Adam Isacson

Still trying to understand Latin America, my own country, and why so few consequences are intended. These views are not necessarily my employer’s.

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January 2021

Latin America-related online events this week

Tuesday, February 2

  • 10:00–11:00 at americasquarterly.org: The New Face of Multilateralism Under Biden (RSVP required).
  • 10:00–12:00 at wilsoncenter.org: Ninth Annual US-Mexico Security Conference: Part 2 (RSVP required).
  • 12:00–1:30 at eventbrite.com: Adelante: The Other Side (RSVP required).
  • 6:00 at insightcrime.org: A Deep Dive Into Guatemala’s Criminal Dynamics and Its Borders (RSVP required).

Wednesday, February 3

  • 9:00–10:30 at eventbrite.com: Digital Technology and the Fight Against Corruption in Latin America (RSVP required).
  • 9:00–10:30 at Zoom: Fiscalías y Estado de Derecho (RSVP required).
  • 10:00 at Zoom: Cuba ante la Agenda 2030. Cumplimiento del #ODS5 (RSVP required).
  • 11:30–12:45 at Zoom: Fiscalías y Estado de Derecho (RSVP required).
  • 12:00–1:00 at seaif.org: Corrupción en Centroamérica: desafíos, derrotas y destellos de esperanza (RSVP required).
  • 12:30–1:30 at wilsoncenter.org: The Future of U.S.-Mexico Relations (RSVP required).

Thursday, February 4

Friday, February 5

  • 10:00–11:00 at csis.org: A Conversation with Martha Bárcena, Outgoing Ambassador of Mexico to the U.S. (RSVP required).

Colombia peace update: January 30, 2021

Cross-posted from WOLA’s colombiapeace.org site. During at least the first half of 2021, we’re producing weekly updates in English about peace accord implementation and related topics.

Transitional justice tribunal issues first indictment of FARC leadership, for kidnapping

Colombia’s post-conflict transitional justice tribunal, the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP), issued its first indictment this week, charging eight members of the former FARC guerrillas’ uppermost leadership, or “Secretariat,” of overseeing at least 21,396 kidnappings during the armed conflict. Two of the accused now sit in Colombia’s Congress.

The JEP’s 322-page indictment for what it calls “macro-case 01,” along with an accompanying annex of heartbreaking excerpts of anonymized victims’ testimonies, underscores the brutality of the FARC’s crime. All seven regional guerrilla blocs raised funds and pressured for prisoner exchanges by abducting people and holding them in miserable conditions, at times for years. About 10 percent died or were killed in custody.

The cruel practice, which intensified after a 1993 guerrilla leadership conference, destroyed the FARC’s image before Colombian public opinion. This got worse as the guerrillas became more indiscriminate, kidnapping even poorer Colombians for small ransoms. The practice dehumanized the guerrilla captors and amounted to the FARC’s “political suicide,” wrote veteran El Tiempo conflict reporter Armando Neira.

The formal accusation is the product of a close read of numerous prosecutorial, governmental, and NGO reports and databases, along with testimonies from 1,028 kidnapping victims. It is also a sign to its many doubters that the JEP is not a mechanism for impunity and appears determined to hold the demobilized guerrillas accountable for serious war crimes. “It is a document that leaves groundless the idea that the JEP was created to suit the guerrillas,” write Juanita León and Juan Pablo Pérez at La Silla Vacía. (The JEP was created by the 2016 peace accord, its underlying law was passed in late 2017, and it began operations in 2018.)

The eight accused now have 30 working days to decide whether they accept the charges. During this period, 2,456 accredited victims may offer observations on the indictment. The ex-leaders haven’t said yet whether they’ll accept the charges, though a statement maintains that they remain committed to the transitional justice process. If they challenge the charges and lose, they face time in prison—up to 20 years.

If the leaders accept the charges, JEP judges will sentence each to a maximum eight years of “restricted liberty”—something less austere than prison—during which they must perform actions aimed at reconciliation. It’s still not clear what these punishments will look like, though they are likely to mean confinement to some of the 170 of Colombia’s 1,100 municipalities (counties) that are prioritized for post-conflict programs.

Some poor areas on the outskirts of Bogotá have been added to this list of post-conflict zones, which raises the possibility that a judge might allow two accused FARC members who have seats in Congress to continue legislating while paying their penalties. While the peace accord appears to allow this, victims are calling on Pablo Catatumbo Torres Victoria and Julian Gallo to step down from their Senate seats. (The 2016 accord gives the FARC five automatic seats in the 102-person Senate and five seats in the 166-person House for two four-year terms.)

The JEP’s announcement indicates that this is only a first step: later this year, the tribunal will accuse many mid-level FARC commanders who participated in kidnappings. It is also moving ahead on “macro-case 03,” the Colombian military’s thousands of “false positive” killings of civilians.

From U.S. diplomats, a new tone on peace accord implementation

The Obama administration supported the Colombian government’s negotiation of a peace accord with the FARC, which was ratified at the end of 2016 during the Obama-to-Trump presidential transition. During the Trump years, while the U.S. Congress continued to approve aid packages that assisted its implementation, support for the peace accord dried up in U.S. officials’ rhetoric. Other than an occasional statement at the UN, it was very rare to hear a diplomat or other official praise the 2016 accord or call for its implementation. Near the end of the 2020 campaign, the Trump campaign went further, adopting the loud anti-accord rhetoric used by Colombian critics like ex-president Álvaro Uribe.

During the Biden administration’s first full week, U.S. diplomats underwent a notable rhetorical shift, voicing support for the accord and its implementation several times in local and social media. Examples include:

  • Tweets on the U.S. embassy’s account (1) (2) (3).
  • A conversation between just-confirmed Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Foreign Minister Claudia Blum.
  • Interviews in Colombian media with U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg.

“I think the agenda between the two countries remains similar. However, perhaps we’re going to see some points with a different emphasis,” Ambassador Goldberg said in a wide-ranging January 24 interview in Colombia’s most-circulated newspaper, El Tiempo. Highlights of that interview include:

  • On peace accord implementation: “We’ve seen some progress, but we’ve also seen some problems with implementation, including opposition from illegal groups.”
  • On social-leader killings and security: “This problem of massacres and attacks against certain groups and leaders is something that needs much more attention. …The government is fighting them [illegal armed groups], but evidently it has not set a policy to prevent the problems they cause.”
  • On aerial herbicide fumigation in coca-growing areas: “This time, the fumigation, the aerial spraying, will be the total responsibility of the Colombian government. We’re going to help them in certain aspects, but they’re going to buy the glyphosate, they’re going to control the planes, it’s not contractors, as before. So now it will be completely different.”
  • On governing party members’ meddling in the U.S. election: “If there are some frictions as a result of that, we’re going to overcome it. It wasn’t President Duque or his cabinet, but some politicians.”

U.S. returns paramilitary leader Hernán Giraldo, a voracious child rapist

On January 25 the United States returned to Colombia Hernán Giraldo, one of 14 paramilitary leaders whom the Uribe government extradited in 2008. Giraldo, whose “Tayrona Resistance Bloc” violently controlled the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region along the Caribbean coast, served more than 12 years in U.S. prison for cocaine trafficking.

Though the U.S. justice system is finished punishing him for drug-related crimes, Hernán Giraldo has yet to face Colombian justice for horrific war crimes. In the Sierra Nevada, he earned the nickname El Taladro (“The Drill”) because of his deliberate use of rape as a weapon of war. Giraldo committed hundreds of rapes, most of them of girls, some as young as 13 years old. He encouraged his commanders to do the same. In video testimonies from U.S. prison, he admitted to only 24 cases.

Hernán Giraldo, now 74 years old, is to face a court in Barranquilla. His many victims, including girls forced to bear his children, have had a long wait while the U.S. government first tried him for narcotrafficking. Even so, justice in Colombia is not assured: from his prison cell, Giraldo may remain powerful. An organized crime group descended from his Tayrona Resistance Bloc, known as “Los Pachenca,” today controls much territory in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

Links

  • Colombia’s Defense Minister, Carlos Holmes Trujillo, died of COVID-19-related pneumonia on the evening of January 26. Trujillo was a leading contender to be the ruling Centro Democrático party’s nominee for the 2022 presidential election.
  • The FARC political party, recognizing that its acronym is a political liability (see kidnapping discussion above), officially changed its name to Comunes (“common people”).
  • Between January 1 and 24, the JEP counted “14 armed confrontations between criminal structures and the security forces, 13 death threats against social leaders, 6 massacres, 5 assassinations of former combatants of the FARC-EP, 14 homicides of social leaders, 3 attacks and 7 armed confrontations between illegal groups.”
  • As of November, there were 1.71 million Venezuelans in Colombia (over 3% of Colombia’s population), of whom 770,246 had “regular migration status,” according to the latest situation update from UNHCR.
  • A report from the Peace Accords Matrix program at Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute finds implementation of the peace accord’s ethnic provisions to be lagging. “Ten percent of the 80 provisions of the ethnic sub-matrix have been fully implemented, 9 percent show an intermediate level of progress, 49 percent show minimal implementation, and the remaining 32 percent have not yet begun implementation.”
  • “We have the hope that during your administration, the economic resources that the United States allocates for anti-drug policies in Colombia can be used more effectively to support productive initiatives for sustainable livelihoods and of good living,” reads a letter to Vice President Kamala Harris from Francia Márquez, a Cauca-based Afro-Descendant environmental leader and winner of the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize.
  • El Espectador hosted a worthwhile panel on implementation of the peace accord’s vital rural reform chapter, with two top officials, the lead author of a critical January report from the Inspector-General’s Office (Procuraduría), a Kroc Institute expert, and an activist from Caquetá. Video here, summary here.
  • The newspaper also produced an excellent multimedia feature on women searching for loved ones who disappeared during the conflict.
  • With Panama’s border closed due to COVID-19, about 1,000 U.S.-bound migrants from Cuba, Haiti, and several African countries are stranded in makeshift tents on a beach in Necoclí, in northwestern Colombia’s Urabá region, according to AFP.
  • Threats and killings—most likely by the ELN, although other armed groups are present—forced 11 town council members to flee the municipality of Argelia, in southern Cauca department.
  • The latest bimonthly Gallup poll, whose time series for some questions goes back to the late 1990s, shows growing discontent on many issues. La Silla Vacía shares the full poll as a Google Doc. Favorability ratings for the military and police have recovered a bit after scandals, though they remain low in part because of enforcement of pandemic lockdowns. Joe Biden has a 60%-11% favorable-unfavorable rating. By a 69%-24% margin, respondents see peace accord implementation as “on the wrong track.”

