2010

 
           
With over 4.9 million Colombians forcibly displaced from their homes by a debilitating war, Colombia is now the second worst internal displacement crisis in the world.  Between now and April 30, tens of thousands across the U.S. and Colombia will participate in this year’s National Days of Action for Colombia to call for a much-needed shift in U.S. policies toward the war-torn country.  Please join us!

Click here for photos, stories, instructions, factsheets, and more!

This year, the National Days of Action will focus on the displacement crisis, but in a different way than last year when we made thousands of paper dolls to symbolize the number of IDPs in Colombia. This year we’re asking you to go a step further than just understanding what is happening, and start talking about why in a campaign we’re calling “Face the Displaced – Colombia: Our Hemisphere’s Hidden Humanitarian Crisis.”


Community action: Once we’ve made these posters, we’re going to need your help organizing public events and church services all over the country where we can display these faces and teach about the displacement crisis in Colombia. Even if you can’t do a poster making party, if you can join the hundreds of grassroots groups and churches both in the United States and in Colombia that will be educating their communities throughout April and praying for peace in Colombia on the weekend of April 16-19th, it will make a huge difference. Click here for more information on organizing a demonstration.

This year we created a central site where everyone will be registering their events across the country so we can really see how much is going on. Please click here to sign up! Or if you're interested in organizing through your church, click here for a faith-based organizing resources.

Legislative change: We’ll work with you during April and beyond to ensure that Washington feels the force of the movement calling for change in U.S. policies towards Colombia. First, they’ll hear from you on the National Call-In Day on April 19th. Then, once you’ve displayed these faces in your cities, send the materials to Washington in May where we’ll be doing some last big displays before taking the faces with to Congress and the Administration to deliver your message. We’ll post more info on these actions soon!


And if you have any questions or need any help organizing, email Vanessa at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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.

When the 7.0 earthquake shook Haiti, leaving more than 230,000 people dead and 1.3 million homeless, you gave from your heart.

You told us about some of your spirited efforts, like the Peer College Counselors in Reseda High School in Los Angeles who sponsored a fundraising drive that raised $628 for Doctors without Borders (the organization the students chose to support) in just 20 minutes. Go, Reseda!

But that's not all you wanted to do. You also wanted your government, not just yourself and your community, to do the right thing. To generously aid Haiti. In the right way, in ways that put Haitians in the center of decisionmaking. In ways that are sustainable.

Spring is coming and major grassroots action for peace in Colombia is near! Soon communities all across the country will start preparing for Days of Prayer and Action, when we will join in solidarity with our Colombian sisters and brothers and show policymakers the real size of the movement for change in U.S.-Colombia policy.

We want to make sure we can count on you to get involved because right now the stakes are higher than ever before.

In January, I traveled to Colombia on a delegation with Witness for Peace to meet with communities resisting displacement in Northern Cauca and with communities of internally displaced people near Bogotá and Cali. Since I got back, I’ve viewed my work differently, and here’s why:

I realized that in our advocacy we talk so much about “victims,” when the word we really should be using is “heroes.”

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will vote on the Debt Relief for Earthquake Recovery in Haiti Act, which would get the U.S. government to push for an immediate cancellation of Haiti's debts to international institutions. Click here to ensure your representative votes for Haiti debt relief.

Happy International Women's Day!

Although we rarely remember to celebrate it in the United States, today many of our partners in countries like Colombia, Mexico, and Guatemala are participating in marches, teach-ins, and even parties. Why? Because there are so many strong and brave women to honor and there's still so much more education to be done before we see equal rights and an end to violence against women in Latin America.

As we mark International Women’s Day, we remember Esther Chávez Cano, a powerful champion for women’s rights who struggled to eradicate gender-based violence and whose efforts raised worldwide attention to the ever-growing toll of unresolved murders of women and girls in Ciudad Juárez.  

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.

On February 23, 2010, Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in a Havana hospital, where he had been transferred from prison after an 83-day hunger strike in Cuba.  Mr. Zapata was among the 75 internal opposition activists detained in Cuba in March of 2003. He and the others were quickly tried and sentenced.  Mr. Zapata was serving a 36-year sentence, extended from an original three-year sentence.  He was one of 55 Cubans who have been designated by Amnesty International as “Prisoners of Conscience.”

The Latin America Working Group expresses our utmost sorrow at his passing and our distress over this tragic and indefensible death. We call upon the Cuban government to institute a thorough investigation into Mr. Zapata’s death.

The LAWG Blog is about to become your favorite thing since fair trade coffee. Why? Because we're ramping it up with more issues, more engaging features, and more room for your voice. Click here to check it out!

