WOLAblog

Leaving the Gang

A growing number of former gang members from Latin America, particularly El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, are requesting asylum in the United States. These are mostly young men who want to leave gang life behind and start new lives, without reprisal from their former mates, and are unable to do so in their home countries. Victims of gang persecution who were not necessarily members of gangs, a group that includes police officers, have also sought asylum.

Until now, immigration lawyers, judges and policymakers had few resources for understanding and contextualizing these asylum claims.  WOLA tried to fill that gap this year with its Central American Gang-Related Asylum: A Resource Guide. This five-part package describes the gang phenomenon in detail in each of those countries, shows how the tough-guy policies of Central American governments have exacerbated the problem, and offers elements of successful legal arguments for asylum claims.   

Here's a review, written by a lawyer for lawyers. It calls the guide "timely and much-needed." Consider that free legal advice.

Looking South

Barack Obama has some interesting things to say about Latin America in an interview with the Los Angeles newspaper La Opinión.  From the sound of it, he gets the profound importance of Lula and Brazil to the region and wants to frame policy in ways that go beyond simplistic labels and ideologies -- not a bad idea. Lula

has helped to lead Brazil in unprecedented growth and I think is actively looking for a stronger relationship with the United States. The key is for the administration to take advantage of these new relationships, to not get obsessed with ideology or labels, but to indicate to the people of Latin America that we care deeply about them, that our interests are not just military, our interests are not just drug[-related], but we also want to make sure that people in these countries are prospering and that we are alleviating poverty.

We will look forward to hearing an update on John McCain's ideas on U.S. policy on Latin America. Here are our own, WOLA's report Forging New Ties.

Victimizers

Colombian death squad leaders have been extradited to the United States to face trial -- not for the atrocities they admit carrying out, but for drug-trafficking crimes. The extraditions, including those of 15 top paramilitary commanders by President Uribe in May, have thrown trials into human rights abuses in Colombia into disarray. Juan Forero gets the story in today's Washington Post.

Veloza [a paramilitary leader] spoke about the evolution of paramilitarism into widespread savagery, such as beheading villagers. Though many commanders said the violence was necessary to push back the rebels, Veloza estimated that 90 percent of victims had no ties to guerrillas.

"You have to now just tell the truth," he said. "We are not victims. We are victimizers.'

WOLA and other human rights groups have been pressing hard for U.S. Department of Justice authorities to work with Colombian prosecutors in trying these suspects for their death-squad activities. U.S. prosecutors can help by vigorously working to get information about those activities in the course of the drug probes and then passing it on to Colombian prosecutors. As 35 members of Congress said in a letter to Attorney General Mukasey,

[M]uch more needs to be done to ensure that Colombia effectively breaks the influence of paramilitaries in its political and military systems.

Coca and Corn

High prices for rice and other commodities may be accomplishing what years of eradiction programs couldn't achieve -- a switch away from coca in favor of other crops. Bolivian farmers are supplementing coca crops with corn and rice, which has the potential to cut coca production while improving Bolivia's own food security. As WOLA's John Walsh explains in a recent Inter-American Dialogue newsletter, "harnessing the rising prices of food crops" makes sense as part of a larger rural development strategy and to nudge farmers away from coca for illegal cocaine.

Higher prices raise rural incomes and over time can help farmers diversify production in ways that lessen reliance on any single crop, including coca.

Coca prices are high, too, as this article explains, but strong prices for food staples give farmers an opening that they didn't have before to diversify into other crops. 

High commodity prices are remaking the Latin American agricultural sector in some surprising ways, driving up earnings from grain exports while undermining small-scale and family farming. This recent report, published by WOLA and the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, explains the phenomenon.  

Evo's Mandate

Bolivian President Evo Morales has won a thumping victory in a recall referendum that he, in fact, initially proposed in January 2007. Morales took 63% of the vote, up from 54% in his original election victory, and this in a country where presidents used to win with a third or less of the vote.  

Here are some interesting figures from the Democracy Center. The math is a little off (Morales' total climbed 11 percentage points, not 11%) but the trend is clear. WOLA's John Walsh and Kathryn Ledebur of the Andean Information Network reviewed the issues facing Bolivia in this absorbing memo. As they suggested before the vote, and this article after, Morales' victory gives him a stronger mandate to pursue constitutional change but may not stop the "separatist" opposition in Santa Cruz. As Kathryn and John write, 

The recall referendum has the potential to either quell or heighten the tension between the opposition and the Morales government over departmental autonomy with respect to the national government.  

They see violence as "highly unlikely." Read on.

End of the Military Court

Argentina has abolished its military justice system. Civilians and military officers will henceforth be equal in the eyes of the law and subject to the same laws and judicial proceedings.

This reform, approved by the Senate last week, follows a series of steps making Argentina's once-notorious armed forces subject to strict oversight on human rights. The country that the Carter Administration used to assail rightly over disappearances and torture has become a leader in the human rights field, while now it's the United States that receives international criticism over its human rights record. The world turns. Read more here.  

(Photo: Former Argentine navy officer Ricardo Miguel Cavallo is escorted by Argentine policemen after his arrival at Buenos Aires international aiport, March 31, 2008. Spain extradited the former Argentine naval officer to his native country to face charges of crimes against humanity during the country's "Dirty War," the Spanish Interior Ministry said. Enrique Marcarian/Reuters)  

Play Ball

A Little League team from Vermont and New Hampshire known as the Twin-State Peregrines will travel to Cuba on Saturday to play a series of baseball matches with youth teams on the island. This has angered Florida Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who calls the granting of travel visas for the players "very troubling." He explains: "Sometimes sports events may be interpreted as diplomatic gestures even when they are not meant to be." He even called a meeting on Capitol Hill with other lawmakers to discuss the trip. 