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Daniel Becerril/Reuters photo at the New York Times. Caption: “An encampment of more than 2,000 migrants seeking asylum in the United States last year in Matamoros.”

(Even more here)

January 29, 2021

Central America Regional

Biden needs to follow through on a proposed Central American regional anti-corruption commission. Otherwise, U.S. aid will not stop thousands of desperate people from fleeing

Colombia

Mientras unos pidieron paciencia y reconocimiento hacia los logros alcanzados, otros reclamaron que los puntos altos son pocos y que en los territorios siguen marginados y desterrados

En efecto, la guerrilla se deshumanizó por completo con este delito

Conflict researchers, victims and former peace negotiators said the accusations are a signal to critics, who assert that rebels benefited from the peace process without fear of punishment, that the justice system set up by the accord is functioning

Se expedirán otros documentos en los que se individualizará la responsabilidad por Bloques de exmandos medios y ejecutores de las Farc en todos los territorios donde se cometió este delito de lesa humanidad

Miles de mujeres en Colombia luchan todos los días y desde hace décadas por sacar del olvido a sus seres queridos desaparecidos

Colombia, Cuba, Haiti

Now in makeshift tents on the beach of Necocli, these migrants hope to sneak into Panama en route to the US by crossing the dangerous Gulf of Uraba to the Colombian border town of Acandi

Cuba

China and Iran are intrinsically more important than Cuba, which poses no real threat to the United States. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for the president to move quickly to re-engage with Cuba

The eight men argue that their ongoing detention violates a Supreme Court decision that generally blocks ICE from detaining people that it is unable to deport for more than six months, and who don’t pose a threat to public safety

Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela

Ecuador reforzará los destacamentos militares e incorporará una veintena de vehículos tácticos Hammer para ampliar la movilidad de sus patrullas en la frontera con Perú, con el fin de vigilar el ingreso de migrantes

El Salvador

El Salvador’s 39-year-old President Nayib Bukele sent local Twitter into a tailspin when he briefly changed his profile picture to an image of Sacha Baron Cohen from the movie The Dictator

Mexico

A better approach with a realistic chance of proving effective would be to focus on a select number of regions producing the bulk of lethal conflict, such as Guanajuato, Guerrero, and Michoacán

In this case, it seems strange that the coyote was able to walk free and even alert the families in Guatemala that their relatives had been killed

Mexico, U.S.-Mexico Border, Western Hemisphere Regional

The impatience is a reflection of the soaring demand for relief among migrants amid an economically crippling pandemic and after four years of efforts by the Trump administration to choke off both legal and illegal immigration

Nicaragua

The Fundación del Río (River Foundation), a conservation organization focused on Southeast Nicaragua, has been systematically reporting on the gradual environmental destruction of the Indio Maíz

U.S.-Mexico Border

Community leaders and experts consulted by the Guardian warned that urgent action is needed to stop the damage to fragile biodiverse landscapes and scarce water sources getting worse

In October 2019, DHS began pilots of the Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR) and Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP) programs to quickly process migrants with claims of credible fear. We conducted this review to evaluate DHS’ effectiveness to date in implementing the programs

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also said that nominee Alejandro Mayorkas would head up a task force that seeks to reunite migrant families

“These Trump policies are alive and well on the border … it’s frustrating”

the critical work of rebuilding must also begin at the border, where our national bonds of solidarity and the rule of law have both been distorted and undermined

We write to urge the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rescind – and not extend or re-adopt – xenophobic, cruel, and unlawful policies implemented by the Trump administration under the pretext of public health

Venezuela

Varios analistas consultados por la Voz de América consideran que revocar la restricción no levantaría la presión a Maduro, y en cambio, evitaría que el país se quede sin diésel, esencial para el transporte de alimentos

Weekly border update: January 29, 2021

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. You can get these in your e-mail each week by joining WOLA’s “Beyond the Wall” mailing list.

Bodies of 19 missing migrants found in Tamaulipas, Mexico

Police responding to a call on January 22 made a grisly discovery in a rural zone of Camargo municipality, in Mexico’s violence-torn border state of Tamaulipas, about 45 miles from Texas. A burned-out pickup truck by a dirt road contained the incinerated bodies of 19 people, whom it seems were shot to death elsewhere and incinerated there.

The victims appear to be migrants from Central America who had hoped to reach the United States. Most or all may be from San Marcos, a department of western Guatemala that borders southern Mexico.

Nothing is confirmed until comparisons with relatives’ DNA are complete, a process that might take about two weeks. But just as they were passing through Tamaulipas late last week, a group of migrants from the towns of Comitancillo, Tuilelen, and Sipacapa—where most residents’ first language is Mam, an indigenous dialect—abruptly stopped contacting relatives back home via WhatsApp.

