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

December 2020

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Photo from U.S. Embassy El Salvador. Caption: “Ambassador Ronald Johnson, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad F. Wolf and President Nayib Bukele.”

(Even more here)

December 16, 2020

Western Hemisphere Regional

Even if immediate reforms are modest compared to the enormity of the problem, Biden can make a lasting contribution by simply being honest about the limits and costs of overseas supply control

Bolivia

El coronel Jaime Zurita llegó a la Fiscalía de Sacaba y se abstuvo de emitir sus declaraciones. El expresidente se reunió con misión de la CIDH por hechos de 2019

Brazil

“The benefit reached many people long before the disease did”

Brazil, Mexico

Writing to Trump after his own election in 2018, Amlo presented himself as a fellow populist – and signed off with abrazos (hugs) as opposed to the more formal un saludo (regards) he directed at Biden

More surprising was the tardy and somewhat chilly letter López Obrador said he sent to Biden late Monday

Colombia

El próximo sábado 19 de diciembre se llevará a cabo la Audiencia pública ambiental sobre el trámite de licencia para el Programa de Erradicación de Cultivos Ilícitos con Glifosato (Pecig)

The United Nations has recorded the deaths of 255 people in 66 massacres in Colombia this year, as well as the killing of 120 human rights defenders, the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said on Tuesday

El control ilegal sobre una nutrida lista de ‘botines’ de guerra que van más allá de la coca, la poca presencia del Estado y conflictos con grandes empresas mineroenergéticas tendrían silenciados a los líderes y las lideresas sociales antioqueños

Varios elementos tienen en común los tres operativos: uno, agentes de la DEA que intervinieron en el primero también lo hicieron en el segundo y en el tercero

La Alta Comisionada de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos, Michelle Bachelet, condenó el martes el incremento de la violencia ejercida por parte de grupos armados no estatales, grupos criminales y otros elementos armados en Colombia

Colombia, Venezuela

En los veinticuatro (24) municipios fronterizos de Colombia ubicados en estas regiones , durante el 2020, han sido asesinadas 472 personas; 63 de nacionalidad venezolana; 24 han sido masacradas; 1.365 personas han sido desplazadas forzosamente y 13 han sido secuestradas

Cuba

The prospect of a détente between Washington and Havana rekindles memories of the thaw that Biden helped champion during the Obama administration

Despite Trump’s repeated falsehoods about Obama’s “one-sided deal” with Cuba, during its short duration, the policy of positive engagement achieved remarkable results

El Salvador

Earlier this year, the Biden–Sanders task force, organized after the president-elect won the Democratic nomination, recommended an end to the agreements signed with the Central American countries

Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris has criticized the agreements with Central American countries. President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment

Mexico

No se refiere a los civiles que han muerto a manos de militares por pasarse un retén o en otro evento castrense, sino a soldados que acabaron siendo procesados por esto

Se repite la historia: queman casas y asesinan a pobladores; no pasa nada, dice el alcalde

The new law is likely to make U.S. agencies reluctant to share information with Mexican institutions they consider to be corrupt, and Mexican officials won’t meet with their U.S. counterparts because of the requirement they disclose the meetings

A senior U.S. law enforcement officer who has spent much of his career working on cases involving Mexico said Tuesday that the legislation may all but cripple American investigations in Mexico

Peru

Tendrán en promedio una duración de 365 días y se realizarán en los Departamentos de Apurímac, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Cerro de Pasco, Huánuco, Huancavelica, Junín, Lima, Loreto, San Martin y Ucayali

U.S.-Mexico Border

Agents have targeted Arizona’s No More Deaths after the group went public with evidence of abuses of power in immigration enforcement

“What really gets me so angry is that they don’t get an opportunity to see a judge or to get a lawyer”

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Photo from Instituto de Defensa Legal (Peru).

(Even more here)

December 15, 2020

Western Hemisphere Regional

No president today would name high ranked foreign policy staff without including individuals with knowledge and background on China, Europe, or the Middle East. The same needs to be true for Latin America and the Caribbean

Under Trump, China has left the United States trailing in terms of power and influence across most of Latin America

Notably, the federal judge in the Texas case, brought by Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, has ruled against two other deferred action programs initiated by the Obama administration

Brazil

The report describes the origins of the PCC, its unique model of organization, and its ability to regulate criminal markets in the areas it controls

Chile

El Mandatario aseguró que la iniciativa “atenta contra el orden público, la seguridad ciudadana, la democracia y el Estado de derecho”

Colombia

La hipótesis del Gobierno que culpa a las disidencias vinculadas al narcotráfico no deja ver las diferencias entre cada asesinato ni ayuda a comprender o resolver el problema

SEMANA RURAL le explica en qué va el desminado humanitario en el país y cómo los excombatientes están aportando en el proceso

