Latin America Security By The Numbers Share This /

Latin America Security By the Numbers

This post was compiled by WOLA intern Elizabeth Lincoln.

• The “Plan of the Alliance for the Prosperity of the Northern Triangle,” a document devised by the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as a response to the region’s crises of violent crime and migration, calls for investment in 12 infrastructure projects, and dedicates two of its 26 pages to “citizen security.” 
• According to the Honduran Commission on Human Rights, around 33,000 Honduran migrants have been deported from Mexico thus far in 2014. This number has already surpassed 2013 deportations from Mexico to Honduras. When asked whether or not Mexico’s Southern Border Security Plan was pushing out Honduran migrants, the Commissioner pointed to the violence and insecurity in Honduras, predicting that the flow of migration will not cease until those issues are addressed effectively through cooperation between Mexico and Central America.
• This week, civilian prosecutors charged three soldiers with homicide in Mexico for the killing of 22 people on June 30 in an Army confrontation with alleged gang members in the town of Tlatlaya, in the state of Mexico. Eight soldiers reportedly killed 22 people in a span of eight to ten minutes following a brief firefight. Witnesses’ reports indicate that the 22 were killed after the firefight ended and they had already surrendered.   
• This year, the Army has carried out 219,378 police-style anti-crime patrols, involving 91,547 soldiers in Mexico. The events in Tlatlaya have prompted a reflection on the military’s use for internal security, and calls for an institutional transformation of the armed forces.
• With a first round of elections this Sunday, an opinion poll shows that Brazil President Dilma Rousseff’s ratings surged nine percentage points. While MDA, Vox Populi, Datafolha, and Ibope polling firms have varied predictions for the election and likely runoff on October 26, all place Rousseff as the winner. Poll numbers for opponent Marina Silva, which had surged in the first half of September, have since fallen.    
• In Peru, the Armed Forces have deployed 48,700 officers to ensure secure elections on Sunday. Voters will choose twenty-five regional Presidents and Vice Presidents, 247 ministers, 195 provincial mayors, 1,647 district mayors, and 10,526 regidores, or community leaders.
• Over 150 human rights defenders, journalists, and politicians in Colombia have been threatened in less than 30 days. The threats are coming from paramilitary successor groups Aguilas Negras and Los Rastrojos, but it is believed that other groups are behind them. The United Nations reports that three social leaders were killed September 13-25, and that at least 40 have been killed since January 1, 2014.
• After an apparent police attack on busloads of students from a teacher’s college in the Mexican state of Guerrero, authorities are searching for 57 students who are reported missing. Twenty-two municipal police officers from Iguala were detained after the incident, in which at least six people died and 25 were wounded over the September 27-28 weekend.
• The Venezuelan government announced Friday that it will use “civil-military force” to apply the Law of Fair Prices, which allows no more than 30 percent profit on sales of goods and services. Since the launch of a military operation against smuggling goods in mid-August, 794 people have been arrested.  This decree comes amid other measures to control commerce in Venezuela, in place since January of this year.
• Twenty-one Latin American presidents gave speeches last week at the United Nations General Assembly. In his speech, the President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro noted the tenth anniversary of ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas, a group of like-minded Latin American countries founded at the initiative of Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez.
• The third of five planned delegations of Colombian victims arrived in Havana on October 1, making a total of 36 victims who have visited peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla group. This delegation included eight women and four men who suffered, or who lost loved ones to, FARC, state, or paramilitary violence. The FARC released a 10 point list of “minimum proposals” for victims’ reparation in the event of a peace agreement.