Latin America

In light of the passing of Venezuela's President, Hugo Chávez, we think the following statements are well worth reading 

Representative Jose Serrano: '"His focus on the issues faced by the poor and disenfranchised in his country made him a truly revolutionary leader in the history of Latin America. He understood that after 400 years on the outside of the established power structure looking in, it was time that the poor had a chance at seeing their problems and issues addressed. His core belief was in the dignity and common humanity of all people in Venezuela and in the world."...

With passions running high on immigration and pitched defenses mounting on both sides of the question, the actual stories of immigrants get lost in the broader debate or simply become a backdrop to fierce ideological battles and arguments. That’s why we thought that you might like to hear about a new book by H. B. Cavalcanti, Almost Home: A Brazilian American’s Reflections on Faith, Culture and Immigration.  It is a reflection on migration by someone who lived it for 30 years, first as an immigrant, now as a citizen. Here’s what the author has to say:

As part of their Documentaries with a Point of View (POV) program, PBS will be broadcasting Sin País nationally on August 9, 2012.

Sin País (Without Country) attempts to get beyond the partisan politics and mainstream media’s ‘talking point’ approach to immigration issues by exploring one family’s complex and emotional journey involving deportation.

 

On May 11 in rural Honduras, a late-night anti-narcotic mission involving American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents and U.S.-owned equipment resulted in the death of four people—two of them pregnant women, a fourteen-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man.  One of the leading Honduran human rights organizations, COFADEH, released this detailed report, calling the event “unacceptable and reprehensible.”

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.

The Latin America Working Group salutes our faith community colleagues who are taking a stance to protect the poor, around the world as well as in the United States.  As we said in the attached letter, the budget should protect assistance to the most vulnerable in Latin America—and around the world, and here at home.

WASHINGTON -- Frustrated that their pleas to the Administration and Congress to protect funding for the nation's most vulnerable are being ignored, nearly a dozen leaders from the faith community were arrested in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building on Thursday, July 28th.  Despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Capitol Police, the leaders refused to end their public prayers asking the Administration and Congress not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.  Over twenty-five other religious observers were present to witness the demonstration as an act of solidarity.

Facundo Cabral, a singer/ songwriter from Argentina, was one of the leaders in nonviolent protest music throughout Latin America for over 50 years. Born in La Plata, Argentina in 1937, Cabral grew up in extreme poverty. As he learned to play the guitar, sing, and write, he quickly became known as the voice of the people who could not speak. His dedication to social justice movements and his response to violent military dictatorships in Latin America forced him into exile in Mexico following the Argentine coup in 1976, where he continued writing and performing, and gained wide-spread popularity. In 1996, the United Nations designated Cabral a "worldwide messenger of peace" for his continued commitment to the people and to justice and freedom for the powerless in Central and South America.

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.

On March 21, President Obama delivered his second major policy speech on Latin America, since assuming office, to an audience gather outside of the Palacio de la Moneda Cultural Center in Santiago, Chile.

Reports and analyses on the President’s Latin America tour are pouring in – keep checking our blog for ours – and we wanted to present a couple of them:

For nine years Valentina Rosendo Cantú has been seeking justice for human rights violations committed against her by the Mexican military. In 2002, Valentina was raped by Mexican soldiers while washing clothes in a stream running through the indigenous community of Me’phaa in Guerrero state. In 2010, Valentina’s case reached the Inter-American court of Human Rights where the court issued a sentence mandating Mexico to make reparations for Valentina and re-open the criminal investigations in civilian courts. Mexico has yet to fulfill its obligation so Valentina continues to fight.

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.” 

History was made on Thursday when a U.S. District Court Judge in Southern Florida, William J. Zloch, sentenced former Guatemalan special forces soldier Gilberto Jordán to ten years in federal prison. Jordán was convicted of lying on his citizenship application to hide his role in the 1982 massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians in Dos Erres, Guatemala. In condemning Jordán to the maximum time allowed by law for naturalization fraud, Judge Zloch made clear that he intended the ruling to send a clear message that “those who commit egregious human rights violations abroad” cannot find “safe haven from prosecution” in the United States. The sentence marks the first time that any of the dozens of Kaibil special forces who carried out the murders almost 28 years ago has been prosecuted.

