Around Latin America

-In a particularly tragic story, sixteen teenagers were shot and killed in Juarez this past week. The news has barely made a ripple in the United States, even though the casualties are greater than, say, Bloody Sunday, serving as a sad reminder not only of how horrible the violence in Juarez has gotten, but how immune the United States seems to be to what is going on just south of it's border.

-Rightist billionaire and Chilean president-elect Sebastian Piñera won the presidential run-off in mid-January. While he doesn't take office until March 11, some of his suggested policies and decisions are already raising eyebrows. As Greg points out, Piñera's desire to redirect money from copper away from the military budget indicates a growing willingness not just on the left, but on the right, to use Chile's income from copper in other ways, and the fact that a right-wing politician sympathetic to the economic policies of Pinochet has adopted this stance may mean the military will have to "come around" to the reality that it won't be getting as much funding from Chile's copper industry as it has grown accustomed to receiving. More troubling to many inside and outside of Chile, Piñera has also refused to divest of some of his financial properties while in office, leading some to ask if he isn't exposing himself to a conflict of interests between his financial holdings and his duties as president. This, on top of his profession that he thought the neoliberal policies under the Pinochet regime were the type of policies he would pursue, have many worried about his economic impact on Chile even before he takes office. Beyond that, it's worth noting that his brother appears to be the Chilean version of Billy Carter (and yes, that cake does look like what you think it looks like).

-In Peru, 41 military officers and soldiers have gone on trial for human rights violations for their roles in the murder of eight civilians in 1989. Although the trial is important for bringing justice, it also has become of political importance, as president Alan Garcia (who was also president from 1985-1990) tried to remove one of the officers from beyond the court's reach by giving him high-end political appointments. The trial, its timing (during Garcia's first administration), and Garcia's efforts to gain impunity for at least some of the officers raises important questions about Garcia's role in the violation of human rights during his administration, questions that are not and should not go away any time soon.

-Among the many victims of Colombia's never-ending civil war, the displaced are oft-forgotten. Many poor and small-landholders have lost their homes and lands, and wealthy families have swooped in to take it and then receive farm subsidies from the Uribe administration, serving as a powerful reminder of the fact that gross social inequalities and questionable political alliances are one of the biggest travesties of the Uribe administration.

-Lula continues to rely on hydroelectric dams for Brazil's future power sources. It just allowed the controversial Belo Monte dam on the Amazon river to proceed, in spite of opposition from environmentalists and residents in the Amazonian basin. With his term coming to an end this year, there will be many reasons to look back on Lula's administration and point at the positive things he accomplished; however, it already seems that his environmental policy may be one of the blackest marks on his administration, and the Belo Monte serves as just another strike against Lula on the environmental front.

-A European spaceport in French Guiana may be "booming," but it's isolating and alienating many French Guianans.

-Speaking of Europeans' presence in Latin America, though it seems unlikely to come to fruition this time, Russia has begun exploring the possibility of helping construct a canal through Nicaragua to connect the Atlantic and Pacific. Nicaragua has been the center of such talks since the early-1800s, so it's not clear why this time it will come to fruition. Nonetheless, it makes an interesting story, and if Russia goes through with helping Nicaragua finally construct a canal, there will probably be all kinds of hand-wringing among politicians in the United States.

-Evo Morales is not only interested in creating greater socio-economic and ethnic equality in Bolivia; he's also interested in opening up opportunities for women, a fact recently demonstrated in his appointments for cabinet: 10 of the 20 positions were filled by women, a first for Bolivia (and for many other countries in the world).

Around Latin America

-The longer-term effects of Micheletti's government are becoming increasingly clear, as Honduras is facing bankruptcy and the likelihood of foreign loans. Over the past several months since the coup, Micheletti's government has been drawing on reserves with no income (and certainly, the withdrawal of foreign investment in the wake of the illegal coup and global condemnation of the Micheletti government has not helped). This has left Honduras with no way to pay creditors as Lobo enters office at the end of the month. The result is that the only solution that seems to be on the table right now is foreign loans from institutions like the World Bank and IMF. Given the legacy of loans from these institutions in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the economic future for Honduras looks fairly bleak. It seems increasingly likely that Honduras can now expect to be paying off the financial burden of the actions of the military and Micheletti for years and years and years to come.

-In a massive step backwards, a Colombian court last week released 17 members of the Army involved in the 2008 Soacha murder case. The soldiers involved were accused of killing unemployed men from Bogota and dumping their bodies in the jungle to disguise the dead as "rebels." The fact that these 17 officers will be free from justice for their roles in the murder of numerous innocent poor Colombians is bad enough; the fact that they did so in order to up the unit's body count and qualify "for a schedule of rewards, as established by Defense Ministry orders" is even worse, as it's just another way that the Colombian government is tacitly supporting the murder of innocent civilians in the name of "security."

-Meanwhile, the ongoing conflict in Colombia can lead to gruesome instances, such as the fact that dumped bodies frequently wash up along the shores of the Cauca River (among others): "While hardly Colombia's only river repository for human remains, the Cauca may well be its most prolific. It carries the bodies of drug gang toughs, of peasants dismembered by death squads, of innocents killed for being kin to somebody's rival." Now, one woman is making an effort to give the bodies the dignity in death that they did not receive in life.

-Martinique and French Guyana voted this weekend on whether they would gain greater independence from France. The referendums on increased autonomy failed in both places , in part no doubt because France can (and probably does) spend more on the two than they could spend themselves, and in part because, as the BBC article demonstrates, residents of both "departments" simply don't trust their political leaders enough to have them lead independent countries.

-Tensions in Paraguay over the possibility of a coup against Fernando Lugo continue to run high, with resulting popular mobilizations already preparing to defend Lugo.

-An ongoing strike among the bauxite sector in Guyana is getting ugly, as the workers' union has alleged instances of racial discrimination against the workers on the part of the company involved.

-While Chilean copper miners resolved their strike last week, smelters continued their strike, but are now apparently close to signing a deal as well. The smelters' strike and the miners' strike briefly drove the global price of copper up last week.

-Argentina is facing a potentially-major institutional crisis, as Cristina Kirchner has forcibly removed the president of Argentina's Central Bank from his position in order to open up reserves for the struggling Argentine economy and (perhaps) salvage some of her own political capital. That may seem innocuous, but Central Banks throughout Latin America tend to function independent of the executive branch, (theoretically) working for the long-term economic stability and growth of a country and not focusing on short-term political moves. If Kirchner is successful, it could be a troubling step towards Central Banks becoming part of political moves for politicians on both the left and right.

-It turns out, one of the Mexican broadcasters for the NFL is a horribly misogynistic pig.

-Finally, in an effort to boost coca-leaf production and spur the Bolivian economy, Evo Morales has an interesting solution. Meet Coca Colla.