Links from the past week

05/31/10
Latin America and the Caribbean
U.S. Policy, Human Rights, Politics and Security

  • Colombia’s first round of presidential voting is over, and results have been tallied. Former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos came close to avoiding a second-round runoff vote with 46.6%, about ten points higher than polls had been predicting. Former Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus will face him on June 20; he won 21.5%, more than 10 points lower than polls had foreseen. Santos won 31 of Colombia’s 32 departments; Mockus only won in Putumayo.

  • Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will attend the OAS General Assembly in Peru on June 6-8. She will spend the rest of June 8 in Ecuador and Colombia, and go on to Barbados on June 9.

  • The Washington Post caused a stir last Monday with an article presenting evidence from a new witness claiming that President Álvaro Uribe’s brother, Santiago, led a paramilitary group in Yarumal, Antioquia, in the 1990s. President Uribe responded by citing the “capacity” of “criminals” to “penetrate a serious newspaper like the Washington Post.”

  • In the wake of a wave of threats, two human rights defenders were killed in Colombia: victims’ leader Rogelio Martínez, in San Onofre, Sucre; and Alexánder Quintero, in Santander de Quilichao, Cauca.

  • After an urban offensive in Kingston slums that killed more than 70 people, Jamaican authorities have yet to capture drug lord Christopher “Dudus” Coke, wanted in extradition by the United States.

  • Two important human rights documents released last week: the Americas section of Amnesty International’s annual report, and the report on Colombia by Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Executions.

  • 12 Republican senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calling for Venezuela to be added to the U.S. government’s list of terrorist-sponsoring states.

  • Though it’s only available to subscribers, William Finnegan’s New Yorker article about the La Familia drug cartel in Mexico is worth a read - or just listen to the podcast interview with the author.

  • Paraguay ended a 30-day state of emergency imposed in five northern provinces to combat a small guerrilla group called the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP). Not a single EPP member was captured as a result of the military deployment. No serious human rights abuses were reported, but critics voiced concerns about giving the army an increased internal security role.

  • Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said that he would dissolve the country’s congress if the business community supported his decision.

  • El Salvador’s president, Mauricio Funes, is completing his first year in office with very high approval ratings but significant disagreements with his own party, the former FMLN guerrilla movement.

  • The head of Colombia’s armed forces, Gen. Freddy Padilla, announced his resignation, effective on August 7, the day Colombia would inaugurate its next president.