Una de las cabezas de esta organización creada por Pablo Escobar en los ochenta, usa el contrabando para legalizar dinero del narcotráfico

Grupos armados ilegales, algunos heredados del paramilitarismo, cooptan no sólo las gestiones de líderes y lideresas del departamento de Córdoba, sino la vida misma de las comunidades

Colombia, Venezuela

The two countries should urgently reopen communication channels to lower tensions and lessen the suffering of migrants who cross the border

Cuba

Like the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, the N27 protest was sparked by police brutality against Afro-Cubans

El director de la revista ‘El Estornudo’ y colaborador de EL PAÍS fue puesto en libertad tras seis horas detenido. El escritor se encuentra bajo vigilancia desde que participó en el Movimiento San Isidro

Mexico

Tres presidentes consecutivos dieron órdenes de que los agentes de la DEA, el FBI, la CIA y el ICE, operaran en México con toda libertad

Mexico, U.S.-Mexico Border

The Sinaloa and Arellano Felix cartels have long been at war with each other for “turf.” After the arrest of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in 2016, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel became increasingly involved

Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela

Diputados de la Asamblea Nacional (AN) continúan recabando información sobre lo ocurrido y se evalúan acciones ante organismos internacionales de derechos humanos

U.S.-Mexico Border

Border Patrol has told the stewards of the park that it plans to quickly replace the two fences that line it with two thirty-foot fences made of metal bollards

Congress must pass the Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act of 2020 (H.R. 8772). It is a true unicorn of legislation in that it has wide bipartisan support

The Biden administration will be expected to balance demands for more lenient policies with moderates’ concerns that any show of tolerance could lead to more illegal migration

U.S. border officials and shelter directors along the border are concerned about the effects of a major surge in migration in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, as is the Biden transition team

Immigration advocates are hopeful that the Biden administration will work to reverse the regulations, but doing so could take as many as sixty days

Venezuela

The new report from the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s office, indicating that the office’s examination of possible crimes against humanity in Venezuela is moving forward, advances the search for justice

A Reuters review of over 40 recent arrests found in each case that authorities used the law to detain critics of the president, his aides or allies

The day ahead: December 15, 2020

I’ll be in meetings nearly all day. (How to contact me)

This is it, my last day fully on the job in 2020. during the rest of the year, I’ll be using vacation days not to travel—not this year—but to get some deep writing done, and then to unplug almost completely.

Today I have 3 internal meetings, I’m talking to a gathering of Colombian Afro-descendant activists, and sitting in on a capstone project presentation for some Georgetown students working on civil-military relations in the Americas. That will leave little time to correspond, except perhaps a window mid-day.

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Fernando Vergara / AP photo at El País (Spain). Caption: “Soldados del ejército colombiano realizan un operativo de erradicación de hoja de coca en San José del Guaviare en marzo de 2019”

(Even more here)

December 14, 2020

Western Hemisphere Regional

“It turns out,” the judge wrote, “that CoreCivic, Inc., did, in fact, operate detention facilities for parents separated from their children”

Brazil

Pursuit of Sleeping Giants Brazil is part of a growing trend over the last several years to instrumentalize the judiciary against those who train fire on conservative media outlets, interest groups and Bolsonaro’s administration

Brazilian peacekeepers led MTF, which until the latest departure had six ships and about 800 sailors, since 2011

Chile

En las últimas semanas ha surgido la idea de que exoficiales o incluso oficiales participen en mesas técnicas de la Convención al momento de abordar el tema de Defensa

Colombia

  • Yohir Akerman, El General Rey (El Espectador (Colombia), December 14, 2020).

Centrémonos en el caso de un militar que no es el personaje de mayor rango, pero donde la evidencia es abrumadora y estremecedora

El próximo sábado 19 la ANLA realizará una audiencia en el trámite de la eventual licencia ambiental para esas fumigaciones

El excomandante paramilitar aseguró también que la mayoría de las desapariciones forzadas se hicieron por pedido de las Fuerzas Militares

De los 75 municipios con más coca u homicidios de líderes de sustitución, a febrero de este año solo había jueces especializados en tres (Puerto Asís, Tumaco y Cúcuta) y jueces penales en seis

Colombia, South America Regional, Uruguay

  • Guillermo Garat, Eliezer Budasoff, Jorge Galindo, La Cocaina Universal (El Pais (Spain), December 14, 2020).

