Conversion and Exit from Central American Gangs

Robert Brenneman of St. Michael's College recently published an article on Wresting the Devil: Conversion and Exit from Central American Gangs in the Latin American Research Review.

Abstract: A crisis of urban violence has emerged in northern Central America during the past two decades. Although youth gangs are responsible for only a portion of this violence, punitive approaches to dealing with gang violence have sharpened public hostility toward gang members and created a context conducive to the practice of “social cleansing” aimed at reducing gang violence by eliminating gang-affiliated youth through extrajudicial executions.

Against this backdrop of public anger and resentment aimed at gang youth, a sizeable number of Evangelical-Pentecostal pastors and lay workers have developed ministries aimed at rescuing gang members and restoring them to society, often making considerable sacrifices and taking personal risks in the process.

After describing the difficulties and risks associated with leaving the gang, this article takes a sociological approach to gang member conversions to discover the resources that Evangelical- Pentecostal congregations and gang ministries offer to former gang members facing the crisis of spoiled identity. I draw on semistructured interviews conducted in 2007 and 2008 with former gang members and gang ministry coordinators in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and a handful of follow-up interviews conducted in 2013.

Religious exits from gangs do not appear to have ever been that successful and, from what I read, have become less so since these interviews were conducted.

See also Brenneman's Homies and Hermanos: God and Gangs in Central America

Inspiring and depressing?

Will a Plan for Central American Prosperity Succeed?

The Inter-American Dialogue's Latin American Advisor asks Will a Plan for Central American Prosperity Succeed?

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled this month to Central America to meet with the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The meetings followed recent confirmation that the Obama administration would include $1 billion in security and economic development assistance for the  region in its 2016 budget under the "Alliance for Prosperity." What did Biden accomplish in Central America? Does the White House's proposed spending target the right areas, and if not, where should the focus be? What do the Central American countries need to do to make the plan work? Will concerns over corruption derail U.S. involvement in the alliance?

I wasn't asked but increased US focus on the region is a welcome development. $1 billion is probably not enough money and the US Congress will probably make it even less. Increased attention and investments need to be sustained beyond what is currently proposed. The devil is in the details of the plan and its implementation. I'm not sure that the region and the US are prepared to scale-up programs that quickly. No, I do not have as much faith in the region's elected and un-elected officials as some do. Many other things need to go right for the investment to pay off.

I still believe that it will help. You can read the varied answers here.

Guatemalan gangs profiting from grenade attacks

Tim Rogers has an interesting story on How a Guatemalan gang profits from deadly grenade attacks for Fusion. The starting point for the article is the recent M-18 attack on San Juan de Dios Hospital in which three bystanders were killed and another twenty-five injured.

Whether the M-18 mareros were trying to free or kill the incarcerated gang boss is unknown, but they failed to accomplish either task. More likely the grenade attack was part of the gang’s business-development plan.

“They want to sow terror and show that they are willing to attack authorities,” Guatemalan Security Minister Mauricio López Bonilla told Fusion. “Their message is: ‘I’m not a common thug, so when I talk, when I demand extortion or threaten you, you better take me very seriously’.”

For a gang whose livelihood depends on extorting small businesses and bus companies, launching crazy attacks with no regard for human life is — in a perverse and horrible way— about creating a favorable work environment.

“On many occasions, this is their business plan,” the minister said.

It's interesting but I'm not ready to buy what they are selling. The M-18 might be looking to sow chaos so as to profit from it, but I'm not sure the hospital attack is the best example, at least not yet.

Using grenades because they are more difficult to track than traditional arms makes some sense. The M-18 is directly responding to improvements in the Guatemala's police ability to investigate and prosecute gang-related murders. However, after hearing Mauricio Lopez Bonilla argue that "In fact, I think one of their leaders barely has the minimum I.Q. required to even be a criminal", it seems unusual to highlight their calculated tactical response.

Where are the grenades coming from?

Guatemalan authorities say they are investigating where the grenades are coming from. In a region rattled by revolutionary and counterrevolutionary wars in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, there are still plenty of old weapons floating around Central America.

“There is a high level of availability of these types of weapons in the region,” said López Bonilla. And with the gang’s expanding extortion business, the M-18 has “improved their purchasing capabilities” in recent years, he added.

But that doesn’t explain the whole story. While some of the grenades are leftovers from the guerrilla movements of the past, López Bonilla says some of weapons they’ve confiscated are newer models — perhaps trafficked from other countries where the M-18 has strong affiliate ties.

Guzman, however, says the grenades are most likely coming from somewhere within Guatemala.

“They buy them here. Where they come from we’re still investigating,” he said.

One would expect the retired Lt. Army Colonel and Kaibil to draw attention to the possibility that the grenades came from the guerrillas, the black market, and/or other countries, he does settle on the likelihood that they are coming from Guatemala. I would have liked Tim to have asked if it were possible that these grenades had come from the stash stolen from the Guatemalan army in 2013. Estimates range from 1,500 - 6,500 stolen. It is believed that those grenades ended up in the hands of local drug traffickers and the Zetas. It is possible, however, that they also found their way into the hands of the M-18. However, I can understand why Lopez Bonilla would not want to speculate that the weapons came from the Guatemalan military.  

Never what one wants to hear, but definitely not with national elections six months away.

The Politics of Modern Central America: Civil War, Democratization, and Underdevelopment

I have a review of Fabrice Lehoucq's The Politics of Modern Central America: Civil War, Democratization, and Underdevelopment in the newest edition of Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice.

While public attention has turned away from Central America since the end of the Cold War, scholars have been busy trying to make sense of its civil wars, transitions to democracy, and postwar economic development. Scholars have utilized a variety of different methods from different disciplinary perspectives in order to better explain the causes, course, termination, and aftermath of civil war. Given the amount of research accumulated over the last few decades on the Central American states, individually and comparatively, and the number of cross-national studies on the causes and consequences of civil war, democracy, and economic development, Fabrice Lehoucq has embarked on quite an ambitious journey to tie them all together in a much needed contribution with The Politics of Modern Central America.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the book but you can find the review here. It wasn't mean to replace it, but I still prefer Understanding Central America.

***Update*** Might as well add the conclusion:

Fabrice Lehoucq surveys a vast literature on civil wars, democratization, and  underdevelopment in The Politics of Modern Central America. Much of my disappointment from the book comes from the fact that there is such rich literature on each topic and a good deal of itwas excluded. Even with these criticisms, however, the text still provides a solid introduction to Central America for those interested in learning about the political and economic development of the region over the last several decades and how those experiences compare to the rest of the world.

US assistance allows Northern Triangle to invest in other areas

Voices on the Border has a good, thoughtful piece on More Neoliberal Economic Policies Will Not Stop Unaccompanied Minors From Seeking Refuge.

While the Plan arguably contains some constructive approaches towards decreasing violence, the emphasis is on implementing neoliberal economic policies. The proposal reads more like CAFTA-DR 2.0 or a World Bank structural adjustment plan, than an effort to stem the flow of emigration. The Northern Triangle and U.S. governments are proposing that foreign investment, more integrated economies, and free trade – and a gas pipeline – will provide the jobs and opportunities necessary to keep youth from seeking refuge in the U.S.

Income inequality and violence are the driving forces behind youth seeking refuge in the U.S., but its hard to imagine how more neoliberal economic policies, which many cite as the reason for inequality over the past 25 years, will do anything except ensure the region’s rich will remain so. A skeptic might even argue that the U.S. and Northern Triangle governments are using the “crisis” of violence and emigration in order to implement policies that further their own economic interests.

