Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and 93 other members of the Congress sent a letter on March 12th, 2012 to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing grave concern about human rights violations in Honduras, particularly the murder of 45 people associated with small farmer associations in Bajo Aguán.
"This is a wake up call for the Lobo Administration," said Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director of the Latin America Working Group. "Forty-five campesino leaders in a small area of Honduras have been murdered. Human rights defenders of all stripes -- campesino leaders, lawyers, LGBT community members, women defenders, journalists, opposition activists -- are being threatened and killed. And not only is the Honduran government failing to do enough to protect them and prosecute those who endanger them, but in too many cases, police or military agents are involved directly or are collaborating with those who commit abuses. We need to see greater effort to protect the rule of law in Honduras."
LAWGEF provided information for the letter and worked with an energetic network of activists across the country, with leadership from the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America, to encourage the amazing number of signers.
Honduras was singled out for a visit by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders, who following her visit, asserted that: "The 2009 coup d'état aggravated institutional weaknesses, increased the vulnerability of human rights defenders and provoked a major polarisation in society. Due to the exposed nature of their activities, human rights defenders continue to suffer extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment, death threats, attacks, harassment and stigmatisation." She went on to say, "I have observed that certain categories of human rights defenders are at particular risk, including journalists, staff of the National Human Rights Commission, lawyers, prosecutors and judges, as well as defenders working on the rights of women, children, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex community, the indigenous and Afro-Honduran communities as well as those working on environmental and land rights issues."
This patchwork quilt, with photos and bits of poems stitched on it, was created by Blanca Nieves from the blue jeans, blouses and dresses of her four murdered daughters, who were disappeared and killed by paramilitary forces in Putumayo, Colombia where the family lived. This quilt is one of the tremendously moving pieces of art in Remember Me: Voices of the Silenced in Colombia exhibit, created by Lutheran World Relief and the Colombian human rights groups MINGA, Agenda Caribe and Fundación Manuel Cepeda.
Vanessa Kritzer takes the exhibit to Portland with Witness for Peace Northwest organizer Colette Cosner!For the past two years, this powerful exhibit has travelled around the United States, educating communities about our country’s role in Colombia’s conflict. LAWG got involved this past summer, working with Witness for Peace and Lutheran World Relief to display the exhibit and organize panel discussions about U.S.-Colombia policy in Seattle and Portland. Then, on October 4th, 2011, we brought it to Washington, DC, for a reception in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Art piece about fumigations.The Remember Me exhibit features works of art created and inspired by victims of violence, their friends and families from San Onofre, Sucre and the province of Putumayo. One piece was comprised of a simple plastic box filled with a mosaic of small squares, each with a face of a desaparecido (disappeared) in Colombia who lies somewhere unidentified in a mass grave. Another powerful work used toy planes to illustrate the devastating effects of aerial fumigations, as they indiscriminately dropped herbicides on fertile land and families. A third poignant piece used three hearts connected by a stake, highlighting the faces of a leaders killed or imprisoned because of their commitment to human rights and peace.Representative Jim McGovern speaks about violence in Colombia.
At the opening in the Rayburn House Office Building, Colombian human rights defender Juan David Diaz spoke about his father, who was murdered in February 2003. Tito Diaz, mayor of the small town El Roble in Sucre, had denounced the alliance between deadly paramilitaries and local politicians to then-President Uribe. Within weeks, his bodyguards were removed, and in April of that same year he was found murdered, tortured, shot and left in a crucifix position. Today, his son Juan David continues to endure threats for his own human rights work.
Congressional Human Rights Caucus Co-Chair Representative Jim McGovern also spoke at the reception about his experiences visiting displaced communities in Colombia and many families who are victims of human rights abuse. “This exhibit helps bring those voices to life,” said Rep. McGovern. “It is so important that we not just know, but feel, the violence and loss that they experience.”
Lisa and Vanessa attend the Remember Me opening in Congress with Annalise Romoser from LWR, Zoraida Castillo, Amaury Padilla, and Juan David Diaz.Zoraida Castillo from Lutheran World Relief’s Colombia office described the process they went through to create the exhibit. Then, Amaury Padilla from MINGA explained that this exhibit comes from a tradition in Colombia used not only to honor the victims, but also to illuminate truths that are too often denied about the country’s decades-long conflict.
This exhibit humanizes Colombia’s humanitarian crisis by providing a forum for understanding outside of the context of policy papers and statistics. Remember Me drives home a powerful lesson by giving a face to the victims and those who struggle for justice.
