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.
No need for a full border wall, Trump says
President Trump, who made the building of a wall along the border with Mexico a central promise of his campaign, significantly scaled back the pledge Thursday. “You don’t need 2,000 miles of wall because you have a lot of natural barriers,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One during his flight to Paris. “You have mountains. You have some rivers that are violent and vicious. You have some areas that are so far away that you don’t really have people crossing. So you don’t need that.” “You’ll need anywhere from 700 to 900 miles,” he said. About 600 miles of the southern border already are protected by walls, fences or other barriers. It was not clear from Trump’s remarks if the figure he cited referred to new border protections or included those already in existence, but he appeared to suggest that fixing current border fences would count against the total he had in mind.
One Mexican town revolts against violence and corruption. Six years in, its experiment is working
Checkpoints staffed by men with assault rifles, camouflage and body armor greet visitors at the three major entrances to this town. The guards are not soldiers, police officers, drug enforcers or vigilantes. They are members of homegrown patrols that have helped keep Cheran a bastion of tranquillity within one of Mexico’s most violent regions. The town of 20,000 sits in the northwest corner of Michoacan, a state where authorities say at least 599 people were killed between January and May, an increase of almost 40% compared with the same period last year. Cheran hasn’t had a slaying or other serious crime since early 2011. That was the year that residents, most of them indigenous and poor, waged an insurrection and declared self-rule in hopes of ridding themselves of the ills that plague so much of Mexico: raging violence, corrupt politicians, a toothless justice system and gangs that have expanded from drug smuggling to extortion, kidnapping and illegal logging. Six years in, against all odds, Cheran’s experiment appears to be working.
Lessons From Guatemala’s Commission Against Impunity
CICIG’s successes highlight the fundamental weakness of Guatemala’s domestic justice institutions. While the elite group of prosecutors that partners with CICIG within the attorney general’s office has demonstrated capacity, the broader office is overstretched, underfunded, and absent in much of the country. The police and judiciary remain weak and susceptible to corruption. CICIG has not transformed the system or strengthened it enough to stand on its own. The central challenge is to phase out CICIG in a way that enables local capacity to develop but does not prematurely remove the external technical support and accountability that local judicial actors and civil society have come to rely on over the past decade.
El Salvador woman at the heart of legal challenge to Safe Third Country Agreement
When an El Salvador woman and her two children arrived from a Buffalo, N.Y., shelter to the Fort Erie border crossing Wednesday, seeking to make a refugee claim in Canada, a team of lawyers from Toronto’s Downtown Legal Services was on high alert. They had U of T law students waiting and watching to report back from the border. As soon as the woman — identified only as “ABC” in court documents — was denied entry under the Safe Third Country Agreement, the legal team filed a Federal Court challenge to the agreement, which they had been working on for months. The agreement requires refugees to request protection in the first safe country they arrive in. Refugees crossing from the U.S. at official border crossings are usually denied entry into Canada. That’s part of the reason why so many risk sometimes dangerous illegal border crossings to make a refugee claim once already in the country — a legal loophole that’s permitted.
El Salvador does not learn from its past. This country, currently governed by ex-guerilla fighters who feared the repressive groups during the war because they tortured, killed, and raped, has created a repressive group that tortures, kills, and rapes. And all of this always against the poor, who later become the same people who flee and end up seeking refuge in Mexico, the United States, Belize, or Costa Rica. The populations of poor neighborhoods, such as the one where Flores launched the first mano dura plan, now, 14 years after the Salvadoran state placed the fight against gangs at the center of its strategy, find themselves stuck between two fatal fires: the gangs and the police. For its part, the United States continues its policies of deportation and criminalization of its migrant population, of which only a miniscule part belongs to any gang. It would seem that this country has not learned the lessons of past decades either.
Honduras bans child marriages and removes parental permission exception
Lawmakers in Honduras have voted unanimously to ban child marriage, making it illegal in the Central American nation for children under the age of 18 to get married under any circumstances. The law passed on Tuesday raises the minimum marriage age to 18 from 16 and removes all exceptions for child marriage, meaning that girls and boys under 18 cannot get married even with the permission of their parents.
Four years later, Nicaragua’s $40 billion interoceanic canal remains a pipe dream
In late 2015, Wang lost much of his fortune when his Xinwei telecommunications took a beating in China’s stock market, according to Bloomberg.com. Since then, HKND has sporadically announced new environmental impact studies, but there’s no canal construction to be seen anywhere. Ortega has not talked about “brother” Wang nor the canal project over the past two years, Chamorro said. HKND recently surfaced as a sponsor of Nicaragua’s “Puccini Festival” in honor of Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924.) The festival featured Puccini’s “Tosca” opera, with one of its leading roles played by — you guessed it — Laureano Ortega. My opinion: This whole story looks like a script for a comic movie, but it’s a sad reflection of a poverty-stricken country that is run like a family fiefdom by Ortega and his wife. As Chamorro told me, the bottom line is that there is no canal, and growing fears of a massive corruption scheme. There are fears that Wang could now use his 50-year concession to sell the rights to ports, airports and tourism complexes, with zero benefit for the Nicaraguan people. It would be a textbook case of how authoritarian regimes often become the most incompetent, and the most corrupt.
Haiti to reform army after 20 years without
The UN departure has sparked a debate over whether Haiti should or should not form a new army. Many politicians support the idea arguing it would provide jobs for young people. But the government’s critics say a military force could quickly become politicised, becoming a weapon in the hands of whoever is the president or prime minister. For much of Haiti’s history, the army has been used to crack down on political dissent by a series of authoritarian presidents.
This special multimedia report takes you deep inside an Urabeños’ cell in the prized criminal territory of Bajo Cauca, a region in the northern part of the department of Antioquia. It offers a unique insight into how a BACRIM network operates and what their role in the underworld is. Based on three years of investigation and interviews with current and former BACRIM members with different ranks and responsibilities, this report presents the BACRIM in the words of its members, as well as their victims and the Colombian authorities. The section on money examines the ways the BACRIM profit from a broad and diversified portfolio of criminal activities. Power analyzes the BACRIM’s inner dynamics, structure, and social control. Murder breaks down the functioning of the BACRIM’s armed wings and their assassin networks.
New UN mission in Colombia to focus on reintegrating FARC
The Security Council unanimously approved a resolution Monday authorizing a new U.N. political mission in Colombia to focus on reintegrating leftist rebels into society after more than 50 years of war — a task the United Nations calls the most urgent challenge following the rebels’ handover of their last weapons. A British-drafted resolution establishes the United Nations Verification Mission in Colombia for an initial period of one year starting on Sept. 17, when the mandate of the current mission that has been monitoring the cease-fire and disarmament process ends. It asks Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to make detailed recommendations on the size, operational aspects, and mandate of the new mission within 45 days.
No alcohol, no violence: life inside the Bolivian community led by women
Though President Evo Morales’ administration passed a law in 2013, in order to stop intimate partner violence and penalise the abusers, with femicide punishable by 30 years in prison, only one-fifth of cases have resulted in prison sentences, according to Bolivia’s national newspaper, La Razón. For almost two decades, the people of Maria Auxiliadora have taken the issue into their own hands. The community was founded by five women, and its leadership roles, president and vice-president, are always filled by women. The founders came up with the idea of Maria Auxiliadora while working on a committee on intrafamily violence and reproductive health, as a way to help families escape the pressures of living in precarious rented accommodation with abusive landlords. The community’s land is collectively owned and cannot be sold for profit, so prices remain affordable to low-income families and guarantees them a stable home.