In early June, we released Waiting for Change, a report on President Obama’s first-year policies toward Latin America. We aren’t the only ones aware of limited progress: Latin Americans are also less enthusiastic than at last January’s inauguration.

On June 17, the Pew Research Center released its most recent 22-nation Global Attitudes Survey, with Mexico, Argentina and Brazil representing Latin American opinion. Though U.S. favorability ratings in these nations jumped after Obama’s election, this year’s poll shows that fewer people in Argentina and Mexico have confidence that Obama “will do the right thing in world affairs,” than did one short year ago. Brazil, which has received special attention from the Obama Administration, consistently responded more favorably to this poll than did the other two Latin American countries represented.

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.

Here’s an update on the recent natural disasters that have hit Guatemala from Kelsey Alford-Jones of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA (GHRC/USA):

A week after Guatemalans experienced a dual assault from Pacaya Volcano and Tropical Storm Agatha, volcanic ash still hangs in the air. Over 80,000 people wait in emergency shelters—the homes, crops and livelihoods of many completely destroyed.

The pursuit of justice “is a challenge that we have been called to take on, and we have no idea how far this journey will lead us,” said Guatemalan human rights defender Jesús Tecú Osorio at a reception in his honor on May 17th, 2010. Human Rights First and the Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) organized this gathering to celebrate Tecú’s selection as winner of the 2010 Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award for international human rights defenders.

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.

In March, two major annual human rights reports on Colombia were released by the State Department and the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights’ office in Colombia. They highlight some advances, most notably a decline in killings of civilians by the army (extrajudicial executions), but point to numerous ongoing problems, including the major scandal of illegal wiretapping by the government’s DAS intelligence agency, a pronounced slowness in achieving justice in extrajudicial execution cases, threats and attacks against human rights defenders and failures by the government in protecting them, a resurgence of illegal armed groups following the paramilitary demobilization, and sexual violence in the context of the conflict.

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.  

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.

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 Guatemala, violence against women has reached staggering levels in recent years. Since 2000, over 4,700 Guatemalan women have been brutally murdered with almost no accountability for a single perpetrator of these crimes. On March 3rd, 2010, American University hosted an event with the Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) called “Stop Femicide in Guatemala!” Internationally acclaimed human rights advocate Norma Cruz spoke with students and professors about the increasing rate of violence against women in Guatemala. The following quotes were taken from that event.

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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.

Amanda Martin of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA provides this important update on the arduous search for justice in the cases of disappeared Guatemalans.

On December 3, 2009, a former military official and three former commissioners were sentenced to 53 years in prison for the forced disappearance and illegal detention of six people in El Jute, Guatemala in 1981. This marks the first time in Guatemalan history that a high-ranking military official has been sentenced for forced disappearance. In the sentence, the tribunal also ordered an investigation of former defense minister Angel Anibal Guevara, former head of Defense Security (EMD) Benedicto Lucas Garcia, and other officials and soldiers assigned to the same military base as the guilty parties in 1981.

The Amazon Rainforest is famously known as the “lungs of the earth.” In the Ecuadorian Amazon, indigenous groups have united in an effort to protect our proverbial lungs from multinational corporations who they say have spent many years exploiting these sacred lands for profit and harming the communities that live there.

On Thursday November 5th, 2009, the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), Amazon Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America hosted an event that allowed members of the Ecuadorian Indigenous Rights Movement to share their stories. The following quotes were taken from Marlon Santi’s remarks at that event.

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.

The international community initially celebrated an agreement negotiated  in Honduras, on October 28th, between coup regime leader Roberto Micheletti and deposed President Manuel Zelaya, which could have put an end to the crisis. But, less than a week later, the accord started crumbling apart.