Most of the missing and presumed dead were in their late teens or early 20s. They had paid a smuggler to take them—“$2,100 upfront,” a mother of one of the victims told Vice—but that did not guarantee safety from Mexican organized crime.

“Camargo is near the edge of territory historically controlled by factions of the Gulf cartel and in recent years a remnant of the Zetas known as the Northeast cartel has tried to take over,” the Guardian reported. Camargo residents cited in the Mexican magazine Proceso pointed to the Northeast cartel as the likely killers.

The tragedy illustrates the outrageous degree of liberty with which criminal groups operate in Tamaulipas and other poorly governed, corruption-riven zones of Mexico, and the danger this poses to migrants. Tamaulipas is where the notorious San Fernando massacre of 72 migrants took place in 2010, and alarming crimes have been frequent since then.

“The toleration of these aberrant crimes demonstrates the lack of protection for the migrant population in Mexico,” read a statement from many non-governmental organizations. Rubén Figueroa of the Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano told Vice, “These massacres are continuous. It’s an ongoing massacre. Sometimes they are big like this one. Sometimes it’s just two of three people that are assassinated, disappeared.”

Border wall construction pause goes into effect

One of President Biden’s January 20 proclamations ordered all construction of the Trump administration’s border wall to pause within seven days. Then, for the next sixty days, agencies are to review procedures for “redirecting funding and repurposing contracts.”

For days after January 20, activists at several points along the border denounced that construction crews weren’t stopping. “It’s a lie, I saw huge bulldozers digging up dirt on mountainsides, the crews were carving out new sections in some places and moving steel bollards closer to installation sites in others,” John Kurc, a filmmaker and photographer, told the Guardian. The Sky Island Alliance, an Arizona environmental defense group, set up a crowdsourced page to document continuing activity.

By the 27th, though, it appeared that wall construction had largely stopped. Now, the new administration must set about finding out what is left of:

  • $9.9 billion in Defense Department funds, which were to pay for 466 miles of wall, about 343 of which were completed; and
  • $5.8 billion in congressionally appropriated funds and $0.6 billion in Treasury seized asset forfeiture funds, which were to pay for well over 300 miles (the mileage to be built with 2021 funds is unknown), about 110 miles of which were completed.

By April 22, the Departments of Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security, and Justice, along with the White House Office of Management and Budget and National Security Council, are to come up with a plan for redirecting remaining funds, cancelling contracts, and (presumably) withdrawing eminent domain claims.

Some are suggesting using the money for border security technologies instead of fencing, an option that raises civil liberties and environment concerns. An unnamed “frontline CBP officer” told the Nation “that they had concerns about the growth of this technology, especially with the agency ‘expanding its capabilities and training its armed personnel to act as a federal police.’”

Border advocates are instead calling for investment to mitigate damage that wall-building did to fragile ecosystems and culturally sacred sites. “The right thing to do would be to tear them all down,” Laiken Jordahl of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity told Fronteras Desk. But “of course we have to be realistic with our demands. We certainly want to focus our energy on removing sections of barriers in wildlife corridors, in sacred areas to indigenous nations. In waterways where they’re stopping the flow of water.” Scientific American notes that this remediation is so necessary that “far more sites need restoration than funding would allow.”

Justice Department rescinds the “zero tolerance” rule

Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson has done away with the Justice Department’s notorious April 6, 2018 “zero tolerance” memo. Issued by Jeff Sessions, the attorney general at the time, this order called on the Justice Department to prosecute, in the federal criminal courts, the largest possible number of undocumented migrants who crossed the border between ports of entry, a misdemeanor.

This policy applied equally to asylum seekers, and it led to an outrageous expansion of family separations at the border. In about 3,000 cases, parents went into criminal custody while children got treated as unaccompanied minors. A scathing mid-January Justice Department Inspector General report found that Sessions and other officials knew that mass family separations would result from zero tolerance, and didn’t bother to prepare the responsible agencies ahead of time.

The revocation of “zero tolerance” is largely symbolic: the horrified national outcry forced Donald Trump to order a stop to most family separations in June 2018. And now, under the “Title 42” COVID-19 border policy, nearly all Central American or Mexican parents with children are being swiftly expelled back into Mexico without a proper chance to ask for asylum.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, keeps rolling back Trump-era policies. Next week the White House may release three or more executive orders seeking to:

  • Set up a task force to reunify families separated by zero tolerance;
  • Address “root causes” of migration in Central America;
  • Improve and increase border-zone processing of asylum seekers;
  • End “safe third country” agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras;
  • End a Trump administration rule barring asylum to people who passed through a third country and didn’t seek asylum there first;
  • Reinstate the Central American Minors Program that allows children to apply for protection in their home countries;
  • Help strengthen Mexico’s asylum system; and
  • Increase refugee admissions.

The White House had originally slated these EOs’ publication for January 29, though there was no formal public announcement confirming that. They are being delayed by a few days as “details are still being worked out.”