It's a helpful piece. One concern is that they frame the last twenty years as times of increasing poverty and inequality in El Salvador as a result of neoliberal economic reforms. However, while unevenly, poverty and inequality statistics improved under both ARENA and FMLN administrations. Don't just assert that poverty and inequality have worsened when the objective indicators tell a different story.

While I am concerned that the benefits of the $1 billion aid package to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras will be marginal at best, it is also important to remember that it is not the only money to be invested in the region. As Voices rightfully points out, the Salvadoran government has proposed another $2 billion worth of progressive programs to also tackle violence. There have also been notable improvements in education and health care delivery. As long as investments keep up in those areas, the money from the US might help in areas not currently being funded to the extent that they should.

US assistance frees up our Central American partners to spend money in other areas. How much they spend and how effectively they do so, are just as important to the success of our partnership.

Historians save the world...one human rights violator at a time

Time magazine has interesting background on some of the people who work for the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit in Meet the Historians Who Track Down War Criminals for the U.S. Government. This group works with the FBI and the Justice Department to track down human rights perpetrators living in the US so that they can be prosecuted and deported for immigration violations. They just finished contributing to the recent case against El Salvador's former general Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova.

Historians have the background in the culture, language and politics of particular regions of the world; they know where to look for the sources that might prove who was responsible for particular crimes. This kind of research relies on personal testimony, written records, photographs — and today, social media.

An important part of their work is creating the narrative, the story that the U.S. Attorney can present in court. This means putting together the threads that link pieces of evidence, building a full picture of a person’s role in human rights abuses. A particular challenge is state-sponsored abuses, where historians must contend with (in some cases) decades of cover-ups and silencing.

For perpetrators from some countries, the U.S. immigration trial will be the only trial they face. That decision, in a U.S. court, may be the only legal acknowledgment their victims ever receive. The ICE team knows this, and they want to make very case count. “Our historians are absolutely critical to getting these cases moving forward,” Shaffer told me.

It's great that the unit has three historians who are looking into human rights violators from Africa, the Balkans, and Latin America who might have relocated to the US. On the one hand, I see the skills that they possess as those that make a liberal arts education at the undergraduate level so valuable. Perhaps there's nothing special about history however.

At the graduate level, historians seem to have the skills that are needed. Anthropologists probably certainly do as well. Political Science? I don't know. When I was finishing graduate school ten years ago, I can't say that there would have been many people capable of carrying out the tasks required of people in the ICE unit. However, I'd like to think that has since changed. My general impression is that the discipline values scholars with a strong understanding of research methods (both qualitative and quantitative) and theory and in-depth knowledge of content and language more so than it did when I was in school. Maybe not as much as it should but still more than it used to in the recent past.

Over the last four years, the war crimes unit has "issued more than 67,000 lookouts for people from more than 111 countries and stopped 140 human rights violators or war-crime suspects from entering the United States." They have also helped to deport 650 known or suspected human rights violators since 2003.

Normally we get bad news about US-based multinationals but...HanesBrands celebrated

Normally we get bad news about US-based multinationals but...

HanesBrands has been honored by the Great Place to Work Institute for its workplace practices in its El Salvador, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic manufacturing plants.

The Great Place to Work Institute named Hanes the third best multinational company to work for in Central America and the Caribbean where the company has nearly 30,000 employees. The company was ranked the second best place to work in both El Salvador and Honduras – the first ranking ever for an apparel manufacturer in Central America.

Great Place to Work gathers data from employee surveys that provide a clear picture of the state of the company's culture benchmarked against other companies. The rankings are predominantly based on employees' responses to the Trust Index Survey, which measures employee perception of the workplace, as well as institute's culture audit, which is completed by management and evaluated by an independent Great Place to Work team.

"We are excited that our own employees were surveyed and recognized as a great place to work," said Maria Elena Sikaffy, vice president of human resources, Hanes Central America and the Caribbean. "These awards reflect the passion of our employees, our commitment to responsible employment practices, and our company's worldwide leadership in ethics. This has allowed us to be a growing responsible community member in these countries."

Guatemala's lack of press freedom

The attention should rightfully be on the murdered journalists and the conditions under which all journalists in Guatemala, and the region more generally, operate. However, the Nic Wirtz piece for Americas Quarterly mentions something that might be important to this case and is terribly important as the US considers investing upwards of a billion dollars in the Northern Triangle.

According to local cable television presenter Marvin Israel Túnchez, who was taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds to his arm and leg, López was the target of the assassination. López’s investigations in 2013 into public works in the department of Suchitepéquez had revealed 2.8 million quetzales ($368,000) worth of non-existent work.

“Journalism is one of the most dangerous jobs in Guatemala,” said Túnchez, who works for Canal 30, the same channel as Carlos Orellana, a journalist who was murdered in 2013.

Public works projects are where some of the region's real corruption takes place. It's why CICIG is needed and its responsibility amplified.

While Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador share certain characteristics, the violence carried out against journalists in Guatemala and Honduras seem to be much less, though no less troubling, in El Salvador.

Some links around El Salvador

The Center for Justice & Accountability has posted a Summary of March 11, 2015 Board of Immigration Appeals Decision Regarding the Deportation of General Vides Casanova.

The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), the highest administrative review authority for the US Immigration Courts, has upheld the removal order for Vides Casanova in a case published as a precedent decision. As precedent, it now controls future rulings by Immigration Judges on similar issues nationwide. 

Pamela Constable at the Washington Post has some background on the case, specifically Juan Romagoza.

Kevin Clarke has Death Comes For the Archbishop for America.

The night before his murder, the archbishop made a personal appeal in a desperate attempt to place some sort of moral obstacle before the escalating pace of the killing in El Salvador. He spoke directly to those soldiers of the night who were most responsible for the growing horror. “I would like to appeal in a special way to the men of the army,” he said, “and in particular to the troops of the National Guard, the police and the garrisons. Brothers, you belong to our own people. You kill your own brother peasants; and in the face of an order to kill that is given by a man, the law of God that says ‘Do not kill!’ should prevail. No soldier is obliged to obey an order counter to the law of God. No one has to comply with an immoral law. It is time now that you recover your conscience and obey its dictates rather than the command of sin.... Therefore, in the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven every day more tumultuous, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you! In the name of God: ‘Cease the repression!’”

The applause was so thunderous the radio station’s beleaguered audio technicians at first took it for some sort of short circuit or feedback in the system that had knocked the good archbishop off the air.

Fernando Luiz Lara takes a look at Contested Cities: Latin America’s Urban Challenges in the World Politics Review.

Latin America’s contemporary urban struggles are characterized by three main issues: public safety; mobility and accessibility; and resources and climate change. These topics are inextricably linked, as this article will show.

Imprisoned gang leaders are on a hunger strike to protest prison conditions in El Salvador.

Tim's got a round up as well.

Date Chosen for Beatification of Murdered Archbishop Romero at The Latin Americanist.

El Salvador hopes to produce final electoral results this week. They are in hanging chad territory.

It's spring break here at the University of Scranton so now back to housework. Normally we might see some people out gardening this week but we still have a few inches of snow on the ground.

Fixing ‘Broken Windows’ Policing to Make It Work for Latin America

Michael Jenkins (@MichaelJJenkins) and I have a brief look at the applicability of broken windows policing to Latin America as private and public sectors groups in El Salvador and Guatemala currently consider implementing their own versions of the model to deal with high levels of crime.

Here's a tease of Fixing ‘Broken Windows’ Policing to Make It Work for Latin America which you can find in today's World Politics Review. (Click here if having trouble with the original link.)

Giuliani, and even more so Bratton, are known for their application of the “broken windows” model of policing that many credit with helping to reduce crime across much of the United States over the past 20 years. If done properly and in combination with other reforms—such as purging corrupt police officers and members of the judiciary and adopting management models of accountability like CompStat, the computerized system developed in New York to track crime and officers’ beats—the broken windows model of policing can contribute to improving the security situation in Latin America.

Mike Jenkins, my co-author on this briefing, is assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Scranton and co-author of a book on urban policing titled Police Leaders in the New Community Problem-Solving Era.

May 23rd beatification of Monsenor Oscar Romero

According to Jesuits in Britain,

The Vatican has announced the date for the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who was martyred in 1980. Speaking in El Salvador, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said that Romero will be beatified in San Salvador on 23 May, the eve of Pentecost.

Archbishop Paglia is the postulator of Archbishop Romero’s cause. The beatification ceremony will be presided over by Cardinal Angelo Amato, the prefect of the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, according to the Italian Catholic newspaper Avvenire.

Pope Francis officially declared on 3 February 2015 that Archbishop Oscar Romero died a martyr's death, 'killed in hatred of the Faith', and the announcement of his beatification was widely expected. During the press conference confirming Romero’s martyrdom, it was also announced that the cause for canonisation of his friend, the Jesuit Rutillio Grande SJ, who was assassinated on his way to celebrate Mass in El Paisnal in the Aguilares parish, has been opened.

Good news indeed.

Two journalists killed and an attack on a hospital in Guatemala

Not the greatest news day for Guatemala. Three journalists were shot and two died while walking in a Mazatenango park. From the AP

Danilo Lopez, the local correspondent for Prensa Libre, and Federico Salazar, of Radio Nuevo Mundo, were killed in a park in Mazatenango municipality.

The men were the vice-president and secretary, respectively, of the recently created Suchitepequez Press Association, according to Centro Civitas, a nonprofit organization dedicated to journalists' human rights.

Prensa Libre editor Miguel Angel Mendez Zetina said Lopez had worked at the paper for more than a decade and recently filed a complaint against Jose Linares Rojas, the mayor of San Lorenzo, for making death threats against him. Lopez had written stories about the lack of transparency surrounding public funds in Linares' administration, the editor added.

"Two mayors from Mazatenango municipality had threatened him for his stories," Mendez said. "Danilo was a very ethical reporter, very transparent and he was very good at accounting for public funds and how this impacted communities."

Marvin Robledo, director of Radio Nuevo Mundo, said Salazar had not mentioned any problems or threats and was not working on anything special when he was killed.

The murders of the two journalists bring the total killed in 2015 to four. (Sorry, mis-read a Tweet. Four journalists have been killed in Suchitepéquez during Otto Perez Molina's term.) One man is in custody.

And from Reuters

At least one woman was killed and 22 people were injured Tuesday after a drive-by grenade attack outside Guatemala’s second-largest hospital aimed at a jailed gang leader who was having a checkup, the country’s interior minister said.

Marlon Ochoa, the brother of the founder of Guatemala’s “Calle 18” gang, had been taken from prison for a checkup at the San Juan de Dios hospital in Guatemala City when the morning attack took place, Mauricio López told reporters.

Ochoa was already inside the building and was unscathed, he added.

Might have to update 2013: A democratic setback in Guatemala.

Burden of Peace: Claudia Paz y Paz

From Burden of Peace

The documentary ‘Burden of Peace' tells the impressive story of Claudia Paz y Paz, the first woman to lead the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Guatemala. The country that has been ravaged for years by a devastating civil war, in which nearly 200,000 Mayan Indians were systematically massacred, is today one of the most violent countries in the world. Claudia starts a frontal attack against corruption, drug gangs and impunity and does what everyone had hitherto held to be impossible: she arrests former dictator Efraín Rios Montt on charges of genocide. His conviction becomes the first conviction for genocide in a national court in the world history.

Since her first year in office, Claudia gave acces to filmmakers of Framewerk, Joey Boink and Sander Wirken. It resulted in an intimate glimpse into the life of a woman who wants to change her country and therefore brings immense sacrifices. The documentary is scheduled for release during the Movies that Matter Film Festival, March 2015, The Hague.

I try to be optimistic that Guatemala will be able to overcome the loss of Claudia Paz y Paz and Yasmin Barrios as advocates for justice. That optimism will be tested once with the question as to whether to extend CICIG's mandate and the outcome of the 2015 national election. 

As I have said before, I am in favor of extending CICIG's mandate. I also understand that CICIG has been in Guatemala for nearly a decade and at some point Guatemala's judicial institutions are going to have to stand on their own. I don't think that they are there yet. 

However, is that what President Otto Perez Molina is calling for? The country's judicial institutions must now stand on their own and reduce their dependency on outside forces. Or has President Perez Molina given any indication that he simply wants an alternative to CICIG from the international community? My understanding is that it is the former but I am wondering if there is any discussion of the latter.

Normalization of vote counting process in El Salvador

Election authorities from the Salvadoran Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) have announced "the normalization of the vote counting process" and are now completing the final vote count which could take up to seven days. TSE authorities have claimed that faulty software interrupted the vote counting process; however, the company tasked with that job denies it was at fault.

You should also take a look at the Center for Democracy in the Ameicas' March 4th update which provides a good overview at the time.

More to come.

While we are debating Honduras, what's its President up to?

While we are debating the security situation in Honduras, what is President Juan Orlando Hernandez up to? Dana Frank says a whole lot of no good in Just Like Old Times in Central America for Foreign Policy.

If the vicious, anti-democratic record of Hernández’s regime is so clearly documented, then why is the Obama administration celebrating the regime and looking the other way at its militarization and human rights abuses? The White House, it appears, is aggressively locking in support for the current Honduran government in order to solidify and expand the U.S. military presence in Central America, while serving transnational corporate interests in the region.

After the 2009 military coup, the United States moved aggressively to stabilize and consolidate the post-coup regime, in order to ensure a regime loyal to the United States and to corporate interests, and to send a message to the democratically elected center-left and left governments that had come to power in Latin America in the previous 15 years that they could be next. U.S. police and military funding for Honduras increased in the years that followed, under the pretext of fighting drug traffickers — who have flourished in the post-coup free-for-all of criminality.

Ok, there's maybe a sentence or two in what I quoted that I agree with, but go read the post for yourself.

If the US got to choose, we wouldn't have to work with Perez Molina, Sanchez Ceren, or Hernandez. However, that's who the people of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras elected.

To a certain extent, I like the policy suggestions at the end of the op-ed.

The administration should immediately and publicly distance itself from Hernández and his regime. It should stop celebrating Hernández, demand the removal of the military from domestic policing, and cut all U.S. police and military funding. It should challenge IMF and IDB funding for Honduras, and re-examine the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR), which, as the AFL-CIO underscores, has been destructive to the Honduran economy.

More positively, the United States should vigorously support a U.N.-sponsored commission on impunity modeled on the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, and ensure that the commission remains free of Hernández’s influence. The Obama administration’s model for economic development should emphasize labor rights, promote a diverse industrial sector generating good, skilled, well-paying jobs, and support diverse, sustainable agriculture development that supports the land rights of campesinos and indigenous peoples. Above all, the United States should reframe its role in Honduras as one in defense of human rights and social justice, rather than against them.

I would probably argue that Frank's suggestions in paragraph one are very unlikely. The US is not going to cut all police and military funding. Right or wrong, the US generally sees such assistance, in all its imperfections, as serving US interests and as leverage to get the Honduran government to act in a way that we prefer.

I don't imagine that the US would have too many problems with the second paragraph. The US government would probably say that that is actually our current approach to dealing with Honduras. Well, maybe except for a Honduran CICIG which I have argued for in the past.

If you are going to update the Honduras travel warning, at least update it

Last week I noted that the US' updated travel warning for Honduras seemed rather strange in its description of what is generally considered the world's most violent country outside of a war zone. Obviously, that's not some sort of sophisticated analysis. Fortunately, Boz and John noticed the same thing and went it to greater detail.

Boz notes how the warnings for 2012, 2014, and 2015 all report that the country is in the early stages of substantial reforms to its criminal justice system. He's "looking forward to the day when Honduras has moved beyond the early stages and actually implemented the promised substantial reforms."

John, who has been living in Honduras for the last few years, also notes how this documents seems to have been entirely cut and pasted from previous warnings, not just the "early stages of substantial reform" section.

We US citizens are privileged.

The travel warning is bogus.

I do not deny that there is violence – especially in the big cities and along the north coast. I do not deny the presence of crime – both petty crime and large scale crime related to drug trafficking and gangs (and corrupt police, military, and economic elites). I do not deny the violence in our area – often due to long-held resentments, family feuds, and alcohol abuse.

But much of the violence continues because the system does not respond to the people. Impunity runs rampant.

The US warning does not address this – and I think throwing a billion dollars into the region won’t help. That's another post.

If the travel warnings are written like the Freedom House reports I help prepare, there is a somewhat bureaucratic reasons why there are so many similarities from one report to another. In writing the FH reports, we are asked to use the previous year's report as the template for the next year's report. When we have new information, for example on homicides or threats against the press, we update it.

When there is no new information but we addressed the issued in the previous report, perhaps an investigation into a criminal case or the rights of the indigenous are not respected are detailed, we either include the same information in the new report even with no new information (because that is important in itself) or delete that information from the next report. It depends if something else important occurs and space is needed for that (there's always a word count).

How exactly are you a good partner, Otto?

Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina said that his country will not accept the "imposition" of CICIG as a condition of US funding for the Alliance for Prosperity. In a sense, that is not surprising. The Guatemalan military has always been a proud institution that does not like to take orders, let alone suggestions, from anyone. As is well known, the US asked the Guatemalan military and government to respect human rights in their battle against rebels during the 1970s as a condition for continuing US funding. They said no thanks. The Guatemalan military said that they didn't need any counterinsurgency training from the US because we had just lost the Korean and Vietnamese wars. What did they have to learn from US? The next time that they sent their soldiers to the School of the Americas, it would be as instructors, not students.

At the end of the war, the US and international community conditioned postwar assistance on numerous conditions, including that they raise taxes as a percentage of GDP from the lowest in the region. Crickets, anyone?

Otto Perez and his administration and much of the country's economic elite are people that the US has to work with for a variety of reasons. However, they should not be described as partners in any accurate way.

Here is what I wrote in June prior to VP Biden's meeting with Otto Perez.

You've dragged your feet on cooperating with the joint UN-Guatemala venture International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), forced out two commissioners, and have made it clear that you will not support extending its mandate even though it is widely believed to have contributed to strengthening the rule of in Guatemala.

You and other members of the political and economic elite have forced Claudia Paz y Paz from the attorney general position, sanctioned Yasmin Barrios, and weakened the rule of law with the shenanigans surrounding the overturn of the Rios Montt conviction.

You put our ambassador on a hit list during the trial or, at best, did nothing to challenge those who did.

You are pursuing drug reforms which we are against.

You've failed to improve workers rights and have forced the USTR to take you to task under CAFTA-DR

We're not perfect but how again have you been a good partner that we should go out of our way to help?

Yes, we know you are not Honduras but that's not good enough.

Unfortunately, nothing has changed.

Salvadorans wait patiently, but they shouldn't have to

I woke up this morning to write a post on the aftermath of El Salvador's legislative and municipal elections but it looks like Tim already did with #EpicFail or Sabotage?

I think if there were a hashtag to describe the work of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in El Salvador since Sunday's elections it would be #EpicFail.  Three days after the elections, no results have been announced, and a "final scrutiny" of the vote tally sheets is just beginning.  It might take as long as two weeks before there are results.

Click on over to get some coverage of the Tico Times and Reuters on Tim's site. I think it is dangerous that the TSE president is throwing around terms like "sabotage." There have been few accusations of fraud in El Salvador's postwar elections, FMLN in 2004 and ARENA in 2014, but the country is not that far removed from its pre-transition history of fraudulent elections.

Unfortunately, "we shall see" shouldn't be what I should have to say four days after El Salvador's national elections. While the TSE has done a pretty good job in the past, in this case, it appears that the country's main political parties are behaving exceptionally.

US updates Honduras Travel Warning

The US Government recently updated its travel warning for Honduras.

The Department of State continues to warn U.S. citizens that the level of crime and violence in Honduras remains critically high, although it has declined in the past two years. This Travel Warning supersedes the Travel Warning dated June 2014 and includes additional information on crime and security in Honduras, as well as updated contact information.

Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens visit Honduras each year for study, tourism, business, and volunteer work without incident. However, crime and violence are serious problems throughout the country. The Government of Honduras lacks sufficient resources to properly investigate and prosecute cases, and police often lack vehicles or fuel to respond to calls for assistance. The police may take hours to arrive at the scene of a violent crime or may not respond at all. Members of the Honduran National Police have been arrested, tried, and convicted for criminal activities. Many more are under investigation. As a result, criminals operate with a high degree of impunity throughout Honduras. The Honduran government is still in the early stages of substantial reforms to its criminal justice institutions.

Honduras has had one of the highest murder rates in the world for the last five years. The U.S. Embassy has recorded more than 100 murders of U.S. citizens since 2002. Many cases over the last 14 years are still awaiting trial. The vast majority of serious crimes in Honduras, including those against U.S. citizens, are never solved. In 2014, there were ten murders of U.S. citizens reported to the U.S. Embassy with seven of the ten resulting in arrests or prosecutions.

Honduras comes across rather well in the beginning and then it sort of goes down hill from there. It actually sounds rather subdued, like they were smokin something, but maybe that's just me.

The warning sounds pretty mild, especially compared to how I remember various warnings for Guatemala and El Salvador.

You can read the rest of the travel warning here.

Rigoberta Menchu welcomes the savior Alfonso Portillo home to Guatemala

Louis Reynolds looks at how Alfonso Portillo's return to Guatemala following his prison sentence in the US might shake up the upcoming September elections for Americas Quarterly. I mentioned on Twitter the surprising welcome that Rigoberta Menchu gave to Portillo upon his return.

Well, that's just embarrassing - let's blame the jet lag: Rigoberta Mechú welcomes Alfonso Portillo home to Guatemala http://t.co/BGNibt7WAL
— Mike Allison (@CentAmPolMike) February 27, 2015

However, her embrace of Portillo shouldn't exactly be that surprising.

Nobel Peace Laureate Rigoberta Menchú stunned her supporters last week by expressing sympathy for Portillo and asserting that he was targeted for political reasons, meaning that his trial for embezzlement in a Guatemalan court in 2011 was motivated by the private sector’s opposition to his social policies. After Portillo’s controversial acquittal, the U.S. requested his extradition to face money laundering charges.

Menchú also said that Portillo had paid his dues, leading to speculation about a seemingly unlikely alliance between Portillo and the country’s most famous Indigenous leader. “I welcome him [back to the country], like many other Guatemalans,” she told the Guatevision TV channel. Menchú ran for president in 2007 with the center-left party Encuentro por Guatemala, and again in 2011 as the candidate for the Indigenous Winaq party. However, on both occasions, she captured just over 3 percent of the vote, mainly as a result of sectarian divisions within the Guatemalan left and left-wing parties’ chronic underfunding.

For the last few decades, the Guatemalan left has been divided between those who want to establish a truly leftist alternative for voters (little tent) and those on the left who believe that it is more important to establish a democratic alternative to the status quo, one that brought the left, center, and maybe even the right together (big tent). Fifteen years ago, some big tent leftists viewed Portillo as an ally because he seemed to be pro-democratic, but more importantly, he was anti-oligarchic. Actually, being anti-oligarchy was almost by definition, pro-democratic.

That obviously gets complicated. Portillo was a member of the FRG, Rios Montt's party. Some leftists saw an alliance with the FRG as acceptable because of the party's anti-oligarchy positions. Others rejected an alliance because of the party's complicity in genocide.

These divisions were part of what led to the break up of the URNG/ANN between 2000 and 2002.

Farmer cooperatives supply El Salvador with seed

Nathan Weller of EcoViva penned an op-ed entitled Farmer Cooperatives, Not Monsanto, Supply El Salvador With Seed. Weller argues that recent changes to how the Salvadoran government procures seeds for its national Family Agriculture Program has been a win-win all around for Salvadorans.

In 2015, rural cooperatives and national associations will produce nearly 50% of the government’s corn seed supply, with 8% coming from native seed—a record high. In the Lower Lempa, where seven farmer organizations have produced corn seed since 2012, this means over 4,000 jobs and income for rural households, primarily employing women and young adults. The public procurement of seed—or the government’s purchasing power through contracts—signifies over $25 million for a rural economy still struggling to diversify and gain traction.

The success of locally-bred seed varieties, compounded with their low production costs, allowed the Family Agriculture Program to contribute to historically high yields nationwide for corn and beans. Last year, more farmers produced more corn and beans at the most efficient yield per acreage than any other year over the last decade. This has also led to a significant adjustment in El Salvador’s trade balance on corn: Imports of white corn in 2014 were a full 94% less than 2011.

If Salvadoran producers can provide better seeds at a lower cost, that's great. That's what competition and capitalism is all about. The US government just wanted its corporations given a fair shake under CAFTA-DR, which now seems to be the case.

FWIW, I did a little consulting work connected to Eco Viva a few years ago.

Joint Statement regarding The Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity of the Northern Triangle

The Presidents of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, and the US Vice President States released a Joint Statement regarding The Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity of the Northern Triangle today in Guatemala City.

The Presidents of El Salvador, Salvador Sánchez Cerén; Guatemala, Otto Pérez Molina; Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández; and, the Vice President of the United States, Joseph Biden, met in Guatemala City on March 2-3, 2015, with the President of the Inter-American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, to discuss the important commitments which will accelerate the implementation of the Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle of Central America.

The senior representatives also agreed to conduct joint high-level dialogues on security issues with relevant authorities, to discuss social issues with civil society, and to review trade and investment issues through meetings between the U.S. private sector and the private sectors of the Northern Triangle of Central America. All these meetings will be held in the first half of this year.

The leaders stressed that their governments agreed to continue the development of the Plan for the Alliance for Prosperity of the North Triangle in an expedited and comprehensive manner, through coordinated efforts among the three countries of the Northern Triangle and with the technical support of the Inter-American Development Bank. They will continue this work throughout 2015. The draft implementation plan and roadmap for each of the above-mentioned topics will be presented in Washington on March 16. For its part, the Government of the United States reiterated its commitment to support these efforts.

The leaders agreed that the joint regional plan and its continued implementation represent significant milestones for the collaboration among the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

The statement is too long to reproduce here so just click through to read it in its entirety. It looks like a pretty extensive list of what each country is going to do on its own and in collaboration (No mention of CICIG however). But the devil is still going to be in the details and depend upon how much, if any, additional funding the US Congress approves.

Given credibility of Salvadoran TSE, the waiting is bearable

Salvadorans are still waiting on the results of this past Sunday's elections. Apparently the new computer system that they adopted to tabulate individual votes from each of the country's voting tables had failed. Some of it was foreseen beforehand but not to the extent of the problems that they actually witnessed. In some ways it does throw into doubt the effectiveness of El Salvador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal, but I, personally, wouldn't go that far. The TSE has become one of the most respected institutions in the country since the end to the civil war and only emerged stronger from last year's presidential election.

Tim has a nice round-up of what we know so far. We don't know the certified vote tallies from the TSE but ARENA and the FMLN have been counting votes as well and begun to announce results from individual mayoral races. The FMLN captured San Salvador from ARENA and San Miguel from GANA.

ARENA captured sitting Vice President Oscar Ortiz's Santa Tecla. That's somewhat of a surprise given that the FMLN and Ortiz had controlled Santa Tecla for forever, but not so much since they lost the city during last year's presidential election as well. They also lost it quit substantially in 2014 - 43,513 to 34,327. I wouldn't read too much into the fact that Roberto D'Aubuisson, Jr. won the race, at least not that it connects to his dad. At least that's my initial take.

Fortunately, no more elections until 2018.

And so we wait.

US criticizes Honduran labor violations

While the US already has taken Guatemala to task for failing to develop and enforce adequate regulations to protect its workers, a new US report looks like it has just laid out an argument why the US should start moving in a similar direction in Honduras.

The U.S. government said in a report released Friday it found evidence of illegal use of child labor in Honduras as well as systemic problems with the country's ability to enforce its labor laws.

The findings from its investigation were issued three years after the AFL-CIO and 26 other Honduran unions and other groups filed complaints of violations of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement.

The labor protections are intended to raise living standards in other countries but also protect U.S. workers from unfair competition. U.S. companies were involved in Honduran workplaces cited in the report and farms and factories cited exports to the U.S.

The Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA), a division of the Department of Labor, said its detailed review turned up labor law violations in almost all of the still operating businesses that the unions and groups complained about. OTLA said its review left it with "serious concerns regarding the government of Honduras' enforcement of its labor laws in response to evidence of such violations."

However, after browsing the report's introduction, it looks like the investigations are at a much earlier point than Guatemala. In addition, the government of Honduras responded in a manner that might give it some time and allow for the US and its Honduran partners to work out their differences short of arbitration.

Throughout the review process, the Government of Honduras has demonstrated a willingness to engage the U.S. government concerning the issues raised in the Submission and the actions needed to remedy the problems identified. In addition to this engagement and open communication with the OTLA, the Government of Honduras took the important step of launching a dialogue and holding regular meetings with representatives from unions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) interested in the Submission. While the OTLA welcomes the Honduran government’s efforts and engagement with civil society, there has not yet been measureable systemic improvement in Honduras to address the concerns raised.

You can read the final report here.

Salvadorans head to the polls once again

Salvadorans return to the ballot box tomorrow for the third time in four years to select members from ten different political parties for the legislature, mayoral posts, and PARLACEN. As usual, the FMLN and ARENA stand apart from the country's other political parties. And, for the most part, polls have put the FMLN comfortably ahead of ARENA.

Given the difficulty of polling in El Salvador and the fact that nearly forty percent of likely voters have no preference at this point, it's a little difficult to project what the FMLN's advantage will actually look like, if they have one, when the final votes are tallied and the seats distributed. Either way, it does not look like any political party will have a majority in the next legislature, meaning that the FMLN will have to once again negotiate with those they perhaps would prefer not to.

In the election for San Salvador, the FMLN’s Nayib Bukele looks like the comfortable favorite against ARENA’s Edwin Zamora. It used to be said that San Salvador mayor was the stepping stone to the presidency (Jose Napoleon Duarte and Armando Calderon Sol), but in recent years the shine has fallen off so that one can barely say with a straight face that it is even a stepping stone to becoming a presidential candidate (Hector Silva, Norman Quijano).

To no one's surprise, violence and the economy are the top two concerns of Salvadoran voters. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a recent spike in violence this month, or at least the last few days, with homicides reaching twenty per day.

Lawyers are disappearing in Mexico and Central America

Karla Zabludovsky has a terrific story on Mexican Lawyers Are Disappearing, Leaving Nothing But Fear And Questions Behind for Buzzfeed.

DURANGO, Mexico — When Claudio Hugo Gallardo disappeared in 2013, his sons scoured the local hospital, prison, and morgue frantically. They combed through video footage recovered from Gallardo’s last known location and even inquired with the cartels whether their operatives had picked up the well-known lawyer.

But before Gallardo’s family could find him, they stopped looking.

“It’s for our own peace. We don’t want threats,” said Claudio Gallardo, one of the attorney’s sons. The family has floated several theories, including the involvement of government officials, cartel thugs, and a combination of both, but prefer to be discreet about their findings, citing orders by local authorities to stop prodding.

Gallardo is one of more than 60 lawyers killed or disappeared here during a spate of crimes against litigators that began in 2008, according to members of Durango’s Benito Juárez Bar Association. Some of the bodies that have been recovered carried messages from criminal groups saying the litigator should not have been defending certain clients, said Celina López Carrera, who is in charge of the state’s public prosecutors.

The Durango attorney general’s office opened a specialized unit to investigate crimes against lawyers in 2010. The unit’s head, Orieta Valles, said none of the 14 cases assigned to it have been solved.

Unfortunately, the murder of lawyers is not confined to Durango, Mexico. From a March 2013 Insight Crime article

More than 50 lawyers were murdered in Honduras between 2010 and 2012, according to a government report, with almost total impunity for their killers.

In the first three years of President Porfirio Lobo's rule 53 lawyers were murdered, yet only two people have been convicted in the cases, according to a report submitted to the Honduran Congress by the country's National Human Rights Commission.

The lawyers, 43 of whom were men, worked not only in criminal law, but also in areas such as commercial and family law, reported La Tribuna. Some worked as public prosecutors, while some provided legal advice to unions and campesino social movements.

The majority were killed inside their vehicles, often in front of their family, friends, colleagues or clients. Of the 53 murders, 49 were carried out with a firearm.

Other reports estimate 68 deaths in Honduras over the three year period.

Meanwhile at least ten lawyers were killed in Guatemala in 2013.

Honestly, I don't remember coming across articles indicating that lawyers were being targeted in El Salvador.

While the press and courts are pressured in all three countries of the Northern Triangle, the extent of the violence is just so much greater in Guatemala and Honduras than it is in El Salvador.

It's hard to build a democratic rule of law when those tasked with carrying out such an important function are targeted by members of the state as well as gangs and organized crime.

University of Scranton recognizes Sr. Peggy with Arrupe Award

Today, the University of Scranton recognized Margaret Ann O'Neill, S.C. with its Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Award for "Distinguished Contributions to Ignatian Mission and Ministry." Margaret Ann O'Neill, S.C. is better known as Sr. Peggy. She is a familiar face to those who have traveled to El Salvador over the last three decades or who have recently attended the Ignatian Family Teach-In in Washington, D.C.

I recommended Sr. Peggy for the award probably two years ago but I can't say that there is a direct connection between my recommendation and her having received the award today.

Sister O’Neill has lived in El Salvador for 25 years, most recently serving as director of Centro Arte para la Paz (Art Center for Peace), Suchitoto, El Salvador, a regional educational cultural center promoting peace through dance, art, and theological reflection. Programs offered through the Center include workshops and seminars, as well as a museum, art gallery and library. She began serving in the Dioceses of San Salvador in 1986, assisting refugees and accompanying them during the civil war that was raging in that country at that time. She first worked in Calle Real, alongside Jesuit Refuge Service Volunteers, a group founded by Father Pedro Arrupe.

A highly respected long-time peace activist, Sister O’Neill has received many honors and awards including the 2008 Peacemaker Award of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and the 2008 Ciudadana Ilustre Award, which recognized her work on behalf of social and cultural development in Suchitoto.

A theology professor, Sister O’Neill served as assistant professor at Augsburg College’s Center for Global Education in El Salvador and at Santa Clara University’s Casa de la Solidaridad in El Salvador. Previously, she also served as an associate professor of Iona College.

Sister O’Neill earned her bachelor’s degree from St. Elizabeth College, her master’s degree from Marquette University and her Ed.D. from New York University.

Congrats Sr. Peggy!

Democrats play hardball with Central America aid request

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) aren't ready to push President Obama's $1 billion aid request for Central America through Congress. In fact, they want to know where all the other money went. (They ask these questions about Iraq and Afghanistan too, don't they?)

"We've spent billions of dollars there over two decades," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, told Secretary of State John F. Kerry. "And we've seen conditions get worse in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador."

...

But some lawmakers responded Tuesday that any U.S. aid program would need to overcome entrenched corruption in the region and noted the refusal of many wealthy families to spend their own money for the national good.

Private businesses in Central America "should be doing more," Leahy said. "They live behind walls. They don't pay taxes. If they don't live in Miami, they keep their money there."

"We can't just continue to layer aid programs," Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) told Kerry in a subsequent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "We've had many programs in Central America and the results have been less than consequential."

Tripling aid will help at the margins. That's good. Let's direct the money towards strengthening CICIG in Guatemala and creating new ones for Honduras and El Salvador; helping entrepreneurs and various civil society groups; and some rule of law projects.

No one except Biden believes that the increased assistance will "the next great success story of the Western Hemisphere." As I wrote in July

The problems in Central America are immense. We need to consider deepening our already close economic relations, craft policies that facilitate migration between the US and the region, jointly invest billions of dollars in development projects, and enact drug policy reforms. I am afraid reforms short of these will probably just help at the margins.

Deeper reforms will require significant efforts by our allies and not so allies in the Northern Triangle and a US willingness to put trade, immigration, and drug policy reforms on the table. 

CICIG doesn't make life uncomfortable enough in Guatemala

In arguing that the US should support a $1 billion investment in the Northern Triangle of Central America, VP Joe Biden said that Guatemala had recently made progress tackling corruption and organized crime. However, the specific progress to which he referred involved networks disrupted by CICIG, not really the government of Guatemala. That should raise red flags. It appears that no one around the Obama administration was able to come up with an example of progress that came directly from the Guatemalan government (Nomada).

So as of right now, we are assisting a government that has barely lifted a finger to help CICIG, whose president and vice president have been linked to serious corruption scandals and attacks against freedom of the press, whose attorney general seems to be favoring friends and political connections in determining which corruption allegations to investigate, and whose interior minister and representative as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations have been linked to organized crime. Two glimmers of hope in the pursuit of justice, Claudia Paz y Paz and Yassmin Barrios, have been effectively sidelined.

All this is taking place as a presidential commission in Guatemala deliberates on whether to ask for an extension of CICIG's mandate beyond its September expiration (International Justice Monitor). On the one hand, you can just give up. Such high-level corruption has continued two decades after significant investments in the rule of law and nearly a decade into CICIG's existence. I understand this sentiment and, at times, share it.

While CICIG's record isn't perfect, it is clear that future assistance to Guatemala should be conditioned on an extension of its mandate. It might also be time to revisit developing CICIG for Honduras and El Salvador or one that works to coordinate judicial reforms across and within all three countries.

Number of poor in Latin America rose between 2013 and 2014

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of poor in Latin America rose between 2013 and 2014. This was the first time in a decade that the region experienced an increase in absolute poverty. According to a report from the UNDP,

Our analysis shows a clear pattern: what determines people to be “lifted from poverty” (quality education and employment) is different from what “avoids their fallback into poverty” (existence of social safety nets and household assets).