Grupos criminales utilizan la logística de empresas legales. Se disloca el negocio con grupos multinacionales que aumentan la oferta en todo el mundo

Honduras

Craig Faller, jefe del Comando Sur de Estados Unidos, recibió este viernes la Medalla Gran Cruz de las Fuerzas Armadas de parte del gobierno de Honduras por su cooperación

Mexico

La Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos (CNDH) y la Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional (Sedena) firmaron un Convenio de colaboración para la formación de militares

For many in the northern city of San Fernando, her story represents so much of what is wrong in Mexico — and so remarkable about its people, their perseverance in the face of government indifference

El proyecto presupuestal solicitado al gobierno estadunidense también incluye una partida de 7.7 mdd para capacitar policías e infiltrarlos en células delictivas de diferentes regiones

Nicaragua

Los años 2018, 2018 y 2020 son inolvidables para Nicaragua y no precisamente por las cosas buenas que dejaron sino por la consolidación de otro régimen dictatorial, el de la familia de Daniel Ortega y Rosario Murillo

El ejemplo de Costa Rica, la historia del Triángulo Norte de Centroamérica, y nuestra propia historia, nos ofrecen pistas fehacientes para la respuesta

Nuestra redacción, ocupada manu militari, está en las mentes y corazones de los reporteros, y en la decisión de no aceptar la censura y autocensura

Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela

Fourteen people believed to have traveled from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago were found dead in waters near the South American nation’s coast

U.S.-Mexico Border

The president-elect has promised a more humane border policy. But devastated economies and natural disasters in Latin America have fueled a spike in migration that could make pledges hard to keep

U.S. border officials have expelled at least 66 unaccompanied migrant children without a court hearing or asylum interview since a federal judge ordered them to stop the practice

A person familiar with transition discussions. He told NPR that the Biden campaign and then the transition team felt that immigration activists had become too adversarial

Federal shelter contractors who operate these facilities disagree with the administration’s court declarations and say there’s a safe way to care for and house migrant children before they’re placed with family members

The day ahead: December 14, 2020

I should be around in the afternoon. (How to contact me)

This is my first workday in a while with only one meeting on the calendar. It’s a weekly marathon morning internal staff meeting, but still, I’ve got the afternoon to catch up on a series of smaller things on my list.

It would be nice to clear those off: I won’t have as much alone-time tomorrow, and then I plan to take the rest of the week, Wednesday through Friday, for what I’m calling a “soft vacation” before the holidays. I did not come close to using my leave time for 2020 (I’ll be losing some of it), but from the 16th onward I want to refuse meetings, turn on the e-mail autoreply, and finally finish a report on Putumayo, Colombia, that I’ve been fitfully working on for months.

So while I’m trying to clear the decks of other commitments today in order to focus on writing starting Wednesday, this afternoon is probably the best time all week to try to contact me.

Weekly email update is out

I just sent off another e-mail update to those who’ve subscribed. It’s got:

  • A link to our latest border policy commentary (a good one);
  • Our four-part podcast miniseries on the U.S. transition and Latin America;
  • Video of last Wednesday’s discussion of coca and eradication in Colombia;
  • Video of last Friday’s discussion of civil-military relations in Latin America, along with that of a companion event we hosted in September;
  • Full text of this week’s Colombia peace update;
  • Full text of this week’s U.S.-Mexico border update;
  • 5 “longread” links from the past week;
  • Links to 4 government reports relevant to Latin America obtained in November;
  • Links to Latin America-related events this coming week; and, finally,
  • Some funny tweets.

Here’s the page with past editions and a blank to add your e-mail address if you want these more-or-less weekly missives in your inbox.

“The Transition”: a four-volume WOLA podcast miniseries

In the weeks after the U.S. election was called for Joe Biden, I asked my colleagues at WOLA to join me for a series of podcasts. Following the four topics of a series of panels that WOLA hosted over the summer, we looked at some of the main challenges the new administration is sure to face—and how it might break with history and handle them differently this time.

I’m really glad I did these, and that eight of my co-workers took the time to join me. Though I’m still learning about audio quality (these are perfectly listenable but you can see why NPR spends so much on fancy studios), I’m delighted that we now have more than two and a half hours of high-quality analysis from people who are really paying attention to what’s going on. These four .mp3 files form an amazing snapshot of U.S.-Latin America relations on the threshold between two very different U.S. presidencies.

Each of the podcast player widgets below has a little download button (the down-arrow) so you can save the .mp3s. You can always find all of WOLA’s podcasts, going back to 2011, here. Or subscribe using your podcast player, we’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you listen to podcasts. The main feed is here.


November 16: U.S. Credibility, Cooperation, and a Changed Tonewith WOLA’s President, Geoff Thale; Vice President for Programs Maureen Meyer; Director for Drug Policy and the Andes John Walsh; Senior Fellow Jo-Marie Burt; and Venezuela Program Assistant Kristen Martinez-Gugerli.

Even as the Biden administration adopts a changed tone in its relations with the region, there may be some surprising continuities from the Trump years. And the United States, beset domestically with political polarization, human rights controversies, and mismanagement of a public health emergency, suffers from reduced influence and credibility in the region.


November 23: A Rational, Region-Wide Approach to Migrationwith Vice-President for Programs Maureen Meyer.