Links

  • WOLA released statements this week calling on Mexico to do more to protect migrants and punish those who abuse them, following the Tamaulipas massacre; and about the need for Mexico’s government to collaborate with the dismantling of “Remain in Mexico.”
  • A new U.S. Government Accountability Office report finds that, between October 2019 and March 2020, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) put about 5,290 recently apprehended asylum seekers through two ultra-rapid border-zone adjudication programs, HARP and PACR. Of these, only 23 percent passed initial credible fear screenings and were allowed to pursue their claims; before HARP and PACR, “74 percent of people passed their credible fear interview and were allowed to continue to seek asylum,” according to the ACLU. (We understand that the DHS Inspector-General will be releasing its own report on HARP and PACR on January 29.)
  • On January 26 Texas Southern District Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee, slapped a 14-day temporary restraining order on the 100-day deportation moratorium that President Biden had mandated on January 20. The order comes from a lawsuit brought by Texas’s archconservative attorney-general, Ken Paxton, who has made recent headlines by leading lawsuits against Biden’s Electoral College victory and against Obamacare. At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern contends that this order from a judge who “does not appear to have a rudimentary understanding of…immigration law” doesn’t actually compel the Biden administration to deport anyone.
  • “It is more difficult to transit through Mexico to the Mexico-U.S. border. This new phenomenon has been changing Mexico from a transit country to, in some cases, a country in which African migrants are settling temporarily or permanently,” finds a thorough new report from the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and the Institute for Women in Migration (IMUMI).
  • At CNN, veteran political analyst Ron Brownstein offers a detailed look at what lies ahead for the Biden administration’s immigration reform push, particularly the prospects for getting enough votes in the Senate.
  • James McHenry, who headed the Justice Department’s immigration court system (EOIR) during the Trump years, is stepping down. McHenry had established decision quotas and other measures that “made judges feel as if they were cogs in a deportation machine,” according to BuzzFeed.
  • The ICE detention facility in El Paso, which is much criticized for miserable conditions, is run by a subsidiary of a company run by members of a native Alaskan nation, who mostly live on an island a few miles from Russia. El Paso Matters tells the story of Bering Straits Native Corporation, which barely responded to its many inquiries.

The day ahead: January 29, 2021

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

I’m in meetings at 10, 11, 12, 2, 3, and 4:00 today, ranging from internal planning to informational interviews to coalition meetings. I’ll be hard to reach because I’ll be talking with people pretty much non-stop.

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Photo from La Silla Vacía (Colombia).

(Even more here)

January 28, 2021

Western Hemisphere Regional

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision revived an asylum bid by Juan Carlos Amaya, a citizen of El Salvador and former member of the gang MS-13

Sources involved with the discussions say they are delayed “by at least a few days,” but declined to say what is causing the delay

“Her chief of staff, Ambassador Julissa Reynoso, will monitor the federal reunification effort given her background as a lawyer”

Chile

The celebrated Chilean judge, Juan Guzmán Tapia, best known for his principled stand against human rights abuses and his pioneering prosecutions of former Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, died on January 22, 2021

Colombia

Ten percent of the 80 provisions of the ethnic sub-matrix have been fully implemented, 9 percent show an intermediate level of progress, 49 percent show minimal implementation, and the remaining 32 percent have not yet begun

Es un documento conmovedor que reconoce y documenta el sufrimiento y el daño causado por las Farc a las víctimas del secuestro. Es un documento demoledor para los congresistas del ahora llamado Partido de los Comunes

Así como es de intensa la tarea de los ambientalistas en Roncesvalles para proteger sus riquezas naturales, también son foco de amenazas contra su labor

En este documento, los magistrados de la Sala de Reconocimiento acusan a ocho excomandantes de la extinta guerrilla de haber sido los responsables de este delito de lesa humanidad

En este documento judicial, los magistrados de la Sala de Reconocimiento acusaron a ocho excomandantes de la extinta guerrilla de haber sido los responsables de este crimen y otros delitos conexos que vivieron sus víctimas en cautiverio

Dos investigadoras del conflicto armado colombiano señalan que el exjefe paramilitar violó a decenas de mujeres como una forma de control militar y social de la población de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

La JEP destaca la importante participación de más de 2 mil víctimas de secuestro que han insistido en la necesidad de establecer la verdad plena de lo sucedido e identificar a los responsables

Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela

El imponente despliegue de blindados y militares en la frontera de Perú y Ecuador para “disuadir” a la migración venezolana evidencia el inagotable drama del éxodo de connacionales

Guatemala

El caso más reciente ha sido la juramentación del juez Mynor Moto, señalado en casos de corrupción, para ocupar un lugar en la corte más alta del país

Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico

Fieles a su actuación servil, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Alejandro Giammattei y Juan Orlando Hernández, presidentes de México, Guatemala y Honduras, respectivamente, han convocado a las fuerzas armadas de sus países para contener la primera caravana del 2021

Guyana, Venezuela

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro is condemning what he calls the illegal detention of two Guyanese-registered fishing vessels and their crew by “the Venezuelan dictatorship”

Mexico

El crecimiento de las facultades militares no ha sido acompañado por el diseño de nuevos mecanismos de control, transparencia y rendición de cuentas

