MEXICO: MEXICAN JOURNALISTS, THE TARGET OF VIOLENCE Representatives of different news media demonstrated on Saturday, Aug. 7 to call for an end to the attacks, intimidation and harassment committed against them in Mexico City and other localities. The Mexican journalists put to one side their cameras, microphones and tape recorders to ask for an end to the violence that has been perpetrated upon their profession. According to the organization Journalists Without Borders and the Interamerican Press Society, Mexico today is one of the most dangerous countries for those who practice journalism. In 2009, 244 attacks were recorded against the freedom of expression of journalists and mass media in Mexico, eleven journalists were murdered and one kidnapped. Ten reporters have been murdered so far in 2010. Juan Fernando Ealy, executive director of the daily newspaper “El Imparcial” and member of the Interamerican Press Society, indicated that the attacks on the journalists have now become part of the “macabre inventory of deaths and victims that has been brought about by the war against and within the drug cartels”.
VENEZUELA: HUGO CHAVEZ STRESSES THE IMPORTANCE OF UNASUR IN AVOIDING A “FRATRICIDAL WAR” WITH COLOMBIA The head of state declared that the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the two neighboring countries on Tuesay, Aug. 10 was a clear sign that the leading role of the United Nations of South America has arrived. The current secretary general of Unasur and the ex-president of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner, acted as chairman of the mediation in the Colombian-Venezuelan crisis. This produced a meeting this past Tuesday between both presidents in the Colombian city of Santa marta where they announced the re-establishment of diplomatic relations which were broken July 22 after more than a year of being frozen. Chavez described the meeting to re-establish bilateral relations with the new president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, as “historic.” “It’s no small thing” that the new regional organization, comprised of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Eduador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam, Uruguay and Venezuela, has managed to suppress the almost certain possibility of a fraticidal war,” said Chavez.
GUATEMALA: THE EX HEAD OF THE PRISON SYSTEM WAS DETAINED UNDER CHARGES OF MURDERING PRISONERS The Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s Office detained the ex-director of the prison system of the country, Alejandro Giammattei, who had also been one of the candidates for the presidential elections of 2007. It was the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (ICAIG) who revealed that the ex-director of the Prison System together with three other public officials within the same administration were guilty of the extrajudicial execution of prison inmates. According to ICAIG, the criminal structure that was in place from the Interior Ministry to the police in 2004 “engaged in criminal activities that included such crimes as murder, drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnappings, extortions and the theft of drugs among others.” Giammattei took refuge last week in the Honduran diplomatic mission where he asked for asylum, declaring himself a victim of death threats and political persecution. However, the Honduran government denied his petition and invited him to evacuate the diplomatic headquarters, which he did Aug. 13 in the afternoon, turning himself over “voluntarily” to the Ministry of Justice in Guatemala.
NICARAGUA: DANIEL ORTEGA TAKES OVER CONTROL OF THE SUPREME COURT OF NICARAGUA The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, now has absolute control of the Supreme Court of this Central American country. This past Tuesday, Aug. 10 the Sandinista judges of the Court dismissed seven liberal magistrates and named in their positions substitutes that from here on out would resolve pending verdicts, among them a questionable decision that would permit the re-election of President Ortega, currently prohibited under the constitution. For the analysts, the dismissal of the liberal judges is a deathblow to the staggering Nicaraguan institutional system.
MEXICO: POLICE IN CIUDAD JUAREZ ACCUSE THEIR BOSSES OF COLLABORATING WITH CRIMINALS Some 400 police from Ciudad Juarez, located on the border with the United States, held their own bosses whom they accused of collaborating with organized crime and of committing extortion. The disruption occurred this Saturday, Aug. 14 after one of their fellow police officers was arrested on charges of trafficking drugs, an accusation held to be presumably false. The police declared that their bosses were in the habit of canceling police patrols precisely on those days and in areas where vehicles loaded with drugs would cross. After the arrest of the police chiefs, the Ministry of Security ordered them transferred to Mexico City, the capital of the country, in order to investigate their ties to different crime organizations and their role in supposed crimes of corruption, which have been denounced by their own subordinate police officers.
PERUVIAN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES FOUND POLITICAL PARTY The native peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, approximately 400,000 according to the government’s statistics, have decided to create a political party with intentions of participating in the presidential and parliamentarian elections of 2011. The movement, which will be named Alliance for the Alternative of Humanity, will be presented officially next September. Its presidential candidate will probably be Alberto Pizango, the leader of the Amazonian shutdown last year that ended with confrontations in the town of Bagua, resulting in 34 persons killed, the majority police. Pizango declared that the future party “will be a political tool of the Amazon and its natural resources, that belong to all of the Peruvians.”
—Compiled and translated by Veda Arias