Adam Isacson

Defense, security, borders, migration, and human rights in Latin America and the United States. May not reflect my employer’s consensus view.

Archives

May 2017

May 31, 2017 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

John Vizcaíno / Reuters photo at El Tiempo (Colombia)> Caption: “En las zonas veredales, los guerrilleros han hecho los registros de sus armas, pero no las han entregado en su totalidad a la ONU.”

(Even more here)

May 31, 2017

Colombia

EL TIEMPO explica en esta y en la siguiente página los elementos claves de los decretos con fuerza de ley que expidió el Presidente para cumplir los acuerdos de paz, y el nuevo cronograma del desarme

If war was waged with military precision, everything from rain to poor roads seems to be derailing carefully laid plans for peace

Guatemala

When will the Armed Forces stop supporting the National Civil Police?

Mexico

A kilogram of opium gum can earn the impoverished farmers about $800 from the drug traffickers who purchase it. After the gum is processed, a kilogram can sell for about $50,000 on the streets of Chicago

The complex business of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without papers is changing profoundly. Here are the stories of human smugglers in Mexico and would-be immigrants looking to illegally cross

“Yes, I do have information from the grassroots about the bosses, but my work has been more about people who have had to suffer the narco”

Venezuela

In my view it is entirely legitimate for Almagro to have invoked the Democratic Charter with respect to Venezuela. However, I felt he did it about a year too soon

May 31, 2017 — 0

Five links from the past week

From David Smilde’s WOLA blog report from Caracas. Caption: “Marchers from Caurimare arriving to Los Ruices.”

A devastating 400-page report details how DEA and State Department officials lied to or obstructed superiors and investigators, including the U.S. ambassador and Congress, about controversial use-of-deadly-force incidents during 2012 counter-drug operations in Honduras.

After eliminating Brazilian legislators accused of corruption, then those “who don’t show up for debates, don’t vote or don’t sponsor legislation,” The Globe and Mail “wound up with just a dozen names” and interviewed five of them for their opinions about what it would take to fix Brazil’s endemic corruption.

The Cochabamba-based NGO brought to Bolivia a group of Colombian coca-growers involved in their country’s post-peace accord effort to negotiate voluntary crop eradication. This report looks at some lessons the group could take from Bolivia’s experience, including “how bringing community members to the fore of policy formulation
and eliminating eradication as a requirement for aid can improve conditions in coca growing areas.”

David attends a large opposition march in Caracas and finds an encouraging degree of unity. He is concerned, though, by a lack of poorer participants and at least a tacit acceptance of violent tactics.

This is a shamefully mistitled article–the former guerrillas profiled here are working for peace in Cali’s crime-ridden slums, and are “endangered,” not “dangerous.” The article and videos themselves, though, offer a good glimpse into the challenges of ex-combatants’ reintegration, and of securing communities of displaced people, like Cali’s vast Aguablanca neighborhood.

May 31, 2017 — 0

The day ahead: May 31, 2017

I will be difficult to contact today. (How to contact me)

I’m taking the day off, as my daughter competes all day in the preliminary rounds of the National Spelling Bee outside Washington. I’ll be cheering her on (or consoling her) and spending little time on my phone and computer.

May 30, 2017 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

AFP photo at El Colombiano (Medellín, Colombia). Caption: “Henrique Capriles, líder de la oposición en Venezuela.”