Trump’s hardline on migration policy is giving way to what promises to be a more humane and managerial approach under Biden. How profound that change will be remains unclear, though, as the United States and the rest of the hemisphere adjust to a reality of high levels of migration, and as the drivers of migration region-wide continue to accelerate.


December 1: The future of Latin America’s anti-corruption fightwith Director for Citizen Security Adriana Beltrán and Mexico Program Assistant Moses Ngong.

Focusing particularly on Mexico and Central America, we discuss who the region’s anti-corruption reformers are, the challenges they face, and how the United States and other international actors can best support them. A key point for the Biden administration is that other policy goals in the Americas will be impossible to achieve without a determined approach to corruption that upholds reformers.


December 11: Authoritarianism, Populism, and Closing Civic Spacewith WOLA’s president, Geoff Thale, and its director for Venezuela, Geoff Ramsey.

For the first time in decades, Latin America is becoming less democratic, amid a rise in populism, authoritarianism, and militarism. The U.S. role in upholding democracy and civic space has been inconsistent at best, and other regional institutions haven’t performed much better. How can the Biden administration change course?

Latin America-related online events this week

Monday, December 14

  • 7:00pm at ContraCorriente: Periodismo transnacional: retos y logros (RSVP required).

Tuesday, December 15

  • 8:00–9:00am at csis.org: A Partnership for Taiwan and Latin America: The Creative Economy (RSVP required).
  • 11:00–12:00 at the dialogue.org: Economic Recovery and Rebuilding the Social Fabric in Latin America and the Caribbean (RSVP required).
  • 2:30 at Amnesty USA Zoom: Protecting Asylum-Seekers During COVID-19: How We Can Uphold Human Rights, Safeguard Public Health, and Ensure Humanitarian Support (RSVP required).
  • 3:00–4:15 at thedialogue.org: Rethinking Drug Policy in the Americas (RSVP required).

Wednesday, December 16

  • 11:00–12:00 at the dialogue.org: Ingresos mineros y petroleros, el cambio climático y la recuperación verde (RSVP required).
  • 3:00–4:30 at wola.org: Peru 2021: ¿Quo Vadis? (RSVP required).
  • 5:00 at atlanticcouncil.org: Latin America-China relations in 2021: Opportunities, risks, and recommendations (RSVP required).

5 links from the past week

  • Reporters from several outlets around the world, calling themselves “The Cartel Project,” published an investigation into the 2012 murder of Veracruz, Mexico journalist Regina Martínez, which they portray as the template that organized crime-tied politicians have since used to silence the press. They aim to finish the work Martínez was doing—investigating the corrupt links between Veracruz’s state governors and organized crime—when assassins killed her in her home. Stories appear concurrently in The Washington Post, The Guardian, Spain’s El País, Mexico’s Proceso, and OCCRP.
  • An unsealed whistleblower complaint from a border wall construction site in California has some remarkable allegations, summarized by The New York Times’ Zolan Kanno-Youngs. Among them, contractors brought Mexican citizens illegally onto their work site, on the U.S. side of the border, to work as armed guards. CBP records meanwhile show that between October 2019 and March 2020, migrants breached the border wall in California and Arizona more than 320 times.
  • Two new Colombian online investigative outlets, Vorágine and La Liga Contra el Silencio, collaborated to tell the story of Juana Perea, a Bogotá-raised beachfront hotel owner and defiant activist in the town of Nuquí, Chocó. In October, Perea became one of many social leaders murdered in northwest Colombia by the Gulf Clan neo-paramilitary group. Pair this with Verdad Abierta’s thoroughly reported and vividly photographed story about William Castillo, a social leader in Antioquia’s Bajo Cauca region whom Gulf Clan hitmen murdered in 2016.
  • “Since 2007, the U.S. government has relied on a small coterie of Mexican officials to implement the Mérida Initiative,” begins an account presenting a trove of U.S. documents that the National Security Archive obtained via a FOIA request. It’s hard not to cringe reading U.S. officials’ words of praise for Mexican counterparts who now face criminal charges for links to organized crime.
  • Honduras’s ContraCorriente finds that, after years of corruption undermining public-private infrastructure projects, the public almost completely distrusts the government’s announced bipartisan rebuilding effort following hurricanes Eta and Iota.

Colombia peace update: Week of December 6, 2020

Cross-posted from WOLA’s colombiapeace.org site. Between now and the end of the year, we’re producing weekly sub-1,000-word updates in English about peace accord implementation and related topics. After that, we will evaluate the experience—both audience response and our own time commitment—before deciding whether to produce these permanently.

Fumigation is coming

Colombia’s justice minister, Wilson Ruiz, told the Blu Radio network that a U.S.-backed program of aerial herbicide fumigation might restart in as little as “between a month and a half and two months.”

