Screens are seen at the master room of Venezuela's opposition TV station Globóvision in Caracas, Tuesday. (Jorge Silva/Reuters)
Is Venezuela's opposition TV channel bowing to government pressure?
• David Smilde is the moderator of WOLA's blog: Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights. The views expressed are the author's own.
What originally appeared as a visible but subtle change of direction at Venezuelan television station Glovovisión has in the last two weeks become a raucous turning point with multiple journalists being fired or resigning. The turmoil leaves Globovisión’s role as an opposition outlet in doubt and appears to represent a new extension of the Venezuelan government’s control over broadcast media.
Following Guillermo Zuloaga’s announcement in March that he had agreed in principle to the sale of Globovisión it was finally acquired at the beginning of May by a business group rumored to have ties with the Government.
The announcement of the hiring of journalists Vladimir Villegas and Leopoldo Castillo as station directors generated considerable optimism about the new Globovisión and its independence. However on May 13, after a meeting with the new owners, Mr. Villegas surprisingly announced on Twitter that he would not be accepting the position after all. He commented that “we didn’t reach agreement on programming nor on what my competencies would be.”
One of the new owners, Juan Domingo Cordero, declared on May 16 that there had been disagreements in the meeting with Villegas over the general direction the business should follow, but he assured that there would be no changes in the channel and that all the journalists would keep their jobs: “All the news anchors are staying, there won't be any changes here.”
However events have unfolded quite differently.
On May 22, President Nicolás Maduro met with two of the new owners of the Channel, Raúl Corrín and Gustavo Perdomo, in Miraflores. The meeting was qualified by the business men as “cordial” and they declared that they had told President Maduro that Globovisión would contribute to “the decrease in the levels of violence in the country.” Information Minister Jorge Arreaza, also present in the meeting, revealed that Maduro had insisted on the need for “generating television content with transcendent values for the future of the children and the need to struggle against fascism, which is a threat to society in any part of the world.”
Only two days after that meeting with the government, Globovisión confirmed rumors that Ismael García (opposition National Assembly representative and responsible for making public the Mario Silva audio) would leave his morning opinion program “Aló Venezuela.” The program will still be aired with co-host Delvalle Canelón but without Mr. García. The statement explained that the policy of the channel was not to air programs hosted by candidates for political office, and since García would be a candidate for Mayor of Caracas in the upcoming municipal elections, the channel had asked him to leave the program. In Venezuela it is common for elected leaders and candidates for office to simultaneously work as broadcast journalists.
The next day the channel also announced that the popular late night host of the show “Good Night,” Francisco Bautista “Kiko,” would leave Globovisión. On the same night of the 26th Henrique Capriles tweeted several times about Globovisión. He expressed solidarity with the workers of the channel and claimed that the new owners had given express orders not to provide live coverage of his speeches and declarations.
On Monday the 27th, news anchor Pedro Luis Flores, and “Buenas Noches” cohost Carla Angola announced they had quit Globovisión in solidarity with Kiko. The Globovisión web page announced the reporters where leaving the channel on “the best of terms.” That same day Globovisión published a statement on its web page reaffirming that the exit of García had been on friendly terms and that Kiko had made misinformed declarations on the matter. The statement denies the existence of a “list of professionals” that will be fired, and ends with the assertion that “media outlets are not political parties.”
That same afternoon, reporter Leopoldo Castillo (popular host of the show “Aló Ciudadano” and now temporary director of Globovisión), in a statement aired by Globovisión declared that there had been misunderstandings recently and that he would do everything in his power to keep the channel’s personnel “united,” but if that was not possible, he would simply leave. He also asked his fellow reporters to “not respond emotionally” and impulsively. He added that if he discovered recent events in the channel where part of a “systematic policy, which up to date I have not uncovered, you can be sure that I will speak out.” (The video can be seen here.)
That same night Kiko declared to CNN en Español that his meeting with the new owners of the channel had been “very aggressive”, and that they had “used the same arguments that the oficialismo [government] uses to attack me. They told me that the channel had been used as a political party and was responsible for what had happened in the country. They told me that I used slander and that I made fun of people.” He also denounced that the day Ismael García had made public the Mario Silva audio, in several occasions they had tried to take it off the air “and then that night at news hour, when that information was given, the reporter that wrote the note said that it had been edited. They took out the parts where Diosdado Cabello was named.”