This year, LAWG’s Colombia team brought together a coalition of labor, human rights, faith-based, and environmental groups to build a national grassroots movement to oppose the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement (FTA). While this FTA ultimately did pass on October 12th, 2011, we are proud of the work that everyone involved did to generate debate about the problems with this trade deal and to convince many members of Congress to vote for human rights rather than corporate interests. Click here to find out how your members of Congress voted and hold them accountable!
Just through the participation of LAWG’s activist base alone, we collected 11,695 signatures on a petition to President Obama, sent over 13,000 emails to Congress, and made hundreds of phone calls right before the vote. By connecting with other groups for fair trade, we were able to multiply our collective voice by tens of thousands. In many major cities, people came together to stage vigils in the streets, which grabbed the attention of local and national media. They spoke out at town hall events and met with their members of Congress when they came back to the district for recess. While LAWG made videos and wrote articles for sites like the Huffington Post, activists across the country published op-eds and letters to the editor in their local newspapers.
Meanwhile, in DC, LAWG and our partners pounded the marble halls of Congress. We brought Colombian unionists, human rights defenders, and small-scale farmers to meet with undecided members of Congress, educating them about the devastating affect that this trade deal would have on the lives of so many Colombians. We displayed the art exhibit Remember Me: Voices of the Silenced in the U.S. House of Representatives to let the testimonies of survivors of Colombia’s conflict speak for themselves. Then, right before the vote, we provided our congressional allies with talking points as well as stories and photos to use in their final arguments.
And in the end, we made a difference. During the debate, we watched as representatives and senators stood on the floor of Congress and told the stories of union leaders who have been killed in Colombia, of families who have been devastated by the conflict, of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities who are struggling to stay on their ancestral lands. We convinced 82% of House Democrats to vote against this unfair trade agreement. This represents the largest percentage of House Democrats voting against a Democratic president on trade in history, and it sent a message to President Obama: no more trade without human rights.
Missed the action? Check out this powerful speech by Representative Luis Gutiérrez in which he honors the lives of two murdered Colombian activists: Alejandro José Peñata, a teacher and unionist, and Ana Fabricia Córdoba, a dynamic Afro-Colombian social leader who struggled for the rights of the displaced.
To read the inspiring speech that Representative Jim McGovern gave during the debate, click here. LAWG sends a big thank you to Rep. McGovern for his tireless efforts to oppose this agreement, as well as to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who “stopped the clock” on this FTA in 2008 and came out against it last week. Thanks also to Representatives Sandy Levin, Mike Michaud, George Miller, Hank Johnson, and John Lewis, Senators Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders, and all the other members of Congress who chose to speak out for human rights during this critical debate.
Although the fact that it passed was upsetting, we were encouraged in the week afterwards when we received messages from our partners in Colombia thanking us for what we’ve done to keep this FTA off the table since it was introduced by the Bush Administration five years ago. By delaying it so long, they said, we pressured the Colombian government to clean up its record on human rights—and they have made some good promises. However, the struggle does not end here.
In the months ahead, we will focus our efforts on making sure that both the U.S. and Colombian governments keep their word to support communities, unionists, small-scale farmers, and others whose livelihoods and safety may now be at greater risk than ever before. We look forward to working with both old and new partners to stand by our brothers and sisters in Colombia as they face these challenges and continue their pursuit of peace and justice.
by Ben Leiter and Katrina Weekson November 21, 2011
After ten years of making a life for himself in the beach-front city of Santa Monica, California, Jorge Romero* was deported to Mexico, joining the ranks of nearly 400,000 other undocumented migrants removed from the United States this past fiscal year. Behind the record high number of deportations by the Obama Administration are stark, human stories of broken families and untold abuse suffered by those who attempt to return to their homes in the United States. Jorge, who left behind his cousin and father in Santa Monica, was one of those to brave the dangerous journey back. On the way, he was apprehended and grossly abused by the U.S. Border Patrol. This is his story, as recorded by humanitarian organization No More Deaths:
Reps. McGovern (D-MA), Schakowsky (D-IL) and Farr (D-CA) are asking other members of the House to sign a letter to Secretary of State Clinton that calls on the Honduran government to address severe human rights problems in the country.
Port of Spain, Trinidad will host the Fifth Summit of the Americas from April 17-19. Started in 1994, the summit aims to foster inter-American dialogue between 34 heads of state concerning current social, economic, and political challenges facing the Western Hemisphere. The United States has used past summits narrow-mindedly to push a free-trade agenda.
But now is a new moment for U.S.-Latin American relations. LAWG has been organizing to encourage President Obama to try a new approach to Latin America and the Caribbean and to use the Summit to deliver an inspiring message that unites us with our neighbors. See a letter from faith-based and other groups.
