Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Also Present in Chile, Argentina

By Sabrina Hernández
Anti-Immigrant sentiment is present in other areas of our hemisphere besides the United States. As US President Donald Trump decries immigration from predominately Muslim countries and vows to build a border wall to defend from  immigrants from Mexico and Central America, two of South America’s two most financially prosperous and stable economies also are experiencing a growth of xenophobic expression.

 Migrant Women Folk Festival in Buenos Aires (Wikimedia Commons)

In Chile and Argentina—economic powerhouses of the continent—an influx of immigrants in recent years has resulted in new anti-immigrant actions. Argentina, newly under a politically and economically conservative government, has seen a crackdown on immigrants. In fact, government officials have begun the rhetorical work of conflating immigration with crime.

Susana Malcorra, foreign minister of Argentina and a serious candidate for UN Secretary-General in last year’s election, has done her part to establish a link between immigration and drug trafficking. Led by President Mauricio Macri, Argentina’s government has developed the rhetorical framework to vilify immigrants, established new controls meant to discourage immigration, targeted bus terminals used by immigrants, and on Jan. 26, implemented a system that obligates airlines to comply with the Interior Ministry.

Not unlike Argentina, Chile, too, has proposed legislation to curb immigration. In the face of a 132% increase of legally registered foreigners, Chile’s rightist coalition, Chile Vamos, wants to make it more difficult to obtain residency visas and also impose clearer penalties for violation of immigration laws.

Peruvian immigrant women in Chile (Wikimedia Commons)

Policies Fuel Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
And what is the collateral damage of these legislative and discursive campaign against immigrants? Much as we have seen here in the United States, discrimination against immigrants is on the rise in both Chile and Argentina as well. While immigrants are strategically targeted for national scapegoating, one study found that immigrants in Chile on average have spent more time in school than their Chilean counterparts.

Immigrants in Argentina primarily come from Paraguay, Bolivia, and Peru, although some people are also migrating there from Uruguay and Chile.

The majority of its immigrants entering Chile hail from Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia, with a recent arrivals coming the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Venezuela (a country that finds itself in times of unprecedented inflation). As more Haitians and other immigrants of African descent arrive, an interesting result has been the diversification of the traditionally homogenous ethnic makeup of Chile.

There is uncertainty whether proposed and enacted legislation will ultimately discourage immigration into the two powerful economies at the tip of South America. Other factors could also come into play, such as the lack of job opportunities. Chile has experienced paltry economic growth in recent years, and Argentina has seen a growth in inflation, a drop in domestic consumption, and an explosive rise in the country’s poverty numbers during the Macri years. The economy was a factor in recent migration patterns in the US, In the years following the Great Recession, the number of Mexican immigrants who left the US surpassed arrivals.

Five Journalists Killed in Paraguay During President Horacio Cartes' Administration

From the time President Horacio Cartes of Paraguay took office in April of 2013, five journalists have been killed in what some Paraguayan leaders are calling a narco-political effort to silence voices of opposition. Andrés Gaudín covered the killing of the fifth and most recent journalist, Gerardo Servia, in last week's issue of NotiSur. "Journalists and campesino groups accuse President Cartes of being a ‘partner and protector of the mafias.’ During a March 6 memorial service for Servián, the secretary-general of the Sindicato de Periodistas de Paraguay (SPP) Santiago Ortiz called Cartes the ‘godfather of these mafia groups’ and said his ‘government of narcopolitics’ is directly to blame for the five journalist killings. ‘Since Cartes took over the presidency, the mafia murders with impunity,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to stop being silent and afraid. We must put an end to narcopolitics. Either that or narcopolitics will put an end to us.’

The repeated killings of journalists and campesinos have also gone unacknowledged by groups such as the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) and Human Rights Watch (HRW), and by regional organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (UNASUR)."

Despite this apparent lack of attention from others, Reporters Without Borders has taken notice. On their webpage focused on Paraguayan reporters, stories of the five journalists and the broader issues highlighted by their murders are provided for the public, as well as activists, other journalists, and anyone generally interested in the rights of press workers and the freedom of information.

Photo: Reporters without Borders

Gerardo Servian Coronel, a radio journalist in the Paraguayan border town of Zanja Pytá, was assassinated on March 4, 2015, by two men riding a motorcycle near the border city of Ponta Pora. Servian was critical of the local government on his radio program, which was not hard to do in a nation riddled by rampant corruption at the highest levels. Servian’sbrother and fellow journalist Gerardo Servian received numerous death threats after working alongside Santiago Leguizamon. Leguizamon was murdered in 1991 and to this day no one has been held accountable. Servian’s is the 17th murder of a Paraguayan journalist in the last two decades, and the fifth since the election of Horacio Cartes. Reporters Without Borders reports that the vast majority of these murders were reprisals for investigative reporting on the links between organized crime and politics.

Photo: Reporters without Borders

Pablo Medina, a correspondent for Paraguay’s leading daily periodical ABC Color, was murdered on his way back from reporting near the indigenous community of Ko’e Pora on October 16, 2014. Known for covering the drug trade in Paraguay, Medina had received numerous death threats before. His assistant, Antonia Almada, was also fatally wounded. Medina was formerly under police protection, but that protection was lifted in 2013. Reports say that two men stopped his vehicle, asked him to identify himself, and then fatally shot him and his assistant. Medina’s brother and fellow journalist, Salvador Medina, was also murdered in the same region in January of 2001 after covering drug traffickers.