(Even more here)

May 30, 2017

Colombia

Ahora, a cruzar los dedos, para que el D+180+20 sí se concrete pues de esa fecha está colgada la expectativa de que una vez los colombianos vean a los guerrilleros sin armas comiencen a finalmente creer en el acuerdo

A partir del 1 de junio y hasta el 20 de junio, la totalidad de los integrantes de las FARC-EP, incluyendo las milicias, habrán hecho dejación de armas y tránsito a la legalidad

Diez policías asesinados y 37 heridos, en 35 ataques contra la Fuerza Pública, perpetrados en nueve departamentos del país, es el saldo que deja hasta ahora el plan pistola ejecutado por la organización criminal “los Urabeños”

Someone stole Mueller’s work laptop and iPhone 6 as well as McDuffie’s iPhone 6, all government-issued equipment. Mueller’s personal iPad and iPhone were also stolen

Cuba

Kavulich said that the administration will enact “increased enforcement relating to travel,” and “a focus upon discouraging transactions with entities controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of the Republic of Cuba”

Honduras

The discovery of coca plantations and drug laboratories in Honduras could be a sign that the country’s role in the region’s drug trade is changing

Venezuela

El líder opositor venezolano Henrique Capriles denunció qu fue “golpeado” por “efectivos de la (militar) Guardia Nacional” cuando se retiraba afectado por gases lacrimógenos

May 30, 2017 — 0

The day ahead: May 30, 2017

I will be difficult to reach today. (How to contact me)

It’s a complicated day, schedule-wise: my daughter has a few hours of preliminary competition at the National Spelling Bee, then I’ll be in the office for a few hours of meetings (a foundation, a journalist). Any other time will be spent with the family here at the Spelling Bee venue, or tucked away doing a bit of writing. I may not be able to respond immediately to any effort to get in touch with me, and tomorrow may be similar.

May 29, 2017 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Photo from Verdad Abierta (Colombia). Caption: “Pasadas las 9:30 de la mañana del miércoles, la marcha indígena salió del Campus Meléndez de la Universidad del Valle, ubicado en el sur de Cali, hacia el centro de la capital vallecaucana. En ese sitio instalaron sus campamentos el día anterior y pasaron la noche.”

(Even more here)

May 29, 2017

Brazil

Every week seems to bring reports of a new atrocity committed against indigenous people in some remote part of the country. But nothing seems to shock our society anymore

The forces lined up against conservation have deep roots. The post-colonial history of Brazil is, to a large extent, the history of deforestation

Colombia

Esa decisión de la Corte podría incluso llegar a ser positiva pues puede ser una oportunidad de fortalecer la legitimidad democrática de la implementación del acuerdo de paz

En septiembre el presidente Juan Manuel Santos presentará a la ONU la intención que tiene para expandir la participación militar en misiones internacionales

Colombia, Mexico

El trabajo es en zonas rurales y urbanas, en selvas y montañas. Y por aquellas remotas tierras, en cualquier momento puede escucharse una ranchera mexicana interpretada por algún artista de México

Venezuela

Goldman Sachs bought about $2.8 billion in Venezuelan bonds that had been held by the oil-rich country’s central bank, a lifeline to President Nicolás Maduro’s embattled government

May 29, 2017 — 0

The day ahead: May 29, 2017

I will be mostly out of contact today. (How to contact me)

Today is a national holiday in the United States. Bizarrely, I’m writing from a hotel about 20 minutes’ drive from home: my daughter is in the National Spelling Bee, an event that lasts all week. Some days this week, I’ll probably be home: I can’t imagine staying in this hotel when we have a perfectly good house nearby with better internet and a fridge full of food. But today, with the opening ceremonies coming and a daughter who is thrilled to be competing, we’re spending Memorial Day at the event.

May 29, 2017 — 0

The week ahead

Bizarrely, I’m writing from a hotel room about 20 minutes from my house. My daughter is one of 290 contestants in the National Spelling Bee. As she’s representing the District of Columbia, we’ve come the shortest distance to compete. It’s nice, though, that we’ve been given a hotel room at the site of the event, just like all the other kids.

After Monday, which is a national holiday in the United States, I’ll be splitting my time this week between the Spelling Bee, our home, and the office. On the calendar I have meetings with funders and several meetings on Capitol Hill to discuss what we’re working on with legislative staff. I’ll post things here when I get a chance.

