Lisa Haugaard

"What is going wrong in Colombia?" asks the coalition of human rights defenders in Colombia. The government of Juan Manuel Santos last year invested time and funding in mechanisms to protect communities and people at risk, among them human rights defenders. 

And yet, in 2012, every five days a defender was assassinated in Colombia, and every 20 hours one defender was attacked. In 2012, 357 men and women in Colombia were attacked for their work as human rights defenders, according to Somos Defensores ("We Are Defenders"), which maintains a unified database of attacks against human rights defenders. Sixty-nine defenders were assassinated, a jump from 49 assassinations in 2011. Indeed, this is the highest number of aggressions against defenders registered by the database in the last ten years, and a 49 percent increase since 2011. The attacks include: 202 threats, 69 assassinations, 50 assaults, 26 arbitrary detentions, 5 forced disappearances, 1 arbitrary use of the penal system, 3 robberies of information, and 1 case of sexual violence...

President Obama's words as he discussed principles for immigration reform struck a deep chord. Some of us at the Latin America Working Group office decided to reflect on our families' paths to the United States.

Here's what he said:

When we talk about that in the abstract, it’s easy sometimes for the discussion to take on a feeling of “us” versus “them.”  And when that happens, a lot of folks forget that most of “us” used to be “them.”  We forget that.

It’s really important for us to remember our history.  Unless you’re one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else.  Somebody brought you...

As Colombia's peace process advances, here are some words to live by.

“We can't condemn Colombians to another one hundred years of solitude and violence.”
--Enrique Santos Calderón, former editor of El Tiempo, brother of President Juan Manuel Santos

“It's one thing that the victims aren't present at the table in Havana, and it's another thing to ignore their voice, deny their rights.  A peace without victims will have neither political nor moral legitimacy.”
--Senator Juan Fernando Cristo

"The dialogue for ending the armed conflict should be a moment in which sectors of Colombian society that have been marginalized, discriminated against and excluded have an opportunity to effectively present their demands, needs and rights that have long been neglected."
--Coordinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos...

As we continue our national conversation about gun violence in the aftermath of the Newtown elementary school shootings, let's also consider a plea from our neighbors in Mexico. One hundred thousand people -- yes, 100,000 people -- have been killed in the violence that has devastated Mexico in the last six years. Twenty-five thousand people have disappeared. Seven thousand bodies lie unidentified in morgues.

U.S. policy towards our Latin American neighbors is, as usual, in need of a few New Year's resolutions. Here goes:

1. Ban assault weapons. Three months before the murders of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, 110 victims of violence and advocates from Mexico traveled across the United States calling on us to take action to stop the violence that has claimed over 100,000 lives in Mexico during the last six years. They asked us to ban the assault weapons that arm Mexico's brutal cartels. Some70 percent of assault weapons and other firearms used by criminal gangs in Mexico come from the United States. The United States should reinstate and tighten the assault weapon ban and enforce the ban on the import of assault weapons into our country, which are then smuggled into Mexico. Do it for Newtown. Do it for Aurora. Do it for Mexico's mothers and fathers who have lost their children to senseless violence.

On December 11, the day after International Human Rights Day, the Colombian Congress approved a justice “reform” bill that will likely result in many gross human rights violations by members of the military being tried in military courts—and remaining in impunity.  The bill, along with a separate ruling by the Council of State, unravels the reforms put in place after the “false positives” scandal in which over 3,000 civilians were killed by soldiers.

We are often telling you about the dangers faced by Colombian human rights defenders—the email death threats and terrifying phone calls, the funeral wreaths labeled with their names sent to their homes, the trade unionist or land rights activist shot dead.

But there is also much to celebrate in the creativity, bravery and dedication of Colombia's human rights community.  And celebrate they did in September 2012, as Colombian civil society leaders and the international agencies coalition DIAL (Inter-Agency Dialogue on Colombia) launched Colombia's first national human rights prize.

On Saturday night, September 22th, 2012, after he attended a wedding, Antonio Trejo Cabrera was shot six times. He later died at a Tegucigalpa hospital.  He was the legal representative of the MARCA campesino movement, and in June he had won the historic though still contested judgment in favor of returning three plantations to campesinos in Bajo Aguán.