Edgar Fernández Fleitas, a Concepción-based lawyer and presenter of a daily radio program called “Ciudad de la Furia” (City of Fury), was murdered on June 9, 2014, just one month after the murder of fellow journalist Fausto Alcaraz. Fleitas’ radio program openly criticized local government and judicial officials and repeatedly drew attention to their involvement with drug traffickers. Death threats on his life were repeatedly reported to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. A single gunman assassinated Fleitas inside his Concepción office.

Fausto Gabriel Alcaraz, a popular radio journalist who covered drug trafficking and the involvement of government officials in illicit trade on the border town of Pedro Juan Cabaellero, was murdered on May 16, 2014. Reports show that Alcaraz was shot 11 times. Alcaraz often accused officials by name on his program for involvement in illicit trade near the border and in other regions. Pedro Juan Caballero has been the site of at least two other murders of journalists in recent memory, including that of Santiago Leguizamon and the radio director Marcelino Vasquez, whose murder took place just months before Cartes entered office.

Carlos Artaza, a press photographer who had recently been covering the aggressive race gubernatorial race in the state of Amambay, was murdered on April 25, 20013 in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero. The homicide occurred just days after Cartes election, a month after the similar murder of Marcelino Vasquez, and on the 24th anniversary of the murder of Leguizamon in the same city. Other journalists in the area who were also covering the heated race and supporting the left-leaning candidate, Pedro Gonzalez, received death threats on their phone reading, for example, “you are next” in both Spanish and Guaraní. Artaza was shot in his car by two men on a motorcycle.

Paraguay ranks 109 out of 180 countries in The Reporters Without Borders 2015 Press Freedom Index.  The index ranks the performance of 180 countries according to a range of criteria that include media pluralism and independence, respect for the safety and freedom of journalists, and the legislative, institutional and infrastructural environment in which the media operate. Other countries in the Latin America-Caribbean region that rank higher than Paraguay are Costa Rica (16), Uruguay (23), Suriname (29), Belize (30), Eastern Caribbean (37), Chile (43), El Salvador  (45), Haiti (53), Argentina (57), Guyana (62), Dominican Republic (63), Panama (83), Peru (92), Bolivia (94), Brazil (99), and Ecuador (108).  In contrast, Guatemala ranked 124, Colombia 128,  Honduras 132, Venezuela 137, and Mexico 148. 

When examining the situation in Paraguay in particular, we see that the northeastern border departments of Concepción, Canindeyú and Amambay (the location of  Pedro Juan Cabellero) continue to be the region in which the greatest effort to silence reporters is exerted. Comprised mainly of rural communities with small and medium-sized urban centers, this is the region traffickers must pass through when traveling from Asunción to the consumer markets of Brazil.

-Jake Sandler 

Also in LADB on March 18-20

• Senate Elects Former Prosecutor Eduardo Medina Mora to Supreme Court
• Same-Sex Marriage Slowly Gaining Acceptance in Mexico
• Price Slide Spells Difficult Days for South American Oil Producers  
• Costa Rica Links Immigration to Development, Focuses on Protecting Immigrant Rights 
• Haitian Immigration Crisis Reaches New Heights

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Zones for Economic Development and Honduras’ Sovereignty for Sale

The Zones for Economic Development (ZEDEs), commonly promoted by the Honduran government as "model cities," are set to become a reality in the near future, as domestic and international investors and developers plan to break ground in coming months. The project is supported by a two-year feasibility study, which South Korean investors completed in November of last year on the first planned ZEDE. That "model city" would be located on the Pacific coast near the border of Honduras with El Salvador and Nicaragua, in a community called Zacate Grande – an island connected to the mainland by a highway. For more on the South Korean study, as well as the threats of human rights violations due to government land seizures and other aspects of ZEDE law, see  last week’s edition of NotiCen.



Even though residents of Zacate Grande have fended off attempts by domestic and international investors and their own national government to seize their land in the interest of future development, the threats posed by ZEDEs are unlike any in the past. As international human rights expert Erika Piquero writes in the Latin Correspondent, ZEDE law presents investors and corporations with the unique ability to work within a separate legislative system, with its own laws, courts, infrastructure, tax law and equipped with an ability to evict inhabitants of land slated for development.

Opponents, proponents offer their views
The opposition points out that the creation of ZEDEs is akin to selling off the country’s sovereignty bit by bit, and terribly violating the human rights of the nation’s most oppressed and marginalized peoples.

The government and the project’s neoliberal supporters stand by the project’s main objective: ZEDEs will spur an unprecedented amount of development and economic growth, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and lifting the nation out of its perpetual state of poverty and underdevelopment.

Opposition leaders, critics, human rights activists and community counter tha this this “development” will only benefit the already wealthy investors; in much the same way as similar schemes have in the past.

A predominantly indigenous, Afro-indigenous community

Photo: Rick Wunderman, Wikimedia Commons

To put the dispute in perspective, it is useful to review the history of the area. Zacate Grande, a predominantly indigenous and Afro-indigenous community, was uninhabited until the 1920s when its current inhabitants were displaced from the mainland. A highway was constructed in the 1970s with plans to develop the beautiful coastline in sight. Some of the nation’s most wealthy individuals have had their hand on local land titles for decades, and now the opening of the ZEDEs is presenting an unprecedented opportunity.