May 28, 2017 — 0

The past week in U.S. border security

Doug Mills photo at The New York Times. Caption: “United States Border Patrol agents listened to President Trump at the Department of Homeland Security in January. Mr. Trump plans to increase the number of agents along the Mexican border.”

  • The Trump administration’s 2018 budget request for Homeland Security includes $1.57 billion to build 74 miles of new border wall/fence in south Texas and near San Diego, California. (That’s $21.2 million per mile.) It would also fund the hiring of 500 new Border Patrol agents (toward an eventual goal of 5,000, expanding the force to 25,000) and 1,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcement and removal agents (toward an eventual goal of 10,000, expanding the deportation force to about 15,000).
  • Acapulco, Mexico-based journalist Martín Méndez Piñeda had to leave Mexico after receiving repeated death threats in a country where six journalists have been murdered in early March. Méndez made the mistake of trying to seek asylum in Donald Trump’s United States, where ICE officials decided he was a flight risk and shipped him to await a ruling in a filthy, overcrowded private detention facility in Sierra Blanca. Méndez ultimately gave up his claim and went back to Mexico, where he says he fears for his life.
  • ICE’s apprehensions of undocumented migrants in the U.S. interior shot up 38 percent in the first three months of the Trump administration, compared with the same period in 2016. This owes to less focus on undocumented people with criminal record. The 41,318 people detained, or 400 people per day, is still a lower rate than ICE detentions during Barack Obama’s first term. (They declined afterward.)
  • At Vox, Dara Lind and Tara Golshan have updated their encyclopedic overview of “How Donald Trump Could Actually Build the Wall — and Who Would Pay the Price.”
  • The Washington Post’s Joshua Partlow explores the reduction in migration to the United States after Trump’s inauguration. He finds that many would-be migrants from Central America, including those fleeing violence, are putting their plans on hold to see how Trump’s hard-line approach plays out. Others are coming, but no longer seeking out U.S. border authorities once they arrive on U.S. soil.
  • The New York Times’s Ron Nixon looks at corruption in U.S. Border Patrol, a phenomenon that could worsen if hiring standards are loosened to speed an expansion of the force. Nixon discusses the well-known case case of Texas-based agent Joel Luna, an emblematic example of the corruption risk.
May 28, 2017 — 0

5 tweets that made me laugh this week

May 26, 2017 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

(Even more here)

May 26, 2017

Bolivia, Colombia

In February 2017, a delegation of 8 coca growers from across Colombia traveled to Bolivia to learn about the country’s shift from forced eradication and conditioned alternative development to community coca control and integrated development

Brazil

The deployment of soldiers shocked a capital already shaken by the day’s violence and an investigation into corruption allegations against the president

Central America Regional

The officials placed particular emphasis on the White House’s threat to cut federal funds for local law enforcement bodies should they refuse to support the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Colombia

Para doblegar a los ‘gaitanistas’ se requiere entender mejor esta amenaza. Aspecto en el que, por el momento, hay más sombras que luces

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras

Tens of thousands of firearms smuggled from the United States help to fuel extreme rates of violence

Venezuela

Venezuelan photographers who have watched their society crumble reflect on the images that have moved them most

What Venezuela needs now is many more Luisa Ortega Díazes. The attorney general did not switch sides. She merely signaled that, from now on, she will act impartially

May 26, 2017 — 0

The day ahead: May 26, 2017

I’m taking today off work. (How to contact me)

I’ve got a series of errands to run this morning and an article to write for another publication this afternoon. I wish my U.S. readers a good Memorial Day weekend.

May 25, 2017 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

(Even more here)

May 25, 2017

Brazil

The use of the armed forces in Brazil touches a nerve among critics of the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985

The speaker of the lower Chamber of Deputies would be interim president for up to 30 days until Congress votes on who would finish Temer’s term, which runs through 2018. But there’s a hitch: Officials facing criminal charges are ineligible

Desde criação da lei em 1999, os militares só foram convocados para atuar em manifestações no leilão do Campo de Libra, em outubro de 2013

Colombia

Thousands of demobilised Farc guerrillas are set to descend on Cali. But with drug gangs offering high salaries, is this already violent city on the brink of chaos?