Five years ago, citing health concerns, the government of then-president Juan Manuel Santos suspended this program, which used aircraft to spray the controversial herbicide glyphosate over 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of Colombian territory between 1994 and 2015. The current government of Iván Duque is working to restart the program, with U.S. funding and exhortations from Donald Trump: “you’re going to have to spray.”

That requires meeting a series of requirements laid out by Colombia’s Constitutional Court, among them consultations with communities and studies of environmental and health impact. The consultations had been slowed by the pandemic: a court in Nariño found that “virtual” exchanges were impossible with communities in remote areas far from internet coverage. That decision, though, was reversed by an October higher-court ruling. Now, 17 consultations are ongoing, and the environmental licensing authority, ANLA, will hold a final national consultation beginning on December 19.

Though Minister Ruiz’s maximum-two-months is on the fast end of estimates we have heard for when fumigation might restart, it is not implausible.

At a December 9 event WOLA hosted with five experts from around Colombia, speakers warned about potential damage that a renewed aerial glyphosate spraying might cause: to human health, to the environment, to indigenous cultures, and to nearby crops needed for food security. Speakers warned that a fumigation program would be costly, would cause forced displacement, and, under most circumstances, would violate the peace accords’ fourth chapter. They warned that a renewed fumigation program could inspire a wave of protest in coca-growing zones, especially if carried out under current conditions of insufficient prior consultation and few opportunities to receive crop substitution assistance.

FARC dissident activity around the country

Concerning reports from around the country point to increasing activity of FARC dissident groups. These are armed groups made up of FARC guerrillas who rejected the peace accord in 2016, ex-guerrillas who demobilized but later rearmed, and new recruits. The Fundación Paz y Reconciliación’s (PARES) latest report on the country’s security situation estimates that about 30 such groups, totaling perhaps 2,600 members, are active in 113 of the country’s 1,100 municipalities (counties). It places them in three categories:

  • Those networked under the 1st and 7th Front structure headed by Gentil Duarte, a mid-level FARC leader who refused to demobilize in 2016. PARES estimates that 65% of dissidents are in this network.
  • The “Nueva Marquetalia” network headed by Iván Márquez, who was the FARC’s lead negotiator during the Havana peace talks but rearmed in 2019.
  • Smaller, “dispersed” groups, often headed by very young people.

After Iván Márquez and several other top ex-FARC leaders launched their “Nueva Marquetalia” dissident group in August 2019, Gentil Duarte’s larger dissident network appeared to rebuff their outreach. Now, “Police say there is a war to the death in the areas [the two dissident networks] aspire to control, such as Putumayo, Nariño, Catatumbo, and Cauca,” according to a December 10 story in El Espectador, which relies heavily on National Police information.

That story warns that Nueva Marquetalia is moving into the heartland of Gentil Duarte’s group, seeking to traffic cocaine along the Guaviare River between Meta and Guaviare. A December 7 half-ton cocaine seizure in Puerto Concordia, Meta, may indicate that Iván Márquez may have sent a powerful emissary to do this: Henry Castellanos alias “Romaña,” who twenty years ago was one of the most feared FARC members because he pioneered ransom kidnappings along main roads out of Bogotá. Much of the cocaine produced in Meta and Guaviare goes through Arauca into Venezuela, then by air or boat to Central America and Mexico, or on to Europe.

To the west of Puerto Concordia, in La Macarena, Meta, dissidents are believed to be behind the murder of Javier Francisco Parra, the director of Cormacarena, the Colombian government’s regional environmental body. Parra was known as a defender of Caño Cristales, a tourist destination famous for its uniquely colored algae. The site’s accessibility was widely hailed as a tangible benefit of the peace accord.

Another feared member of the Nueva Marquetalia, Hernán Darío Velásquez alias “El Paisa”—who headed the FARC’s brutal, elite Teófilo Forero Mobile Column—was dispatched to Putumayo. There, he made an alliance with that department’s most powerful regional organized crime group, called “La Constru” or occasionally “La Mafia Sinaloa,” and with remnants of the FARC’s 48th front. All are fighting the Carolina Ramírez FARC dissident group, which is aligned with Gentil Duarte, for control of Putumayo’s lucrative trafficking routes through Ecuador and out to the Pacific, and down the Caquetá river into Brazil and on to Europe.

Colombian press reports from the past week also find a worsening humanitarian situation in Nariño’s Pacific coastal region. In the busy port of Tumaco, “where, curiously, there are hundreds of Mexicans these days,” Alfredo Molano Jimeno reported in El Espectador about the wave of violence that followed the September collapse of a two-year truce between two local dissident groups, the Frente Óliver Sinisterra and the Guerrillas Unidas del Pacífico.