Even though Honduras has signed most major international accords on human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples, the ZEDEs would suspend basic rights like habeas corpus and other internationally recognized rights. Mixed with Honduras’ checkered past in respecting human rights law, many critics are hoping this plan more model cities and economic development does not plunge the communities within these zones into a state of lawlessness, where the whims of investors and corporations literally run the courthouse.

With many human rights activists and academics linking the creation of ZEDEs more to patterns of Honduran militarization than to actual neoliberal plans for development, we may begin to see a situation where military and security forces are literally and legally acting as a strong arm force for the interests of investment, maintaining ‘order’ in these fantastical economic zones, and perhaps physically removing people from their land.

-Jake Sandler

Also in LADB on Jan. 14-16 

• Veracruz Continues to Live Up to Reputation as Dangerous State for Journalists
• Insecurity Takes Back Seat to Immigration at Recent Summit Between Presidents Enrique Peña Nieto and Barack Obama
• Transparency Concerns Regarding Election of  Guatemala's Comptroller General
• Peru’s New Youth Employment Law Sparks Protests, Calls For Repeal
• Venezuelans United Against U.S. Sanctions

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Center for Justice and Accuntability Seeks Truth, Justice, Redress for Victims of Torture, Human Rights Violations

"The administration of Salvador Sanchez Ceren has the obligation and opportunity to make a difference, to improve the lives of the people of El Salvador – the people th ey fought for – and ensure that they see justice."  Center for Justice and Accountability

Several thousand people participated in a candlelit procession through the campus of the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA), the scene, 25 years ago, of one of the most infamous episodes in El Salvador’s dozen-year civil war (1980-1992): the predawn murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and and the housekeeper's daughter.  This week's issue of NotiCen examines some of the issues surrounding the anniversary, including efforts to overturn a blanket amnesty approved in El Salvador in 1993, which allows the perpetrators to remain unpunished.

 

Photo: Center for Justice and Accountablity

Among those participating in the procession in San Salvador on Nov. 18 was Almudena Bernabeu, an attorney and rights advocate at the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) in San Francisco, California. The CJA has played a leading role in recent years in efforts to prosecute the authors of the UCA massacre

The CJA is an international human rights organization dedicated to deterring torture and other severe human rights abuses around the world. The organization also advances the rights of survivors to seek truth, justice and redress, which applies directly to its work in El Salvador. 

CJA uses litigation to hold perpetrators individually accountable for human rights abuses, develop human rights law, and advance the rule of law in countries transitioning from periods of abuse.
The case of the murdered Jesuits is just one of seven active cases in El Salvador.  The center is  involved in human-rights-related litigation in seven countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.  In addition to El Salvador, the CJA is involved in cases in Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Peru (as well as the United States).  The other five countries where the CJA is involved in human-rights-related cases are Bosnia, Cambodia, China, Somalia, and Timor-Leste.

The CJA was founded in 1998 with support from Amnesty International and the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture to represent torture survivors in their pursuit of justice. The center is part of the movement for global justice for those who have been tortured or have suffered other severe human rights abuses.

"CJA is one of the few international human rights NGOs with a base of clients who speak out publicly against mass atrocities from a survivor's perspective," said the organization.  "At the heart of CJA’s mission is the belief that survivors themselves are the most effective spokespeople against torture, genocide and other abuses. CJA devotes resources to supporting clients who, as a result of participating in our litigation, are galvanized to dedicate more time and energy to anti-impunity efforts within their communities."

-Carlos Navarro 

Also in LADB on Dec. 10-12 

• Mexican Supreme Court to Elect New President, Welcome New Justice in 2015
• Tabaré Vázquez Back as Uruguay’s President, Reflecting Region’s Progressive Trend
• In Push To Spur Investment, Peru Weakens Environmental Protection
• Guatemalan Government Mired in Financial Problems
• Mexico Welcomes US President Barack Obama’s Executive Order on Immigration

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An Innovative Solution to Drought in Nicaragua: Eat Iguana Meat

From National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

As the worst drought in over three decades is taking its toll on families and communities throughout the “Dry Corridor” of Central America, the World Food Programme (WFP) is working with the governments of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua to provide food assistance to several million people through an effort that combines resources from Canada, Brazil and Australia, as well as donations of rice and beans from Japan and Ethiopia, 

The emergency conditions in the Dry Corridor, which scientists say are the result of climate change, have prompted the governments of Guatemala and Honduras to declare a state of emergency for the region. The drought is having an especially devastating effect on Guatemala.

Wikimedia Commons (Rob Young)

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's administration is holding off on an emergency declaration for now, even thought Nicaragua is still receiving large amounts of food from WFP.  “In this country we do not have a social crisis, what we do have is a drought affecting the dry corridor, which is made up of fewer than 100 municipalities. However, in most of those places it is raining and production is taking place," said the  Read more from Benjamin Witte-Lebhar in this week's issue of NotiCen.

Each of the four countries is attempting to cope with the situation in different ways. The Ortega administration, for example, is urging residents who live in the dry areas of Nicaragua to eat more iguanas.  According to  Guillermo Membreño, director the governmental Department of Land Management, iguana meat has a higher protein content than chicken.  The problem is that the hunting of iguanas in the wild is prohibited in Nicaragua during the first four months of the year. Membreño's solution is for residents in the dry areas to set up iguana farms. Any iguanas raised at the farms do not have the same protections as the iguanas found in the wild.