This gap suggests that, alone, more economic growth is not enough to build “resilience”, or the ability to absorb external shocks, such as financial crisis or natural disasters, without major social and economic losses. We need to invest in the skills and assets of the poor and vulnerable — tasks that may take years, and in many cases, an entire generation.

I was thinking about this in terms of El Salvador. The country clearly falls short on the criteria needed to help people out of poverty. Economic growth is among the lowest in the region; few quality jobs are being created; and, while there has been an important push to support increased school attendance, it's not clear that the educational system has shown demonstrable improvement in the last few years.

On criteria two, there's been an improvement in terms of services provided to the poor and, while I am not positive, I would say that the existence of household assets should be supported with billions of dollars in remittances.

Central American Stories: When We Were Young...There Was A War

Go check out the When We Were Young project.

These children grew up in the 1980s during the civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. They all lost loved ones and their childhoods were darkened by bombings and massacres. In both countries guerrilla movements seeking economic and political reforms took on military dictatorships supported by the United States. Both wars ended in negotiated settlements: El Salvador in 1992 and Guatemala in 1996.

What happened to these children after the wars ended?

The stories are powerful and the multimedia presentation is intriguing.

 

Honduras: A Government Failing to Protect its People

Members of the Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWGEF) and Center for International Policy (CIP) recently traveled to Honduras to investigate current conditions on the ground.

What we found was a security apparatus and criminal justice system in desperate need of reform and a population with little faith in its government. Issues of violence, impunity, and corruption that have plagued the country for years are intensifying. 

Don't miss the entire series:

Deported Back to Limbo: the Forced Exodus from Mexico

Honduras’ Military: On the Streets and in the Government

Unrelenting: Constant Peril for Human Rights Defenders, Members of the LGBT Community, and Journalists in Honduras

The Key to Everything: Investigations and Justice in Honduras

San Pedro Sula: Nearly a War Zone

The Law of Secrets: What the Honduran Government Doesn’t Want People to Know

Can U.S. Aid Help Address the Perfect Storm in Honduras? (updated)

Kino Border Initiative's El Comedor

The Los Angeles Times has a nice write-up on El Comedor along the US-Mexico border in Nogales

El Comedor is sponsored by the Kino Border Initiative, a binational humanitarian effort by religious organizations, including Jesuit Refugee Service / USA, Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist and the Diocese of Tucson. El Comedor served 38,667 meals to migrants in 2014.

I spent a few days volunteering at El Comedor in October 2014. You can read some of my posts here.

You can also learn more about their work and see how you can donate your time or money at the Kino Border Initiative.

How should Sánchez Cerén seek to bring down the murder rate and improve security in El Salvador?

Along with Adam Blackwell of the OAS and Ricardo Cevallos of BLP Abogados in El Salvador, I answered a series of questions related to insecurity in El Salvador in today's edition of the Inter-American Dialogue's Latin American Advisor. Here were the questions:

This month marks the one-year anniversary of Salvador Sánchez Cerén's election as president of El Salvador. Sánchez Cerén has consistently vowed that he will not make truces with criminals in the Central American country, where a government brokered 2012 truce between rival gangs broke down last year, leading to a sharp increase in the homicide rate. How should Sánchez Cerén seek to bring down the murder rate and improve security in El Salvador? Is another truce the answer, or are more hardline tactics against gangs needed? How would you rate the president's performance thus far?

Kind of a loaded question - truce or a return to hardline tactics? I didn't take the bait.

And he was my conclusion:

There are no shortcuts—neither halfbaked mano-dura policies nor gang truces—to a more prosperous and secure El Salvador. Domestic public and private sectors must work with local, regional and international partners to invest in social and economic programs, improve infrastructure, tackle corruption, reduce impunity and strengthen democratic institutions. A proposed increase in U.S. assistance to the region and ongoing multi-sector collaboration through the National Council for Citizen Security (CNSCC) are potentially positive developments. Largely beyond its control, however, El Salvador will also need serious regional and global efforts to minimize the damage that it suffers from climate change and the international drug trade.

Go read the rest of my answer.

Don't call them the Falklands!

I'm not one to pick on Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, but David Corn and Daniel Shulman just completed a Mother Jones investigation into O'Reilly's repeated claim to have been in the midst of a firefight during the war of the Falkland Islands. Given that no US reporter appears to have made it to the Islands to cover the war, it must have seemed strange that O'Reilly somehow figured out a way to cover the conflict from the Islands themselves.

It's a good, brief investigation. However, I just can't get over the fact that O'Reilly wanted one of his US viewers living or traveling in Argentina to remind the Argentine people that he had proudly covered the 1982 Falklands War.

For the British, the islands are the Falklands. However, the Argentines refer to the islands as the Malvinas. While it was not the only reason that I failed my Argentine history class while studying abroad in Buenos Aires in 1995, I sure do remember the professor wanting to strangle me when I referred to the Falkland Islands during my oral final exam.

El Salvador's gang ceasefire is bad news for police

Phillip Sherwell argues Why El Salvador gang ceasefire is bad news for police for The Telegraph.

For Father Antonio Rodriguez, a priest who for 15 years ran a rehabilitation programme for former gang members, the uncompromising stance is a depressing re-run of the failed policies of the past when rampant violence continued even as jails were filled with tattoo-covered gang members.

“Nobody is offering anything new, any real policies on trying to tackle the underlying causes of crime in this country,” he said.

“We are just hearing the failed old ’iron fist’ approach of previous governments. I don’t know what Giuliani will recommend, but any lessons from New York are not going to work here. El Salvador is a different place with different problems.”

The article is fine, for the most part, but I find it unusual that Father Toño is featured so prominently at the end. He was arrested last year on a variety of charges that went above and beyond facilitating a benign truce between El Salvador's two main gangs. Last I read, he was found guilty and then returned to his native Spain. Omitting the criminal nature of his involvement with El Salvador's gangs and simply describing his involvement as "a priest who for 15 years ran a rehabilitation programme for former gang members" is troublesome.

Beyond that, his argument is problematic as well. Father Toño also seems to conflate the broken windows model of policing with zero tolerance and iron fist policies. My colleague Mike Jenkins and I should have something out on this issue in the next week or so.

There's also the claim that no one is offering anything new or trying to tackle the root causes of the violence. The Salvadoran and the United States governments have funded hundreds of programs to tackle the root causes of violence in the country from investments in jobs creation programs to a renewed emphasis on school attendance. There's been a great deal of change in the health sector. The US has invested several hundred million dollars through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, CARSI, and Partnership for Growth programs. There's ILEA, the International Law Enforcement Academy. There are a number of gang prevention and rehabilitation programs. There's the Plan for Prosperity that might be funded in some capacity.

Nothing?

Take a read - what are your thoughts?

Nicaraguans demand action over chronic kidney disease

Photograph: Oswaldo Rivas /Reuters

“I was healthy when I started working for the company and sick when they got rid of me,” said Walter, who asked for his surname to be withheld to protect his relatives, 13 of whom work in sugar cane. “Every family here has lost someone, the work is making us sick, but there are no alternatives,” he said. “We are all dying from it, it’s a total epidemic.”

The exploitation of Nicaragua’s landless rural poor by a handful of wealthy families working with US agribusinesses was one cause of the 1979 uprising against the dictator Anastasio Somoza. The country is now ruled by a former Sandinista revolutionary, President Daniel Ortega, and he faces accusations of abandoning the country’s campesinos in pursuit of a political pact with big business.

