Week in Review

04/08/11
Abigail Poe
Latin America and the Caribbean
  • The U.S. and Colombian governments announced this week that they have reached a breakthrough on the long-stalled U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Under the agreed upon "Action Plan," Colombia will phase in a series of steps to expand protections for unions and workers, boost the prosecution of those who violate workers' rights, and hire as many as 480 new labor inspectors over the next four years (see this Fact Sheet (PDF) for more details). Congress must still vote on the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement before it can go into effect. At a joint press conference on Thursday, Presidents Obama and Santos formally endorsed the new agreement. Many members of Congress took the opportunity to make statements in opposition or in support of the pending FTA and the new action plan. Links to these statements are poorly designed, poorly managed, and poorly led" campaign against the country's drug cartels and organized crime. Javier Sicilia told reporters, "The mafias are here. We should make a pact," an idea which was discussed by Time reporter Ioan Grillo in the article, "Should Mexico Call for a Cease-Fire with Drug Cartels?".
  • The Ecuadorian government declared U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges "persona non grata" and expelled her from the country over a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks that accuses a "newly retired police chief of a long history of corruption and speculates that President Rafael Correa was aware of it." Ambassador Hodges' expulsion was announced by Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino at a news conference (video here). Upon receiving the news, Hodges issued a statement saying that the order "left me saddened tremendously, both personally and for this country." In retaliation for the expulsion of Ambassador Hodges, the United States expelled Ecuadorian Ambassador Luis Gallegos on Thursday. The State Department also announced that high-level U.S.-Ecuador talks set for this June have been suspended. As a result of this week's round of expulsions, the United States now does not have ambassadors in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. And Hodges has become the second U.S. ambassador to "fall victim to WikiLeaks," after Carlos Pascual resigned as ambassador to Mexico last month.
  • Preliminary results released by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council indicate that Michel Martelly defeated Mirlande Manigat in the second round presidential election by more than a 2 to 1 margin. Martelly won more than 67% of the vote, however the results will not be final until April 16.
  • New legislation related to Latin America has been introduced in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives over the past week:
  • Former President Jimmy Carter traveled to Cuba last week, where he met with President Raul Castro and Fidel Castro, among others. His trip report is here. CIP's Wayne Smith wrote a policy brief (PDF) on Carter's press conference, where the former U.S. president called "not only for ending all restrictions on the travel of American citizens to Cuba, but for an end to the trade embargo." WOLA's Geoff Thale also commented on the trip and the State Department's announcement of its "intention to obligate $20 million to support very controversial 'human rights and civil society' programs in Cuba" just two days after Carter's return.
  • The first round of Peru's presidential elections will be held on Sunday. According to recent polls, Ollanta Humala is forecast to win the first round and face Keiko Fujimori in the run-off.
  • We recently received the Department of Defense's Section 2011 Report on Training of Special Operations Forces for FY2009 (also known as the Joint Combined Exchange Training Program (JCET) report). The PDF is available here. This report provides an overall summary of section 2011 deployments for Fiscal Year 2009 and includes a summary of the type of training conducted and detailed information for each country's deployment. These training details have been added to the Just the Facts database. To see the details for each country, click on the country name in this table.