The drought has created a difficult situation for families in this region of Central America. “Some families resort to dangerous survival tactics, such as skipping meals. Others simply stop sending their children to school to save money. Others send the head of households to Mexico or the United States to find jobs," said the WFP.

Environmental activists from around the globe are hoping the UN Climate Summit in New York City on Sept. 27 will address the impact of climate change on agriculture, especially in poor regions like the Dry Corridor in Central America.

-Jake Sandler

Also in LADB This Week...
'Bebe Doc" Duvalier Can Face Trial on Human-Rights Abuses: Rejoicing victims of former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Bébé Doc" Duvalier (1971-1986) enthusiastically welcomed the decision announced by a three-judge panel on Feb. 20 that the Caribbean island nation’s former ruler could be charged with crimes against humanity. George Rodríguez tells us more in the latest edition of NotiCen.

Mexico-Related Labor Issues: The left and the right have both launched initiatives to raise the minimum wage in Mexico, seizing on an initiative that President Enrique Peña Nieto and the governing Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) have not put at the top of their economic priority lists. Read more from Carlos Navarro in this week's edition of SourceMex. Also, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Mexican government agreed to strengthen their collaborative efforts to provide immigrant, migrant, and otherwise vulnerable Mexican workers and their employers with guidance and information and access to education about their rights and responsibilities under the laws enforced by the EEOC. Read more in SourceMex.

Candidates of Questionable Character in Peruvian Elections: Peru’s regional and municipal elections scheduled for Oct. 5 are clouded by a considerable number of candidates with shady pasts convicted of graft, embezzlement, drug trafficking, and aggravated theft.  Read more from Elsa Chanduví Jaña in this week's edition of NotiSur.

Is the Right Regaining Power in South America? Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa believes that right-wing forces are launching a "conservative restoration" in South America, a coordinated effort to regain power and, unless the left is willing to fight back, put an end to the cycle of progressive governments that has taken hold there in recent years. Andrés Gaudín tells us more in this week's edition of NotiSur.


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Argentina Pushes Back

As Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner battles against a recent court decision in New York that ruled in favor of Argentine bond owners, called ‘vulture funds’, the populist South American leader is also filing suit against RR Donnelley, a printing company that recently closed up shop in Buenos Aires and laid off hundreds. The large printing company cited struggles amidst the difficult national economic situation, due in large part to Argentina’s defaulting on its debt for the second time since the new millennium. President Fernández de Kirchner is utilizing an anti-terrorism law to threaten RR Donnelley with criminal charges for attempting to further derail the national economy and incite fear in international markets.

Fernández de Kirchner’s threat against the printing company could appear as desperate, backing the position of those who favor the New York decision and view Fernández de Kirchner’s anger as nothing more than a mechanism to draw popularity by standing against the unpopular US government.

Despite favorable responses from the IMF and international media that criticized the heavy-handed New York court decision, which set Argentina’s default in motion by affirming the claims of vulture funds that held-out during a debt restructuring plan under the presidency of Nestor Kirchner (Fernández de Kirchner’s husband) almost a decade ago, the US Supreme Court upheld the New York decision, thus calling into question the economic spending policies of Kirchner’s administration. Andrés Gaudín addresses the controversy in Argentina in this week's issue of NotiSur. 

High public spending has been known to cause problems for the national economies of countries ruled by populist leaders, often more concerned with pleasing the masses and maintaining their power than financial minutia such as inflation rates. In fact, the populist president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has set in motion a group of laws that not only allow him to stay in power indefinitely, but also begin a move away from Ecuadoran dollarization. President Correa has framed this strategy as a way to protect the Ecuadoran people from the control of banks and bankers. Luis Ángel Saavedra discusses the Correa government's new currency policy in this week's issue of NotiSur. However, the new financial code is set up in a way that will allow Correa to more readily increase spending and ‘print’ electronic money. This would create a system of parallel currencies, similar to the convertibility plan under which Argentina has operated since its first default in 2002.

Between Kirchner and Correa, two leaders heavily influenced by South American populists during the second half of the twentieth century, there is a grand attempt evident to stand up against the US and other global powers. Whether or not these positions are motivated by populism, the ‘vulture funds’, in Argentina’s case, and the dependence on the US dollar in Ecuador’s, underline the legitimate struggle of Latin American nations (and other post-colonial, periphery economies for that matter) to overcome what economist Ellen Brown calls “colonization by bankruptcy”.

-Jake Sandler

Also in LADB this week....
Update on Unaccompanied Minors: We've written about the children from Central America from the perspective of Mexico and El Salvador.  George Rodríguez gives us a regional perspective as well as a point of view from Honduras. 

Praise for Dominican Republic's Immigration Policy: The Dominican government's decision to move toward a resolution of its immigration conflict (primarily with neighboring Haiti) has earned the praise of a couple of important international figures, Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon,  Read more from Crosby Girón.