In a press conference, Kiko reiterated that the new board of directors is exercising censorship in line with the Government. He also declared that during his last meeting with the new directors, they had offered to buy the name of the show “Buenas Noches,” which Kiko owns, but that he had refused.
On Tuesday May 28 Maduro declared that the problem with Globovisión is not disagreements over a supposed change of editorial line but a fight between different factions of the “right” for control of the channel: “They are dealing with a huge problem among themselves…In the end they are the ones that are destroying the TV channel that the fascist right used to poison the country: Globovisión.”
The Globovisión official twitter account has suffered an “unfollow” campaign by opposition followers unhappy with what they perceive is a change in the editorial line of the channel. According to Noticias 24, the account had 2,732,394 followers on Sunday 26th. At the time of writing this post the account has 2,349,779 followers.
– David Smilde is the moderator of WOLA's blog: Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights.
Mexicans both poorer and happier than wealthy nation peers
Low wages, gaping income inequality, poor education, long workdays, shorter life expectancy. By the sound of the statistics, Mexicans’ satisfaction with their lot ought to be low.
But despite weak performance across rankings in the 2013 "Better Life" index released this week by the 34-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Mexicans come out strong in terms of satisfaction. They’re more satisfied with their lives than the average in the OECD – a collection of mostly wealthy nations – and fall just behind a handful of countries like Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark: 85 percent of Mexicans say they have more positive experiences than negative ones in a given day.
It’s not because they’re making more money. Mexicans earn roughly half the OECD annual average wage of about $23,000 in a country plagued by inequality. The top 20 percent of earners bring home nearly 13 times what the bottom 20 percent earn here.
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And it’s not because they have more free time. The OECD report calculates that Mexicans work 2,250 hours per year – the highest rate of all the countries surveyed. Women, more of whom work in the informal sector, still bear the brunt of labor at home, too. Mexican men dedicate less than a third of their time on unpaid domestic work than women do.
School isn’t a bright spot, either. When it comes to education, Mexico falls well below OECD nations in reading literacy, math, and science test scores. Few people earn a high school diploma compared to the rest of the OECD field: 36 percent versus the organization average of 74 percent.
Mexicans even fare worse in life expectancy: 74 years versus 80 years, the OECD average.
So what gives?
Faith, family, and pride in the patria, or homeland, may have something to do with it.
“Even if the economy isn’t great, the opportunity God gives us to live every day is more than sufficient,” says Marina Garcia while playing in a park with her two dogs.
Rosalina Tuma, waiting for a Tai Chi class to begin, says, “I live happily. I travel a lot, outside the country, too. But I would never trade Mexico. I’m very proud of my country.”
Staying happy in the face of hardship “is how we are,” says Raul Gonzalez, a self-described proud grandfather. “Al mal tiempo, le damos buena cara.”
We put on a good face, even in bad weather.
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A masked member of the 18th Street gang peers from behind a window of a prison door as other gang members give a press conference inside the San Pedro Sula prison in Honduras, Tuesday. Honduras' largest and most dangerous street gangs have declared a truce. The Honduran government says it supports the truce but will not give concessions to the gangs. (Esteban Felix/AP)
Can Honduras mirror El Salvador's successful gang truce?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
The Honduran gang leaders of MS-13 and Pandilla 18 signed a truce [Tuesday] officially mediated by the Catholic Church and the OAS. The truce, modeled off the one in El Salvador, looks to reduce violence across Honduras, but particularly in San Pedro Sula. The Honduran government says it supports the truce but will not give concessions to the gangs. However, it appears that like El Salvador, the Honduran government is more involved in this truce than they are admitting publicly.
Coverage: Heraldo, Tiempo, InSight Crime
1. The truce is unlikely to have the same level of success in Honduras as it did in El Salvador. Even those brokering the Honduran truce admit that. The gangs in Honduras are more diverse with less centralized leadership. There are also other actors involved in the crime and violence, including the Honduran police, that complicate the issue.
2. Let me add a bit of caution to that first point. Many analysts, myself included, underestimated the potential success of the Salvadoran gang truce when it was first reached. I did not expect the truce in El Salvador to lower the violence by nearly half, nor did I think it would remain so solidly in place over a year later. I'd be happy to be similarly wrong about Honduras if it means reducing violence by half.
3. Even a little success with this truce would be good. A 10 percent decline in murders would be hundreds of fewer deaths, particularly in San Pedro Sula. For that reason, we shouldn't hold this truce to the standard of El Salvador and we should be happy for any sustainable decline in violence that it can bring.
4. Lessons learned from El Salvador include issues to watch. Do the gangs shift tactics or increase non-violent crimes to make up revenues? Do NGOs identify increases in disappearances and extortion that aren't reported by official statistics? If violence is reduced, does the truce provide gangs political leverage over the government through their potential threat to undo the progress?
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
Humberto de la Calle (r.) head of Colombia's government peace negotiation team, speaks to reporters during the peace talks with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in Havana, Cuba, Sunday. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)
Colombia, FARC rebels make peace progress with land deal
Six months after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government first sat down to try and negotiate an end to the country's half-century-long conflict, many citizens felt their hopes deflate. The talks were beginning to appear to be just another failed attempt at peace, and critics' voices were growing louder.
But on Sunday came a major breakthrough. The FARC and the government made a joint announcement stating that they had reached an agreement for "radical transformations" in the Colombian countryside. Land rights have been a flash point of the conflict, and the FARC claim they are the reason they rose up against the state 49 years ago today. Over half of the farmland in this South American nation is held by 1 percent of landowners. The new agreement “seeks to reverse the causes of the conflict,” according to a joint statement read in Havana, Cuba, where the negotiations are taking place.
Land is just one of five points on the negotiating agenda, and no single deal is final until the entire negotiation process draws to a close, according to negotiation rules. Few specifics on the land agreement have been released since the May 26 announcement, and the FARC’s chief negotiator said there are some land reform details that remain unresolved.
The fact that the two sides decided to announce the agreement nonetheless is an indication of the urgency negotiators felt to show the public they were making progress.
'Generate controversy'
Some Colombians gushed with enthusiasm and hyperbole at the news. "What just happened in Havana is the most important thing that has happened in the last 100 years in the country," said Senator Armando Benedetti, a member of the government coalition. "The issue of land is 60 percent of a peace agreement."
But critics continued to question the peace process. "Terrorist Farc kills our soldiers and policemen and the Santos government rewards them with a land agreement," tweeted former president Alvaro Uribe, a fierce critic of President Juan Manuel Santos. In another tweet he wrote: "It's unacceptable that the Santos government negotiate the model of the Colombian countryside with narco-terrorists."
Lead government negotiator Humberto de la Calle said criticism was welcome. "We know that these negotiations generate controversy and that's fine," he said. "But we ask for the debate to be sensible."
Many victims of the FARC remain skeptical that a peace deal is possible. "I doubt it. This is the same as the last time there were negotiations" which ended in 2002, says Sandra SÁnchez, who was displaced by guerrillas in 2007 from her home in Vichada province after her son and daughter deserted from the rebel ranks. "They talk and talk and then the negotiations break off and we’re left with more war."
Doubts are understandable – The FARC marked their anniversary by torching two trucks on a highway in the southern Cauca province – and there are still many thorny issues to work out before a peace deal is a sure thing. But there may be reason for cautious hope, too: Never before has the FARC and government come so far on agreeing on anything, much less a very root cause of the conflict.
Guatemala's former dictator Jose Efrain Rios Montt sits in the courtroom before the judge reads the verdict during his genocide trial in Guatemala City, May 10. (Moises Castilo/AP)
Guatemalan court hits rewind button on Rios Montt's genocide conviction
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, centralamericanpolitics.blogspot.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
In a three-to-two ruling Monday night, Guatemala's Constitutional Court overturned Efrain Rios Montt's guilty verdict and Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez's not guilty verdict and returned the trial to April 19.
While the dust is still settling, April 19 would mean that witness and expert witness testimony will not need to be re-admitted. The court will be at the point at which it will be preparing to hear closing arguments.
Obviously, the ruling is good news for Rios Montt, but it is bad news for Rodriguez Sanchez, who is in jeopardy again. It's also bad news for the survivors who worked so very hard to secure the guilty verdict.
Now the ruling could be a sign of corruption and impunity. That would obviously be bad. Mauro Rodrigo Chacón and Gloria Porras were the two judges who ruled against overturning the verdict. Chacón represents the University of San Carlos and Porras was appointed during the Colom administration. The court's reversal comes following weeks of escalating attacks in the press from a powerful economic group, veterans' groups, and other right-wing groups.
Or it could be a sign that the Constitutional Court is doing its job and making sure that all parties adhere to established legal practices. That would be good as it doesn't help if justice cuts corners.