Cuba

USAID programs in Cuba, which have been highly controversial in recent years, aren’t funded under the Trump administration’s proposed State Department budget

Guatemala

El coronel (activo) Edgar Rubio Castañeda ha escrito un libro titulado Desde el cuartel y se ha atrevido a decir lo que para muchas personas ya es sabido

Honduras

Americans accompanying partner forces on missions in developing countries, ostensibly as trainers and advisers, sometimes drift into directly running dangerous operations with little oversight

THE DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION repeatedly lied to Congress about fatal shooting incidents in Honduras, including the killing of four civilians during a DEA-led operation, according to a devastating 424-page report

The report says the DEA failed to properly investigate the incident, frustrated attempts to find the truth and stuck to an inaccurate version of events

Mexico

Autoridades federales indicaron que ninguno de los elementos de la Sedena está por ahora detenido ni suspendido de sus funciones

Members of the next generation, known as “narcojuniors,” have shown themselves more impulsive and violent. They also seek a higher profile and apparently headlines as well

Desde los primeros días de este año, la Dirección General de Comunicación Social de la Sedena dejó de enviar comunicados e invitaciones para eventos públicos organizados por la Sedena a La Jornada y al reportero que cubre la fuente informativa

Even though I have good reason to fear for my life, U.S. officials refused to let me stay. And now I’m in danger again

Venezuela

Syria and Venezuela plotted in recent years to evade international sanctions on Syria through a secret deal to transport its crude oil through Russia to the Caribbean

Organizaciones no gubernamentales defensoras de los derechos humanos (Provea y Cofavic) han manifestado su preocupación por el sometimiento de ciudadanos civiles a la jurisdicción militar

May 25, 2017 — 0

The day ahead: May 25, 2017

I’m going to be in meetings all day, and hard to reach. (How to contact me)

I’ve got meetings all day, all of them at WOLA’s offices. A morning call with the creators of “Security Force Monitor,” an interesting new human rights data project. Then a conference call with WOLA supporters to talk about our border security and migration work. (I’m getting a late start today because I wanted to do this call on a proper full night’s sleep.) A meeting to talk about our legislative strategy for border work. A meeting with a visiting USAID Colombia official. And a meeting with a Canadian expert. I probably won’t post much here today, as I won’t have my fingers on a computer keyboard.

May 24, 2017 — 0

The past week in U.S. policy toward Latin America

Image from the Justice-State inspectors-general report on Honduras (PDF).