Below is a LAWG staffer’s dream of what the President should say to the hemisphere’s assembled leaders. To see what the President actually said, check out our website after April 19th.
I’m glad to be here in the Port of Spain for the Fifth Summit of the Americas, joined by leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as leaders of civil society and business.
Let me start by making something absolutely clear: the era of Washington demanding that the region’s freely-elected governments do its bidding, and take its advice without complaint, is over. Today, the era of mutual respect and partnership begins. If this economic crisis has taught us anything, it’s that neither the United States nor Wall Street knows what makes good political or economic sense for all nations at all times. We won’t always agree, but the door to my office is open. I’m ready to listen.
To demonstrate how serious I am, and how serious the good people of my country are, about forging a new relationship, I want to announce that today I am signing an executive order restoring the rights of most Americans to travel to Cuba without asking the U.S. government for permission. And I am sending a message to the U.S. Congress signaling that I favor their action to definitively end the travel ban for all Americans. It’s clear that Americans favor “travel for all” rather than “travel for some.” Soon the United States will no longer be the only nation in the Western Hemisphere without diplomatic relations with Cuba.
The current economic crisis has helped us see anew that our bonds are stronger than we may sometimes think. We are bound not only by our common humanity, but also by shared dreams of peace and prosperity. And in trying times like these, we’re brought together by everyday experience. After traveling to hard-hit communities in my country and meeting at the White House awhile back with President da Silva, I know that the laid off auto worker in the United States and the person struggling to keep his or her job at the airliner plant in Brazil are kept awake at night by the same nagging questions: How long before the next paycheck? Will we be able to keep our home? How is this going to affect my children’s future?
Weathering this crisis is our priority, but how we respond matters. Our policies must be bold enough to meet the magnitude of the challenges before us, but they also have to be smart enough to avoid past mistakes and compassionate enough to keep vulnerable people from slipping further towards the margins of our societies. We must recognize the crushing power of persistent poverty and inequity, which I witnessed firsthand growing up in Indonesia, and pursue economic growth that creates broadly shared opportunity and dignity. And as we respond, we have to pay more attention to the plight of indigenous and Afro-descendant populations who, after centuries of discrimination and exclusion, remain living on the frontlines of poverty today.
There’s a lot of work to be done, but the United States is ready to lend a helping hand. In the coming weeks, my administration will be requesting from Congress significant increases in social, economic, and humanitarian aid for Latin America and the Caribbean and I hope that this important assistance makes its way to the people who need it most before long.
The United States seeks peace and prosperity for all who desire it. We now know that these goals cannot be accomplished through military might, but only by a strong commitment to human rights and the rule of law. That’s why we’re moving to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and, recognizing that “justice too long delayed is justice denied,” we’ll continue to send aid to strengthen judicial systems plagued by staggering rates of impunity. And the United States will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with human rights defenders wherever and whenever they face threats or attacks, or have their legitimacy called into question, because history teaches us that they are essential actors on the stage of democracy.
We’re ready to be better friends to you, our neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean. We’re ready to lead and we’re ready to listen. I hope this Summit marks the beginning of a new era of positive relations between all of our nations. I’m looking forward to listening to your ideas on how our nations can work together to achieve our common dreams and vanquish our common challenges.
Thank you.
--The “dream speech” was written by Travis Wheeler and background information was researched and compiled by Christa Schelter.
As you take office, you know full well how much we need you to take a new approach to our nation’s economy and the war in Iraq. But we also urge you to take a new approach to U.S. relations with our neighbors to the south.
We have put up barriers rather than lent a helping hand.
Lending our neighbors a helping hand should not be defined, as it has for too long, as arming, equipping and training the region’s militaries. Today, half of U.S. aid to Latin America goes to the military and police.
Yet Latin America still faces enormous challenges of poverty and remains one of the world’s most unequal societies. The global economic crisis will likely take a heavy toll on Latin American and Caribbean nations. Most urgently, the high price of food will mean that too many face not just poverty and unemployment, but also hunger. The recent devastation of crops and food supplies by multiple hurricanes in the Caribbean will exacerbate this danger, especially for Cuba.
We urgently implore you to redirect U.S. aid towards public health, education, disaster relief, microcredit, and small-scale agriculture. And we ask you to build a fair trade policy that improves the lives of poor and middle-class workers and farmers on both sides of our hemisphere. Unfair trade agreements and abandonment of investment in small-scale agriculture drive Latin American citizens to cross our borders in search of a better life.