Coincidieron que, es evidente la falta de diseño e implementación de políticas de prevención de la violencia que garanticen el derecho a una migración segura

El sobrevuelo ocurrió luego que el pasado fin de semana campesinos de siete localidades confrontaran a soldados de los Batallones 40 y 27 del Ejército, después de que militares destruyeron 50 hectáreas de cultivos de amapola

Los habitantes del municipio de Chilón se enteraron por medios de comunicación sobre el acuerdo entre autoridades municipales, estatales y federales (incluyendo a la Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional-SEDENA), para ceder un terreno dentro de su territorio para la construcción de un Cuartel

A las bajas por la enfermedad se suman las de más de 500 policías asesinados por ataques de los criminales. La violencia contra los uniformados está en el nivel mas alto de los últimos tres años

The evolution of the Mérida Initiative points to the importance of working towards a common understanding of security that puts citizens’ security at the center

  • Anita Isaacs, Anne Preston, Lives Derailed (Haverford College, The New York Times, January 28, 2021).

Between June 2018 and June 2019, we interviewed 430 former immigrants living in Mexico City. More than a third left the United States during the first 18 months of the Trump administration

Mexico, U.S.-Mexico Border

Los gobiernos de México y los Estados Unidos tienen la obligación de colaborar entre ellos para proteger a estas personas, y revertir por completo “Quédate en México”, un programa que ha generado un desastre humanitario sin precedente

U.S.-Mexico Border

“They think things are going change immediately. I’m trying to make them understand it’s not that easy”

The day ahead: January 28, 2021

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

While I didn’t try to steer meetings and commitments away from today, I have a pretty light schedule. I’ll spend part of the day pestering contacts in government about things like information requests, and part of the day writing a weekly border update, some Colombia website updates, and some longer-term projects. Tomorrow’s schedule is much fuller, so I’ll try to make the most of today’s unexpectedly open calendar.

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Photo from defensa.com (Spain).

(Even more here)

January 27, 2021

Western Hemisphere Regional

The pandemic may ultimately be a turning point that saw unfortunate crime and security-related trends of the past three decades accelerate even faster. The question is what governments can do to stop it

The percentage of Latin American students who complete high school may fall from 61% to 46% because of the pandemic

While some changes are possible, the realities of a split U.S. Congress and a crowded domestic agenda will probably prevent the kind of bold experiments such as drug legalization that some progressives support

Congressional Democrats and immigrant advocacy groups seem content deferring initially as Biden seeks Republican support for change. But it’s clear that both groups have only limited patience for that approach if Republicans don’t quickly show signs of interest

Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump appointee, granted a temporary restraining order sought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, saying the state had demonstrated a likelihood of facing immediate harm from Biden’s pause

Brazil

Secco is attacking money laundering by criminal organizations at a national level, a strategy that isn’t frequently seen in Latin America

Chile

This news was devastating. Diemar felt she had accepted that her adoption was done in the proper manner because she couldn’t handle the emotional fallout

Colombia

The death leaves a void for the ruling Democratic Center Party, which is trying to decide on a candidate who could win in next year’s presidential election

En lo que va del 2021 se han presentado 14 enfrentamientos armados entre estructuras criminales y la Fuerza Pública, 13 eventos de amenazas de muertes a líderes sociales, 6 masacres y 5 asesinatos de excombatientes de las Farc-EP

Ecuador, Peru

Su objetivo será vigilar hasta 30 pasos fronterizos clandestinos que han sido identificados como los más frecuentes utilizados por la inmigración ilegal

El Salvador

Bukele se vende como un mesías, como el parteaguas en la historia de este país y no pretende permitir que le compita ninguna guerra, con todos sus magnicidios y masacres; ni tampoco una paz, con todos sus logros e imperfecciones

Guatemala, Honduras

Thousands in US-bound migrant caravan were returned to Honduras this month, but many say they will try again. Here’s why

Guatemala, Mexico

Family members of the missing Guatemalans said their loved ones — most of them in their late teens and early 20s — started heading North on January 12, departing from Comitancillo, Tuilelen, and Sipacapa, small towns and villages just south of the border with Mexico

Honduras

Las autoridades confirmaron que no se reportan personas heridas, pese al enfrentamiento y el siniestro de la avioneta que se quemó en un 90 por ciento

Mexico

Dos grandes cárteles, siete u ocho organizaciones criminales de alto impacto y unos cien grupos menores de la delincuencia organizada, no menos peligrosos, conforman la geografía del narcotráfico en México

U.S.-Mexico Border

Prosecutions had dropped sharply after the Trump administration declared a pandemic-related health emergency that allows them to immediately expel Mexicans and many Central Americans

Venezuela

Johan León, Yordy Bermúdez, Layners Gutiérrez Díaz, Alejandro Gómez y Luis Ferrebuz estuvieron tres días en una clínica del municipio San Francisco, por presentar síntomas asociados al COVID-19

“Ten drops under the tongue every four hours and the miracle is done,” Maduro said in a televised appearance on Sunday. “It’s a powerful antiviral, very powerful, that neutralizes the coronavirus”

Talk to anyone in the Venezuelan community right now and you may hear really mixed feelings

The day ahead: January 27, 2021

I’ll be reachable, except when writing. (How to contact me)

Like yesterday, I’ve tried to keep today clear of meetings while I do a lot of correspondence and writing. I may have email, whatsapp, signal, text etc. turned off when I’m deep into writing.