A New Corruption-Free Police Unit in Mexico? On Aug. 22, President Enrique Peña Nieto swore in a 5,000-member gendarmerie, an elite federal police force that the administration is touting as a "new model" of corruption-free law enforcement. The new unit, known as the Gendarmería Nacional, will function as a type of SWAT team that will be deployed to specific areas of conflict. Security analysts are skeptical that the new unit will make much of a difference. "The gendarmerie is an aspirin to fight a cancer," Ernesto López Portillo, founder of the Instituto para la Seguridad y la Democracia (Insyde). Read More from Carlos Navarro

Too Many Deputies and Senators in Mexico?  The governing Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) has proposed a public referendum on a proposal to reduce the size of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate in Mexico. Supporters of this plan agree that Congress has become too big and costly to operate, so a reduction in the number of members of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate is warranted. Critics suggest, however, that the PRI’s proposal to reduce the number of at-large seats in each chamber is undemocratic because it would make it difficult for small parties to gain representation in Congress and perhaps give too much power to the party with the majority of seats.  Carlos Navarro tells us whether this initiative will prosper.

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Should a 10-Year-Old Child Be Allowed to Work?

There are 13 million (8.8%) of children in child labour in Latin America and the Caribbean -International Labour Organzation's latest report on Child Labor

Child labor already exists, and it is difficult to fight against it. Rather than crack down on it, we want to guarantee children’s labor security so that, step by step, we can eradicate [child labor] in the next five years. For that reason the law includes necessary safeguards in labor, health, and education rights. -Bolivian Sen. Adolfo Mendoza.

Image for ILO's Football Resource Kit

On July 17, 2014, the Bolivian Congress approved the Código Niño, Niña Adolescente, which lowers the minimum age at which children can work—to 10. The governing Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) defended the decision by saying it reflects what for "innumerable" families is simply a fact of life.

Is this a pragmatic decision or does it further entrench a practice that the global community believes is unacceptable?


The Bolivian Congress believes that children are having to work by necessity, and that any prohibition against having children as young 10 years old participate in the workplace would be counterproductive, particularly when this practice has taken place for generations. The legislation recognizes that low-income Bolivian children will and must work. And if this is going to happen, they have to have protections.

While the arguments of Bolivian legislators and President Evo Morales might merit strong consideration, the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) believe that the standards were set for a reason: to provide a framework to eradicate the practice of child labor. "One of the most effective methods of ensuring that children do not start working too young is to set the age at which children can legally be employed or otherwise work," the ILO says in a report on conventions and recommendations on child labor. Read more about this issue from Andrés Gaudín in this week's edition of NotiSur,

Here is the ILO's latest report on recent child labor trends.  Here is the ILO's Football Resource Kit on using football (soccer)  in child labor elimination and prevention projects.  And here is what UNICEF says about child labor.

Also in LADB this week...
Other Issues involving Youth and Children
If you have been following the ongoing coverage of the surge in the number of unaccompanied minors fleeing from Central America to the US, Ben Witte-Lebhar offers us the perspective from El Salvador in  this week's edition of NotiCen.

In NotiSur, we look at youth from a totally different perspective. Greg Scruggs tells us why Brazil's newest potential voters, those aged 16 and 17, have chosen not to register to vote in record numbers.

Health-Related Matters
We also covered children from a broader-health related perspective in this week's newsletters.  In NotiCen, Louisa Reynolds examined how Latin American countries are dealing with the problem of obesity in a region where (according to the Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO)  23% of the adult population and 7% of preschoolers are overweight or obese.

In SourceMex, we wrote how a chemical spill into the Sonora River forced environmental and health authorities to declare an environmental emergency in seven cities. 

International Hero or Corrupt Fugitive?
Our other article in SourceMex reported on the latest effort to bring fugitive miners' union leader Napoleón Gómez Urrutia back to Mexico. There are two sides to Gómez Urrutia.  Even though he has been accused of embezzling US$55 million from the union, he has been reelected as secretary general on numerous times. And international labor organizations have given him awards for his efforts to shine the light on corporate greed and inadequate safety standards for miners in Mexico.

-Carlos Navarro

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At the Other End of the Migration Journey

Honduran school children ( ZackClark. via Wikimedia Commons)

'The program is aimed specifically at children at social risk and with no access to formal education, and in it the child’s interests are involved. The beneficiaries are children practically living in city dumps, and others with no access to school, those who have no father or mother to provide them with a family and support." - Col. Gustavo Adolfo Amador, administrator of Honduras' Guardianes de la Patria

Most of the attention on the recent migration of minors from Central America to the United States has been on the point of destination--the United States. The coverage in the US media ranges from the detention centers where the young migrants are housed to U.S. immigration policies.

Even in this week's issue of SourceMex, we discuss a controversial move by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to send 1,000 National Guard Troops to the Texas-Mexico border as a response to the surge of minors from Central America. To some extent, we have also covered news from the point of transit, which is Mexico.  And in our coverage, we have alluded to the poverty and violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, which is largely behind the large exodus of unaccompanied minors.

Official T-shirt

So how do you keep young people from joining gangs?  Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández thinks he has a partial solution.  Earlier this year, he launched a program called Guardianes de la Patria, aimed at covering some 25,000 youngsters in the 5-15 age group in low-income, densely populated neighborhoods nationwide. The goal is to  teach young people values, prioriites and love of country.  "They receive formal and nonformal education, such as workshops, lectures, Christian education, training in technical work, physical training, sports, recreation activities according to age groups, and there is a school for fathers and mothers," said  Col. Gustavo Adolfo Amador, one of the officers who has oversees the program.