  • The Trump administration’s budget request to Congress, issued May 23, has a lot of bad news for Latin America. The foreign assistance request would slash aid to the region by 35 percent. The Homeland Security request would build 74 miles of border wall and hire 500 new Border Patrol agents. The request will now undergo a long march through the Republican-majority Congress, which should soften (if not totally undo) the cuts. Here’s WOLA’s analysis, in written/graphical and podcast form. Here’s coverage from Reuters, El Tiempo (Colombia), Proceso (Mexico), and La Prensa (Nicaragua).
  • A report issued jointly by the State and Justice Departments’ inspectors-general [PDF], the product of years of work, confirms the worst of what many of us suspected about three 2012 incidents in Honduras, in which DEA personnel working with Honduran security forces participated in events involving use of lethal force. In the most notorious of these, a shooting on a remote river in the town of Ahuas, four innocent civilians died. The report documents rather shocking levels of non-cooperation on the part of DEA and State Department officials, including long delays in responding to inquiries and the passing of misleading information to the U.S. ambassador and to members of Congress.
  • 58,706 Haitian citizens have been living in the United States under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program since the 2010 earthquake. This status expires in July. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly just granted them six more months, with instructions “to handle their affairs” and prepare massively to leave the United States in January. The Haitians’ situation is seen as a preview of what may happen to 263,000 Salvadorans and 86,000 Hondurans whose TPS is to expire early next year.
  • Mexico’s defense and navy secretaries were in Washington May 23 for a trilateral meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan. Releases were vague on what specifically they talked about.
  • Several days earlier, Mexico’s foreign affairs and interior secretaries were in Washington for talks with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary Kelly. They were talking about improving cooperation against transnational organized crime, and presumably against production of heroin in Mexico. A joint press conference was cordial but announced no new initiatives.
  • Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos paid a visit to Washington where he met for the first time with Donald Trump. The meeting was cordial, as were Santos’s meetings with members of Congress, although Santos heard concerns about rising coca cultivation in Colombia. Santos did not get from Trump a ringing endorsement of the November 2016 peace accord with the FARC guerrillas, though Trump, in response to a reporter’s question, assured that “There’s nothing tougher than peace, and we want to make peace all over the world.”
  • The Trump administration levied sanctions against eight Venezuelan Supreme Court justices whose March decision effectively to annul the opposition-led legislature sparked protests that continue today. WOLA’s David Smilde doubts that they will be effective, and worries the sanctions may in fact increase the government’s “exit costs.” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s eloquent response to Trump was that he “get your pig hands out of here.”
  • A Trump administration review of U.S. policy toward Cuba was expected to be complete last week, but no announcement was forthcoming. Any decision has been put off for a couple of weeks.

The following legislation moved in Congress in the past week:

May 24, 2017 — 0

At wola.org: Trump’s 2018 Foreign Aid Budget Would Deal a Devastating Blow to Latin America

Here’s a new post at WOLA’s site in which I perform serious analysis on something I should normally be poking fun at: the Trump administration’s proposal to cut Latin America’s foreign assistance by 35 percent next year.

Map showing which countries get cut the most

Some observations:

  • Assistance to Central America would drop by 39 percent from 2016 to 2018.
  • Assistance to Colombia would drop by 16 percent from 2016 to 2018, and by 36 percent from 2017 to 2018.
  • Assistance to Mexico in the foreign aid bill would drop by 45 percent from 2016 to 2018.
  • Along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Homeland Security appropriation calls for new fencing at a cost of $21.2 million per mile.
  • Foreign Military Financing, the main military aid program in the foreign aid budget, would fall to zero throughout Latin America.
  • The military aid cuts may get a boost from Defense Department budget aid accounts.
  • The request devastates independent development agencies.

Read the whole thing here.

May 24, 2017 — 0

WOLA Podcast: The Trump Administration Wants to Slash U.S. Aid

WOLA’s website will shortly post a written/graphical overview of the Trump administration’s dumpster-fire of a foreign aid budget request. But for now, here’s a very fact-filled conversation about it between WOLA’s program director, Geoff Thale, and me.

May 24, 2017 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Sandy Huffaker/The Washington Post via Getty photo at Vox. Caption: “A family is reunited through the fence during a Children’s Day celebration in San Ysidro, CA in 2016.”

(Even more here)

May 24, 2017

Brazil

We wound up with just a dozen names and decided to seek out one from each major political party – and one unicorn, the only politician everyone agrees is clean

Colombia

En su presupuesto para el año 2018, el presidente republicano solicita US$ 251.400 millones en recursos administrados por el Departamento de Estado para la guerra contra las drogas y algunos programas de desarrollo social y posconflicto

Mexico

Polls show the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), the new party of veteran leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, could wrest control of the state of Mexico from the PRI

En materia de cooperación militar destinó 87 millones 660 mil dólares a México, aproximadamente la mitad de los fondos que se enviaron al país en 2016

The request would cover 32 miles of border wall construction, 28 miles of levee wall in the Rio Grande Valley, and 14 miles of a new border wall system to replace fencing south of San Diego

“We are absolutely dead serious about the wall,” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said