Here's what I wrote on Al Jazeera last week:
First, the prosecution still has to secure the final verdict. The trial itself has been full of intrigue, with two different judges claiming they should be overseeing the trial. Pre-trial judge Patricia Carol Flores, who was responsible for evidentiary and other matters of the case, held a hearing on the morning of Friday's verdict during which she tried to annul the trial, once again, and send it back to November 2011.
The Constitutional Court (CC) already ruled that Flores had overstepped her authority and had interpreted its ruling too broadly. It seems the CC only wanted her to incorporate new evidence that previously had been excluded and then send the case back to Judge Barrios. However, Flores' latest decision to re-annul the trial remains pending.
Following Friday afternoon's verdict, Rios Montt's attorney argued that the defence had already lodged four constitutional challenges and eight amparos which had not yet been ruled upon. Those legal challenges could threaten the conviction. Guatemalan lawyers have a history of using excessive, often frivolous, legal challenges to delay or deny justice so it is possible that all are resolved in favour of the prosecution. In this trial alone, the defence lodged over 100 legal challenges.
Judge Barrios and her two colleagues must have decided that the best strategy to reach a verdict was to push the trial through to the end without waiting to resolve all the outstanding legal challenges rather than let the trial get bogged down.
If Judge Barrios and the other two judges remain in charge of the case and all that needs to be re-argued are closing arguments, the damage is minimal. If the CC determined that the trial court should not have proceeded when it did and it is now returning the case to the point in time at which it should have been stopped, April 19, that is justice in motion. That is a CC that takes its role seriously. However, the ruling might have gone beyond that.
As of tonight, though, the ruling's motivations and implications are not necessarily clear.
Guatemala's former dictator Ríos Montt wears with headphones as he listens to the verdict in his genocide trial in Guatemala City, last Friday. The Guatemalan court convicted Rios Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, sentencing him to 80 years in prison. (Luis Soto/AP)
What does genocide conviction of Ríos Montt mean to Guatemalans abroad?
• The views expressed are the author's own.
From Texas last week, I tuned in to the trial of Guatemala's former-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt as he was sentenced to 80 years in prison and heaved a tearful sigh of relief.
His sentence – the maximum in Guatemala – came 12 years after the case was initially filed with the Inter-American Court in Spain. And it was long-awaited: Mr. Ríos Montt's 18 months as Guatemala’s dictator, is considered the bloodiest of the country’s entire civil war. His trial was the first time any domestic court has tried someone on genocide in the world.
When I called my mother in Florida to share the news she didn't miss a beat: "Por fin ese viejo se va a la carcel, donde se merece estar." At last, that old man is in jail, where he deserves to be.
I wasn't the only Guatemalan-American live-streaming the trial, reading the blogs, local papers, and any new piece of information that could help me grasp what my country was going through.
The rest of my family was doing the same from Los Angeles, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Miami, and North Carolina. And there were all the people I didn't know, who I was connecting with on Facebook from Canada, Mexico, Sweden, Amsterdam, Argentina, and other parts of the world. It seemed everyone was commenting on the Ríos Montt trial, which began in November 2012.
For many in the Guatemalan diaspora this was a David and Goliath moment, the giant dictator demolished by the humble stone of the Guatemalan court.
“I felt a rush of energy along the marimba of my spine, ending up as a cascade of tears of joy,” says Martha Chavez, a Guatemalan comedian based in Toronto. “I wanted to yell, ‘Champagne for the whole world, hooray!’"
Aida Morales, also in Canada, cried, too. This was the conviction of a man many long felt was most responsible for the genocide of the early 1980s.
“I was almost unwilling to believe that I was awake, rather than dreaming, it was too good to be true,” says Hugo Orozco, a political exile based in New York City.
History of the conflict
The origins of Guatemala's civil war date back to the split that emerged after the United States financially backed a military coup in 1954 that overthrew leftist President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. Mr. Guzmán’s election was viewed by many Guatemalans as the first sign of democracy: The country adopted a new constitution that broadened suffrage and supported the labor and agrarian movements. He initiated land reform and sought to make United Fruit Company pay taxes on its immense holdings in Guatemala. But the victory was short-lived.
In the context of the cold war, the US saw Guzmán’s moves as tainted by Cuba’s communist influence.
The US supported right-wing military governments in Guatemala until 1988. A significant period of support came after Ríos Montt’s brief presidency, which began in 1982 after a military coup. Some 200,000 people were killed during the Guatemalan civil war, mostly members of indigenous communities, and many point to Ríos Montt's tenure as one of the most violent periods of the 36-year internal conflict.
