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Repressive strategies led by former soldiers are the new norm in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador

[Translation of an article from ContraPunto of San Salvador for December 14. See original here and related articles here, here and here.]

By Gerardo Arbaiza

The Central American Northern Triangle, consisting of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, has been found in several studies to be the most violent region of the world not involved in an armed conflict.

According to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Honduras is in first place in the world in homicides, with a rate of 78 for every 100,000 inhabitants, followed by El Salvador with 66 and, three levels below, Guatemala, with a total of 41 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.

The World Health Organization considers a country to be in an epidemic when the rate of deaths from any cause reaches ten for every 100,000 inhabitants.

The strategy these countries have adopted recently to reduce these figures is directed at taking members of the armed forces and using them together with police forces for tasks of citizen security. (more…)

[Translation of an article from Diario Tiempo of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for October 17, from an Agence France Presse dispatch. See original article here and related articles here, here and here.]

Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico – A proposal to create a document granting safe-conduct to Central Americans who enter Mexico on their way to the United States was offered by the governor of the Mexican state of Chiapas during a ministerial meeting of the Grupo de Tuxtla, made up of representatives of ten countries.

“We respectfully offer a proposal to create biometric identification, passports, official identification cards or some kind of document for entering our country and thus to combat the most despicable of businesses, which is the trafficking and dealing in persons,” said Juan Sabines, governor of the state of Chiapas, the capital of which is the site of the meeting, being held in preparation for a presidential summit planned for November. (more…)

Two rightist candidates will contend for the Guatemalan presidency in November runoff election

[Translation of an article from Diario Tiempo of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for September 12, based on an Agence France Presse dispatch. See original here.]

The president of the Salvadoran legislature, leftist Sigfrido Reyes, on Monday denied that the rightist win in Sunday’s elections in Guatemala signals a general turn to the right in Central America.

“Guatemala has taken a step within its democratic development,” said Reyes, who led a mission from the Salvadoran legislature to observe the elections in Guatemala. Two rightists, retired General Otto Pérez and businessman Manuel Baldizón, will compete for the presidency of Guatemala in a runoff in November, as indicated by a count of 95 percent of the polls in the Sunday election.

Reyes, leader of the ruling Frente Farabundo Martí (FMLN) of El Salvador, denied that the results signal “the return to power of the right” in Central America and declared that the case of Guatemala is “atypical.” In Guatemala, “the party institutions are young, some of them weak, in other cases they tend to be short-lived. This last element is very characteristic of the Guatemalan political tradition, so each election is a surprise,” he stressed. The legislator denied a general return to power of the right on the isthmus, affirming that in the other Central American countries “there are established parties (on the left), with histories and with very well defined ideologies.”

Three leftists won presidencies in Central America between 2007 and 2009, an unprecedented occurrence: Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (Sandinista), Álvaro Colom in Guatemala (Social Democrat) and Mauricio Funes in El Salvador (FMLN). Honduras and Panama have rightist governments, while that of Costa Rica is nominally social democrat but is considered on the right because of its neoliberal policies.

A demonstration against violence in Monterrey

[Translation of an editorial from El Faro of San Salvador for August 29. See original here. Atlántida is a state on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, best known as a luxury tourist attraction but recently also a center of drug trafficking and other organized crime, and of the violence that results.]

The recent attack on a casino in Monterrey, which left more than 50 dead, raised even higher the level of horror that drug trafficking gangs have unleashed in Mexico in their delivery of drugs to the United States.

President Felipe Calderón, besieged by a population fed up with so much bloodshed, pointed rightly toward the United States, asking that country to begin the task it has never been willing to take on: that of decreasing the drug use and toughening its control over the sale of fire arms. (more…)

[Translations of two articles from La Jornada of Mexico City for December 24.  See originals here and here.]

Human Rights Commission documents kidnapping of 20,000 migrants in 2010

Mexico City, December 23 – The Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH – National Human Rights Commission) of Mexico has documented more than 10,000 kidnappings of illegal migrants during a six-month period of this year, an official of the organization announced on Thursday.

The CNDH has recently investigated at the scene the abduction of some 50 immigrants who were travelling on a freight train through Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, as charged by Central American governments. (more…)

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City for November 10. See original article here and related article here.]

by Fabiola Martínez

Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, November 9 – “What country was Calderón talking about?” asked Edith Zavala, executive secretary of the Foro Nacional para las Migraciones [National Forum for Migration] of Honduras, a support network for citizens of that country who have suffered abuse while traveling through Mexico, as soon as the president’s long speech ended..

Calderón listed measures to support the migrants, actions to arrest those responsible for the massacre in Tamaulipas of 72 workers from Central and South America and reassured listeners that his administration respects human rights. (more…)

[Translation of an article from El Faro of El Salvador for August 26. See the original here .] 

By Óscar Martínez

I don’t understand the uproar over the 72 migrants Los Zetas assassinated in Mexico. I guess it was because of the number of bodies piled up together, in plain view in the picture from the ranch in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, just across the border from Brownsville, Texas. It’s a worm of corpses rolled up against the wall of a ruined shed in that wilderness in the middle of nowhere, out there at the end of the little dirt road. Some of the corpses had their hands tied behind their backs. Others were lying piled on top of each other, in the parts of the worm that were swollen. I don’t understand the uproar over the massacre of so many migrants.

The big news media, of Mexico, of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, even of the United States, of Spain and South America, have used their front pages, their important sections, their top news spots, to cover the massacre of migrants in Mexico. I don’t understand the uproar in such big media.

The politicians, the ones from Mexico, from Central America, from Brazil, Ecuador, have rushed to sit in their press conference chairs in front of those media and to apppear later on the front pages. It’s true, not just any politicians. They are the heads of departments, of institutions, of organizations. They are even the presidents themselves of those countries, who have said, as the one from Mexico said, that the perpetrators of the massacre in San Fernando are “animals.” I don’t understand such an uproar by so many importaint politicians. (more…)

Caracas declares Clinton tour a failure

[Translation of an article from La Jornada of Mexico City]

Agence France Presse and Deutsche Presseagentur

Caracas, March 4 – Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro has called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Latin American tour “a failure” and declared that she came to the region “to scheme, to attempt to divide the countries that are trying to unite our continent, to attempt to sow doubt about the process of democratic transformation that countries like Venezuela are living through.” (more…)