Human rights organizations warn, however, that the program has a Nazi-type component, exposing kids to a political-military culture of weapons to make up for a failed strategy to draft youngsters into the volunteer military service. "That’s a neo-Nazi project. We’re going to have youngsters with only military training since their childhood, and they’re having, with all that, all their rights … violated. It’s a project to annihilate a country’s dreams and the hope one places in youth. It’s a horror, what we’re living," said Bertha Oliva, head of the Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH)   Read More from George Rodríguez in NotiCen, July 31, 2014

(This video in Spanish from HispanTV provides addtional information)



Also in LADB This Week....

• Environmental advocates have accused Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow of reneging on his commitment to a sustainable-tourism policy by allowing a subsidiary of Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) to invest US$50 million in the construction of a cruise port on Harvest Caye, a 75-hectare island 5 km southwest of Placencia Village.
• The center-left Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena),  created by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is now officially a political party and is ready to compete with the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) for votes in Mexico's election in 2015..
• The World Cup was a disaster for Brazil, when measured by the results on the field (a 7-1 loss to Germany,  Off the field, the tournament ran smoothly for the record number of foreign tourists visiting the country and affluent Brazilians attending matches, but preparations also caused the widespread displacement of low-income Brazilian families. Either way, the event will have little impact on President Dilma Rousseff's reelection chances.  An economic downturn, however, could influence voters.
•  In the days leading up to the BRICS summit in Brazil on July 15, the Russian and Chinese presidents came to Latin America offering generous loan packages and cooperation plans. As leaders of the strongest economies of the five countries in the BRICS group, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China signed hundreds of agreements for billions of dollars with Latin America’s progressive governments with which they either have, or are looking for, points of agreements on the necessity of modifying structures of the global agencies and establishing a fair and polycentric new world order based on international law with the UN playing a central coordinating role.

-Carlos Navarro

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Economic Development, Energy Needs Clash with Environmental Protection, Right of Communities to Control Natural Resources

Photo: Carlos Navarro

In March 1977, the United Nations Water Conference recognized water as a right for the first time declaring that “All peoples, whatever their stage of development and social and economic conditions, have the right to have access to drinking water in quan tities and of a quality equal to their basic needs”.

The right to protect water and natural resources has become a source of conflict in many countries in Latin America.  Four countries--Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Panama--have had to struggle or are struggling with a decision regarding this precious natural resource. Environmental advocates and indigenous communities are among hose opposing the privatization of water or the development of huge water-related projects.  The government and the business sector are on the other side. They see the large-scale projects as a means to promote development/and or create sources of energy for the country. The results have been mixed.

Let's examine each of the conflicts.

Chile. In June, the government’s Comité de Ministros—the top of the bureaucratic totem pole for decisions regarding development projects—voted unanimously to reject the polemical HidroAysén power project, a multibillion-dollar hydroelectric complex planned for a mostly untouched area of Chile's far-southern Región de Aysén.  The ruling ended years of on-again, off-again legal limbo regarding the costly venture, which its corporate backers—Endesa (51%), a Spanish-Italian energy giant, and Colbún (49%), a privately owned Chilean utility—first unveiled in 2007.  Read More in Read More  from Benjamin Witte-Lebhar in NotiSur, July 11, 2014

Ecuador: A march staged by Ecuador’s indigenous movement—the second during President Rafael Correa’s time in office—was so small that, instead of influencing the government, it showed the indigenous movement to be weak and fragmented. A water law, as this set of regulations for the use and administration of a natural resource that the Ecuadoran Constitution classifies as a human right is known, was approved by 103 of the Asamblea Nacional’s 137 members despite ongoing debate since the bill was proposed in 2009. Read More  from Luis Ángel Saavedra in NotiSur, July 18, 2014

Panama: Panama’s newly elected President Juan Carlos Varela, who took office on July 1, comes to power amid a drought-sparked energy crisis that has highlighted the perils of depending heavily on hydroelectric power at a time when rain patterns have become increasingly erratic as a result of climate change. Panama’s new government has stated that it wishes to review the contract awarded by the former administration to Brazilian company Norberto Odebrecht for construction of the Chan II hydroelectric dam on the Río Changuinola, in the northern province of Bocas del Toro. Representatives of the Ngöbe indigenous group have reiterated their opposition to the project and have complained that Varela has not met with them to discuss his plans for Chan II. Read More from Louisa Reynolds in NotiCen, July 24, 2014

Peru: The  Congress on July 11 passed a packet of laws to promote investment and reactivate the economy despite numerous national and international criticisms that labeled the proposal a blow to the country’s environmental structure, control, and management. The new regulations basically relax sanctions for environmental violations. Iván Lanegra, former intercultural vice minister, told the newspaper La República, "Clearly, reducing fines implies less environmental protection and, worse yet, dismantling environmental protection is done with a law called "Investment Promotion," which increases the risk that it could be interpreted to mean environmental policy is being used to attract investment, which is precisely what should not be done."  Read more from Elsa Chanduví Jaña in NotiSur, July 25, 2014

Also in LADB the Past Two Weeks...
In Mexico, a federal court granted bankruptcy protection to PEMEX contractor Oceanografía,, the federal government reduced estimates for the number of disappeared, President Enrique Peña Nieto created an office to manage immigration policies along the southern border, and several states  have approved a ban on the use of animals in circus performances, thanks to the efforts of the Partido Verde Ecologista de México (PVEM)

In Central America, Salvadoran President Salvador Sánchez Cerén made a pair of early overtures to human rights victims, raising hopes that his presidency, which began just last month, might usher in an era of greater accountability regarding the many abuses and atrocities committed during the country’s dozen-year civil war (1980-1992)...Guatemala's Congress approved a nonbinding resolution that denies that genocide was committed during the country’s 36-year civil war and calls for "national reconciliation."And President Daniel Ortega added a new item to his already bulging portfolio of powers: direct command of the Policía Nacional (PN), Nicaragua’s 12,000-strong national police force.

