News links from the past week Share This /

• 3/30, House Armed Services Committee, “FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Budget Requests from SOUTHCOM, NORTHCOM, and EUCOM” - covered in an earlier blog post
• 3/30, House Ways and Means Committee, “Panama Trade Promotion Agreement”
• 3/31, House Committee on Homeland Security, “The U.S. Homeland Security Role in the Mexican War Against Drug Cartels”
• 3/31, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, “Exploring Drug Gangs’ Ever-Evolving Tactics to Penetrate the Border and the Federal Government’s Ability to Stop Them”

• 3/31, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “A Shared Responsibility: Counternarcotics and Citizen Security in the Americas”

Outside the context of hearings, members of Congress also made statements with relevance to Latin America policy.

• Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued her recommendations (PDF) for 2012 foreign assistance. Proposing deep cuts, the conservative legislator calls for an end to U.S. development assistance to Brazil and a suspension of “all non-security, non-humanitarian assistance to Bolivia” until “marked differences are seen in the level of commitment by the Government of Bolivia in sharing our democratic and security objectives.” She also recommends cuts to the U.S. contribution to the OAS until it “has undertaken meaningful reform.”
• Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Michigan), the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee and perhaps the House Democrat with the most direct influence over the Colombia and Panama free trade agreements, gave a speech laying out his position on those agreements.
• Rep. Connie Mack (R-Florida), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, wrote a letter to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos asking him to extradite Venezuelan narcotrafficker Walid Makled to the United States instead of Venezuela (though it appears Makled will be sent to Venezuela).
• Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee that funds the State Department and foreign-aid programs, gave a floor speech in favor of police-reform efforts in Guatemala.

• In a Houston Chronicle op-ed, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) called for adding Mexican drug-trafficking organizations to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Three long but highly recommended articles from last week:

• “Lula’s Brazil,” by Perry Anderson in the London Review of Books.
• “Guatemala: A Murder Foretold,” by David Grann in the New Yorker.

• “Living on the Edge: Colombian Refugees in Panama and Ecuador” (PDF), by Refugee Council USA.

The Inter-American Human Rights Commission concluded its semi-annual sessions, during which it held 44 hearings and 29 working meetings. The commission’s press release, with links to video and a detailed annex, is here.

Lots of poll numbers were reported last week.

• Peru’s presidential elections are Sunday, April 10. It’s a five-way race. Two polls:
  • CPI: Ollanta Humala 21.2, Keiko Fujimori 19.0, Alejandro Toledo 18.6, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski 16.1, Luis Castañeda 15.5.
  • IMA: Toledo 23.9, Humala 21.9, Fujimori 17.6, Kuczynski 16.9, Castañeda 13.8.
• Six months before Argentina’s October presidential elections, President Cristina Fernández, who can run again, has a 65 percent approval rating among urban Argentines. None of her likely opponents is above 30 percent.
• Three months into her term, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff has a 73 percent approval rating, though her government has a 56 percent approval rating.

• Hard-line Gen. (R) Otto Pérez Molina leads President Álvaro Colom’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Sandra Torres, by a 47%-14% margin in a poll for Guatemala’s September presidential elections.

Six months after the killing of the FARC guerrillas’ military boss, alias “Mono Jojoy,” in the same region, Colombia’s El Tiempo finds the FARC actually gaining strength in the department of Meta south of Bogotá. The phenomenon, which apparently includes fronts gaining membership, is taking place in and near the “La Macarena Consolidation Zone,” an area where the U.S., Colombian, Dutch and other governments have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a civil-military governance program. Nonetheless, Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera told a Chilean newspaper interviewer that the FARC, nationally, are “surrounded and diminished.”

The FARC targeted infrastructure in several parts of Colombia, bombing a gas pipeline in La Guajira (the pipeline belonged to Venezuela’s PDVSA oil company, and the gas shutoff briefly forced electricity rationing in parts of Venezuela); power lines in Antioquia and Arauca; and oil pipelines in Norte de Santander.

Defense Minister Rivera revealed communications from 2009 taken from computers recovered from the September 2010 “Mono Jojoy” operation. The emails apparently show top FARC leaders discussing a guerrilla peace and drug trafficking-cooperation agreement with “Comba,” leader of the Rastrojos, one of the largest of the “new” paramilitary groups.

Three advocates for the return of stolen land to victims were killed in Colombia during the week of March 20, marking twelve murders of land advocates since President Juan Manuel Santos was inaugurated in August with promises to return millions of acres to dispossessed victims. In response, the Colombian government announced a series of measures to protect land-rights advocates. Defense Minister Rivera announced that the Prosecutor-General’s Office – a special branch of government – would create a special unit to investigate such crimes; Prosecutor-General Viviane Morales said the next day that her office had no such plans.

Both Time and Wired magazines ran articles, with lots of pictures, of the new generation of self-powered submarines that narcotraffickers based in Colombia and Ecuador may now be using to transport cocaine.

Since last August, 1,200 National Guard troops have been deployed on the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border. This deployment – unusual because it puts the Guard in a long-term law-enforcement role – is set to expire in June. Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) is pushing to renew and expand it, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the Obama administration hasn’t ruled out a renewal. Meanwhile an Associated Press analysis concluded that the United States “still lacks [a] border strategy,” and Mexico’s El Universal newspaper reported that the United States now has 130 planes and helicopters, plus six drones, deployed along the border.

Brazil, the main transit country for cocaine produced in Bolivia, is increasing its counter-drug aid to Bolivia. According to Bolivian “Drug Czar” Felipe Cáceres, Brazilian assistance will include “police training, logistical support, the future delivery of four helicopters to support interdiction, and VANT drone aircraft to monitor border points.” The Brazil-Bolivia agreement will substitute for sharply reduced U.S. counter-drug aid to Bolivia, which expelled the DEA in 2008.

Picketers on March 27 prevented distribution of the Sunday edition of opposition-aligned Clarín, Argentina’s most-circulated newspaper, without a government response. Days later, visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez – not a journalist – was awarded the “Rodolfo Walsh Popular Communication Prize” by the Universidad de La Plata journalism school.

Chávez’s tour also took him to Uruguay and Bolivia, but a visit to Colombia was postponed to April 9 because the Venezuelan President’s plane had engine trouble.

Narco-violence is worsening rapidly in Honduras, where 8 people were massacred in the rural eastern province of Olancho last week.