Week in Review

01/14/11
Latin America and the Caribbean
  • The trial of suspected anti-Castro Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles began in El Paso, Texas this week. While Posada Carriles has been linked to bombings in Havana and the downing of an airliner in the 1970s, he is being charged with "perjury, obstruction of federal proceedings and making false statements during a naturalization hearing" -- not terrorism. However, this trial, according to the New York Times, marks the first time American prosecutors will present evidence in open court that Posada Carriles played a major role in carrying out bombings in Cuba, as he is being tried for lying to an immigration judge about his role in the bombings.
  • The Organization of American States released its report on Haiti's electoral crisis (the report has not been made public, but a version is available for download on the Center for Economic and Policy Research's website: PDF), recommending that the country's electoral officials prevent government-backed candidate, Jude Celestin, from moving on to a second round run-off vote. Haitian President Rene Preval officially received the report on Thursday, though the Associated Press reports that he is "unhappy with their recommendation that his preferred candidate be cut from the presidential runoff vote" and is reported to have requested revisions to the document.
  • Meanwhile, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who completed his second term as governor in December, was named special envoy for the OAS.
  • The Mexican government released a new set of official drug war statistics, citing over 34,612 drug-related murders since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006. The government broke this statistic down, showing that of the 34,612 murders, 30,913 were execution-style killings, 3,153 were the result of shootouts between gangs, and 546 involved attacks on authorities. In 2010 alone, 15,273 people were killed - a 60 percent increase from 2009.
  • In other news related to violence in Mexico, over the weekend, and in less than 24 hours, more than 30 people were killed - at least 16 of them were found decapitated - in Acapulco. Also, three mayors have already been killed in 2011 in Mexico, compared to a total of 14 in 2010. On Thursday, the mayor of a "remote mountain town in southern Oaxaca state" was shot to death. On Monday, the mayor of Temoac (Morelos), was killed, and last Friday, the mayor of Zaragoza, of the Coahuila state, was found dead.
  • Freedom House released the 2011 edition of its Freedom in the World index, which scores 194 countries and territories on their levels of political rights and civil liberties. This year, Mexico dropped from "free" to "partly free." According to Freedom House, this drop results from the state's failure to "protect ordinary citizens, journalists, and elected officials from organized crime."
  • U.S. Representative Sandy Levin (D-Michigan) traveled to Colombia this week on "a fact-finding mission to observe first-hand conditions relevant to the Colombia [Free Trade Agreement]."
  • Many articles were published on Haiti's slow-going reconstruction efforts this week, as the one-year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated the country on January 12, 2010 passed. This includes an op-ed by Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), in which he writes:

    Partnership entails commitment and maturity on both sides. Haitians across society -- from the economic and political elite, to the nascent and unsteady civil society, to the masses of poor -- have to realize that our concern for their welfare does not give them leverage to shun our demands for progress. We cannot do the tasks that only they can do.

  • Chile's Minister of Defense, Jaime Ravinet, resigned from his post following a scandal over untransparent purchases made in the wake of last February's earthquake in the country.
  • Colombia's new Attorney General, Viviane Morales, assumed her post this week and noted that the extradition of paramilitary leaders to the United States was a bad idea, as it served as an excuse for them to stop collaborating with the Justice and Peace Process in Colombia.
  • Honduras' congress approved constitutional reform measures that would allow referendums on re-election and term limits. As the Associated Press notes, these "once taboo subjects" were the "hot-button issues behind the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya in 2009." The measures must be approved again when the new congressional session begins on January 25th before they go into effect, however the Attorney General or Supreme Court could still challenge the measures' constitutionality.
  • And finally, according to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil is planning to spend $6 billion on radars, armored vehicles and unmanned aircraft to carry out a new project to protect its borders from smuggling and arms trafficking.