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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Dirty Campaign Tactics, A Repressive Leader, A Corrupt Governor, and Mayors Who Can't Read

"[Ex-President Álvaro] Uribe was a no-show when called upon by legal authorities to produce the evidence he claimed to have against President Juan Manuel Santos. Obliged to retract his accusations, he used an odd argument that was unbefitting an ex-president and practicing lawyer. 'I checked the dictionary and must say now that there is a difference between evidence and information. What I have is information,' said Uribe, who has since dropped the subject entirely."   -from NotiSur, July 4, 2014

Colombia's former President Álvaro Uribe claimed to have proof that President Juan Manuel Santos

Caricature of a "ward heeler" politician (Wikimedia Commons)

had accepted US$2 million in donations from drug traffickers to cover costs of his reelection campaign. When asked to provide proof of his allegation, Uribe backed down from the statement.  And yet, even if untrue, the comments from Uribe were a matter of public record. The statement had the potential to sway voters in a tight runoff election between Santos and Uribe-backed candidate Óscar Iván Zuluaga. In the end, they didn't make a difference, as Santos won the runoff election by seven percentage points. Andrés Gaudín tells us more about the Colombian election in this week's edition of NotiSur. 

A second article in NotiSur looks at the impact of political consultants on high-profile elections in Latin America. The dirty tactics employed by these consultants have generally benefited candidates who lean to the right politically (Carlos Menem of Argentina, Henrique Capriles of Venezuela, Porfirio Lobo of Honduras, Norman Quijano in El Salvador, and León Febres Cordero of Ecuador), but a couple of leftists (Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil) have also made use of their services.  Click here to read more

Crackdown in Haiti
In other issues covered by the LADB this week, we also deal with politically tainted personalities and institutions. An article from George Rodríguez examines how a lack of judicial independence has resulted in a weak judiciary across Central America. A second article in NotiCen discusses the repressive tactics of President Michael Martelly's administration in Haiti, and how the leader is now viewed as a dictator.

In Mexico, scandal continues to dog the governor's office in Michoacán state. Gov. Fausto Vallejo was forced to resign after the release of several photographs of his son meeting with notorious drug trafficker Servando Gómez Martínez, also known as La Tuta. The release of the photos came just weeks after Vallejo’s top aide, and former interim governor, Jesús Reyna García, was arrested on charges of collusion with the Caballeros Templarios. Other elected leaders, primarily mayors in poor rural areas in Mexico, have a different kind of problem. They cannot read or write. (By some estimates, 20% of the mayors in the state of Oaxaca are illiterate). An article in this week's issue of SourceMex looks at the problem of illiteracy in Mexico, and how there has been very little progress in solving the problem in recent years.

Read two reports from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on Literacy in Mexico. Education Policy Outlook: Mexico and Programa Internacional para la Evaluación de Alumnos (PISA 2012)

-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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Cuba Seeks to Boost Trade Prospects; U.N. Report Urges Mexico to Protect Journalists; Paraguay Congress Clears Privatization Law

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Articles in SourceMex, NotiCen and NotiSur for October 30-31 and November 1

Central America Seeks to Become Biofuel Producer

With the price of fossil fuel rising on the international market, countries all over the world are seeking to boost the use of biofuel. For Central America, a region that boasts some of the world’s most efficient sugarcane producers and already has several ethanol production plants, this represents the opportunity to become a major biofuel exporter. Flavio Castelar, director of Brazil’s Arranjo Produtivo Local do Álcool (APLA), foresees that developed countries’ demand for biofuel will increase, which means that Latin American sugarcane producers will have to improve efficiency to produce the required volumes to meet the domestic demand and export the surplus. -Louisa Reynolds Read More

Bilateral Conflicts in Latin America Persist Despite Integration Efforts

Despite the proliferation of regional and global organizations designed to promote integration and good relations between countries, bilateral conflicts--territorial, political, economic, and environmental--persist in Latin America. In recent weeks, differences have re-emerged between Argentina and Uruguay and between Colombia and Nicaragua, reviving crises supposedly already resolved by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. -Andrés Gaudín   Read More





U.N. Human Rights Review Urges Mexico to Improve Protections for Journalists

Mexico’s inability to protect journalists and human rights defenders were among the issues raised during Mexico’s second Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of human rights, held in Geneva on Oct. 23. The process, which comes under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council, allows a country to present an update on advances in human rights over a four-year period but also provides the opportunity for fellow members of the UN to offer their assessment on the state of human rights in the presenter. -Carlos Navarro    Read More

Cuba Seeks Greater Role in Transatlantic Trade with Mariel Megaport and Foreign Trade Zone

Mariel Bay, 45 km from Havana, will become Cuba's main port when the expansion now underway is completed at a cost of about US$950 million and, in addition, a foreign-trade zone will open to attract international business, foreign investment, and new technology, all part of President Raúl Castro's attempts to update the socialist economic model. The project is aimed at generating exports, employment opportunities, funding, technology transfer, and logistics systems and encouraging domestic and foreign companies to set up business, according to the legislative decree signed by the president and published on Sept. 23 in the Gaceta Oficial de Cuba. -Daniel Vázquez   Read More

