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

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

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

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

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

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