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🟥Week of December 16: I’m shutting down most comms and meetings to finish a big project in the last few days before the holidays. I will be buried in that and difficult to contact. After that, I'm off work until January 6.
I’m leaving Monday morning for an 11-day visit to Colombia. We’ll be doing field research in two regions of the country, plus a couple of days in Bogotá. It’s shaping up to be an incredible trip, though there’s never enough time to do things as thoroughly as one would like.
That’s four days from now. Over those four days, I need to finish a draft of a big report based on our mid-August visit to the Mexico-Guatemala border. I’m already up over 6,000 words, and I think a barely workable first draft is about six hours away.
Once that’s in the bag, I plan to put in many hours of “desk research” about the two Colombian regions I’ll be visiting, so that I can get the most out of our scheduled interviews. All that, plus 11 hours of meetings scheduled for today and tomorrow, packing for the trip, and spending some time with my family over the weekend before I go away.
This is all to say that, because of that workload, this site may be barely active over the next two weeks. I’ll try to post from Colombia, though for security reasons I won’t post from the regions I visit until I leave those regions.
As of today, though, I need to put on hold things like posting news links. I’ll actually be traveling quite a bit in October: Colombia twice, Florida, Los Angeles, and maybe New York. So my posts here will probably be sporadic for a while.
Except for a moment around mid-day, I’ll be hard to reach today. (How to contact me)
My calendar shows three calls scheduled today with mostly academic colleagues in the U.S. and Europe. I’m also taking my daughter for her annual doctor checkup in the early afternoon. This evening WOLA is holding a public reception for Latin American human rights defenders who are in town for the Inter-American Human Rights Commission hearings.
The FY2020 Homeland Security appropriations bill fully funds the President’s request for the border wall while also providing Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the detention capacity needed to enforce immigration laws
According to the van’s driver and multiple witnesses, a police officer fired at a passing motorcycle, piercing the van’s exterior and striking Felix in the back
Bolsonaro asserted that the forests were “practically untouched,” and blamed a “lying and sensationalist media” for propagating fake news about their destruction
Las personas que realizaron este reconocimiento a la Comisión son el mayor del Ejército Gustavo Enrique Soto; José Éver Veloza, excomandante de las AUC; y José Benito Ramírez, quien en la guerra fue conocido ‘Fabián Ramírez’
The classified report — a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post — offers new allegations about the scope of Maduro’s personal knowledge of the guerrillas’ presence and activities
Una vez más el Gobierno colombiano aportará pruebas en contra del régimen chavista que mantiene una relación de beneficio mutuo con el Eln y las disidencias de las Farc
Según el documento, el objetivo de la reunión habría sido discutir “la propuesta de crear un bloque político de la izquierda Latinoamericana, y el apoyo de movimiento de tropas y entrenamiento a milicias (Eln y Gao-re)”
The underpinnings of the bilateral relationship — including trade and cooperation in the fight against transnational crime — have not significantly changed
As the one-year anniversary of López Obrador’s presidency approaches, expectations are high that his government will do what his predecessors have not: provide answers to the tens of thousands of families of the disappeared
Central America Regional, Mexico
Rick Jervis, Daniel Borunda, Vicky Camarillo, Rafael Carranza, Daniel Connolly, Hannah Gaber, Diana Garcia, Julia Gavarrete, Alan Gomez, Daniel Gonzalez, Jack Gruber, Harrison Hill, Sandy Hooper, Bart Jansen, Mark Lambie, Pamela Ren Larson, Sean Logan, Aaron Montes, Omar Ornelas, Nick Oza, Rebecca Plevin, Annie Rice, Joe Rondone, Courtney Sacco, Matt Sobocinski, Lauren Villagran, Jared Weber, “One Deadly Week Reveals Where the Immigration Crisis Begins — and Where It Ends” (USA Today, September 25, 2019).
In one week, thousands of migrants overwhelm the U.S. border. We reveal their dangerous journeys and the broken immigration system that awaits them
Resource conflicts and the management and protection of Venezuela’s natural heritage are not only important from a conservation angle—they are the key to achieving a sustainable political solution and unlocking Venezuela’s future
El presidente de Rusia, Vladímir Putin, reiteró junto al gobernante venezolano Nicolás Maduro, su apoyo a «todas las autoridades legítimas» del país y expresó su respaldo al diálogo entre el chavismo y 5 partidos minoritarios
O’Brien’s appointment may be an indicator that the administration is trying to not “rock the boat” as it enters an election year and instead tout the sanctions and previous saber-rattling
Other than an internal meeting in the morning, I should be around today. My goal is to make huge progress on a report about the Mexico-Guatemala border, so that I can have an advanced draft in process by the time I travel to Colombia for a 10-day trip starting Monday.
I’ll be attending an all-day discussion at the U.S. Institute of Peace about implementation of the the “Leahy Law,” a 20-plus-year-old condition that (in theory) stops U.S. security assistance to foreign units that violate human rights with impunity. I’ll be hard to contact.
The mechanisms for getting the money back are far from simple and Trump administration officials don’t get to decide how these funds are made available
The department said no Native American tribal lands or national parks were included in the transfer, which includes areas next to the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona and Otay Mountain Wilderness in California
Morales is running for a fourth-consecutive term in the Oct. 20 presidential election and some analysts believe that the fires could damage his prospects
Archila reveló que están en ejecución 1,1 billones de pesos y anticipó que en diciembre se sabrá realmente cuánto se requerirá en los próximos años para atender las necesidades de los seis pilares básicos
De los 171 casos reportados por la Oficina del Alto Comisionado para la Paz hasta el 20 de septiembre, se han esclarecido 87 –poco más de la mitad de los casos– y 13 personas han sido condenadas
El escolta de Yolanda González, una lideresa protegida por la UNP, murió abatido por militares y ella resultó gravemente herida. La mujer contradice la versión del Ejército que asegura que el escolta habría disparado primero
Tres candidatos a alcaldías asesinados, cuatro a concejos, más de 40 amenazados y 402 municipios en riesgo de sufrir episodios de violencia política forman la antesala de las elecciones de octubre
Hoy los colombianos podrán escuchar, por primera vez, las declaraciones de los exjefes guerrilleros sobre el secuestro, caso en el que ya están acreditadas 580 víctimas
Aunque durante más de 200 años ningún conflicto ha terminado en guerra y siempre el diálogo ha imperado, algunos dicen que esta vez hay varios factores que podrían empeorar la situación
With diplomatic ties between the two countries severed, the risk of escalation is high. Bogotá and Caracas should open channels of communication to avoid inter-state clashes
While the Trump administration has suspended aid programs to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, Ms. Ou, the ambassador, noted that China had signed 13 cooperation agreements
The government of El Salvador, the country that sent the most asylum seekers to the US in 2018, signed an agreement on Friday to begin accepting asylum seekers sent back from the US
En las pasadas elecciones guatemaltecas ganó la presidencia el exdirector del Sistema Penitenciario Alejandro Giammattei —quien asumirá el próximo enero—, conocido por haber sofocado un supuesto motín en 2006 y después acusado de facilitar una lista de reos para ejecutarlos
Neither the United States nor Venezuela’s neighbors support military action, so barring direct aggression by Venezuela or the Colombian groups now based on its territory, that’s unlikely to be a means for toppling the regime
1:00–3:00 at Due Process of Law Foundation: ¿Puede América Latina perseguir eficazmente crímenes atroces y gran corrupción? Desafíos de las fiscalías y el papel del derecho internacional (RSVP required).
9:30–11:00 at WOLA: Transitional Justice in Guatemala: The Challenges Ahead (RSVP required).
10:00–11:30 at CSIS: The Evolving Role of Taiwan in Promoting Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (RSVP required).
1:30–3:00 at Due Process of Law Foundation: Crímenes de Lesa Humanidad en las Américas: los casos de Colombia, México y Venezuela (RSVP required).
2:20–5:30 at 1800 Massachusetts Ave NW: El Derecho a Defender Derechos en la Mira (RSVP required).
3:30–5:00 at Freedom House: Re-Institutionalization and Transitional Justice in Venezuela (RSVP required).
3:30–5:30 at the Wilson Center: The Struggle for Peace in the Midst of Repression: Unified Voices from Nicaragua’s Civil Society Leaders (RSVP required).
11:00–12:15 at the Migration Policy Institute: The Colombian Response to the Venezuelan Migration Crisis: A Dialogue with Colombia’s Migration Czar (RSVP required).
I spent the weekend writing a memo about police assistance, then a declaration for one of the several cases being litigated against the Trump administration’s efforts to limit asylum. Today, I’ve got a long morning staff meeting, coffee with a colleague in the afternoon, and will be speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event in the evening.
Otherwise I’ll be working on a big report about the Mexico-Guatemala border, nailing down details for a trip to Colombia next week, and answering messages that went unanswered while working on last week’s Colombia conference.
Agents at Dilley are not wearing the Border Patrol’s well-known olive-green uniforms, and are identifying themselves to migrant families and children as asylum officers
The latest case-by-case court records through the end of August 2019 show the court’s active case backlog was 1,007,155. If the additional 322,535 cases which the court says are pending but have not been placed on the active caseload rolls are added, then the backlog now tops 1.3 million
For more than a century, a series of Brazilian governments have sought to move into the country’s interior, developing — or, to be more precise, colonizing — the Amazon
Uno de los antecedentes que influyeron en la posición del Gobierno en la mesa de negociaciones corresponde a las experiencias derivadas del Plan de Consolidación Integral de La Macarena (PCIM), el cual tuvo aplicación en el gobierno de Álvaro Uribe
Por ser el principal paso desde Cúcuta hacia las grandes ciudades del país, el páramo es un paso obligado para los caminantes que emprenden la aventura. Por eso, a lo largo del camino existen 13 albergues
Aunque el Departamento de Estado no ofreció más detalles, la frase “operaciones de influencia” usualmente se refiere a actividades de inteligencia y reclutamiento de fuentes
Among the opposition’s demands are the establishment of a transitional government, trials for all those implicated in the PetroCaribe corruption scandal, prosecution of public officials accused of corruption, and organization of a National Sovereignty Conference
The attorney-general’s office said it would reinvestigate “almost from scratch” what happened to the 43 after they clashed with local police on 26 September 2014
These are turbulent days for the migrants of El Buen Pastor. For the first time since World War II, the U.S. government is turning away thousands of asylum seekers regardless of their need for refuge
Seeking to relieve the pressure from asylum seekers in border towns, Mexico bused asylum seekers south. The country’s practices could violate international law
La aplanadora de la bancada orteguista con sus setenta diputados aprobó este 18 de septiembre el acuerdo de protección de inversiones con el régimen islámico de Irán
But the depression that began here in 2013 has accelerated into a meltdown, the product of falling oil prices, failed socialist policies, mismanagement and corruption
Santos explicó que la reunión se centrará en «la decisión de invocar y a partir de ahí poder tomar decisiones respectivas frente a sanciones». Dijo, no obstante, que de «ninguna manera quiere decir que se aprueba el uso de acciones militares»
There is no indication that the government is moving in the direction of Maduro’s departure followed by a genuinely competitive presidential election under international supervision
We bade farewell to our excellent Colombian visitors / conference participants last night. Today, I should be at WOLA all day, writing and catching up. I have an internal strategy meeting and coffee with a journalist in the afternoon.
Guillermo Botero is at it again. Colombia’s defense minister said that the security forces he oversees can’t capture a wanted criminal because, as a demobilized FARC member, that criminal is somehow protected by the peace accord.
Leider Johani Noscue, alias “Mayimbú,” is a rearmed FARC dissident in Cauca department whose group is believed to be behind the brutal September 1 assassination of mayoral candidate Karina García on a rural road in Suárez municipality. As a former guerrilla, “Mayimbú” faces trial in the post-conflict justice system, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), for war crimes committed during the conflict. The JEP, a deliberative judicial body, hasn’t yet formally expelled him from its list of defendants.
For that reason, Botero seems to think that “Mayimbú” is untouchable. On Tuesday he told Colombia’s Senate chamber, “We consider that he should be taken out of the JEP in order to be arrested. If not, we’ll have to confront him ‘enfusilao’ [on the battlefield, or in the act of committing a crime].” Botero then tweeted that he had sent a letter to JEP President Patricia Linares asking that Mayimbú be expelled “so that the security forces may act.”
But of course the security forces can act. Just because he’s still on the JEP’s list doesn’t mean that “Mayimbú” is exempt from arrest for any crimes committed after December 1, 2016, when the FARC peace accord was ratified. There is ample proof that he has taken up arms again, and indications that he was involved in the attack on Karina García. Of course Colombia’s police and military are free to arrest him without regard to the JEP, and an arrest order exists regardless of his JEP status.
Defense Minister Botero, who oversees both Colombia’s armed forces and police, must know that. So either he was badly confused, or cynically launching a false attack on the JEP, and by extension Colombia’s peace process. Neither case is good.
In a letter to Botero, the JEP responded yesterday that “The security forces have NO limitation to pursue or capture the accused parties who have rearmed or are committing crimes.” “Let the JEP work,” read a statement from Colombia’s increasingly active “Defendamos la Paz” movement. “It does damage to institutions and the peace process to keep promoting this discrediting campaign against the JEP, with inexact, imprecise statements or with lies, to seek to generate a perception in public opinion that transitional justice is promoting or tolerating impunity.”
Guillermo Botero is a problem. He is supposed to be managing military and police forces totaling nearly 450,000 people, including Latin America’s second-largest armed forces. His tenure of more than a year has seen human rights and corruption scandals within the military, signs of discontent among some officers, and some erosion in security gains.
He also makes frequent misstatements that reveal either an alarming lack of diligence about, or deliberate disregard for, critical security concerns. Botero has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the past few years’ hundreds of threats and murders of human rights defenders and social leaders. He has demanded changes in the law that would allow the security forces to confront social protests. Earlier this year, opposition legislators sought to censure him for these and other missteps, including promoting a false narrative about soldiers’ April extrajudicial execution of a former FARC member in the Catatumbo region.
I have heard that Botero is in his position because he was the preferred choice of Álvaro Uribe, the former president and current senator who is the central figure in President Iván Duque’s ruling Centro Democrático party. During his eight years in the presidency, though, Uribe never had a defense minister who was quite this ideologically hidebound, gaffe-prone, or divorced from reality. Guillermo Botero is showing serious managerial shortcomings, he doesn’t appear to have a grip on the truth, and he keeps making egregious public misstatements. He’s out if his depth, and he’s making Colombia’s security apparatus less effective.
After a very well-attended and lively conference yesterday, I’m accompanying our Colombian visitors on a schedule of meetings with officials around Washington. While this should be a great day, I won’t be available to talk, or do much writing, while this is happening.
I’ll be hard to reach today, we’re putting on a conference. (How to contact me)
We’re hosting an all-day conference on Colombia today with a great lineup of speakers. If you can’t come, I’m told there will be a livestream and archived video here.
At times, the judge seemed ill-informed about how MPP works. At one point, she turned to the government prosecutors in the room and asked whether the Mexican government was providing the migrants housing. One of the attorneys said he did not know. (The answer, generally, is no).
The quote is from Gus Bova’s coverage of the new “tent courts” the Homeland Security Department (DHS) has set up next to the border-crossing bridge in Laredo, Texas. (The exchange with Immigration Judge Yvonne Gonzalez also appears in AP’s report.)
There, by video, immigration judges based elsewhere are hearing the asylum cases of asylum-seeking migrants. U.S. authorities have taken these migrants back into the United States for their “video hearings,” which they’ve awaited for months in dangerous northern Mexican border towns under the “Remain in Mexico” policy.
This policy, which DHS calls “Migrant Protection Protocols” in nakedly Orwellian fashion, has sent over 42,000 non-Mexican asylum seekers into Mexico to await their U.S. hearings since it started last December. Court challenges to the policy are ongoing, but judges have let it proceed for now.
To the judge’s question: No, the Mexican government isn’t providing housing. How could it, with at least 4,000 people per week being sent back over the border right now? The only exception is one government-run shelter in Ciudad Juárez that lets a couple of hundred families stay for three or four weeks, even though “Remain in Mexico” victims must wait for months. Another federal shelter may soon open in Tijuana.
Anyone even passingly familiar with Remain in Mexico would know that. Remain in Mexico has received an ocean of media coverage—at least print media coverage, much of it horrifying—since its rollout last December.
Given the high profile and very controversial nature of Remain in Mexico, the judge’s question is shocking. So was her later suggestion that homeless migrants ask cash-strapped pro-bono lawyers for help paying for their housing in Mexico.
Doesn’t Judge Gonzalez—who had 52 Remain in Mexico cases on her docket yesterday—know that every day, DHS is taking hundreds of people, many of them with children, many of them with strong asylum claims, and sending them homeless and income-less into Mexican border towns with high crime rates? Yes, that’s what’s happening, and at least the judges assigned to these Remain in Mexico cases should be aware of that.
“Fewer than three years after Colombia’s oldest guerrilla group signed a peace agreement with the government, the terror leaders have said never mind,” reads today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal’s influential and ultraconservative editorial page. For the Journal, the defection of former chief FARC negotiator Iván Márquez and a handful of other ex-leaders means that the peace accord is over: “[T]he country’s war on terrorism is back on. But the truth is that it was never off. The sooner everyone admits that the better.”
There are three things wrong with this analysis. (You can read my analysis of Márquez’s August 29 defection in the September 3 New York Times.) They are:
1. Assuming that today’s FARC is a monolith. The Journal doesn’t distinguish between re-armed “dissidents” like Márquez, and the 90-plus percent of ex-guerrillas and leaders who remain committed to the peace process. It’s hard to conclude otherwise from a paragraph like this:
It’s doubtful there was ever a FARC commitment to peace. A better read is that the guerrillas took a deal that included amnesty and 10 unelected FARC seats in Congress, but that they had no intention of giving up the lucrative cocaine business or their dream of bringing down Colombia’s democracy.
In fact, maximum leader Rodrigo Londoño and other FARC political party members have been outspokenly critical of Márquez and other dissidents. In Spain’s El País the other day, Londoño called them “a handful of deluded compañeros who, with a proclamation of armed struggle outdated in time and space, want to hide their own mistakes.” (Londoño seems to be more engaged these days going to spiritual reconciliation retreats with ex-paramilitaries and top recording artists.) Meanwhile, preliminary reports indicate that rank-and-file ex-guerrillas, who have long since begun new lives at peace, aren’t being tempted by Márquez’s call to arms. “Everyone saw the video [of Márquez’s August 29 announcement], nobody talked about it, not even the slightest comment. There were activities already scheduled and everyone went out to do their work, and that was it,” an ex-combatant toldEl Espectador. “I don’t know if they really thought we’d just throw everything aside.”
2. Assuming that Márquez’s group has huge convening power. “Mr. Márquez’s paramilitary will pull together thousands of FARC who abandoned the demobilization process,” the Journal warns. That’s not impossible, but it’s not likely.
After nearly three years, about 1,050 ex-guerrillas who demobilized, out of 13,000, are “whereabouts unknown.” Some of them are probably members of over 20 rearmed “dissident” groups around the country. Another 800 or so never demobilized in the first place, they’ve been dissident from the start. These dissidents have probably recruited several hundred more people with no FARC background.
Where does Márquez’s group—whose inaugural video showed only about 20 people, no more—fit in with them? If you’re one of the main dissident leaders, like “Gentil Duarte” or “Iván Mordisco,” it’s not clear what benefit you’d gain from an alliance with high-profile figures like Márquez, “El Paisa,” or “Romaña,” other than adding several commanders with long combat experience. Would you have to share resources with them? Would they challenge your command and your decisions? Would they compete with you internally?
While the FARC dissident phenomenon is a growing security challenge for Colombia (and Venezuela, and Ecuador, and Guyana, and Suriname), they are far from unified, and it’s far from clear that Márquez’s rearmed faction will be their center of gravity.
3. Assuming that “post-accord” really meant “post-conflict.” A sentence like “the country’s war on terrorism is back on” tells us that the Journal‘s editorial-writers haven’t been paying close attention. Violence indicators have been rising in many former conflict zones since at least early 2018. A social leader is killed about every two and a half days. The government failed to fill the vacuum of authority in formerly FARC-influenced territories. Instead, other groups have rushed in: the ELN, FARC dissidents, the Gulf Clan post-paramilitary network, and regional organized-crime militias (“La Constru”, the “Caparros,” the EPL, the “Puntilleros,” “La Empresa,” and many others).
The International Committee of the Red Cross identifies five distinct armed conflicts going on in post-accord Colombia. Of 281 municipalities (counties, of which Colombia has about 1,100) that the Bogotá-based Peace and Reconciliation Foundation prioritized for post-conflict analysis, “there are 123 in which the FARC had previously operated and have since been taken over by illegal armed groups and criminal organizations.”
It is normal for an immediate post-accord period to be more violent than the last years of a conflict, as violent competition continues in ungoverned territories. But that’s where the problem lies: the Colombian government is not doing enough to fill the vacuum in these territories.
The Journal misses that completely. Its editorial-writers apparently have an axe to grind about Colombia’s peace accord, and are keen to declare it prematurely dead. But that analysis not only misses the greater security challenges Colombia faces today: it’s based on some glaring analytical flaws. Good policy will not be based on analyses like these.
We’ve done this every year since 2012: organize a day-long, open-to-the-public event about Colombia. Mostly Colombia-based people, chosen because they’re good explainers, share their on-the-ground knowledge of security challenges, peace efforts, drug policy, and human rights.
The next edition is tomorrow, at the National Press Club in downtown Washington. The event announcement is here. Come join us.
We will also have a livestream at that site, though you’ll have to be familiar with both English and Spanish to follow it without an interpreter feed. If I can, I’ll embed that here too.
Some of the speakers on the agenda are can’t miss.
Ariel Ávila of Bogotá’s Peace and Reconciliation Foundation is on TV constantly in Colombia because he’s a clear, analytical, and energetically opinionated explainer of the conflict, organized crime, corruption, and similar issues. Don’t miss the Foundation’s late-August annual report on the conflict (in Spanish, English summary).
Christoph Harnisch, the longtime head of the International Commission of the Red Cross office in Bogotá, is also a brilliant explainer of what is happening right now in Colombia. The ICRC’s alarming analysis finds “five conflicts” coinciding in this “post-accord” moment.
Xiomara Balanta is the vice president of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), the transitional justice system set up by the 2016 peace accord.
Luis Eduardo “Lucho” Celis of REDPRODEPAZ knows more than nearly anybody about the ELN, and what it would take to make a peace process with them function.
Socorro Ramírez, who unfortunately will have to appear via Skype, has been studying the conflict for decades and I’ve learned a lot from her.
Jacqueline Castillo Peña lost a brother to the Colombian Army’s “false positive” killings a decade ago, and now heads a victims’ group, the Mothers of False Positives.
Father Sterlin Londoño is a longtime social leader from central Chocó department and member of the National Afro-Colombian Peace Council.
Marco Romero, a longtime colleague, heads CODHES, a human rights group that pioneered work on internal displacement in the 1990s and has grown in recent years.
I first knew Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno when she was Human Rights Watch’s Colombia person and, later, author of the excellent book There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia. Now, she’s the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
Humberto Ohana/Zuma Press/PA Images photo at Open Democracy. Caption: “Jun 28, 2017 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Residents and children walk the street as Brazilian police forces wait in a local food shop prior to a raid on drug dealers in the favela Pavao Pavaozinho located in Copacabana.”
Democrats opposed the bill because it includes $12.2 billion to build new sections of the wall. Senate Democrats are threatening to filibuster the legislation over border funding
Since 2018, the United States has adopted a series of migration policies that have caused significant changes for the effective enjoyment of the human rights of migrant persons, asylum-seekers, and refugees in the country
At times, the judge seemed ill-informed about how MPP works. At one point, she turned to the government prosecutors in the room and asked whether the Mexican government was providing the migrants housing
Powered by murky sources of capital and rising demand for beef, a violent and corrupt frontier is now pushing into indigenous land, national parks and one of the most preserved parts of the jungle
Heavy-handed policing and sentencing may generate a temporary “chilling” effect on violent crime. But studies of mano dura-style interventions across Latin America indicate that these impacts tend to be transitory and short-lived
Este tipo de aseveraciones y de falsas acusaciones en 2003 fueron el inicio de una fase de montajes judiciales contra varios defensores de nuestra Comisión de Justicia y Paz, entre ellos Danilo Rueda
Lo que hace el gobierno es definir un perfil de “hombre fuerte” —el “Don”, el cacique, el “mero mero”, en fin, una autoridad local— que se convierte en interlocutor legítimo
The top brass could ease or thwart a move away from President Nicolás Maduro. Sponsors of transition talks should include military representatives in the discussions sooner rather than later
Analysts say Monday’s deal paved the way for Mr. Maduro to call new congressional elections as early as January, despite boycott threats from the main opposition parties
A group of minority opposition parties is entering negotiations with President Nicolas Maduro’s government without the consent of the U.S.-backed opposition leader Juan Guaidó
Our big Colombia conference is tomorrow, some of our panelists have arrived already, and I’ll be helping out with that over the course of the day, as well as finishing the talk I’ll be giving about coca eradication. If you’re in Washington, I hope you’ll stop by tomorrow.
In the first seven months of this year police caused 30% of all violent deaths in the state of Rio and killed a record 1,075 people – the highest number in more than two decades
At one meeting, Mr. Cabello described sea and land drug trafficking routes through Venezuela, the documents showed. At another, Mr. Carvajal said coordination with the “comrades,” meaning the FARC, was going well
Administration officials, while acknowledging that the treaty includes provisions for the use of military force, said their immediate goal was to escalate sanctions — including the possible interdiction at sea of ships carrying Venezuelan oil
Policías y oficiales de Migración salvadoreños patrullarán 154 puntos ciegos. La iniciativa surgió de reuniones con el secretario de Seguridad de Estados Unidos y es parcialmente financiada por el departamento de Estado
Más de 1,000 personas, según estimaciones de la prensa, caminaban al son de una pegajosa canción “JOH (por el presidente Juan Orlando Hernández) es pa’fuera que vas” y con pancartas como “Fuera el narcodictador”
Mediante el testimonio de vecinos y familiares de las víctimas, la organización civil reconstruyó la detención arbitraria de personas, la tortura a que las sometieron para vestirlas con ropas de camuflaje y su posterior asesinato a la luz del día
The women then showed her paperwork from US immigration officials, directing them to show up to the Mexican side of the San Ysidro Port of Entry at 3:30 a.m.
The Trump administration calls the policy “Migrant Protection Protocols,” but far from offering protection, the policy has led to a brutal wave of kidnappings in some of Mexico’s most dangerous border cities
Only a small percentage of the recently arrived Venezuelans are eligible to vote, but many Latin Americans in Florida see the Venezuelan government as the nexus of the region’s worst problems
Highlighting that Colombia event that we’re putting on all day Wednesday.
Tuesday, September 17
9:00–12:00 at the OAS (1889 F St.): “Challenges and Opportunities for Electric Mobility in the Americas” (RSVP required).
Wednesday, September 18
9:00–10:00 at the Wilson Center: “Argentina in Crisis: A Conversation with Governor Juan Manuel Urtubey” (RSVP required).
9:00–4:00 at the National Press Club: “Protecting Peace: Progress and Challenges for the Full Implementation of the 2016 Colombia Peace Accords” (RSVP required).
I should be reachable for much of the afternoon. (How to contact me)
On Wednesday, we’re putting on our big annual conference taking the measure of Colombia’s peace process. Our speakers mostly arrive tomorrow. When not in morning staff meetings, I’ll be helping with that and doing some writing all afternoon.
It was a 20-mile race aimed at a population of slower runners like me (hence the name “Revenge of the Penguins”). Still, it was nice at my advanced age to finish 24th out of 117 people on a sunny late-summer morning in Washington. It was downright pleasant jogging along the canal that follows the Potomac River—except for the last four miles or so, as the temperature rose and my knees started to throb.
I’ve increased my running mileage this year (losing 20 pounds in the process), and am enjoying it. It has taken time away, though, from things like writing blog posts.
The WOLA human rights award gala last night went really well (and ran quite late as people stayed around for along time after the ceremonies ended). This morning, I’m sitting in on an event with some Colombian visitors. Then I’ll be in the office the rest of the day, doing writing and planning: we’re putting a big Colombia peace conference on next week, and will be hosting an amazing group of visitors.
I’ll be reachable in the morning and early afternoon. (How to contact me)
WOLA’s annual human rights award dinner is this evening, and I look forward to seeing lots of people in our community. Our board will also be meeting in our offices mid-day.
When not doing that, I’ll be reachable and dealing with a deluge of bad news, and bad decisions, about the disappearing right to seek asylum at the U.S. border.
Also, for my birthday yesterday I got a new laptop, which I’m almost done setting up. (I’m writing on it right now.) This ends a 10-month experiment with trying to use an iPad for most of my writing, research, and other work. It just didn’t work out and I’ll be selling it. I’ll write something soon about that experience, but the short version is that the iPad’s hardware is amazing, but the software, especially the operating system, remains badly hobbled and constrained.
I’m most reachable in the morning and the latter part of the afternoon. (How to contact me)
Today’s my 49th birthday! Really getting up there. But it’s also a busy Wednesday. I’ll be “celebrating” by participating in two meetings with groups that work on border and migration, and by drafting more of our report on Mexico’s southern border. Tomorrow is WOLA’s big annual human rights award gala, so there may be some prep involved there too.
Yesterday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released its August data about migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Using that, along with data from Mexico’s government and recent non-governmental studies, I posted a 9-tweet thread to Twitter last night, with 17 graphics. Here is that thread, deconstructed.
