Weekly News Roundup, Sept 18

Former market square in Dipurdu, a riverside community in Colombia’s Choco. Photo: Anna Vogt

Latin American countries welcome Syrian refugees

Latin American countries are opening their doors to Syrians fleeing the civil war in their country, as Europe struggles with a growing refugee crisis. Chile and Venezuela have this week both offered to take in Syrian refugees , and Brazil said it would continue to welcome people escaping the country’s brutal conflict. Argentina and Uruguay have also created special programs to resettle Syrian refugees since the war started in 2011.

Q&A with Alice Driver: How journalists can cover violence against women in Mexico

I framed the issue in terms of analyzing the second victimization – the way the media, both national and international, have systematically blamed the disappeared and murdered women and their families for crimes. In newspapers, on TV, in films and in books, feminicide victims are often described in physical terms such as the size of their breasts, the type of underwear they wear, or the color they paint their fingernails.

NEW REPORT CASTS DOUBT ON THE OFFICIAL VERSION OF MEXICO’S AYOTZINAPA DISAPPEARANCES

The report negates the Mexican government’s narrative that after the students had been forcibly disappeared by municipal police they were handed over to a criminal group and subsequently incinerated in a trash dump. “The experts’ report makes clear that the government attempted to sell to the families, Mexican society, and the international community a version of the events that, far from being the truth, is not backed up by scientific evidence,” affirmed Meyer. “The government preferred expediency over veracity and went to great lengths, including likely torture, to back up their version of the events,” she said.

Showdown in Guatemala

Corruption charges are certainly not new in Guatemala, nor in Central and Latin America as a whole. But because the popular uprising had such a dramatic effect, leaders and people in many countries in the region are paying attention. Maldonado called on protesters to remain vigilant and not to stop. “This is an opportunity,” he said. “They cannot relax.” Talk to Al Jazeera sat down with President Alejandro Maldonado to discuss politics, protests, corruption and impunity in Guatemala. We also talk to one of the leaders of the protest movement, Gabriel Wer from “Justice Now”, about the impact of the peaceful protests and his hopes for the future of Guatemala. 

Gang wars in El Salvador, bloodiest year (photo essay)

The government-brokered ceasefire between the two largest gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18th Street Gang, has failed and violence is skyrocketing in El Salvador once more. In May, 635 gang-related homicides were reported, according to official figures. In June, the number rose to 677, and in August, a record number of violent murders took place for over the course of three days.

In Divided Nicaragua, National Dish Brings Rich And Poor Together

Sacasa points out another of vigorón’s distinctions: “Everyone eats vigorón: all classes, all creeds.” The democratic dish survived the notoriously cruel Somoza dictatorship and then a civil war — both just a few decades ago. The war exacerbated social problems and economic disparity, and caused painful fractures within families. The recovery from the Somoza era wasn’t an easy one, but love of a shared dish helped in its own way.

Fraud, Violence, and Protests Cloud Results of Haitian Election

All across the country, the vote was held amid a climate of chaos and tension. In Chansolme, in Haiti’s rural northwest, a polling place supervisor was forced to hide under a bed for hours after being threatened by armed bandits who needed his signature to officially endorse completed ballots that they had provided. In Nippes, another supervisor was held at gunpoint and forced to sign a document canceling the election for an entire voting center. In the commune of Desdunes in the Artibonite, all five voting centers were shut down by midday.

Burning cane and planting corn to reclaim territory in southwestern Colombia

According to the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN), 56 percentof children in the region suffer from hunger or malnutrition and 6,000 of 25,000 local familieshave inadequate land for survival. Meanwhile, less than one percent of Colombia’s population owns 62 percent of all land, and eight sugar company giants possess over330,000 hectares (about 1274 square miles) of local land which is planted horizon to horizon with sugarcane, used principally to produce foodstuffs, ethanol and molasses for both domestic consumption and export. The Nasa have concentrated their occupation on the fields owned by INCAUCA, the multinational sugar company owned by Colombian billionaire Carlos Ardila Lülle. They contend his company represents a “transnational model of plunder and agribusiness.” The Nasa criticize this as an unsustainable model of development that depends upon the cultivation of monoculture crops (sugar, bananas, palm oil and flowers) for export.

THE COLOMBIA-VENEZUELA BORDER CRISIS MUST BE RESOLVED RESPECTING HUMAN RIGHTS

While addressing criminality at the Colombian-Venezuelan border is needed, doing it by inciting xenophobia and trampling Colombians’ rights is not justified. Families of mixed Colombian and Venezuelan nationalities have been separated. There are also refugees, migrants, and Venezuelan nationals wrongly caught up in these actions. Colombians deported report mistreatment at the hands of members of the Venezuelan National Guard, and having to leave documents and all their possessions behind.  As the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights rightly noted on August 28 “collective expulsions run contrary to international law” and the State is obliged “to take an individual decision in respect to each deportation.” 

Social Movements Request End of Term Limits in Bolivia

Thousands of Bolivians marched Thursday to the country’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly to deliver their request for a constitutional reform that would eliminate term limits for the president and vice-president.  Bolivians representing trade unions, campesino organizations, Indigenous communities, and social movements arrived at the offices of the vice-president in the capital of La Paz where Juan Carlos Trujillo, a leader of the Bolivian Workers’ Center, hand delivered the proposal to the president of the senate.

Cleaning Up La Paz: How Bolivia’s biggest city freed itself from a ubiquitous culture of corruption.

Del Granado and his team reinforced this message by translating their principles into a comprehensive policy program, “Zero Tolerance for Corruption,” in 2002. The program had three main components. First, the reformers made it clear that the fight against corruption would entail rigorous prosecution of corrupt acts, supported by codes of conduct for public officials. Second, the new administration planned to foster economic recovery by reforming the city’s fiscal policies, including collecting due revenues and restoring credibility with external funders and aid agencies. Third, Del Granado and his colleagues aimed to reshape the relationship between public institutions and citizens by establishing greater transparency and more participative mechanisms aimed at building trust…Perhaps the most important lesson of the La Paz experience is its emphasis on the promotion of integrity. The city’s experience suggests that interventions based on such an approach are likely to prove more successful than more conventional anti-corruption campaigns. Or, to put it differently: cultivating positive values that stand in opposition to graft appears to be more effective than simply instilling a fear of retribution.

Bolivia: Group translates Facebook into native language

“Aymara is alive. It does not need to be revitalised. It needs to be strengthened and that is exactly what we are doing,” says Ruben Hilari, a member of Jaqi Aru. He tells El Pais that using Facebook in their native language will boost young people’s self-esteem. “If we do not work for our language and culture today, it will be too late tomorrow to remember who we are, and we will always feel insecure about our identity,” he says.