There were death squads, executions, forced disappearances, and torture of noncombatants. The majority of the human rights violations took place under Ríos Montt’s “scorched earth” campaign that aimed to destroy-all-opponents.
During this armed conflict, many Guatemalans became political refugees, asylum seekers, or immigrants looking for economic opportunity outside of a country at war. My family left because of the poverty in the rural areas that resulted from the conflict, and still remains.
The conflict only came to an end in 1996, with the signing of the Guatemalan Peace Accords, and Guatemala’s social fabric is still shadowed by its long history of political repression and decades of violence.
Included in the Peace Accords was the acknowledgement of the rights of indigenous people to receive a full range of social services in their own languages, including legal services, public education, and health care. But disparities in economic, health, and education services still remain between indigenous and nonindigenous populations.
'Reality check'
The day of the verdict, there was a collective sigh of relief among the many Guatemalans who had long felt betrayed – by their country, their legal system, and the international community. But the court’s decision to charge Montt was also a reality check: Reconciliation won't suddenly appear thanks to one conviction.
Montt is only the beginning. There is a lot of work left to be done in terms of holding people accountable for a whole host of crimes committed during the civil war. These crimes are inextricably part of the social fiber that is our country and our continuing battle with “los poderes ocultos,” the hidden powers, today.
And some are not so hidden. Testimony during Montt’s trial implicated current President Otto Perez Molina in similar crimes against humanity. (As standing president he has political immunity.) Mr. Perez Molina stated in an interview with CNN that while he is willing to apologize for crimes of the past, he does not believe genocide occurred in Guatemala.
The verdict itself is being challenged by Montt's attorney, Francisco Garcia Gudiel. Mr. Garcia stated he had lodged four constitutional challenges and eight protections, or amparos, which have not yet been ruled upon.
My personal feelings about this trial bring up the same complex emotions I feel when I think about finding my father. He was a lieutenant in Guatemala during that era: Did he play a role in the atrocities? He abandoned my mother during the war, but he still shaped who I am. Much like Guatemala, he is inseparably a part of my identity, for better or for worse.
“Nothing will ever be the same,” Ms. Chavez from Toronto says. “Even if the reality is still gloomy, people now know there’s the undeniable truth of the sun. And it will eventually shine.”
– Kara Andrade is an Ashoka fellow working in Central America, and co-founder of HablaCentro LLC a non-profit that develops curriculum to help people in Latin America become more digitally literate and civically engaged.
'People of corn' protest GMO strain in Mexico
Everywhere in Mexico, from the megalopolis of Mexico City to the smallest farming community, the squeaking, creaking sounds of a tortillería churning out corn tortillas can be heard.
Corn is the most important staple of the Mexican diet. Corn tortillas of many varieties – white, yellow, blue – figure into every meal of the day. The grain works its way into the national cuisine in endless other ways: The large kernels of hominy corn in rich pozole soup, as the base for spicy tamales, in sweet breads, and in hot, thick atole drinks.
It’s native to Mexico, where some 59 indigenous strains of corn exist.
Which is why an emerging debate over whether to allow growers to cultivate genetically modified corn has heated up. Opponents of GMO corn have urged the Mexican government to ban GMO. To draw attention to their cause, on Thursday four local Greenpeace activists climbed a 335-foot monument on Mexico City’s busy Reforma Avenue and dropped a banner reading "No GMO" on the iconic Estela de Luz tower in protest, according to a Greenpeace spokeswoman.
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Mexico has already allowed limited cultivation of GMO corn in a handful of northern states as part of an experimental program. In March, according to local news reports, agribusinesses Monsanto and Syngenta solicited permits to expand GMO plantings. If granted, planting will begin in the fall.
Greenpeace is asking the government to prohibit the cultivation of GMO corn in any form, whether in pilot programs or on a commercial scale. [Read about Peru's recent decision to say 'no' to GMO.]
The DNA of genetically modified corn can mix with native strains, threatening their existence, according to Antonio Turrent Fernandez, president of the nonprofit Union of Scientists Committed to Society, or UCCS.
“Mexico is the world’s only hope,” says Mr. Turrent Fernandez. “If a few years from now the world wants to revert to original strains, the only way to return is for native Mexican corn not to be contaminated.”
Mexican producers haven’t kept up with demand for corn, leading the country to import about 30 percent of what it consumes, he says.
That’s one reason why an association of Mexican corn producers has come out in favor of commercial-scale planting of GMO corn for its ability to resist increasingly hot temperatures and scarce water.
In the creation stories of the Popol Vuh, the sacred Mayan text, man and corn are described as inextricably linked – giving rise to the saying that Mexicans are “people of corn.” Now the country faces a decision: Of what kind of corn does it wish to be made?
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Safety check: Are some car models sold in Latin America held to lower standards?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
"Four of Brazil's five bestselling cars failed their independent crash tests," [reports an] AP article on how cars in Brazil fail safety tests. [It] is probably the most important read out of Latin America this weekend.
Car companies around the world appear to be cutting corners in models sold in Brazil and other Latin American countries. Lower government safety standards and poor monitoring mean that many of the most economical cars sold in Brazil fail tests that are required for US or European consumers.
It's likely that these safety failures on the part of both car manufacturers and Brazilian government have contributed to thousands of avoidable deaths on the country's roads. The death statistics from car crashes do not receive the same attention as a brutal massacre or a factory collapse.
To be clear, this is not just a story about Brazil's manufacturing industry. It's not just cars made in Brazil, but cars sold in Brazil, including many that are imported.
From the article:
The Mexico-produced Nissan March compact sold in Latin America received a two-star rating from Latin NCAP, while the version sold for about the same price in Europe, called the Micra, scored four stars. The crash tests found the Latin American model had a weak, unstable body structure that offered occupants little protection in even non-serious wrecks. Factories in Mexico are producing essentially the same car for both regions, but with lower safety standards for the Brazilian market.
Automakers aren't going to change their practices until politicians and regulators in Brazil and elsewhere in the region force them to do so. Political systems aren't going to move until citizens pressure them.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant based in Managua, Nicaragua, who runs Bloggings by Boz.
People hold a signs that read in Spanish: 'there was no genocide in Guatemala' during a protest outside the Matamoros prison in Guatemala City, Sunday. Demonstrators say the judicial process was corrupt and are demanding a higher court nullify the verdict. A tribunal ruled Friday that Rios Montt knew about the killings and didn't stop the slaughter between 1982 and 1983, the height of Guatemala's brutal civil war. (Luis Soto/AP)
What will the Rios Montt genocide conviction do for Guatemala?
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, centralamericanpolitics.blogspot.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
A Guatemalan court found former dictator and US Cold War ally, Efrain Rios Montt, guilty on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to eighty years in prison. His intelligence chief, Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, was found not guilty on all charges. It's a historic day for the people of Guatemala. Here's Will Grant with the BBC's take:
When the Guatemalan Peace Accords were signed in 1996 after a civil war in which 200,000 people were killed, very few ever thought this moment would be reached. In blisteringly critical language, Judge Jazmin Barrios said that as de facto president it was logical that Rios Montt knew of what was happening in the country, but did nothing to stop it.
Hunger, systematic rape and forced displacements were all used as tools of war against the Ixil people for whom merely being a member of the indigenous group was a "mortal offence" in the military government's brutal pursuit of left-wing guerrillas.
Judge Barrios's summary and subsequent sentencing of Rios Montt was everything that human rights organisations and victims' families' groups in Central America had been hoping to hear for decades. Now the 86-year-old former general is facing the rest of his life in prison, though he is almost certain to appeal on the grounds of his age.
From a July 2011 post of mine on Dos Erres:
I know that it probably sounds like I go back and forth about this, but that's not really the case.I think that all those who committed human rights violations during the war (and the postwar) should be held to account for what they did. However, not everyone is equally responsible and not every should obviously suffer the same punishment. And while it is right that these four men from the Dos Erres massacre have their day in court, I am uncomfortable with the fact that the people who trained, ordered, and rewarded them for their behavior will not.
Now, the courts have finally brought the man most responsible for the genocide of the early 1980s to justice. There's more work to be done.... Judge Flores tried, once again, to annul the trial and send it back to the beginning [Friday] morning. Rios Montt's attorney, Francisco Garcia Gudiel, argued after the verdict that they have already lodged four constitutional challenges and eight amparos which have not yet been ruled upon.
Judge Barrios said that the attorney general's office still has the responsibility to continue to pursue justice. For many, that seems to mean going after President Otto Perez Molina who was tied to the genocide during witness testimony. Mr. Perez Molina can't be brought before a court right now as he has immunity while president. The president, by the way, issued a statement supporting the court's ruling. [Though he told CNN that he personally did not believe a genocide occurred.]