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Jorge Lezama photo at SinEmbargo (Mexico). Caption: “Campesinos solicitaron el apoyo del Presidente.”

(Even more here)

January 26, 2021

Brazil

O ministro da Defesa, general Fernando Azevedo, viaja no próximo sábado para os Estados Unidos e só volta no dia 4 de fevereiro. Ele vai para Luisiana visitar o Centro de Treinamento de Preparação Conjunta, em Fort Polk

Central America Regional

We need the Biden Administration to set a new tone that unequivocally embraces the rule of law. That starts by holding corrupt actors accountable through tools like the Magnitsky Act

Colombia

The FARC’s political party will now be known as Comunes, which translates roughly to commoners or commons

The fallout of a decades-long armed conflict, a peace process that appears to be coming apart at the seams, an impending economic crisis, and a government with far-right conservative leanings that has failed to appease the growing frustration —all factors driving the anger of everyday Colombians

Carlos Holmes Trujillo se desempeñó en este gobierno como ministro de Relaciones Exteriores y de Defensa. Fue precandidato presidencial para las elecciones de 2018

La llegada de Girado tiene en tensión a tres departamentos y varios municipios de la Sierra Nevada de santa Marta

Márquez requested direct communication with Vice President Harris to help ensure the United States’ continued commitment to an inclusive peace in Colombia

Guatemala, Mexico

30 indigenous men and women traveled to the foreign ministry in Guatemala City from distant highland provinces on Monday after word spread their relatives may be among the deceased

Haiti

While once only a concern for those with means, now no one is immune from becoming a kidnapping victim in Haiti

Mexico

With the president now infected, what most aggrieved many Mexicans was not only that he had flouted basic safety precautions, but that he also may go back to playing down the threat

Unos 200 campesinos de siete comunidades del municipio de San Miguel Totolapan, Guerrero, se confrontaron a jaloneos y empujones este domingo con efectivos del Ejército que acudieron a destruir plantíos de amapola

The group had kept in contact with family members back home, Coronado said, but there had been no word for them since Thursday, when they were apparently in or near Tamaulipas

Since 2019, the current U.S. and Mexican Administrations have been working together to externalize U.S. immigration enforcement into Mexican territory. This resulted in thousands of African migrants being stranded in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula

U.S.-Mexico Border

Determining which fence segments should come down and how to fix the damage they have caused would likely require some tough decisions

A frontline Customs and Border Protection officer, who asked not to be identified as they were not authorized to speak publicly, told The Nation that they had concerns about the growth of this technology, especially with the agency “expanding its capabilities and training its armed personnel to act as a federal police”

About 1,220 individuals received positive credible fear determinations placing them into full removal proceedings where they may apply for various forms of protection such as asylum. However, as of October 2020, DHS and EOIR could not account for the status of such proceedings for about 630 of these individuals

While the suspension of new enrollments in MPP is a critical first step, thousands of individuals with pending MPP cases remain in danger

Venezuela

“Del lado del chavismo sí hay gente que quisiera la negociación”

The day ahead: January 26, 2021

I’ll be reachable much of the day, but will be unresponsive when writing. (How to contact me)

I’ve deliberately avoided scheduling meetings today and tomorrow, after two weeks of very frequent commitments. I’m catching up, doing a lot of back-and-forth correspondence, and trying to get writing done. While writing, I’ll have all communications apps turned off.

Some articles I found interesting this morning

Photo from Animal Político (Mexico).

(Even more here)

January 25, 2021

Brazil

Sunday’s protests were called by conservative groups that had once backed the president, while those on Saturday had come from the left

Colombia

El Ejército de Colombia adquirió 3.771 fusiles Galil ACE 23 de calibre 5,56 mm. El contrato, firmado con la Industria Militar de Colombia INDUMIL, por un valor de aproximadamente 4,4 millones de dólares

Organizaciones sociales ya han enviado sus peticiones al nuevo Gobierno para que respalde la paz

Un informe de la Procuraduría estableció que lo reportado por el Gobierno en términos del Fondo de tierras y la formalización de predios a campesinos, promesas del primer punto del Acuerdo de Paz, es inferior a la realidad

Los militantes de las extintas Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia han llegado a la conclusión de que esa sigla genera resistencia en múltiples sectores de la sociedad y han decidido identificarse a partir de ahora como Comunes

Solo esta semana hubo denuncias por la desaparición de once personas que se movilizaban de Tumaco al municipio de Mosquera y por el desplazamiento de 99 familias

“Puede haber una relación más distante entre los partidos de Gobierno de los dos países, pero nadie está proponiendo recortar la ayuda o cambiar la relación comercial”

“Hoy me atrevo a escribirle esta carta, con la esperanza que pueda ser leída por usted, a fin de establecer un dialogo que nos permita articular las acciones necesarias para cuidar la vida desde el amor maternal y el instinto del cuidado”, escribió la lideresa

En diálogo con EL TIEMPO, el embajador estadounidense en Colombia, Philip Goldberg, reconoce los esfuerzos del gobierno de Iván Duque para implementar el proceso de paz, proteger las vidas de líderes sociales y evitar masacres. Pero pide “hacer más”

El ex alto comisionado de Paz, vislumbra lo que significa la nueva administración de EE. UU.

