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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The Ball Rolls in a Different Direction

Image by Pumbaa80, on Wikimedia Commons

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff appeared  on national television to defend the World Cup against the principal critiques from protesters, that the money spent on the mega-event should have been used for education and health care, among other needs. She  said public resources for the tournament stadiums amounted to R$8 billion (US$3.6 billion), while national, state, and local investments in education and health care from 2010, the year stadium construction began, through 2013 amounted to R$1.7 trillion (US$76.2 billion), or 212 times as much.

Michael Amaro, a programmer from Itaborái, a municipality in greater Rio, was unconvinced. "The government spent R$1.3 trillion on health care and education and it’s still as bad as it is? It’s not 10% as efficient as it should be," he said.  -from NotiSur, June 20, 2014


Chances are most of the fans of fútbol in the United States who are watching the 2014 FIFA World Cup associate the event with the great play on the field, especially the Latin American teams.  Chile, Colombia and Costa Rica have played especially well, and Mexico scored some points with the fans back home by earning a tie with the host country Brazil (one of the favorites to win the tournament). Brazilian fans are somewhat disappointed with their team's performance, but the host country remains in good shape to advance to the next round, as does its chief rival and neighbor Argentina.

Outside of its soccer fortunes, Brazil has earned mixed marks when it comes to organizing the event.  The South American country was late with completion of many of its sports venues, and there were numerous complaints that some of the infrastructure that caters to tourists was subpar. And yet, the actual games have been well organized, so the image that Brazil is presenting to the world on balance appears to be positive.

For ordinary Brazilians, there are also mixed feelings. The intense pride in their team is unmistaken, with many Brazilians wearing green and gold and blue on the streets and in the dozen or so venues where the games are being played. But there is discontent below the surface. In his article in NotiSur entitled "World Cup Begins with Diminished Protests, Increased Security, and Debates Over Legacy," Gregory Scruggs discusses how many ordinary Brazilians continue to protest the government's decision to spend money on the World Cup instead of devoting resources to education, health care and other social services.  Read More

Also in LADB this week...
Across the continent in Chile, President Michelle Bachelet has been very busy during her first three months in office. The center-left leader has already submitted a bill to overhaul the national tax system and another to do away with Chile’s much-maligned parliamentary election rules, and she has proposed a handful of education reforms. In May, she traveled to Argentina. The month before, she coordinated responses to not one, but two natural disasters: a powerful April 1 earthquake in the north followed two weeks later by a devastating firestorm in the port city of Valparaíso. 

Another newly installed president is Salvador Sánchez Cerén, El Salvador’s first "guerrilla" president, Sánchez Cerén takes over a a deeply divided country that is facing a resurgence of crime.  Crime is also major topic in the other article in NotiCen, which examines the increase in the increasing deaths of journalists in Honduras.  In SourceMex, we review the decision of state-run oil company PEMEX to sell off most of its shares in Spanish oil company Repsol and the ongoing efforts in Mexico to address gun-related violence (A recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court might help).

-Carlos Navarro

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Brazil Behind in Construction for World Cup; Nine Journalists Killed in Mexico in 2013; El Salvador Elections Going to Second Round

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Articles in SourceMex, NotiCen and NotiSur for February 5-7

Former Guerilla Commander Takes Round One In Salvadoran Presidential Election

Vice President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the leftist Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) won El Salvador’s Feb. 2 presidential election by an unexpectedly solid margin but fell just short of the 50% plus one valid votes needed to avoid a runoff. The FMLN candidate drew nearly 49% of the vote, finishing a full 10 percentage points ahead of his main rival, former San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano of the hard-right Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA). Ex-President Antonio Saca (2004-2009), another conservative, finished a distant third (11.4%). Fringe candidates René Alcides Rodríguez of the Partido Salvadoreño Progresista (PSP) and José Óscar Morales of the Fraternidad Patriota Salvadoreña (FPS) earned less than 1% of the vote between them. Benjamin Witte-Lebhar  Read More

At Least Nine Journalists Killed in Mexico in 2013

Journalist rights organizations report that a least nine editors and reporters were killed in Mexico during 2013, although the number could actually be higher because the whereabouts of a handful of reporters who disappeared during the year are unknown. The organization Casa de Derechos de los Periodistas AC, based in Mexico City, reported the murders of six journalists during the first full year of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency. Other sources reported at least three other murders, which adds up to nine confirmed killings last year, plus one journalist who disappeared and whose whereabouts are unknown. This compares with at least 17 murders of journalists in 2012, in addition to five others who disappeared. Carlos Navarro Read More

Honduras' New President Juan Orlando Hernández Pledges to Respect Human Rights While Providing Security

In his inaugural speech, Honduras’ new President Juan Orlando Hernández, often referred to as JOH, insisted he will keep his campaign promises, among them, his commitment to improve this Central American nation’s appalling situation regarding security--or lack of it. He also guaranteed that, in so doing, all actions would be carried out within the framework of the law and fully respecting human rights. But in human rights ranks, the president's words, at best, are not taken as sincere, and the forecast in this regard is somber.  George Rodríguez  Read More

Uruguay’s Conservative Parties Unite

Uruguay’s two conservative parties--opponents for their entire 177-year existence--have joined forces to defeat the Frente Amplio (FA), which has governed Montevideo, the national capital, for the past 25 years. The unprecedented alliance--motivated by the certainty that neither the Partido Colorado (PC) nor the Partido Nacional (PN or Blanco) could defeat the ruling progressive administration alone--is remarkable because the two parties have been on opposite sides of prolonged and bloody civil wars three different times. On Jan. 9, electoral authorities authorized unification of the two parties under the name Partido de la Concertación. The new party’s goal is to oust the Frente Amplio and recover control of the capital, home to nearly half the country’s 3.3 million inhabitants. Andrés Gaudín  Read More

FIFA World Cup Causes Financial and Human Burden on Brazilian Cities

As the calendar inches closer day to by day to the opening match of the 2014 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in Brazil, questions mount about the impact of the global sporting event on the country’s 12 host cities. Brought to international attention by last year’s street protests, issues such as white-elephant stadiums, cost overruns at public expense, corruption in building contracts (NotiSur, July 1, 2011), human rights abuses against construction workers, and housing evictions in low-income communities persist. While the tournament draws are complete and soccer fans have depleted the first round of ticket sales, the behind-the-scenes preparation has been a far less smooth process.  Gregory Scruggs   Read More

Monarch Butterfly Populations at Biosphere in Michoacán Down Sharply

The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve sits at the edge of the territory controlled by the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar) drug cartel in Michoacán state. The recent violence that has hammered communities like Apatzingán and Uruapan has apparently not spilled over to the biosphere. The popular tourist destination is facing a different kind of problem this year, however. The number of butterflies migrating to the biosphere is at an all-time low, and some environmental organizations are warning that the migration of the butterflies to Michoacán and México state could disappear altogether. This could create a major problem for the biosphere, which earned the designation as a World Heritage Site in 2008.   Carlos Navarro   Read More