However, I'd like to know more about why Rodriguez Sanchez was found not guilty. Legally, why wasn't he found guilty? And what does the prosecutor's office learn from that? The lessons should influence who, if anyone, they pursue next.
Charges have also been filed against a former ORPA guerrilla for a massacre of twenty-two campesinos. I'd like to see the AG's office go after the financial backers of the genocide and/or those who profited.
Will the trial heal the wounds of war? I doubt it. The audience's singing of a poem by terrific poet, Otto René Castillo, following the verdict probably didn't help. He was a guerrilla in the Rebel Armed Forces who was disappeared by government forces in the 1960s.
Will the verdict help strengthen the country's judicial institutions? I'm not convinced. This was a very politicized case with both sides frustrated with the process and only one side frustrated with the outcome. The international community will herald it as a sign of the much improved justice system, which I have and continue to agree with, but I don't know how the verdict will play out locally. Many on the right still believe that this was a political lynching. They've consistently fought efforts to strengthen the country's judiciary and this will probably all but end any support they still might have had, if any, for Paz y Paz and CICIG.
But none of those issues mattered [Friday night]. The Maya-Ixil population, who suffered so much during the war and who still suffer today, have finally found the justice for which they have been struggling for over three decades.
– Mike Allison is an associate professor in the Political Science Department and a member of the Latin American and Women's Studies Department at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. You can follow his Central American Politics blog here.
A powdered-chocolate Che? It must be Cuba. (Linda Feldmann)
Move over Beyoncé: Another American explores Cuba, 'people to people'
Raul leans forward, at the end of a satisfying lunch of seafood and flan, and asks me a favor.
“Please give a message to Obama,” says the deeply tan fisherman with electric eyes. The crucial message that I am to personally deliver to the leader of the free world: that the president has a kindred spirit in Cuba. “He is a mason, and I am a mason,” Raul says.
I have my doubts about the first half of the message, but no matter. Our table of visiting Americans – plus Osvaldo, our Cuban guide – has had quite the conversation with Raul Sierra Carriles, president of the local fishermen’s cooperative.
Raul told of the 350-pound marlin he caught two years ago, which took an hour to reel in with a heavy line and lots of hooks. He talked about the cigarette boats he has seen speed by as he fishes far offshore, and the time one offered to take him and his crewman to Florida. They declined.
Inevitably, the discussion turns to Ernest Hemingway, who lived nearby for 20 years and used to keep his fishing boat, the Pilar, at the marina here in Cojimar, near Havana. Raul is a bit too young to have known Hemingway, but he knew Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway’s boat captain, who died in 2002 at the age of 104. The walls of the restaurant – an old Hemingway haunt named La Terraza – are crowded with pictures of “Papa” and the old man.
Mind you, we are told, Hemingway insisted that Santiago, the main character in “The Old Man and the Sea,” was based on no one in particular. But if I ever read the book again, Fuentes’s weathered face will surely come to mind.
It is the final day of a jam-packed week in Cuba, and I am pinching myself. I’ve just had lunch with a guy who knew a guy who knew Hemingway.
But I am not here on a journalist’s visa. Nor did I sneak in illegally, in violation of the five-decade US trade embargo with the island. Like Beyoncé and Jay-Z, who traveled to Cuba just a couple of weeks before us, my mother and I are here on a “people to people” tour – since 2011, a legal way for Americans to see this long-forbidden island just a short flight from Miami to Havana. Until then, legal travel was limited to family visits and other restricted categories, such as academic, cultural, and humanitarian.
Technically, Beyoncé and Jay-Z weren’t tourists, and neither were we. Our trips were set up by tour operators licensed by the Treasury Department, and under the rules, we were to have a “full-time schedule of educational exchange activities that will result in meaningful interaction between the travelers and individuals in Cuba.” The idea is to support Cuban civil society. For the Cubans, the trips help their economy.
To many Americans, the allure of Cuba is clear: It is the largest island in the Caribbean, steeped in culture – music, literature, art, dance, food – and the storied homeland of so many Cuban-Americans who lost it all when Fidel Castro took over in 1959.
Everyone in our group wanted to see the place before the Castros depart the scene and, sooner or later, the island becomes just another stop for the cruise lines. As a former Moscow correspondent, I was expecting the Soviet Union with palm trees. I wasn’t far off.