Congressman Diaz-Balart is, of course, entitled to his opinion, but whatever his "interpretation" of this visit, we have our own: a simple wish by some boys from New England and their chaperones to play baseball and experience another culture. If it results in the kind of people-to-people contact that is slowly laying the groundwork for a better U.S. relationship with Cuba, even better. But let the kids play ball. 

As Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy has said, "if the president can go to China at taxpayers' expense [for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics], these kids ought to be able to go on a privately paid trip to Cuba to play some baseball."

Good luck, Peregrines.

Thinking About Mérida II

Vicki Gass, WOLA’s Senior Associate for Rights and Development, points out how U.S. trade deals affect the national sovereignty of Latin American nations:

 

Trade deals have huge implications for national sovereignty, whether it is the Chapter 11 investor-to-state regulations or national treatment clauses or intellectual property rights, which impact national, state and local policies, especially on development issues but also environmental and public health ones. 

 

For example, in the NAFTA chapter 11 clauses, it allows corporations to sue government in special tribunals (which go around the country’s domestic system and laws) to obtain compensation for government polices that they believe violate their rights under NAFTA (or any other FTA modeled after NAFTA).  If a corporation wins its case, it can be awarded unlimited amounts of taxpayer dollars from the offending nation.

 

For poor nations, this has bigger implications and can influence decisions on policies that protect their populations out of fear that a corporation will sue. In El Salvador, for example, the mining company Pacific Rim, is threatening to sue under Chapter 11 for loss of future profits even though where the company wants to mine would contaminate the water basin which provides water for the northern departments and 30% of the water for San Salvador.  While it is true that the trade deals don’t have the legal binding power of a treaty, they do subject participating nations to certain legal obligations to one another, and puts the rights of corporations over the rights/mandates of governments. This is why we have called for trade deals to allow governments to retain policy flexibility to protect vulnerable sectors. There are also those who would argue that the SPP (the Security, Prosperity and Partnership act) being secretly negotiated expands NAFTA, and Mexico is a willing partner in these negotiations.

Neighbors

Arlen Specter, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, has requested a meeting with Raúl Castro to discuss drug interdiction and prospects for establishing trade and tourism ties with Cuba. "I think we are right on the cusp of doing that,'' Specter said. He also wants to meet Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

''I'm a firm believer in dialogue,'' Specter said.

So are we. And we're glad to see more people joining us in that view every day, including in the Cuban-American community, as this story suggests.

Here's an introduction to a WOLA report on how the Europeans, Canadians and Mexicans have kept up ties with Havana and are better-positioned than Washington to influence events on the island.

(Photo: Elsa Falkenburger)

Coca and Violence in Colombia

Gimena Sanchez and John Walsh, WOLA's Senior Associate for Colombia and Senior Associate for the Andes and Drug Policy, respectively, write:

 

A story by Simon Romero in last Sunday's New York Times accurately describes the insecurity, violence and internal displacement faced by the majority of rural and poor civilians in the Department of Nariño on Colombia's Pacific coast. Groups most affected by the violence are Afro-Colombian and indigenous peoples, who are mostly poor farmers.

As an indigenous leader quoted in the article underscores, the illegal armed groups operating in the area are "not weakening but getting stronger."  These include the FARC and ELN guerrillas and paramilitary militias known as the O.N.G. (New Generation Organization) and Black Eagles.

 

Much of the violence in Nariño is fueled by the drug trade.  According to UN estimates reported in June, coca cultivation in Colombia increased by 27 percent in 2007, with Nariño recording the largest increase of any department.  The expansion of coca in Nariño has occurred even though the department has been the main target of the U.S.-backed aerial herbicide spray program (fumigation) every year since 2004, with more than 450,000 acres sprayed from 2004-2007.  (To read more on why fumigation has been such a failure, read WOLA's recent report “Chemical Reactions.”)

A delegation from WOLA visited Nariño in June.  During this trip, we heard many testimonies of affected Afro-Colombian leaders, religious entities and local officials that corroborate the facts in Romero's article.  We continue to receive alerts from the field about increased violence, displacement and violations committed against Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities in Nariño.  For example:

 

• On June 15, paramilitaries entered the municipality of Olaya Herrera. They killed various members of the community and caused the internal displacement of over 1,000 Afro-Colombians. 
• On June 24, paramilitaries entered the village of Candelilla de la Mar and killed prominent Afro-Colombian leader Felipe Landazury. 
• On July 11, several members of the Afro-Colombian Community Council of the Cordillera Occidental of Nariño (Copdiconc) were detained at a paramilitary roadblock in Policarpa municipality.  Two of the detained, José Arcos, Vice President of the Community Council, and María Antonia Amaya, were taken hostage by the paramilitaries. 

These are just three of many examples of violence faced by civilians in this area of Colombia. The plight of people in Nariño and other rural areas of Colombia may not often make headlines, but a humanitarian crisis is unfolding there. Policymakers cannot turn a blind eye to it. Rather than deepen farmers' reliance on coca by fumigating, U.S. policy should focus on promoting alternative livelihoods, in cooperation with the affected communities.

And U.S. policymakers should insist that Colombian authorities dismantle the military, economic and political structures of paramilitary groups -- fully and permanently.