Paraguay’s Congress Clears Controversial "Privatization" Law

Two months after assuming the Paraguayan presidency, businessman Horacio Cartes has convinced Congress to approve a law giving the government authority to rent out--for a period of up to 40 years and without legislative or judicial oversight--a vast array of state assets and services. Officially named the Ley de Promoción de la Inversión en Infraestructura, the norm is more commonly referred to as the Ley de Participación Pública–Privada, or PPP. Among other things, it allows the executive to offer leases on Paraguay’s two massive binational hydroelectric plants: Itaipú, which it shares with Brazil, and Yacyretá, which it shares with Argentina. -Andrés Gaudín   Read More

President Enrique Peña Nieto Issues Executive Order to Ban Slot Machines, Tighten Regulations for Casino Permits

In an effort to control one of the activities of organized crime in Mexico, President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration has enacted tighter restrictions on casino operations. Peña Nieto issued an executive order banning slot machines and limiting the ability of casino permit holders to rent out or cede their permits to other operators. By issuing the executive order, the president pre-empted the need for the high court (Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, SCJN) to issue a ruling on the legality of slot machines, a matter that ex-President Felipe Calderón had brought to the court. -Carlos Navarro   Read More

Mexico Reacts to New Pope; Central America Farmers in Dire Plight; Uruguay Court Turns Back Human-Rights Gains

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Articles in SourceMex, NotiCen, NotiSur for March 20-22
 
Mixed Reactions in Mexico to Election of New Pope

The election of Jorge Bergoglio, a Jesuit cardinal from Argentina, as the next pope elicited many positive reactions in Mexico. The general consensus was that it was a good sign that Bergoglio came from a Latin American country, and the move by the new pontiff to take the name Pope Francis was also seen as positive because it signaled his commitment to put solidarity with the poor at the top of his agenda. But reactions were mixed on what his election meant for the future of the Catholic Church. There were questions about his age, and uncertainty of the stances he would take regarding other controversial matters.   Carlos Navarro   Read More

Lack of Investment in Rural Development Leaves Central American Farmers in Dire Plight

A lack of effective policies to boost rural development and allow farmers to find a place in the global economy has exacerbated inequalities between urban and rural areas in Central America, experts say. The solutions lie in a series of integral policies that include strategies to boost crop yields, improve access to credit, and democratize access to land.
  -Louisa Reynolds   Read More




Uruguay's Supreme Court Overturns Law Allowing Prosecution of Human Rights Violators

In just eight days, between Feb. 14 and 22, Uruguay's Suprema Corte de Justicia (SCJ) steamrolled over human rights, destroying what little had been accomplished in 28 years of democracy to judge crimes against humanity committed by state terrorism during the worst civilian-military dictatorship (1973-1985) in the country's history. First, the SCJ demoted without cause Judge Mariana Mota, who specialized in human rights, transferring her from criminal court to civil court. It then ruled unconstitutional Ley 18.831, according to which no statute of limitations could be applied to crimes committed during the dictatorship.   -Andrés Gaudín   Read More

Summertime Service Cuts Spur Talk Of "Renationalizing" Chile’s For-Profit Water Companies

Millions of Santiago residents were left high and quite literally dry in recent weeks by a series of water-service cuts that some Chilean citizens groups and politicians are calling a wake-up call on the perils of privatization. The first disruption hit the Chilean capital Jan. 21-22 after flooding from a heavy rainstorm flushed copious amounts of sediment into the Río Maipo, Santiago’s principal source of drinking water. The event forced Aguas Andinas, the city’s primary water-utility company, to temporarily shut three of its treatment plants and thus cut the water supply to an estimated 2 million residents. Complicating matters was the timing of the problem--at the height of the southern summer.
-Benjamin Witte-Lebhar    Read More 

Report Confirms Illegal Exports of Weapons to Mexico Have Continued at Steady Pace in Recent Years

A new report from the California-based Trans-Border Institute (TBI) has found that an increasing percentage of firearms sales in the US are actually smaller caliber weapons destined to be smuggled into Mexico. Furthermore, the study concluded that the number of weapons acquired in the US and headed south of the border increased significantly in the past decade. The TBI, housed at the University of San Diego (USD), and its research partner, the Brazil-based Instituto Igarapé, released the report just days after the US Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that would make straw purchases of firearms a felony.  -Carlos Navarro   Read More

Honduran Former Police Chief Accuses Successor of Ordering his Teenage Son’s Murder, Revealing Tensions Within Security Force

The 17-year-old son of former Policía Nacional (PN) chief Ricardo Ramírez del Cid and two police bodyguards of the élite Batallón Cobra were gunned down last month by a group of heavily armed assailants. The surprise attack on Óscar Roberto Ramírez and the two security agents took place the evening of Feb. 18 at a small, middle-class restaurant in Tegucigalpa’s southern suburb of Colonia Lomas de Toncontín, near the Toncontín International Airport. The incident was initially attributed to local gang activity, but sources later said the clash derives from an ongoing feud between the former police chief and his successor.  -George Rodríguez   Read More