Several hours north and inland from Tumaco, in the violent Telembí Triangle region, La Silla Vacía reports on fighting between the Óliver Sinisterra, the Gentil Duarte-tied 30th Front, and the Gulf Clan neo-paramilitary group, for control of the Patía River’s trafficking routes. Violence broke out six months ago, during the pandemic, and has been worsening ever since. Further north along the coast, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA alerted about combat between dissidents and other groups causing mass displacements in Iscuandé, Nariño.

In all of these reports, a common theme is the near-total absence of Colombia’s state. Usually, the only government presence is military—and in places like coastal Nariño, there is only so much even a corruption-free armed forces could do. In La Silla Vacía, the general heading the local armed forces task force “recognizes that the Patía River is too extensive and connects with a maze of smaller rivers that are impossible for the security forces to control in their entirety.”

Links

  • Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York), the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said his first overseas trip as chairman will be to Afro-descendant regions of Colombia , a country he knows well (and, some contend, controversially).
  • Colombia’s Senate approved a round of 19 military promotions, including those of Army Generals Evangelista Pinto Lizarazo and Edgar Alberto Rodriguez Sánchez, who commanded units during the 2000s alleged to have committed large numbers of “false positive” killings.
  • Joshua Collins reports for The New Humanitarian from Caucasia, in northeastern Antioquia’s convulsed Bajo Cauca region. Verdad Abierta also focused on the Bajo Cauca region, publishing a threepart series, with some striking photos, about armed group activity and social leaders’ precarious situation.
  • At a virtual hearing of the OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission, representatives of Colombia’s Truth Commission denounced obstacles that the government has placed in the way of their work, such as security forces’ refusal to turn over requested documents. Colombian government representatives declined even to participate in the hearing.
  • A UNDP-PRIO-Universidad de los Andes poll of 12,000 residents of the 170 post-conflict “PDET” municipalities found reduced overall perceptions of armed-group control, and 80% support for programs that reintegrate former FARC combatants.

A video archive about late 2020 civil-military relations, covering 11 Latin American countries

After a very successful event today, we now have, on WOLA’s YouTube page, four hours of discussions of the current moment with premier experts in civil-military relations from 11 Latin American countries. It’s in two parts: today’s discussion, and an earlier one, with a similar format, hosted in September.

Taken together, they are a tremendous resource for understanding this uneasy, precarious moment in the hemisphere’s politics and democratic transitions (or reversions). Sort of like two focus groups taking the pulse of things, shared with the public.

This is raw video in Spanish, though. Some audiences, like busy policymakers with competing commitments and responsibilities, won’t watch all of it. We need to repackage it, perhaps in a variety of formats. I need to figure out over the holidays how best to do that.

In the meantime, though, here are the event videos, which are really worth your time. In reverse chronological order:

Today’s video (December 11), covering Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru.
Our September 11 event, covering Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay.

Weekly border update: December 11, 2020

There’s so much happening at the U.S.-Mexico border—much of it outrageous, some of it heroic—that it’s hard to keep track. With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments in 900 words or less. We welcome your feedback.

You can get these in your e-mail each week by joining WOLA’s “Beyond the Wall” mailing list.

Border wall a key disagreement delaying 2021 appropriations

Today, December 11, is the deadline that Congress had set for passage of a 2021 federal government budget. While the Democratic-majority House and Republican-majority Senate continue talks on a budget that Donald Trump might sign, they’re not finished. The Senate is likely to approve a continuing resolution, which the House passed Wednesday, extending the deadline to December 18 and averting a government shutdown in the midst of a pandemic.

Legislators are “torn on at least a dozen policy issues, particularly related to immigration,” congressional staff told the Washington Post. “The most divisive issues in government spending talks concern funding for President Trump’s border wall with Mexico and detention facilities run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

The two chambers’ versions of the 2021 Homeland Security Appropriations bill could hardly differ more widely on border wall funding. The Senate bill—which the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed in November but never voted on—provides $1.96 billion “for the construction of barrier system” along the U.S.-Mexico border. The House bill—which the House Appropriations Committee passed in July but was never debated on the floor—not only has no money for wall construction, it would rescind $1.38 billion from 2020 and ban future transfers of Defense Department funds for wall-building, as President Trump has done by declaring a “state of emergency.”

“Trump almost certainly won’t sign a package that guts funding for one of his biggest priorities as his administration comes to a close,” notes Politico. Still, with President-elect Biden promising to hold wall construction immediately upon his inauguration, it’s not clear what would happen with any wall-building money in the 2021 bill.

Media continue pointing to increasing migration, “caravan”

CBP has yet to release its November migrant apprehensions numbers. But November is likely to be the seventh consecutive month of increased migration since arrivals hit a pandemic low in April. Reports in major media—some citing CBP officials—are rumbling about an accelerating increase in migration from pandemic and hurricane-hit Central America. A common framing is that it’s an “early test” for the incoming Biden administration.