Central America Regional, Mexico

Tuesday’s proposal foresees 2018 Mexican aid of $87.66 million, down more than 45 percent from the 2016 outlay

Nicaragua

La cooperación caería a 200,000 dólares para el año fiscal 2017 – 2018 y se concentraría solo en educación y formación militar internacional

Venezuela

The apparent olive branch may never come to fruition, as a special assembly to rewrite the nation’s constitution is slated to take place first

Both the government and opposition leaders — who urge nonviolence — appear to be losing control

Riots and looting have raised risks that protests could spin out of control

May 24, 2017 — 0

The day ahead: May 24, 2017

I should be reachable for a while in the early afternoon. (How to contact me)

I’ll be doing some drive-time radio interviews in Colombia this morning to talk about the Trump administration’s proposed aid cut to the country. We’ll put out a memo hopefully in the morning explaining what’s in this disaster of a budget and what comes next. In the late morning I’ll also record a podcast about it with a colleague or two at WOLA. I’ve got a morning call scheduled with a journalist and an afternoon meeting to plan a conference call with WOLA supporters. When not doing that, I’ll be on a writing deadline for an academic article about U.S. policy toward Colombia.

May 23, 2017 — 0

Hopefully this 2018 foreign aid budget request is dead on arrival in Congress

The Trump administration issued its 2018 budget request to Congress today. We’ll have a proper memo out about this tomorrow. For now, here’s a crude graphic that shows pretty clearly how radical and irresponsible the foreign aid part of the request is.

Chart of U.S. aid to Latin America since 1996 showing 2018 request dropping to levels not seen since 2001.

The Homeland Security request, meanwhile, proposes to build 74 miles of border wall at a cost of over $21 million per mile. That’s about three times the cost of the border fencing built in the years after passage of the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

More analysis—and probably a better-looking graphic—will come to wola.org tomorrow.

May 23, 2017 — 0

Some articles I found interesting this morning

(Even more here)

May 23, 2017

Colombia

Las Farc han venido aplicando lo que llaman ‘la estrategia Mojoso’ para que como ese, otros disidentes le apuesten al proceso de paz

Colombia, Venezuela

En un comunicado, el Ministerio de Defensa de Colombia aseguró que los vehículos fueron desplegados en 2015 con base en los acuerdos entre autoridades de ambas naciones

Haiti

“As soon as you put your head down to sleep, it’s six months. After six months, what is next?”

The announcement did not please advocates on either side of the immigration debate. It foreshadowed the battles to come next year, when the Trump administration will decide the fate of about 263,000 people from El Salvador

Mexico

Durante el encuentro, realizado en Washington entre el domingo pasado y ayer, se establecieron diálogos estratégicos, en los que se abordaron temas sobre la defensa de América del Norte, ayuda humanitaria, apoyo a Centroamérica y el Caribe, cooperación para operaciones de mantenimiento de la paz

Mendez described the Sierra Blanca Detention center in West Texas as “small, with metal bunks, worn-out rubber mattresses, wooden floors, bathrooms with walls covered in green and yellow mold, weeds everywhere and snakes and rats that come in at night”

Venezuela

Venezuela’s state prosecutor has panned unpopular President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to create a grassroots congress, deepening a rare public split among the ruling Socialists

Demonstrators lit the house in the city of Barinas where Chavez spent his early years aflame Monday afternoon along with several government buildings

May 23, 2017 — 2

The past week in Colombia’s peace process

(1) In a decision announced late on May 17, Colombia’s Constitutional Court appears to have dealt a severe blow to implementation of the FARC peace accord. In a 5–3 vote, the magistrates did away with key parts of “fast track,” the special legislative authority the Court approved last December to allow swift passage of laws to enact the November 2016 peace accord’s commitments.