“Since they couldn't beat him on the courts, they killed him,” said Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesman for Bajo Aguan's peasant movements, cited in an Associated Press story.  Trejo "had denounced those responsible for his future death on many occasions."  Trejo also prepared legal challenges to a proposal by U.S. and Honduran companies to run privately-run charter cities that critics call unconstitutional, as they would skirt national labor and other laws.

One hundred and ten victims of violence from Mexico and human rights activists traveled thousands of miles, caravanning in 2 buses to visit 25 cities across the United States to urge communities from Los Angeles to New York, Tucson to Montgomery to help them stop the horrific violence that is afflicting their families and their country. The Latin America Working Group was proud to join with Global Exchange, Washington Office on Latin America, Drug Policy Alliance, Witness for Peace, Center for International Policy, RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Mennonite Central Committee, and many other partner organizations and faith communities to host this historic caravan as they ended their journey on September 12, 2012 in Washington, DC. and other partners to host this historic caravan as they ended their journey on September 12, 2012 in Washington, DC. 

In old city Cartagena, Colombia, elegant colonial buildings with verandas and wooden shutters contain trendy restaurants, a Benetton store and expensive shoe shops.  But the Afro-Colombians selling strands of pearls on the sidewalks, who add  life to this tropical tourist haven,  may have come from Urabá, Carmen de Bolivar, Marίa la Baja or other areas where threats and clashes between all the armed actors, paramilitaries, guerrillas and the armed forces forced them to flee the violence.

"We just want the government to enforce its own laws," we heard over and over again, as we listened to women and men from campesino communities who were testifying about murder, torture and violent land evictions in Bajo Aguán, Honduras.  

I can tell you what should be on the table for discussion at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia:  The safety of the region’s human rights defenders.

Alexander Quintero campaigned for justice for the victims of Colombia's 2001 Naya River massacre, committed by paramilitary forces.  “He brought us all together, indigenous, Afro-Colombian and mestizo communities,” said a colleague.  “It could have been any of us,” a sobbing defender said, as she told me about his May 2010 murder.

As the National Days of Action for Peace in Colombia begin this week, I wanted to share the original poem "They Don't Believe Us" that Colombian human rights defender, Orlando Bolaños, read aloud to me when I visited him on a human rights verification mission in December. 

“It’s hard for us to do human rights work where we are. We have to hide what we are doing so they don’t watch us. Our comings and goings are monitored.  Our emails are monitored.  Our leaders are in a permanent state of stress, not just for themselves but for their children. It was hard for us to even get out to talk to you.”

This is what I heard from one activist when I visited Colombia on an international mission to investigate the status of human rights defenders this past December. Unfortunately, he was not alone in describing this systematic persecution and attacks against those working for justice in Colombia.

The U.S.-Colombia trade agreement was held up for an unprecedented five years over human rights and labor rights concerns.  It was passed today, October 12th, but over strong and passionate opposition from many members of Congress, and from a broad range of civil society organizations in the United States and Colombia, including labor unions, human rights groups, faith-based organizations, environmental groups, and Afro-Colombian, indigenous and small-scale farmer associations. 

"Why do we care so much about this?" said Lisa Haugaard, Executive Director of the Latin America Working Group (LAWG).  "Because we believe that passage of this agreement will make it harder to encourage the Colombian government to protect its trade unionists, who are still murdered with impunity today—23 so far this year.  Because we believe the flood of agricultural imports from the United States will undermine Colombia’s small-scale farmers, including Afro-Colombians and indigenous people, who have suffered so much in Colombia’s civil war. And because it will boost the kinds of large-scale investment, such as mining and biofuel, that has helped to fuel the violence in a conflict that still grinds brutally on."

The State Department on September 15, 2011, certified that Colombia had met the human rights conditions attached to U.S. assistance. No surprise there—the State Department always certifies Colombia meets the conditions, no matter what is happening on the ground.  To be fair, this time, with the year-old Santos Administration, there’s somewhat more reason to certify than during countless rounds of certification during the Uribe Administration.   The certification document cites the Santos Administration's successful passage of a victims' reparations and land restitution bill; a “disarming of words” initiative in which it abandoned the inflammatory anti-NGO language used by Uribe and his top officials, which had endangered human rights defenders and journalists; progress on some historic human rights cases; and a variety of directives and policy initiatives, at least on paper, to support human rights and labor rights.
 
But the 118- page document contains a wealth of information that shows why we should still be deeply concerned.

The steps up to the conference room were plastered with faces. Faces of the missing fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, mothers and wives. They looked out at us, some faded, torn photographs, others as real as if they could be ready to pick up their child, eat dinner with their family, head off to work, today.  Gathered in this hotel conference room in Bogotá were the women and men who had lost a part of themselves when their loved one was taken away in “the perfect crime”: forced disappearance.

Coalition of Groups ask U.S. Congress to Oppose Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Yesterday, June 23, 2011, the Latin America Working Group (LAWG), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), and more than 400 other organizations, academics, and individuals from both the United States and Colombia, sent a letter to the U.S. Congress asking representatives to vote no on the pending U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Human rights violations in Colombia–abuses against labor activists, Afro-Colombians, human rights activists and others–continue to take place at alarmingly high levels. In this climate, it would be a mistake to approve the FTA.

U.S. aid that helps people in need, as they recover from natural disasters, flee from conflicts, and struggle in poverty, is on the chopping block as the Congress takes up the President’s FY2012 foreign aid budget request.   Based on a letter we sent with our partners, the Latin America Working Group’s director Lisa Haugaard testified before the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee with the following appeal.

A December 2010 report by Human Rights Watch outlines the lack of accountability for human rights abuses committed during and following the June 2009 coup in Honduras. The report also documents 47 cases of threats or attacks, including 18 killings, against journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists since the inauguration of Honduran President Porfirio Lobo in January 2010.

"As Haitians prepare for the first anniversary of the earthquake, close to one million people are reportedly still displaced. Less than 5 percent of the rubble has been cleared, only 15 percent of the temporary housing that is needed has been built and relatively few permanent water and sanitation facilities have been constructed," concludes Oxfam in a hard-hitting report on the world’s response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa “returned safely to the presidential palace… after spending hours held by police inside a hospital room outside Quito,” according to CNN. While attempting to talk with rioting police demanding that a law be revoked that they believed would cut their salaries, Correa had tear gas lobbed at him and had been taken to the hospital. Later he was rescued by soldiers and returned to the palace. Correa characterized the events as an attempted coup. He stated, “I leave as president of a dignified nation, or I leave as a cadaver.” 

In 2005, I visited the community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia. A group of poor farmers who had been repeatedly displaced from their homes by violence, they had decided to call themselves a “peace community” and reject violence from all sides—paramilitaries, guerrillas and the army.  Yet the community was subjected to ever more harassment and violence, including by the local 17th army brigade.  Some 170 members of the peace community have been assassinated since 1997. My visit came soon after seven members of the peace community, including three children, and a local farmer had been massacred and dismembered.  The community members had left their army-occupied town to construct a bare-bones, dirt-floor village down the road.

Colombia's Constitutional Court issued an important decision last week which sent Colombia's new administration back to the drawing board to secure approval for a U.S.-Colombian military base agreement.  The decision effectively struck down the contentious agreement, chastising the Colombian executive for having failed to get approval from Colombia's Congress, and requiring them now to seek congressional endorsement before moving forward. 

On August 13th, a car bomb was detonated near the Caracol Radio headquarters, one of the largest networks in Colombia. LAWGEF and its partners issued the following statement in response:

Over two thousand civilians intentionally killed by army soldiers seeking to beef up their body counts and score days off. A massive illegal wiretapping operation by the president’s intelligence agency targeting Supreme Court judges, journalists, opposition politicians and human rights defenders. Seven human rights defenders and leaders of displaced communities killed in May alone, in a nation where threats and attacks against defenders are rarely effectively investigated and government officials’ denunciations of them place them in danger. In which authoritarian country opposed to the United States did these abuses take place? In none other than Colombia, often called “the United States’ best ally in the Western Hemisphere.” And we, the U.S. taxpayers, bankrolled this friendship to the tune of more than $6 billion.

We’ve seen up close how the production and trafficking of illicit drugs has fueled a war in Colombia, corrupted governments in Central America and brought terrifying violence to Mexican communities.  We know about the devastating effects of drug abuse in our own neighborhoods in the United States.  What has become clear is that solutions the U.S. government has pursued, such as the massive aerial spraying campaign in Colombia which destroys food as well as illicit drug crops or aid that encourages the Mexican army to police the streets and checkpoints do not solve the problem. Instead, it leads to more devastation and violence.