(1/9) Let’s post a bunch of migration data using CBP and Mexico government numbers.
With 800,000+ apprehended in 11 months, this is the largest apprehensions total since 2007. But unlike 2007, 2 out of 3 are children and parents. In fact, single adults are still trending down.
(2/9) Trump’s June tariff threat caused Mexico to increase its own apprehensions, leading to a drop in US apprehensions at the border. But we’ve seen this before: there were drops after crackdowns and disruptions in 2014 and 2017, and migration recovered after a few months.
(3/9) The crackdown has further increased demand on Mexico’s overwhelmed, underfunded asylum system.
(4/9) After the crackdown, migration from Guatemala dropped more sharply than migration from Honduras. Honduras is now the number-one origin country for migrants apprehended at the US-Mexico border, followed by Guatemala then Mexico.
(5/9) Add people on waitlists at ports of entry plus “Remain in Mexico” victims, and there were at least 52,000 asylum seekers stuck in Mexican border towns by the end of July. It’s probably somewhere around 65,000-70,000 now: a nightmare scenario.
(6/9) CBP seems to have eased “metering” ever-so-slightly in August. (6/9)
(7/9) 11 months into fiscal 2019, seizures of cocaine, meth, and fentanyl already exceed fiscal 2018. As usual, most seizures happen at ports of entry, not the areas in between where some would build more walls. Heroin is flat, perhaps because demand for fentanyl is greater.
(8/9) Marijuana seizures continue to decline sharply at the border, a likely outcome of states’ legalizations, and port-of-entry seizures are suddenly the majority.
I’m reachable in the morning and early afternoon. (How to contact me)
I’m working at home this morning: it occurs to me that I’ll be taking a long trip to Colombia in 2 1/2 weeks, and there’s a lot that has to get done here in Washington before then. In the afternoon I’m recording a podcast and have a call with a reporter, and hope to write a few more pages of our report on Mexico’s southern border.
My schedule today includes a weekly staff meeting in the morning, a mid-afternoon call with a reporter, and a meeting with a visiting delegation of migrants’ rights advocates from Mexico and Central America.
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point in Schumer’s state is the most expensive project impacted in the United States with $95 million pulled from construction on its engineering center
This week, the families discovered that they would not get the new middle school they were expecting so that President Trump could build his border wall
Children separated during the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance policy” last year, many already distressed in their home countries or by their journey, showed more fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress symptoms
La manifestacio?n pu?blica de Iva?n Ma?rquez de volver a las armas, junto con Santrich, El Paisa y Roman?a, genera todo tipo de dudas sobre la implementacio?n del Acuerdo de Paz y, particularmente, sobre el rol y las funciones de la Jurisdiccio?n Especial para la Paz (JEP)
SEMANA accedió al contenido de la primera declaración que rindió Diego Alexis Vega, el joven que salió con vida de una confusa operación militar que culminó con la muerte de un indígena
Las comunidades indígenas del norte del Cauca denunciaron una serie de amenazas contra la vida de los integrantes de la guardia por parte de un grupo de narcotraficantes, al parecer, el Cartel de Sinaloa
El presidente de Colombia, Iván Duque, aseguró este jueves, 5 de septiembre, que el régimen de Nicolás Maduro no debe salir con «bravuconadas» como la de anunciar que desplegará un sistema de misiles antiaéreos en la frontera
Hay quienes temen que una mayor actividad militar del lado venezolano les impida seguir pasando la frontera para suplir sus necesidades básicas en Cúcuta
El gobierno de Jimmy Morales y su ejército, cuestionados por su cercanía con narcotraficantes, salieron a acusar a “seudo campesinos” y “seudo defensores de derechos humanos” y declararon Estado de Sitio en 22 municipios
Inicialmente se preveía que las obras militares en Honduras se verían afectadas por la construcción del muro fronterizo entre Estados Unidos y México, pero al final se determinó que la afectación solo se dará en proyectos previstos en instalaciones militares estadounidenses en Puerto Rico, Guantánamo (Cuba) y España
Los migrantes africanos, haitianos y de otros países asiáticos, que exigen sus oficios de salida del país, forcejearon contra los elementos de la Guardia Nacional, Policía Militar y Policía Federal
General Avilés, si le preocupan tanto los golpes de Estado, le informo que la experiencia internacional demuestra que si su Ejército no existiera, tampoco existieran intentos de golpes de Estado en Nicaragua
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