On November 5th, 2009, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) sponsored a briefing of civil society leaders and activists on Capitol Hill to talk about the human rights violations that have been occurring in Honduras since the coup and give their vision for the future.  The leaders’ visits were coordinated by the Quixote Center and Just Associates, and LAWGEF pitched in to help. The following quotes were taken from that briefing.

Once again, Central America is battered by natural disaster.  As our partner the Share Foundation describes it:

“While the National Hurricane Center in the United States has downgraded Hurricane Ida to a Tropical Storm, El Salvador has experienced the full brunt of hurricane force winds and rain.  Over the weekend, the storm destroyed more than 7,000 homes and damaged many more.  The most recent data… indicates that approximately 130 people have been killed by the storm, and thousands more injured.   This total is sure to rise as emergency relief workers continue to work their way through damaged buildings and areas that have experienced landslides.

After a long life, touching millions of people with her powerful voice and commitment to social justice, Argentine folksinger Mercedes Sosa passed away on Sunday, October 4th, 2009. Sosa set an incredible example of how music can change the world.

Her deep, rich voice and emotionally charged performances became the rallying cry for a generation of Latin Americans oppressed by dictatorships. In a time of terror, she chose to be “the voice for the voiceless ones” and sing words that were forbidden. In her more than fifty-year career, she pioneered a new movement in music, which buried itself deep into the soul of every listener, as personal as it was political.

It seems that a day cannot go by without an article in the MSM declaring that “Cuba is opening up to the world.” There’s a lot of tricky logic going in such statements, and this past Sunday’s Concert for Peace without Borders organized by Colombian pop star Juanes can help us to reflect on this a bit, and also to act to change United States restrictions on travel by Americans to Cuba.

Being the music lover that I am, before anything else I have to comment: What a spectacular display it was! Well over a million people – half of Havana’s population according to Cuban press sources – filled the Plaza of the Revolution to see performances by Cuban artists living on the island and abroad whose work most epitomizes their homeland, such as Los Van Van, Orishas, Silvio Rodríguez, Yerba Buena, Carlos Varela and Amaury Pérez. Hats off to saxophonist and music director extraordinaire Juan Manuel Ceruto and an amazing ensemble that accompanied many of the Cubans, as well as their foreign guests such as Luis Aute, Miguel Bosé, Olga Tañón and Danny Rivera, among others. It was great to see Cuban musicianship on display again here in the United States, if only via an online video stream provided by Univisión, something unheard of not so long ago.

The coup deposing democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya that took place in Honduras on June 28, 2009 has been condemned by the Organization of American States and governments from around the world --including the United States.  Now the U.S. government needs to stay on the right side of history and make its message unmistakable.  Will you take action to help ensure that the White House stands firmly for democracy in Honduras and our Congress joins the deafening chorus signaling, in no uncertain terms, that coups are a ghost of the past and will not be tolerated?

*Please call your congressional representative. Tell her/him to support the Delahunt-McGovern House Resolution on Honduras!

Mauricio Funes was sworn as President of El Salvador last June 1st. As Funes and his wife, Vanda Pignato, arrived at the inaugural ceremony, they were received by a cheering crowd chanting, "Yes, we did!" As the couple reached the stage, the chants turned into the traditional Latin American leftist hymn, "The people, united, will never be defeated." Monday's inauguration marks a turning point in the country's history, since it is the first time El Salvador elected a leftist president. Since colonial times, the smallest Central American country has had a troublesome history characterized by brutal repression of indigenous uprisings, decades of military dictatorship, a bloody twelve-year civil war and more recently, 20 years of right-wing party rule. Therefore, the FMLN victory represents a new era of hope and change for Salvadorans.

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).

El Salvador celebrated a historical presidential election on Sunday, March 15th. The Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN), the former Salvadoran guerilla movement during the 12-year civil war, won 51.3% to 48.7% for the conservative ARENA party. Mauricio Funes, the president-elect, became the first left-leaning president in the country’s history. His victory puts an end to the twenty years of ARENA party rule and makes El Salvador the latest to join a growing number of Latin American countries that have democratically chosen leftist governments.

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.