Guatemalans dreaming of and campaigning for a nation governed by the rule of law were devastated June 7th when the head of a UN-supported body set up to investigate organized crime resigned in frustration. Carlos Castresana had labored valiantly, as head of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), to investigate the organized crime that has penetrated the nation.

The year was 2004. I was contacted by Colombian human rights activists. Would I please come to Colombia to join them in a book launch of the second edition of The Authoritarian Spell? They were worried that the book, a collectively written critique of what they saw as authoritarian tendencies by the administration of President Alvaro Uribe, would provoke a reaction, and wanted international accompaniment. I said yes, and went to one of the book launches in Medellín, where a professor at the local university spoke and introduced me and several of the book’s coauthors, and we had a genteel, scholarly discussion of current events, in an auditorium filled mainly with students and professors. 

Little did we know that the book, criticized by the government as exaggerated, was in fact far too light a critique of the government’s authoritarian tendencies.

Colombia’s outgoing President has launched an assault against his country’s courts for taking some initial steps to bring high-ranking military and government officials to justice for their role in murder, illegal wiretapping, disappearances and torture.  This is no abstract political debate. When the President takes to the airwaves to denounce those working for justice, the judges, lawyers, witnesses and victims’ families know that death threats, and sometimes murder, often follow.  The threats and attacks usually appear to be from paramilitary groups. Colombia’s Supreme Court made a call for help:  “We make an appeal to the international community to accompany and show solidarity with the Colombian judicial system which is being assaulted for carrying out its duties.” 

President Obama was elected with a campaign of hope, and change.  Those of us who care about Latin America hoped that U.S. foreign policy towards the region, too often unilateral and focused on military solutions, would also change.

A year ago, at a summit of Latin America’s leaders, President Obama hit a note that resonated well with his counterparts: “I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations.”

After that hopeful moment, though, the new administration stumbled at the starting gate. 2009 was a rough year for U.S. policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean. Latin American governments and civil society groups were disappointed by the Obama Administration’s inattention, vacillation on democracy and human rights, and failure of imagination in creating more humane policies, especially after it secretly negotiated a defense agreement with Colombia and backed off from efforts to urge resignation of the coup regime in Honduras despite an admirably united Latin American and OAS response to protect the democratic order.

As I listened to mothers and sisters and sons describe how they found their loved one in the morgue of a Colombian army base, dressed up in a guerrilla uniform when they knew he was a civilian, I was not only saddened, I was stunned by the striking similarity of the cases. From Casanare, Meta, Cauca, the facts were so similar. Witnesses saw the person being taken prisoner by a group of army soldiers.  They went looking for him, thinking he’d be detained on the army base. Then they were shown a photo or the body of their relative, dead and claimed by the army as killed in combat.

As Colombians go to the polls May 30th, they will elect a president who will have a historic opportunity to change the lives of millions of Colombians affected in profound and tragic ways by the country’s enduring armed conflict. The Latin America Working Group and partner organizations have sent an open letter to Colombia’s presidential and vice presidential candidates to ask them how they will lead the nation in building a more just and inclusive society that promotes and respects the rights of all its citizens. 

As an official “Truth Commission” was inaugurated May 4th in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, leading Honduran human rights groups expressed serious concerns and announced an alternative commission.

Saying that a real truth commission “should provide a space which has been denied to the victims, in which they can be heard and injury to their rights repaired,” the groups criticized the official commission for “exclusion of the victims” and the “lack of processes to ensure effectiveness and impartiality.”

Extremely serious human rights violations have taken place since the inauguration of Honduran President Porfirio Lobo on January 27th. Since that date, there has been a notable increase in attacks against people opposed to the June 28th coup d’état and their family members, as well as a surge in attacks against journalists. A teacher was slain in front of his class. Three campesino leaders from the community of Aguán were assassinated.  

Charles Bowden’s Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields is an unflinching look at the violence on the U.S.-Mexico border and the failing solutions by both countries to address it.  With an intense sympathy for the many victims but also a degree of understanding even for a contract killer who finds God, the author doesn’t let the reader find comfort in anything.  The book, just published by Nation Books (New York: 2010), can be found at your local bookstore or online distributors.  Here are a few selections from this devastating catalog of violence.