So, what's new with our blog?

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.

While some historic snowstorms and the President's Day recess sidetracked our congressional advocacy work in the first couple weeks of February, the introduction of the Peterson-Moran Cuba bill (HR 4645) has helped us regain our "travel for all" momentum and represents our best chance to end the travel ban on Cuba in 2010.

Mavis Anderson, senior associate for Cuba policy at the Latin America Working Group, gave the following remarks at a congressional briefing for House staff on February 24, 2010. The briefing's panelists included Former Secretary of Agriculture under President Ronald Reagan, John Block; Father Juan Molina of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops; Chris Garza of American Farm Bureau; and moderating, Tom Garofalo of the New American Foundation. The briefing took place on Thursday February 24, 2010.

A United States delegation led by Craig Kelly, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs, met with Cuban officials led by Dagoberto Rodríguez, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, in Havana on Friday, February  19th, to discuss migration issues.  This meeting marked the second round of migration talks since their suspension in 2004 by President George W. Bush.

Here are some stories from our partners about how relief efforts are unfolding. In many areas quake survivors are at risk and still abandoned.

On February 11th, Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL), long time pro-embargo supporter (and creator), announced that he will not run for his tenth term this coming November.

“I am convinced that in the upcoming chapter of the struggle, I can be more useful to the inevitable change that will soon come to Cuba, to Cuba’s freedom, as a private citizen dedicated to helping the heroes within Cuba,” said Rep. Diaz-Balart. 

If you've been following the national news, you've probably heard that Washington, DC, has been slammed by more snowstorms than usual this winter season (only Syracuse, NY, has had more). This past weekend's snowstorm, dubbed "Snowmageddon" by President Obama and "Snowpocalypse" by some LAWG staffers and other DC-area residents, was so powerful that the Federal Government has remained closed since the snowflakes began falling last Friday afternoon. Today, we're being hit by yet another snowstorm, and we haven't even finished shoveling and plowing ourselves out of the last one!

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.

On a cold afternoon during the last days of 2009, a man dressed in a black shirt, black pants, and a black hat walked through the quiet halls of Congress with a guitar in hand. While no passerby could have known it, this was a landmark moment for Grammy award-winning Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Varela. For the past ten years, Varela had been denied a visa to tour in the United States due to harsher travel restrictions imposed by the Bush Administration.

Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) hosted a briefing and performance with Varela that highlighted the importance of international cultural exchange. Varela—who has been compared to Bob Dylan for his beautiful, often controversial lyrics and prolific repertoire—was frank in his views on the problems caused by the increased restrictions on travel between the U.S. and Cuba in recent years.

"With the Clinton Administration, Cuban artists were more able to come to the US.... There was a wonderful event in Cuba in the 1999 when a large number of musical artists from the US came to Cuba and met with Cuban artists. It produced songs, new working relationships, wonderful paths and bridges—projects that were all terminated with the Bush Administration. It was very telling that when I was denied a visa in 2004 to do a tour in United States, and many Cuban youth protested in Miami. How could it have been that they left Cuba looking for the land of the free and they weren’t even allowed to listen to their own musicians?”

We thought you should hear this story from Lisa Bonds, with our partner Lutheran World Relief in Colombia.  See LWR’s blog on Colombia and other topics by clicking here.

“I joined my Lutheran World Relief colleagues and Rosario Montoya, the Director of Fundacion Infancia Feliz, in a visit to the ‘Finca la Alemania,’ the German farm… As we drove to the farm, Rosario briefed us on the farm's history and the people who had recently returned to the farm after having been displaced by one of the most feared paramilitary leaders, called ‘the Chain,’ in the state of Cordoba...

When the crisis in Haiti began, we were glad to know we could count on you to join in raising the resources to help those in immediate need. Going forward, we're going to need your voice to make sure that our government and the international community take the necessary steps to support Haiti as it begins the long road to recovery. Please start with this urgent action from our friend Hayley Hathaway at the Jubilee USA Network:

In the wake of Haiti's unimaginable tragedy, one obvious and simple step toward a just recovery is for the international community to cancel Haiti's $1 billion debt.

Please take an extra moment to click here and sign Jubilee USA's petition "Drop Haiti's Debt Now and No More Debt for Disaster."

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.

The Haitian earthquake that occurred on January 12th has left the poorest nation in our hemisphere in an even worse position. However, the international community has made a remarkable humanitarian effort to contribute to the relief of the Haitian people. Even nations that are typically at odds have joined together to help.

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.

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.

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: