 1980s and 1990s, according to Justice in Mexico, a research project at the University of San Diego. But today, being a mayor or other regional lawmaker may be among the country’s most dangerous jobs. Mexico’s National Assn. of Mayors recently reported that more than 100 mayors, mayors-elect and ex-mayors had been slain since 2006. That was the year when then-President Felipe Calderon, with U.S. backing, launched a new chapter in Mexico’s war on drugs, including the so-called kingpin strategy that targeted cartel leaders, resulting in battles for fragmented trafficking empires. The last decade has seen heightened intra-cartel clashes, shootouts between traffickers and government forces, and a surge in killings and “disappearances” of citizens.
The Other Border Problem: American Guns Going to Mexico
Many more weapons are still in the hands of cartel gunmen who commit dozens of murders every day. A 2013 study by the University of San Diego’s Igarape Institute estimated that between 2010 and 2012, some 253,000 firearms were purchased to be trafficked over the southern border. The gaps in regulation, like the gun show loophole, make it impossible to know the true numbers.
Instead, toughness needs to be targeted. Murder is extraordinarily concentrated—80% of violent killings in Latin American cities occur on just 2% of streets. Detailed crime statistics enable the police to get to grips with the local factors behind the killing. If they know exactly how and where to apply their efforts, they can make arrests and prevent violence.
According to findings from this Refugees International (RI) report, both the United States and Mexico are deporting individuals with significant protection needs back to Honduras and El Salvador – the countries from which they fled. The report, Putting Lives at Risk: Protection Failures Affecting Hondurans and Salvadorans Deported from the United States and Mexico, finds that the protection process at every stage – from the processing of an asylum application to deportation and reintegration into the country of origin – suffers from serious failures that ultimately put lives at risk. The RI research also found that despite important investments in reception services for deportees, both Honduras and El Salvador have weak protection systems.