Colombia, Mexico

Después de la extradición de los exjefes paramilitares a Estados Unidos en 2008 por orden del expresidente Álvaro Uribe Vélez, se produjo un efecto inesperado en Colombia y fue la entrada de los carteles de Sinaloa, Jalisco Nueva Generación y Los Zetas

Cuba, Nicaragua

El modelo de represión que ahora ocurre en Nicaragua, y desde 2014 en Venezuela, tiene sus orígenes en Cuba desde el año 2003

Mexico

Lamentó que aún se registren enfrentamientos con pérdida de vidas humanas, aunque afirmó que ya se están sintiendo los cambios

En total el Ejército consiguió asegurar 6 mil 975 kilogramos de este estupefaciente, un crecimiento del 18.5 por ciento respecto a los 5 mil 886 kilogramos decomisados en 2019

La Secretaría de Marina (Semar) reservó por cinco años la hoja de servicios de mandos vinculados a la desaparición y posible ejecución extrajudicial de 47 personas en Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, entre enero y junio de 2018

Los testimonios de pobladores de Camargo señalan que un comando de pistoleros del Cártel del Noreste (CDN), los antiguos Zetas, localizaron en una casa del poblado Santa Anita a 19 presuntos ciudadanos guatemaltecos, a quienes asesinaron en ese lugar y luego los abandonaron

López Obrador has frequently minimized the severity of the pandemic and has rarely worn a mask

Campesinos de siete comunidades del Municipio de San Miguel Totolapan se confrontaron este domingo con efectivos del Ejército, luego de que estos les destruyeron 50 hectáreas de amapola

U.S.-Mexico Border

The future of the border wall is up in the air not only for what may still go in but what some want to see torn out

Venezuela

Alistarse en la FAN ya no es una opción para los venezolanos más pobres

  • Alberto Barrera Tyszka, Los Naca Naca (The New York Times, January 25, 2021).

El chavismo está criminalizando la solidaridad. Su modo ñaca ñaca, su estilo camorrero e impúdico, requiere de una respuesta más contundente —incluso más pública— de las Naciones Unidas

Venezuela’s Juan Guaido is a “privileged interlocutor” but no longer considered interim president, European Union states said in a statement

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) on Monday will launch another effort to offer Venezuelan exiles protection from deportation through Temporary Protected Status — a move that the Biden administration supports

The day ahead: January 25, 2021

I’ll be mostly reachable in the afternoon. (How to contact me)

I’m trying to keep Tuesday and Wednesday of this week clear of commitments in order to get some overdue writing and website maintenance done. (We’ll see whether I succeed at that.) Today, I’ve got a long internal staff meeting on the calendar in the morning, a meeting with colleagues in Colombia in the afternoon, and a lot of messages in my inbox. I should be reachable most of the afternoon, though, if needed.

Weekly e-mail update is out

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

  • The latest WOLA podcast, on Mexico;
  • Full text of this week’s Colombia peace update;
  • Full text of this week’s U.S.-Mexico border update;
  • A piece about politicized security forces, which I wrote for a Brazilian think tank newsletter;
  • Video of a fun TV appearance with a Colombian panel on January 20;
  • 5 “longread” links from the past week;
  • Latin America-related online events for this week;
  • And, finally, several 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.

Latin America-related online events this week

Monday, January 25

  • 12:30–1:30 at newschool.edu: Decolonizing Drug Policy: Perspectives from the Americas and Asia (RSVP required).

Tuesday, January 26

  • 10:00–12:00 at wilsoncenter.org: Ninth Annual US-Mexico Security Conference: Part 1 (RSVP required).
  • 3:00–5:30: Política energética, capitalismo extractivista y medio ambiente (RSVP required).
  • 8:00pm at Zoom: ¿Por qué hablamos de drogas? (RSVP required).

Wednesday, January 27

  • 10:00–11:30 at refugeesinternational.org: From Displacement to Development: Challenges and Opportunities to the Economic Inclusion of Venezuelans in Colombia (RSVP required).
  • 12:00 at uk.rodeemoseldialogo.org: Cowards Don’t Make History by Joanne Rappaport (RSVP required).
  • 2:00 at Zoom: In the vortex of violence. Lynching, Extralegal Justice, and the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico (RSVP required).
  • 3:00 at notredame.zoom.us: Ethnic Report from the Barometer Initiative (RSVP required).
  • 4:00–6:00 at elespectador.com: ¿En qué va la Reforma Rural Integral? Information here.

Thursday, January 28

  • 5:00–6:00 at williamjperrycenter.org: Regional Security and Defense: The Next Decade (RSVP required).
  • 5:30–7:00 at Zoom: Author Meets Critics: MS-13 the Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang w/Steven Dudley (RSVP required).
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