Guatemalan Hillside. Anna Vogt
In the past 15 months, at the request of President Obama, Mexico has carried out a ferocious crackdown on refugees fleeing violence in Central America. The United States has given Mexico tens of millions of dollars for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 to stop these migrants from reaching the United States border to claim asylum. Essentially the United States has outsourced a refugee problem to Mexico that is similar to the refugee crisis now roiling Europe.
US government deporting Central American migrants to their deaths
Human rights experts warn that in its haste to expel or deter undocumented immigrants, the US government is scrimping on its obligation to provide asylum to those genuinely in peril in violation of international law. The collateral damage of America’s increasingly unforgiving deportation process is that people are being returned to extremely dangerous situations in Central America, which has some of the highest murder rates in the world. Based on reporting from northern Honduras and freedom of information requests in the US, the Guardian has compiled the stories of three young Honduran men who were all killed soon after deportation. Two of them had originally fled to the US after their brothers were violently attacked by gangs, one of them fatally.
Paint remover: Mexico activists attempt to drone out beleaguered president
Despite a fondness for slogans, Rexiste is less keen to label itself. “We’re not a collective of artists or activists,” says the collective, which, naturally, does not possess a spokesperson. “We operate in the public space, we hack political discourse and we do what we do because it’s part of our everyday lives. We exist because we resist.” Its weapons in the fight against a “military dictatorship that grows amid international silence” are humour, ridicule, art – and now a flying robot. “Droncita was only born a couple of weeks ago but she’s already deeply loved and her videos have been shared across social networks,” says the collective. “The impact’s been surprising and we think it reflects the need to renew the ways in which we get involved in the public debate; protests and marches are necessary but they are not enough.”
Guatemala’s Upcoming Elections: What’s Next?
The people of Guatemala have successfully overthrown a corrupt regime that threatened the integrity of the public institutions and the rule of law. As civil society prepares for a second round of elections, uncertainty is in the air, and the media, political parties, lobbies, and private sector all have an interest in influencing the atypical process taking place in the country.World Policy Journal consulted a panel of experts for their insights regarding the prospects of the political process and possible outcomes in Guatemala.
A new front-line in the war on terror
On August 28, a 17-year-old citizen of El Salvador became the country’s first person to be sentenced for “acts of terrorism” on account of his association with alleged gang activity, the Spanish news agency EFE reported. Identified only as Antonio N, the teenager was accused of attacking a group of police with a handmade weapon. In El Salvador, it is customary to refrain from publishing the full names of minors charged with crimes, but classifying them as terrorists is apparently acceptable. The case was a litmus test for a new ruling. Four days prior to Antonio N’s sentencing, the Salvadoran Supreme Court had decreed that gang membership was now punishable under the 2006 Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism, which can set prison sentences of up to 60 years.
El Salvador’s Military Wants Compensation for Security Risks
Heading out to the street to perform the duties of a cop generates frustration among the soldiers. Between 2010 and 2011, for example, when they assigned soldiers to control the entrances of prisons where gang members were being held, the soldiers became targets for the gangs. In 2015, the year that has broken homicide records as a result of the war between gangs and the state, the soldiers once again have become targets. Through September of this year, 13 soldiers have been killed in 2015. The soldiers, from their position on the streets, ask if the work they do, and what the state offers them in return for risking their life, is worth it.
Community resistance defeats Canadian mining project in Nicaragua
Residents of Rancho Grande, a municipality in the department of Matagalpa, have been fighting to protect their lands and waterways from Vancouver-based company B2Gold’s ‘El Pavón’ open pit gold mining project. Locals have organized marches, boycotts and other actions to demonstrate their overwhelming opposition to mining. On October 12, the Nicaraguan government announced that the mining project would not proceed. Environmental officials determined the project was non-viable, government communications coordinator Rosario Murillo told reporters at the daily press briefing. The Nicaraguan government’s announcement that B2Gold’s ‘El Pavón’ gold mining project is not viable made no explicit reference to the local communities’ vocal opposition to mining in Rancho Grande. However, there is little doubt local resistance was a key factor.
Gaining Ground: Nicaragua’s Women Coffee Farmers
Coffee is one of the world’s most highly-traded commodities, and in Nicaragua, women undertake 70 percent of the work but own just 23 percent of the land, facilities, and products. The lucrative tasks are done by men, who retain control over household incomes, while women’s work in agriculture tends to go unpaid and is slotted between other household chores.
Haitian Cholera Victims tell UN to “Face Justice”
On the morning of October 14, activists will be erecting large portraits of cholera victims outside the United Nations (UN) offices in New York, Geneva and Port-au-Prince to commemorate the 9,000 lives lost from cholera brought to Haiti by UN peacekeepers five years ago. The portraits are a part of a new campaign, Face Justice, which calls on the UN to hear victims’ calls for justice. The campaign demands that the UN accept responsibility for causing the epidemic through faulty waste management, provide reparations, and invest in water and sanitation to eliminate cholera. “Every family in my community lost something because UN peacekeepers gave us cholera. I say to the UN: give us justice,” said Joseph Dade Guiwil, a cholera survivor whose portrait will be featured at the UN.
To support an MCC Haiti Campaign for justice on the 5th anniversary of cholera´s arrival in Haiti, visit facejustice.org
Eyewitness: dread and despair for deportees on Haiti-Dominican border
At the heart of the situation is an often-overlooked distinction between undocumented foreign workers who were recruited by the Dominican state or by companies, and those who crossed the border illegally and lack a valid visa. While every government has a sovereign right to document and count its foreign workers, in this case the process fails to distinguish between different categories of migrants: the unlawful and the undocumented. All the men I spoke to were worried about the future, their loved ones and their livelihoods. They’d left their hearts in the Dominican Republic, together with their families, and they were torn over whether to ask them to uproot their lives and join them in Haiti.
Devil Is in the Detail of Colombian Justice Deal
The complexity of accountability processes, like the Justice and Peace Process, have ended up delivering too little too slowly and at great expense, with frequent need for revision. Indications in the proposal suggest a process that is even more complex than those that have come before it. This is frankly a cause for serious concern.To avoid the difficulties of the past it would be preferable for detailed mapping and costing to be carried out before a decision is made on structures, budgets, prioritization and processes. If the process begins to show signs of stress within a short time, it will indicate that not only have lessons not been learned from the past, it will raise questions about how serious the intention was to do justice at all.While the agreement is, indeed, a most welcome and unexpected surprise, it is much too early to say that it is capable of delivering the kind of truth and justice that Colombia must provide to its injured citizens.
Bolivia’s Morales blames capitalism for climate change
Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has blamed capitalism for climate change and called on industrialised nations to reduce emissions. Speaking at the closing of the People’s Climate Change conference in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba on Monday, Morales declared his intention to represent unheard voices at the UN climate change conference in Paris later this year. He said those countries that were not working to reduce emissions were going against the laws of nature. “Don’t go against the natural world, natural law, go with Mother Earth. She has a certain way of doing things and when you start going against that there are no penalties or fines, there’s only consequences when you go against natural law,” Morales said.