Nina Lakhani takes a good look at chronic kidney disease (CKD) with Nicaraguans demand action over illness killing thousands of sugar cane workers, According to Dr Catharina Wesseling, CKD is an occupational disease that “predominantly affects male workers exposed to excessive heat and dehydration – conditions which are most severe in the sugar cane industry."

“Whole families are being wiped out by this illness, we want to be compensated fairly, and make sure every sick worker has access to medical treatment, this is our right. We are disappointed with Commandante Ortega’s government, they have no concern for our health … us ordinary working people have been sold out,” said Juan Rivas. No one from the government met the marchers.

I understand why the US will seek $1 billion to help the Northern Triangle of Central America, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. However, it's somewhat uncomfortable that the increased assistance won't include Nicaragua, the region's poorest country. 

They clearly don't have the gang and cartel violence of their neighbors, nor do they force tens of thousands of their youth into exile. However, they do have the corruption, weak to non-existent democratic institutions, and a general sense of insecurity that we are looking to overcome in the region. Nicaragua could also contribute important knowledge when it comes to various community policing models.

If you believe that increased assistance from the US will deliver intended benefits to the recipients, perhaps it is time to be proactive and include Nicaragua.

Immigration policy halted by Texas judge

NYT

According to the New York Times, a federal judge in Texas suspended  President Obama's recent executive action on immigration.

In an order filed on Monday, the judge, Andrew S. Hanen of Federal District Court in Brownsville, prohibited the Obama administration from carrying out programs the president announced in November that would offer protection from deportation and work permits to as many as five million undocumented immigrants.

...

Some legal scholars said any order by Judge Hanen to halt the president’s actions would be quickly suspended by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.

“Federal supremacy with respect to immigration matters makes the states a kind of interloper in disputes between the president and Congress,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. “They don’t have any right of their own.”

It's disappointing, of course, but this is how our system works. I'm hopeful that the Court of Appeals will rule in favor of the president's recent executive actions and that the country can then take additional steps towards enacting humane and comprehensive immigration policies.

US maintains restrictions on military aid to Guatemala

I meant to post this two weeks ago but got distracted. From Jeff Abbott writing at Truth Out

In December, the US Congress passed legislation that reconfigures the conditions of economic aid for development projects in Guatemala and puts further pressure on the Guatemalan government to reduce the presence of military in everyday life. 

The requirements are part of the Appropriations Act for the 2015 fiscal year, which sets the budget and terms for the coming fiscal year. In relation to Guatemala, the act does several things. First of all, it maintains the three-decade-long congressional ban on military assistance to Guatemala, which was instated due to human rights violations by the military during the country's 36-year-long internal armed conflict. Secondly, the bill requires the government of Guatemala to show progress on the repatriation of families affected by the construction of the Chixoy dam during the 1980s.

Lastly, the bill makes funding for Guatemala's massive expansion of development projects dependent on the government "implementing a credible plan to build a professional, credible police force and end the army's involvement in internal law enforcement" - as required by the 1996 peace accords - as well as the investigation and prosecution of any army official alleged to have committed "gross violations of human rights" during the countries 36-year-long internal armed conflict.

US restrictions on military aid to Guatemala have been in place for quite some time. It is notable that restrictions remain even though many in the US and in Guatemala want them lifted. One of the reasons that restrictions remain in place is that successive Guatemalan governments have failed to abide by US conditions. That's why the restrictions were developed in the first place. However, there seems to have been progress on the second condition regarding reparations to residents displaced for the construction of the Chixoy dam and the third one with regards to prosecutions, even though the Rios Montt trial developments have been a setback.

One gets the impression that the US would like to give greater military assistance to the Guatemalan military not because it prefers the greater militarization of the country but instead because of its lack of faith in an undermanned, under-trained, and under-resourced police. I was at a meeting a few years ago and we were all encouraging low-level US officials to focus on providing more resources to transform the police. They sort of laughed. I don't think that they had much confidence in the Guatemalan police. They had most likely heard the same story for over a decade. Today, I'd say the police are better than they used to be but nowhere near what is needed for a democratic society.
 
One of the other reasons why the restrictions remain in place also appears to be grassroots pressure in the US on Congress...sounds like an interesting research project.

Washington Post endorses Obama aid request for Central America

The Washington Post Editorial Board has come out in lukewarm (?) support of President Obama's aid request for the Northern Triangle of Central America.

In short, the United States has a strong interest in helping Central America achieve the prosperity and stability that have so long eluded it. President Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget proposal addresses that interest with a request for $1 billion in aid to the northern triangle. A little more than half of that would go to beefing up the countries’ security forces and public institutions, with the rest going to economic development. This would be the first installment on a five-year program of still-undetermined size, officials say.

This is the first that I've heard of US financial support for a five-year program. I might be wrong but I am guessing that this is one billion of the fifteen billion that Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are looking for to support their five-year plan. However, the link from the Post goes to the White House's Fact Sheet from June that only mentions two small USAID plan that will run for five years so it's not entirely clear. I haven't read that the Administration is prepared to ask for increased resources not just next year, but every year after. That's what I had in mind earlier this week.  

The WP isn't ready to proclaim the surge in unaccompanied minors over but they are somewhat optimistic by this year's number of migrants which is down from last year. It makes sense - most who can and want to leave have done so already. That should provide respite for a few months or so. However, the decreased flow out of Central America means that this will still be the second highest year on record. That's not something to celebrate.

I'm with their call for economic and physical security. Who isn't?

I really need to get more familiar with Plan Colombia because it has apparently solved world peace. Everybody loves it or everybody thinks that it is very useful to persuade reluctant members of Congress to support whatever initiative that our heart's desire.

High quality leadership is needed in the region. We are on board here. A colleague and I tried to get an op-ed published on this month's ago but no luck.

The concern with the FMLN manipulating "constitutional rules for their advantage" - somewhat confusing unless you are speaking about Decree 743 and the packing of the courts a few years ago. To reduce the crisis to FMLN manipulation, however, would be naive and sustained for simply partisan means. Aligning with Venezuela? Well, you have Alba Petroleos but that sure seems like the extent of it. FMLN and El Salvador alignment with Venezuela might be an issue but it hasn't come up since US right wing forces tried to sabotage the FMLN in last year's presidential election. That's not to say that there are not problems with corruption and transparency. To be fair, they did highlight insecurity in Honduras earlier in this post.

Finally,

Mr. Obama’s aid plan is appropriately ambitious and generous; over the coming years, though, it must also be conditioned on recipients’ fulfillment of conditions related to transparency and respect for human rights. That approach, or a version of it, has been tried before in Latin America, both in Colombia and in Central America during the 1980s. Congress and the administration must adapt a new conditionality for the Central America crisis of today.

The aid plan is welcome news. However, I would stop short of calling it "ambitious and generous." It breaks down to $33 per capita. I cringe, however, at the next statement which goes on about conditionality. There needs to be some accountability for the money and the programs, but conditionality like this does not have a good history in Central America. Here is a paragraph that mostly got cut from my recent World Politics Review analysis.

I do not doubt that the countries of the Northern Triangle have carried out some reforms that indicate a willingness to make hard decisions. However, it feels somewhat reminiscent of the Cold War when President Ronald Reagan’s administration would go before the US Congress to certify that the Salvadoran military and government were taking human rights more seriously because they had killed fewer people than the previous month. We can point to isolated examples of progress but it is challenging to identify sustained progress.

The conditions that the US placed on aid to El Salvador during the 1980s had some success. The Salvadoran military, when pressured, did respond to US calls to respect human rights - not absolutely, but better. However, it also led members of the US Reagan administration to go before Congress and the media to lie about significant progress. It also led many members of Congress to play dumb and simply pass all responsibility for the failures of US policy to the executive branch.