Officials are reporting increased arrivals of unaccompanied children, who are less subject to immediate expulsion under questionably legal pandemic border measures. Deputy Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said that the agency is “apprehending an average of 153 young migrants a day at the border since October.” In court filings, CBP has projected “that the flow of unaccompanied children could increase by 50 percent by late March 2021,” the Texas Tribune reports.

Often, Ortiz said, the children and their smugglers are seeking to avoid apprehension—which is a new pattern—and are being kept in “stash houses” in the border zone before being moved further north. For those who are apprehended, the Office of Refugee Resettlement—to which unaccompanied children are transferred—has less shelter space due to COVID-19 distancing restrictions: 7,971 beds, down from the norm of 13,764.

More migration from pandemic and hurricane-battered Central America appears to be a certainty. About 1,000 Honduran people, most of them victims of hurricanes Eta and Iota, departed the bus station in San Pedro Sula on Wednesday night in a “caravan” reportedly organized over social media. These efforts to migrate across Mexico, using “safety in numbers” rather than paying thousands of dollars to smugglers, became a staple of Fox News coverage and Donald Trump messaging in 2018.

Since then, though, almost none have made it through Mexico. A few members of a January 2019 caravan trickled into the United States, but most remained in Mexico. Since then, Mexico has deployed security and migration forces to block attempted caravans in the country’s far south, in April and October 2019, and again in January 2020. In October 2020, a caravan of Hondurans was broken up in Guatemala. And now, Guatemala’s National Police have announced “preventive actions” against new Honduran migration, requiring travelers to have valid passports and COVID-19 tests.

It’s not clear what a migrant wave might mean for the Biden team’s promised dismantling of the Trump administration’s hardline migration measures. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden transition team is “trying to decide which policies to change and when, in order to fulfill Mr. Biden’s campaign promises without creating the appearance of leniency.” This may include “temporarily leaving in place Mr. Trump’s pandemic order to return most migrants to Mexico shortly after they cross the border,” despite the illegality of expelling endangered people without giving them a hearing.

In WOLA’s view, dealing with a rising flow of asylum-seeking migrants is an administrative issue that—while difficult because the Trump administration is leaving behind a lack of infrastructure—can be handled with little drama. In a December 9 commentary, WOLA points to short, medium, and long term measures that the Biden administration can implement to handle a “wave” while guaranteeing protection to those who need it.

Hope for passage of missing migrant bill

The remains of about 8,000 migrants, most of whom died painful deaths of dehydration and exposure, have been found on U.S. soil, in border regions, since 1998. Advocates who have spent years trying to prevent these deaths, and to identify the remains, are hopeful that long-awaited legislation might ease their work.

S. 2174, the Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains Act of 2019, co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris (D-California), passed the Senate by unanimous consent on November 16. Among other measures, the bill would fund the installation of up to 170 rescue beacons in desert areas, while helping local jurisdictions and non-profits pay for efforts to handle and identify migrant remains.

An identical bill in the House, H.R. 8772, was introduced November 18 by Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) and Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas). It needs to pass by the end of the 2020 congressional session in order to become law, otherwise both chambers need to start over again in 2021.

Links

  • The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some citizens of El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal until at least October of 2021.
  • The Trump administration is leaving office by promulgating its most restrictive rule yet undoing the right to seek asylum.
  • The New York Times published a wild story, based on a whistleblower complaint and a FOIA request, alleging that border wall contractor SLS and subcontractor Ultimate Concrete had brought Mexican citizens illegally onto their work site, on the U.S. side of the border in California, to work as armed guards. CBP records meanwhile showed that between October 2019 and March 2020, more than 320 breaches of the border wall took place in California and Arizona—nearly 2 per day.
  • Thirty-five Democratic members of the House of Representatives, led by Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), sent a letter to Joe Biden asking him to “immediately” rescind Trump’s emergency declarations, waivers, and private property condemnations enabling wall-building.
  • The El Paso Times ran a 4,000-word account of the journey of a Guatemalan father and his 10-year-old daughter caught in the web of “Remain in Mexico.”

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Reuters/Jose Cabezas photo at PBS NewsHour. Caption: “Members of Honduran security forces stand in front of a bus carrying people who take part in a new caravan of migrants, set to head to the United States, at a check point in Ocotepeque, Honduras December 10, 2020.”