In South America,.the Paraguayan government and business leaders moved to encourage more investments from already economically dominant Brazil, and political infighting fueled a standoff between the Venezuelan government and the oposition
 
-Carlos Navarro

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Escaping Crime and Gang Violence

 "More often than not, their neighborhood has become so dangerous or they have been so seriously threatened, that to stay is to wait for their own death or great harm to their family. Their neighborhoods are full of gangs. Their schools are full of gangs. They do not want to join for moral and political reasons and thus see no future,  -Elizabeth Kennedy, author of a study on Central American minors emigrating to the U.S.

Casa de Belen Posada del Migrante, Saltillo, Coahila (Photo by Chuy Mendez Garza via Wilkimedia Commons

Immigration (or emigration) is an important theme in three of the articles in our newsletters this week. The airwaves, the front pages of daily newspapers, and popular Internet sites in the United States and elsewhere have been filled with images of minors who have been caught after crossing into Texas. According to the White House, a record number of unaccompanied minors (more than 52,000 in the first five months of the year) were detained in U.S. border communities.

There are many factors prompting the young people to make the long and treacherous journey from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala through Mexico to seek a better life in the U.S. Economics and a desire to reunite with relatives (many times parents) certainly play a significant role in that "better life," but the children and teens are also seeking to escape out-of-control violence and crime that has ravaged their communities. Elizabeth Kennedy, a researcher at San Diego State University and University of California Santa Barbara, tells us more in a study entitled "Refugees from Central American gangs."

We covered the topic in SourceMex, weaving in the point of view of Mexican authorities and non-governmental organizations,  We also discussed a summit on the crisis in Guatemala City that included Presidents Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala and Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador, US Vice President Joe Biden, Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, and Honduran Government Coordinator Jorge Ramón Hernández Alcerro. Read More

A second article in SourceMex reported on an increase in remittances sent by Mexican expatriates to relatives back home during the first quarter of 2014. This is despite adverse economic conditions during that period in the country where most expatriates reside: the US. 

Map of Hatian migrants in Dominican Republic (Wikimedia Commons)

In NotiCen, we covered the new plan by the Dominican Republic to regularize the migratory status of "illegal aliens." The plan will benefit between 500,000 and 700,000 people, most of whom have ties to neighboring Haiti. While a percentage of those affected are recent immigrants, many others have lived their entire lives in the Dominican Republic, even though parents or grandparents came from Haiti.  Read more

Also in LADB this week
NotiCen also covered the case of former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo, who was sentenced by a US court to five years and 10 months in jail for accepting US$2.5 million from the Taiwanese government and attempting to launder the illegal money through US banks.

In NotiSur, our two articles dealt with land issues and indigenous rights. One article tells us how citizens of Ecuador adversely affected by Chevron's operations in the South American country managed to organize a protest at multinational company's annual shareholders' meeting.  This is despite Chevron's decision to move the meeting from the San Francisco Bay area to a more isolated location in Texas in order to avoid the protestors.  The second article looks at the five-year anniversary of the Bagua massacre in Peru, and how nine legislative decrees by ex-President Alan Garcia led to violent conflict. The decrees, related to energy projects, infringed on the ancestral right of indigenous communities to their land. Several trials related to the conflict are proceed slowly.
 
 -Carlos Navarro

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Disaster in Paradise

 "The fire in Valparaíso could be seen as a tragic natural disaster that caused massive damage without any distinction/ But if you take a look at who was most affected, the unjust reality is that ‘the losers,’ in this case, were the same people who always lose: the region’s poorest families." -," Ignacia Ossul and Rafael Silva, former directors of the anti-poverty organization Techo-Valparaíso

Known for its brightly-colored homes, iconic hillside elevators, and cherished history as one of the South Pacific’s most important seaports (particularly in the pre-Panama Canal era),  the Chilean coastal city of Valparaíso is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and major tourist destination.

Valparaíso, a city of artists and sailors, and Viña del Mar, with its flashy beachfront condos, casino, and upscale restaurants, are a study in contrasts. They complement each other, however, when it comes to the kind of imagery Chile uses to market itself to the world: that of a culturally rich country with a colorful past and—thanks to a prolonged period of economic growth that has endowed it with Latin America’s highest per capita income (between US$15,000 and US$20,000, depending on estimates)—an even brighter future.

Missing from that image, though, are the deeply impoverished communities—like the ones that burned in last month’s firestorm—that exist on the outskirts of Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, Santiago, and other major Chilean cities.

A furious wildfire burned its way through several Valparaíso neighborhoods last month, killing 15 people and leaving more than 12,000 homeless. Chile’s second major disaster in as many weeks, the fire also served as a painful reminder that, for many, the country’s much-heralded economic "miracle" is still very much a mirage. Read more from Ben Witte-Lebhar in the May 23 issue of NotiSur. 

