2009

I have just returned from Honduras, and I can tell you, there is no possible way that there are the basic conditions for free and fair elections on November 29th.

Click here to tell Secretary of State Clinton to call these elections what they really are—far from free and fair!

“Vote? Me? No way? For what?”  said the young man, almost spitting out the words. “What is there to vote for in this election?”

All over Honduras, youth “in resistance,” women in resistance, artists in resistance, lawyers in resistance, well-dressed and blackberried political party leaders in resistance, campesinos in resistance, are saying no to these November 29th elections. While the word “resistance” may conjure up images of masked guerrillas, this image is totally misleading. As I could see in a trip this week to Tegucigalpa, it is, so far, in general an extraordinarily peaceful, civic resistance.

This year, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) gave its annual Human Rights Award to the Tlachinollan Human Rights Center from the state of Guerrero in Mexico. This award honors the bravery and dedication of organizations and individuals defending human rights in Latin America. 

LAWG has great respect for Tlachinollan’s work and we were moved by the beautiful words that Abel Barrera, the director of Tlachinollan, used in his acceptance speech. The following is an excerpt from that speech. To read the full speech click here. Para leer todo el discurso, haga clíc aquí.

On Friday, November 13th, some influential thinkers from both the United States and Mexico gathered at the Woodrow Wilson Center Mexico Institute to discuss how our two nations must begin Rethinking the U.S.-Mexico Border. 

The current model, as described by former Deputy Foreign Secretary of the Government of Mexico Andrés Rozental, is a system characterized by “irritation, inefficiency, illegality, and now, violence.” Moving forward, he stated, we need “cooperative solutions to shared problems.”