On the 30th anniversary of the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes apologized for the role of the Salvadoran government in this cataclysmic event.

His words are so moving they require no further introduction.

For text of the speech in Spanish, click here.

For a New York Times article about President Funes' speech, click here.

An English translation of the speech follows.

I just listened to a group of Honduran lawyers, who were exhausted, frustrated and in fear, as they explained their efforts to defend citizens’ rights in their country.

The lawyers were here to ask for help from the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. Their message was:

As the Texas State Board of Education voted in March to exclude Archbishop Oscar Romero from history textbooks, just as we reach the thirtieth anniversary of his murder, it seems like a good moment to remember his legacy.

In a decisive ruling for democracy, Colombia’s Constitutional Court determined February 26th that a law authorizing a referendum to change the constitution to permit a second consecutive reelection of President Álvaro Uribe would be unconstitutional. President Uribe immediately accepted the decision.

We charitably termed the Obama Administration’s first year of Latin America policy a “false start.”  After the year was kicked off with a promising beginning with a rousing speech at the Summit of the Americas, a promise to close Guantanamo, the lifting of the ban on travel to Cuba for Cuban Americans, and some principled words on human rights to Colombian President Uribe, we had some hope for a new, less ideological, more people-centered approach to the region. As the year progressed, those hopes were dashed. But now we dare to hope again.

In two interesting analyses of elections in Latin America, Professor Doug Hertzler, associate professor of anthropology at Eastern Mennonite University and Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy remind us, and the U.S. government, to look closely at the reality in each country rather than viewing it in an ideological context.

As Hondurans sort through the wreckage of human rights and civil liberties violations that occurred following the June 28th coup, one pressing issue the country will have to address is the wave of violence directed against members of the LGBT community.

As National Party leader Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo is inaugurated president of Honduras, we can’t just pretend the June 28th coup and its bitter aftermath never occurred.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights just released a devastating 147-page catalogue of the violations of human rights and civil liberties that have occurred since the coup in Honduras.

As we give from our own pockets and encourage our government to fund relief and reconstruction in earthquake-devastated Haiti, we can’t let skepticism about the past success of aid efforts dissuade us from responding.  But at the same time, we can’t ignore real concerns.  Groups involved in human rights and health related work in Haiti issued a call for Haiti relief and reconstruction efforts to respect the following principles:

As I advocate for a U.S. policy towards the region based on justice and human rights, I’ve had easier years during the Bush Administration. For an administration that promised hope and change, both are in short supply.

Elections took place Sunday, November 29th in Honduras with National Party leader Porfirio Lobo declared the winner.

But elections carried out under a state of emergency, with visible military and police presence, by a government installed by coup, with a significant movement opposed to the coup calling for abstention, and with the deposed President still holed up in the center of the capital city in the Brazilian Embassy, are no cause for celebration. As we wrote to the State Department on November 24th, “a cloud of intimidation and restrictions on assembly and free speech affect the climate in which these elections take place… basic conditions do not exist for free, fair and transparent elections in Honduras.”

“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.

In every province of Colombia, women long to know what happened to their husbands, to their daughters, to their sons. Children want to know what happened to their fathers, to their mothers.

Even Colombia’s associations of families of the disappeared have long estimated that at most the disappeared totaled 15,000. And many did not believe the toll was so high.

But as forensic teams are conducting exhumations following the partial paramilitary demobilization, prosecutors are interviewing paramilitary leaders, Colombia’s National Search Commission is soliciting information from the victims, and victims are organizing to know the truth, the scale of the human catastrophe is slowly being unveiled.

“If that kind of barbarity can be directed against the highest-ranking person in the country, what will happen to the rest of us?” asked the activists at COFADEH, the Committee of Families of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras, right after the June 28th coup that sent President Manuel Zelaya into exile.  Now the answer to that question can be seen in COFADEH’s hard-hitting October 22nd report, “Statistics and Faces of Repression.”

Despite the Micheletti government’s announced intention following international and national pressure to lift the state of siege, the notice has not yet been published in the official gazette, and rights violations continue.  The de facto government issued a new decree allowing the government’s telecommunications agency to revoke licenses for radio and television stations that transmit messages that promote “social anarchy,” ensuring that censorship can continue.  Police continued excessive use of force against protestors, and some protestors remain in detention. Meanwhile, hopes for dialogue increased as the Organization of American States negotiators arrived, but no end to the crisis is yet in sight.