Vibrant social movements throughout Latin America—which in recent years have been elected to, or influenced, governments—are challenging economic policies that have failed to reduce poverty and inequality. These movements, which include indigenous and Afro-descendent populations who have suffered centuries of discrimination, should be included, not feared. We ask you to pay special attention to the indigenous and Afro-descendant populations who are organizing for their livelihoods, land rights, and civil rights.
It’s time to take a fresh look at our failed, expensive counternarcotics policy that leaves U.S. citizens without access to drug treatment programs and, in Latin America, brings the army into the streets and fields. Just since 2000, the United States has spent $6 billion in Colombia; yet the level of coca production in Colombia and the Andean region remains just as high as at the program’s start. Inhumane aerial spraying programs that destroy farmers’ food crops and forced eradication without alternatives produce neither good will nor results. We must invest in helping poor farmers switch permanently away from illicit drug crops abroad and in effective treatment and prevention at home.
We ask you to put human rights front and center in your policy towards Latin America. We need you to stand with human rights defenders wherever they face threats and attacks for calling for justice. The United States should also stand with Latin Americans who are struggling to achieve justice for past abuses—because truth and an end to past impunity pave the way to future justice.
We need the United States to focus aid and diplomacy on regional human rights problems, strengthening the rule of law and supporting independent and effective judiciaries. But this focus must be fair, impartial, and balanced. On the one hand, countries that have been considered allies have received a free pass; this must end. On the other hand, valid concern for human rights and democratic institutions should not escalate into bellicose rhetoric and policies, and democratically-elected governments should be respected.
We ask you to recognize the most severe human rights and humanitarian crisis in the hemisphere—in Colombia, where hundreds of thousands of people flee their homes from violence in a war without end. The United States must use tough diplomacy to encourage the Colombian army to end abuses and sever all links with abusive paramilitary forces. The United States must demand real progress on ending violence towards trade unionists and ensuring justice in these cases before any trade agreement goes back to the table. The United States must increase support for humanitarian aid for those displaced by war.
And if the United States wants to begin to actively support peace, it cannot continue to endlessly bankroll war.
But if we want to put human rights front and center, we must first live up to our own ideals. Abu Ghraib did tremendous damage to the United States’ image in Latin America as well as the rest of the world, and Guantanamo continues to do so. A clean break with this past by closing Guantanamo and reestablishing safeguards to prevent torture and abuses by our own forces will help to repair this damage.
The relationship between the United States and Cuba is at a potentially transformational moment. Coinciding with new visions for change in this country, change is also occurring in Cuba, with more reform-minded leadership and the desire for improved government-to-government relations with the United States. The past eight years have brought a reduction in citizen contacts, increased enforcement of cruel U.S. sanctions, and accelerated curtailment of Americans’ fundamental right to travel. Cuba is at the crossroads for any new U.S. policy toward Latin America; your administration’s approach to Cuba will be seen by our Latin American allies as a symbol of Washington’s approach to the entire region. We cannot afford to get it wrong. Therefore, we ask you to support the lifting—for ALL Americans—of the travel ban that divides the U.S. and Cuban people—as a demonstration to our Latin America neighbors that a new day has dawned in our relationship with them, and because it is the right thing to do.
A relentless focus on border enforcement has put a symbolic as well as a physical wall between the United States and Latin America. Money poured into poorly-thought-out fencing and other forms of enforcement have harmed communities on both sides of the border and have driven migrants to more dangerous cross points without guaranteeing gains in security. It is time for a more thoughtful approach that includes and involves border communities—and recognizes the need for immigration reform.
And indeed we ask you to do the hard political work to achieve comprehensive immigration reform. You must recognize the aspirations and contributions of the millions of members of our communities who have only sought to build a better life for their families. We know it is not easy, but it is necessary, sensible, and just.
We encourage you to listen to the voices of Latin Americans whose stories and unique perspectives must be heard in Washington if we are to help our neighbors lift millions out of grinding poverty and build more equal and just societies.
We look forward to working with you to build a just policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean that renews our historic commitment to defending human rights and unites us with our neighbors.
This patchwork quilt, with photos and bits of poems stitched on it, was created by Blanca Nieves from the blue jeans, blouses and dresses of her four murdered daughters, who were disappeared and killed by paramilitary forces in Putumayo, Colombia where the family lived. This quilt is one of the tremendously moving pieces of art in Remember Me: Voices of the Silenced in Colombia exhibit, created by Lutheran World Relief and the Colombian human rights groups MINGA, Agenda Caribe and Fundación Manuel Cepeda. 