Start with the revolutionary billboards and slogans plastered on buildings. Right there at José Martí International Airport, overlooking the parking lot, there it is – the handsome, iconic face of Che Guevara looking sternly off into the distance. More than former President Fidel Castro or his successor, brother Raul, or even national hero José Martí, Che’s visage is everywhere – even stenciled with powdered chocolate onto the foam of a cappuccino.
The condition of the buildings also suggests 1980s Moscow. In many neighborhoods, block after block of shabby, crumbling infrastructure tell visitors all they need to know about a state-run economy. At least Old Havana and other tourist areas are restored, or under renovation, thanks in part to foreign investment.
Just like in the movies, classic 1950s American cars really are ubiquitous, a source of pride for the ingenious Cubans who manage to keep them running. There are also plenty of Soviet-era cars – mostly the little boxy Ladas and Moskviches. Then there are the new cars – Hyundais, BMWs, Fiats – driven by the Cuban 1 percent.
Still, the people-to-people dimension of our trip is what gave it the juice. Any visitor can drive around and look at the monuments and visit Hemingway’s favorite bars in Old Havana – and even head to the suburb of San Francisco de Paula to visit Finca Vigia, the Hemingway residence-museum, where the Pilar is on display. We did all of that.
But in keeping with Treasury Department requirements, our tour operator, the Grand Circle Foundation, filled much of our time with Cuban people: artists and intellectuals, musicians, schoolchildren, senior citizens at a Catholic center, young “street opera” performers, a tobacco farmer, the fishermen of Cojimar. We got lectures on music and baseball, a tour of an orchid farm, and a crash course on Santeria, a widely practiced African faith. Leo, our American guide, took us to his favorite paladar, or private restaurant, in Havana – Doña Eutimia.
Sometimes we created our own “people to people” moments, such as the game of dominoes some in our group had with locals. There was also free time at night to head out to jazz clubs.
We also got out of Havana for a few days, heading west into the scenic Viñales Valley, famous for its box-shaped hills known as mogotes and tobacco farms. In the town of Viñales, we fanned out to private homes for dinner. Our hosts, Teresa and Severo, proudly told us about the bed and breakfast they run out of their house, a practice allowed by the government since 1997. Teresa showed us her appointment calendar, booked with guests from all over the world. A night at their place goes for 25 convertible pesos (about $30).
Of course, throughout the trip, we were interacting with “government approved” Cubans, who met often with American tour groups, they admitted. The phrase “people to people” itself contains echoes of the old Soviet Union, and the days of “fellow travelers” who were more than willing to put a happy gloss on the often tragic outcomes of dictatorial rule. To flesh out what I was seeing, during the trip I read the book “Havana Real” by Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez.
But even without Ms. Sánchez’s book, there’s no hiding the struggles of daily life for average Cubans, who still get their food via a ration system. Grand Circle advised us to bring gifts – not trinkets, but everyday necessities, such as toothpaste, shampoo, cleaning supplies, powdered milk, socks, shoes (didn’t have to be new), and granola bars. For the fishermen, we were to bring fishing line, leaders, hooks, and lures. For the kids, art supplies, clothing, and athletic equipment. I threw in two scuffed baseballs, and was assured they would be welcome.
Our guide Osvaldo, a former high school teacher, fielded our endless questions with good humor. We heard about his teenage son, who likes to watch “Friends” and “Vampire Diaries” and recordings of Boston Red Sox games. We heard about the high divorce rate, and the challenges of live-in mothers-in-law. We got an update on Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who was the subject of a fierce custody battle with the US back in 2000. Elian is now 19, a young communist, and a student at a Cuban military academy.
Embarrassment was a running theme. To Osvaldo, the drab Soviet-era architecture dominating some neighborhoods is an insult to Cuban aesthetic sensibilities. But nothing says former imperial overlord like the former Soviet (now Russian) Embassy, a garish, sword-shaped tower of concrete rising above Havana’s upscale Miramar neighborhood.
The moist poignant moment of our trip came at Havana’s Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. As we entered, we were assaulted by the odor of melting paint. The air conditioning was broken; the necessary part was reportedly on its way from Canada. Our guide, Wifredo, spoke of his embarrassment as we sweated our way through the exhibitions.
By the end of the museum tour, only two of us were still with Wifredo. But he was determined to show us his favorite piece. It was the word “Revolución,” constructed from dinged-up, recycled building materials – rusted metal, bathroom tile, old plaster. He didn’t need to say why it spoke to him so profoundly.
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