As international and domestic concern mounts over the suspension of constitutional rights declared by de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti on September 26th, the government promises to restore rights, but does not yet act to do so, and human rights violations continue.

On September 21st, President Manuel Zelaya returned clandestinely to Honduras and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy in the capital city of Tegucigalpa. Honduran police fired tear gas to disperse Zelaya’s supporters gathered around the embassy. They also launched tear gas at the human rights group COFADEH, where men, women and children had taken refuge after the attack at the embassy.   People detained for violating a newly established curfew are being held at the football stadium, where observers saw people who had been severely beaten. The situation in the capital and elsewhere is extremely tense.

Today, LAWGEF joined labor, environmental, human rights, development and faith-based organizations in submitting written comments to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) in response to a formal request to the public for opinions on the pending trade agreement. In their comments, these groups outlined the specific human rights and labor problems in Colombia, and urged the Obama Administration to insist upon seeing fundamental improvements on these issues before going forward with a free trade agreement.  Violence against trade unionists and other obstacles to worker rights were outlined by the AFL-CIO and US Labor Education in the Americas Project.  Some groups also outlined the potential impact of the trade agreement on the rural poor, including Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities.

Just as the Bush Administration did countless times before, the Obama Administration certified on September 8th that Colombia meets the human rights conditions in law. The conditions, which refer to gross violations of human rights by Colombia’s security forces and collaboration between those forces and paramilitary or other illegal armed groups, are attached to thirty percent of Colombia’s military aid.

The Latin America Working Group mourns the passing of Senator Edward Kennedy, a crusader for human rights and social justice in our nation and around the world.  As the Woodrow Wilson Center's Cynthia Arnson describes his remarkable efforts in Latin America, including his outspoken efforts to denounce human rights abuses following the 1973 coup in Chile,  “His name is recognized and revered among a whole generation of Latin Americans who were persecuted or forced into exile during the years of the dictatorships.”

With the chaos following the June 28th coup and the shuttering of media outlets, it has been hard to learn about the state of human rights in Honduras.  That’s why it’s so important to read the report that the Honduran Association of the Detained and Disappeared, COFADEH, released July 15t on the human rights situation in Honduras since the coup on June 28, 2009. 

LAWG calls for the restoration of democratic order in Honduras, including return of democratically-elected leader Manuel Zelaya and the restoration of full civil liberties and freedom of the press.

Today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Honduran President Zelaya and announced, following the meeting, that Costa Rican President Oscar Arias has agreed to act as a mediator and has been accepted by both President Zelaya and the leader of the de facto government, Roberto Micheletti.

“But it has been my view for several days that the most useful role we could play is to convince all that are directly concerned, not only President Zelaya, but also the de facto regime, the OAS, the UN, everyone, that we needed to have a process where the Hondurans themselves sat down and talked to each other,” said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the daily press briefing. “And that is – that’s been my goal, and I believe that we are on the brink of that happening. I’m hoping that it actually occurs soon. So we have tried through our good offices to get people to this point. And we’re very grateful for the willingness of President Arias to serve in this position, and we’re also appreciative of the efforts of the OAS as well.”

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/125753.htm

 

The situation in Honduras has only worsened since the coup on June 28th when the Honduran military rousted President Manuel Zelaya from his bed, and flew him to Costa Rica in his pajamas.

Military vehicles with machine guns rolled through the streets of Tegucigalpa, Honduras as the Honduran military ousted President Jose Manuel Zelaya yesterday, June 28.  This marks the first military coup in Honduras in thirty years and brings back ugly memories of darker times for democracy in Latin America.

As President Uribe visits the White House, the scandal regarding the Colombian intelligence agency Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS) is widening daily. According to Colombia’s Attorney General, over the last seven years the DAS systematically and without warrants tapped the phones and email of Colombia’s major human rights groups, prominent journalists, members of the Supreme Court (including the chief justice and the judge in charge of the parapolitics investigation), opposition politicians, and the main labor federation. Not only did DAS personnel spy on their targets, they spied on their families. This includes taking photos of their children, investigating their homes, their finances, and their daily routines. DAS even wrote a detailed manual of spying methods for personnel to follow.

