Week in Review

07/29/11
Latin America and the Caribbean

In the News

  • Ollanta Humala was inaugurated as President of Peru on July 28, the country's 190th anniversary of independence. In his remarks before Congress, the new president, who is already being tentatively hailed as the "Lula of the Andes," promised that "Peru's peasants and the poor in the countryside in general will be the priority." Humala angered supporters of Peru's former dictator, Alberto Fujimori, by pledging to rule in the spirit of the 1979 constitution rather than remain loyal to the one passed under Fujimori in 1993. While the Peruvian economy is growing steadily, President Humala faces a number of challenges, from rampant social unrest stemming from unequal development in the rural departments to a suspicious elite and upper-middle class in Lima. On the Just the Facts blog, Adam Isacson has the full list of Humala's cabinet appointees.

     

  • Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned to Caracas from Cuba, where he received treatment for cancer, to celebrate his 57th birthday this week. Despite joking that his chemotherapy treatments will soon leave him bald like Yul Brenner, Chavez told a crowd of supporters “I had said I’d leave in 2021. Well, I’m not going away in 2021 or anything. Maybe in 2031."
  • InSight Crime reports that as coca production rises in Bolivia, the department of Santa Cruz is rapidly becoming a hub for narcotics trafficking, with 20 drug-related shootings so far this year.
  • Angel de Jesus Pacheco, commander of the Colombian criminal gang "Los Rastrojos," was killed by his own bodyguards in Antioquía.
  • More than 1,000 people were arrested in Ciudad Juárez in a massive crackdown on human trafficking.
  • Four former Guatemalan soldiers are finally standing trial for the massacre of more than 250 people during the civil war in the 1980s. The trial is a victory for the families of the victims, who have campaigned for justice for 17 years.
  • According to a study by Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography, homicides in Mexico rose 23% in 2010.
  • Mexican federal police announced that they will leave Ciudad Juárez in September, having determined that the city is "under control."

Recommended Articles

  • Ricard Marosi of the Los Angeles times has a four-part series investigating the Sinaloa Cartel's distribution network in California.

     

  • On the Just the Facts Blog, Lucila Santos has a new piece on the debate over illegal immigration titled "Perception vs Reality: Illegal Migration in Decline."
  • Elyssa Pachico of InSight Crime reports that the death of the leader of "Los Rastrojos" will be a "game changer" in Colombia.
  • José Rubén Zamora of Guatemala's El Periódico alleges that Guatemalan military leaders allowed drug traffickers to obtain U.S.-donated firearms.

U.S. Southern Command Updates

  • The USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) and the Continuing Promise 2011 (CP11) mission team departed El Salvador on July 24 and will now continue on to Costa Rica and Haiti. The medical team treated 8,257 patients at three sites in El Salvador, while the engineering and construction team completed projects at two schools.

     

  • Undersecretary of the Army Dr. Joseph W. Westphal arrived in Honduras to begin a week long tour of Central and South America. In addition to touring bases and meeting with American service members, Undersecretary Westphal will meet with diplomatic and military leaders in each country he visits.

Legislation

  • The State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee marked up draft legislation that would make fiscal 2012 appropriations for department, agencies, and programs under its jurisdiction. A summary of the bill's most important provisions is available here, and a subcommittee draft text of the FY 2012 State and Foreign Operations Bill is available for download as a PDF. The opening statement of Subcommittee Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Texas), in which she expresses her support for continued aid to Mexico, is available here.

This blog was written by CIP Intern Claire O'Neill McCleskey