(Even more here)

December 11, 2020

Western Hemisphere Regional

It is perhaps little surprise, then, that Latin America, the region with the world’s biggest gap between the rich and the poor, would also be ground zero for the pandemic

Chile

El Mandatario se reunió esta tarde con el director del Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Sergio Micco, en La Moneda

Colombia

Así lo reveló el informe “Luces y sombras de la implementación del Acuerdo” realizado por el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo en Colombia (PNUD), PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo) y la Universidad de los Andes

El asesinato de esta lideresa y empresaria en Nuquí, un rincón paradisiaco de la costa chocoana, muestra el dominio que ejercen los paramilitares en distintas poblaciones de ese departamento

También pedimos al organismo incluir a Colombia en el capítulo 4 de su informe anual, en el que se exponen las situaciones de los países materia de especial preocupación

The city is part of a conflict zone in Colombia’s northern Bajo Cauca region, where illegal mining, coca production, and extortion are the economic lifeblood of the rival armed groups

Este viernes el colectivo dhColombia radicará una denuncia en contra del ministro Carlos Holmes Trujillo y otros altos mandos policiales solicitando investigue la responsabilidad que estos pudieron tener, por línea de mando, en los hechos de abuso policial

La Segunda Marquetalia contactó a viejas fichas de las Farc para comprar cocaína y venderla a carteles mexicanos y mafias europeas

Cuba, Guyana, South America Regional, Suriname

From Guyana to Paraguay and Chile, Cuban migrants are posting notes on social networks to join the caravans, which have already created problems in Suriname

Honduras

Hundreds of Hondurans trying to start a new caravan to reach the U.S. border were stopped by Honduran security personnel

Para este grupo poblacional, que se estima representa el 10 % de la población hondureña (unas 934,000 personas), distribuida en nueve grupos étnicos, la decisión que tomó el gobierno de confinamiento sólo agravó la ya difícil situación

Mexico

The decision to review the case comes a week after Mexico’s representative for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said in a hearing that the victim, Ernestina Ascencio, died from health problems, sparking backlash

De acuerdo con diversas organizaciones, ninguna de las instituciones de fuerzas federales ha cumplido con la obligación de capacitar a sus elementos en materia de derechos humanos

Aunque el presidente sostiene que ya no se permiten ni la tortura ni la impunidad, la Fiscalía responsable sigue recibiendo denuncias de nuevos casos

Since 2007, the U.S. government has relied on a small coterie of Mexican officials to implement the Mérida Initiative. Now, some of those same individuals are facing trial in the United States

  • Ricardo Ravelo, Tema Explosivo (SinEmbargo (Mexico), December 11, 2020).

¿Podrá el Gobierno de México limitar el número de agentes de la DEA en México? ¿Cuál es el objetivo? ¿Qué no hagan investigaciones que pongan en evidencia el llamado narco-Estado?

U.S.-Mexico Border

“Wow! This is almost like busy work they’re doing,” exclaims biologist Myles Traphagen as he drives his truck up to the construction staging area and beholds the destruction for the first time

Venezuela

Un total de 21 casos de violaciones a la libertad de expresión ocurrieron el domingo, 6 de diciembre, durante el desarrollo de las elecciones parlamentarias

Venezuela, Western Hemisphere Regional

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and IOM, the International Organization for Migration, launch a US$1.44 billion regional plan to respond to the growing needs of refugees and migrants from Venezuela and the communities hosting them across 17 countries

WOLA Podcast: The Transition: Authoritarianism, Populism, and Closing Civic Space

Here’s a great episode closing out a four-part cycle in which we look at what confronts U.S. policy toward Latin America during this sharp break of a presidential transition. Thanks to Geoff Thale and Geoff Ramsey for joining me here.

I’m also happy that I finally figured out the “reduce noise” filter on the Audacity sound editing app. Makes a difference.

The .mp3 file is here. The podcast feed is here. And here’s the text from WOLA’s podcast landing page:

This is part four of a four-part podcast miniseries looking at key issues facing U.S. policy toward Latin America, as Washington transitions from the Trump era to the Biden administration.

This episode focuses on the state of democracy and civic space in the region. For the first time in decades, Latin America is becoming less democratic, amid a rise in populism, authoritarianism, and militarism. The U.S. role in upholding democracy and civic space has been inconsistent at best, and other regional institutions haven’t performed much better. How can the Biden administration change course?

Host Adam Isacson talks about this with WOLA’s president, Geoff Thale, and its director for Venezuela, Geoff Ramsey.

Hear Geoff Ramsey’s and the Venezuela program’s new Venezuela Briefing podcast. And here, view the video of President Trump meeting with regional leaders that Ramsey mentions in this episode’s discussion.

Earlier episodes of this “transition” podcast series covered U.S. credibility (November 16), migration (November 23), and corruption (December 1).

Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here.

The day ahead: December 11, 2020

I’ll be hard to contact today. (How to contact me)

This morning I’m a panelist at an “Afro-Descendant Non-Repetition Dialogue” organized by the National Afro-Colombian Peace Council and the Truth Commission edit: this was just postponed to Tuesday and they’re going to make it a private discussion. Then at noon we’re hosting another event of our own, on civil-military relations in the Americas. Then I’m in a meeting of arms trade groups, and an internal meeting at WOLA. By the time that ends, the workday will be nearly over, so I’ll be hard to contact.

This may be my last day of 2020 that’s so packed with events. Meanwhile, look for a border update and a new podcast by the end of the day.

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