Since 2007, the Latin America Working Group has been demanding action to end the killings of civilians by the Colombian Army. While the Colombian government has taken some steps to address these systematic abuses, the nightmare is not yet over. Two important resources have just come out that show that much more needs to be done.

It’s hard to believe—the Latin America Working Group has completed a quarter-century of campaigning for a just U.S. policy towards Latin America.  Right now we’re celebrating this history:  our collective work to shift U.S. support from war to peace in Central America; to increase U.S. aid for victims of hurricanes, earthquakes and war; to build U.S. counternarcotics policies that are more humane and effective; to promote border policies that respect the rights of border communities and migrants; and to end, once and for all, the Cuba travel ban. 

If you’ve called your member of Congress on these issues, if you’ve contributed to our cause, if you’ve sent our messages on to your friends, if you’re a member or supporter of any of the groups in our coalition—then this is your history, too.

The trial of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori “contributes to the strengthening of the rule of law and democracy in Peru and is a genuine milestone in the struggle against impunity in the region,” according to Jo-Marie Burt of George Mason University and Coletta Youngers of the Washington Office on Latin America. “It is the first time that a democratically elected head of state in Latin America has been found guilty of committing crimes against humanity.”

As our country is reflecting upon the use of torture by U.S. interrogators since 9/11, some history and literature from Latin America’s dirty wars offers insights.  A new translation of Uruguayan author Mario Benedetti’s play Pedro and the Captain, about to be released by Cadmus Editions, provides an unblinking look into the psychology behind such abuses.

As our President addressed the gathering of the hemisphere’s leaders, the Summit of the Americas, in Trinidad-Tobago, he got the tone right. “There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations; there is simply engagement based on mutual respect and common interests and shared values,” he said in his official speech. In other settings, he went farther: “If our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction, if our only interaction is military, then we may not be developing the connections that can, over time, increase our influence,” he said, noting that Cuba’s sending of doctors to care for the poor in other countries offered an example to the United States. He also stated he is “absolutely opposed and condemn any efforts at violent overthrows of democratically elected governments” (reported in The New York Times here and in The Washington Post, “Obama Closes Summit, Vows Broader Engagement with Latin America,” April 20, 2009).

"For 25 years we knew absolutely nothing," said Alejandra García Montenegro, 26, who was a baby when her father, labor leader Fernando García, left for a meeting in February 1984—when Guatemala was under military rule—and never came home. "It was as if the earth had swallowed up my father and he had never existed," she said.

While many of our readers know that Colombian human rights defenders are frequently targeted and stigmatized by public threats and innuendo that call the very legitimacy of their work—and sometimes their personal integrity—into question, what’s less well understood is how often the voices of those denouncing human rights abuses are stifled by baseless investigations and prosecutions.

Speaking to reporters after a local “security council” meeting in Norte de Santander earlier this week, President Uribe claimed that only 22 of the many hundreds of cases of “false positives” civilian killings by the Colombian army in recent years have any “judicial foundation.”

Day after day we hear nightmarish stories of gangland slayings in Mexico, as drug-related violence expands, affecting the lives of countless families and communities across Mexico, as well as the U.S-Mexico border region. Mexico’s Attorney General estimates that rival drug cartels killed 6,262 people in 2008.

Last week, Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos visited Washington, DC to meet with lawmakers and top Obama Administration officials, including Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Sec. Robert Gates, and National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones.

"My father was a dreamer. He was a cheerful, generous man. He was our friend and our hero, the man who helped us discover the world."

These are the words of Yessica Hoyos Morales, whose father, Jorge Darío Hoyos Franco, a Colombian labor leader, was assassinated in 2001 by two hired hitmen, as she testified to a hearing held February 12th by the House Committee on Education and Labor, chaired by Representative George Miller (D-CA).

Welcome to the Latin America Working Group’s new blog—the LAWG Blog (sorry, we couldn’t resist the name).  We’ll be bringing you updates on U.S. policy towards Latin America, inspiring stories from Latin American human rights activists, tips for what you can do to make change—all in the service of building a more just U.S. policy towards our neighbors to the south.

When we talk about Colombia, we often hear two reactions. "It's so complicated!" Or, "Why should I care. There are no good guys to support there." Well, as to the first, yes, it’s complicated. Even more than you know. But as to the second, there are few places on earth with more heroes and heroines than Colombia.