Other articles in the Latin America Data Base for May 21-23 include a report in SourceMex on  how a ban on stoways on the train known as La Bestia is affecting Central American migrants and an article about the arrest of a third former Mexican  governor on corruption charges. In NotiCen, we examine whether a decline in violent crimes in the Dominican Republic necessarily represents a drop in criminal activity. We also report on Costa Rica's newly installed President Luis Guillermo Solís and what he is doing to promote transparency and accountability. NotiSur examines the debate on whether the age of criminal responsibility should be lowered in Uruguay..

-Carlos Navarro

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Guatemalan Dictator Could Escape Justice; Tension in Michoacan; Paraguay Rejoins MERCOSUR

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Articles in SourceMex, NotiCen and NotiSur for January 22-24

Former Dictator Efraín Ríos Montt Could Escape Justice

Two recent developments in the complex web of legal maneuvering surrounding the trial of former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt (1982-1983) have made it even more unlikely that he will ever be imprisoned for human rights violations committed during Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict. The trial, set to resume in April 2014, was postponed again until January 2015, purportedly because of the court’s busy schedule. With survivors facing threats and harassment, their attorneys fear that, if the trial is resumed, more than half the witnesses will be unwilling to testify again. In addition, on Oct. 22, 2013, the Corte de Constitucionalidad (CC) instructed the Corte Suprema de Justicia (CSJ) to overturn its prior ruling that Ríos Montt could not seek amnesty. -Louisa Reynolds   Read More

Tensions Remain High in Michoacán State, as Self-Defense Groups Confront Drug Cartel

The ongoing violent dispute between self-defense militias and the drug-trafficking organization Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) in Michoacán state has escalated in recent weeks, and the presence of the Army and federal police appears to have worsened the situation. The Army insists that the self-defense militias are unnecessary and illegal and that the federal government will take charge of going after the Caballeros Templarios, an offshoot of La Familia de Michoacán, which once dominated the state. Local residents counter that self-defense groups, which have been formed in about one-third of the state, are necessary because federal authorities have been ineffective in eradicating the drug cartel, which continues to make life miserable for many residents. -Carlos Navarro   Read More

Chilean Rights Groups Applaud Demise Of Government-Backed 'Anti-Protest' Bill

Two days after losing last month’s presidential runoff, the Chilean right suffered a second stinging defeat, this time in the lower house of Congress, the Cámara de Diputados, which voted Dec. 17 to reject a controversial law-and-order bill known popularly as the Ley Hinzpeter. The bill--a key item in President Sebastián Piñera’s legislative agenda--was first presented in late 2011 by then Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter (now minister of defense). It was designed to give authorities added leverage in clamping down on street demonstrations. The bill’s demise (the Cámara voted 51-43 against it) added insult to injury for Piñera’s conservative Alianza coalition, whose faint hopes of retaining the presidency had been dashed less than 48 hours earlier by the dismal Election Day performance of its candidate, Evelyn Matthei, who earned less than 38% of the vote in the Dec. 15 runoff -Benjamin Witte-Lebhar   Read More

Polls Show Costa Rica’s Traditional Political Center Threatened from Left and Right

Since the five-week revolution of 1948--sparked by a congressional decision to annul a presidential election--when the present Second Republic was founded, bipartisanship has occupied the Costa Rican political stage, in the center--both center-right and center left. Through the years this evolved so that the two traditional players--the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC) and the social democratic Partido Liberación Nacional (PLN)--became the two election options. But massive dissatisfaction with the PLN and the PUSC, held responsible for a deteriorating standard of living and a rising crime rate, has opened the door for candidacies from the far left and the far right. Voters are considering the two options even though they continue to view themselves as ideologically "centrists." -George Rodríguez   Read More

Paraguay’s Decision to Rejoin MERCOSUR Revitalizes Trade Bloc

In just two hours, Paraguay’s Congress produced a bit of news that immediately made major changes to the region’s political map. Following a Senate decision eight days earlier, Paraguayan deputies on a split vote Dec. 18 agreed to rejoin the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR), a trade association it helped create in 1991 along with Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay . Venezuela joined in 2012. Immediately after voting to rejoin MERCOSUR, Paraguay’s Congress also decided to recognize the democratic government in Caracas, re-establish diplomatic relations broken 18 months earlier, endorse Venezuela’s MERCOSUR membership, and lift a declaration declaring Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro persona non grata. Together these measures re-established the equilibrium broken on June 22, 2012, when the rightist Partido Liberal Radical Auténtico (PLRA) and Partido Colorado (PC) toppled the constitutional government of President Fernando Lugo in a parliamentary coup d’état. -Andrés Gaudín    Read More

Deportations of Mexican Citizens Set to Break Record during U.S. President Barack Obama’s Administration

Undocumented Mexican immigrants in the US, uncertain whether Congress will finally consider immigration-reform legislation in 2014, are facing high deportations, including deportations of many men and women who have been in the US longer than 10 years. Immigrant-rights organizations say deportations of Mexicans have surged during the current administration, approaching a record of 2 million people since US President Barack Obama took office in 2008. The latest data from Mexico’s immigration agency (Instituto Nacional de Migración, INM) indicates that 332,000 Mexican nationals were deported in 2013. And, as Mexicans fight to stay in the US, they are also making demands on the Mexican government—namely the right to make their votes count in Mexican elections. -Carlos Navarro   Read More