The new changes result from the Court’s consideration of a suit brought by Iván Duque, a senator from the opposition party led by former president Álvaro Uribe, the peace accord’s most vocal opponent. The Court struck down the ability to get a vote on a full bill without amendments or modifications (votar en bloque, similar to how the U.S. Congress approved free-trade agreements in the 1990s and 2000s). It also struck down a requirement that the executive branch approve of changes to implementing laws under “fast-track” (a protection against changes that might violate the accord’s commitments). The decision does not undo the few peace-implementation laws that have already passed, like the amnesty for ex-guerrillas not accused of war crimes.

Without “fast track,” the danger is that Colombia’s Congress might treat what was agreed after four years of negotiations in Havana as a mere suggestion. Legislative wrangling could delay, change unrecognizably, or quietly kill some of the government’s accord commitments.

We still need to see the actual text of the decision to interpret the potential damage. In the meantime, here is a sample of what analysts are saying.

  • The government’s lead negotiator in the FARC talks, Humberto de la Calle, said the Court’s decision “opens the door to a cascade of modifications to what was agreed,” calling it a “swindle.”
  • Juanita León and Tatiana Duque of La Silla Vacía discuss the “hard blow” that the Court’s decision represents for the peace accord’s implementation, which they say is a “triumph” for Uribe’s right-wing opposition party. On the bright side, though, León and Duque say that congressional deliberation and compromise might restore to the accord some of the credibility it lost when voters rejected it by a 50.2 to 49.8 percent margin in an October 2, 2016 plebiscite.
  • “The legalistic complexity of the debate is such that few Colombians have managed to understand the devastating effects that this decision has on the future of peace in Colombia,” wrote Semana columnist María Jimena Duzán.
  • Rodrigo Uprimny, a much-cited legal scholar from the think-tank DeJusticia, believes the decision was “legally incorrect” and worries that it might “make accord implementation slower and harder, as political groups opposed to or skeptical of peace could use the ability to introduce changes, and to vote article by article, to attempt, in bad faith, to block the accord’s implementation.”
  • Semana magazine lays out seven pessimistic effects that the decision will have on the peace process, concluding that “the ball is now in Congress’s court” at a bad time–just 10 months before the next quadrennial legislative elections.

(2) President Juan Manuel Santos visited Washington and met with Donald Trump at the White House. Trump appeared not to have been well-briefed about Colombia. “Trump did not mention Colombia’s hard-fought peace process until a reporter asked about it,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “He then praised Santos’ efforts. ‘There’s nothing tougher than peace,’ Trump said, ‘and we want to make peace all over the world.’”

Santos’s visit came just 13 days after the 2017 foreign aid budget became law, including the $450 million post-conflict aid package (called “Peace Colombia”) that the Obama administration had requested in February 2016. (The link points to $391 million in aid, because it doesn’t include assistance through the Defense Department budget and a few smaller accounts.)

As the Trump administration prepares to issue to Congress its request for foreign assistance in 2018—which is expected today—two senators appear to be occupying the Republican legislative majority’s “turf” on Colombia policy. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) explained in a Miami Herald column that he opposes the FARC peace accord, but supports the “Peace Colombia” aid package with conditions. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) supports a more generous approach to lock in the peace accord’s security gains. Sen. Blunt, along with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), co-chaired an Atlantic Council task force that issued a report coinciding with Santos’s visit, which endorsed aid within the “Peace Colombia” framework.

(3) The Colombian Presidency’s post-conflict advisor, Rafael Pardo, says the government will launch 12 pilot projects this year to start work on one of the most ambitious parts of the peace accord’s rural development chapter: a cadaster, or mapping of all landholdings in the country.

May 23, 2017 — 0

The day ahead: May 23, 2017

I should be reachable much of the day. (How to contact me)

Other than a morning car maintenance appointment and lunch with a congressional staffer, I’m in the office all day. Today is when we expect to see the first details of the Trump administration’s 2018 budget request, and we’ll be crunching those numbers as quickly as possible to produce a memo explaining the extent of the potential damage.

I’ll be looking at:

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