El Salvador's military to withdraw from 'peace zones'
• Insight Crime researches, analyzes, and investigates organized crime in the Americas. Find all of Elyssa Pachico’s work here.
El Salvador's Defense Minister confirmed that the military will withdraw from the areas designated "peace zones," where Mara gangs have pledged to end all criminal activity.
Defense Minister Atilio Benitez told La Prensa Grafica that the military will withdraw from the peace zones, as crime is expected to drop significantly in these areas, and the troops need to focus their attention on regions with higher crime rates.
Four municipalities have been inaugurated as crime-free sanctuaries so far, and another ten are expected to follow. The Defense Minister said that as a first step, the military would stop conducting joint patrols with police in the current peace zones, which include Sonsonate, Quezaltepeque, Ilopango, and Santa Tecla. [Read The Christian Science Monitor's coverage of the gang truce here.]
The military's withdrawal is not a concession granted to gangs as part of the truce, the minister added. When the peace zones were first announced, there were some reports that said police would promise to cease night-time patrols in these areas, although the government has not yet confirmed that this is the case.
Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 have committed to handing over weapons and stopping all homicides, kidnapping, and extortion in these areas, as part of the second phase of El Salvador's national gang truce.
InSight Crime Analysis
Benitez's announcement comes just as one of the designated municipalities, Ilopango, registered its first homicide since the peace zone was launched on Jan. 23. According to La Prensa Grafica, the murder victim was a former gang member. The incident heralds some of the challenges that lie ahead if crime rates do not significantly improve in the designated peace zones. It is also clear that the security forces will have to redefine their approach in the designated municipalities, given the apparent scaling back of military and police operations in these areas.
While El Salvador's nation-wide gang truce has brought a dramatic improvement in crime rates since it was first announced in March 2012, incidents involving spats between alleged gang members have continued. In one such confrontation, four were killed and another three injured in a reported firefight between rival gangs in San Miguel municipality over the weekend, reports EFE. So far it seems as though these incidents have not undermined the government's support for the gang truce, although there is a risk that if gang killings continue in the peace zones, there could be a loss of goodwill.
– Insight Crime researches, analyzes, and investigates organized crime in the Americas. Find all of Elyssa Pachico’s work here.
Guatemala's former military leader Efrain Rios Montt (1982-83) attends a pre-trial hearing at court in Guatemala City, last week. (Moises Castillo/AP)
Guatemala's Rios Montt to stand trial for genocide and crimes against humanity
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
Jose Efrain Rios Montt will be tried on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for the massacres and displacements Mayan indigenous in 1982-83 (BBC, Prensa Libre, Plaza Publica, HRW).
I think the "and" in that previous sentence is going to become an important point in this trial. While I and many others believe Rios Montt is guilty of genocide, it is a particularly difficult crime to prove in court given that it is based on intent. There are no public ideological writings of Rios Montt that clearly call for the extermination of a particular ethnic group, even if he was behind the deaths of 1,700 Mayans, and the private writings can be challenged in court.
However, the crimes against humanity, which include being the intellectual author of numerous massacres and the displacement of tens of thousands, are pretty much without dispute. Whether or not he intended to commit genocide, he certainly ordered those crimes against humanity.
I expect that secondary charges will become very important as this trial continues. The genocide charges may not stick, particularly in the heavily politicized environment of Guatemala's judicial system, but the evidence for the crimes against humanity is overwhelming. Rios Montt should spend the rest of his life in prison for those crimes. The justice will be delayed and imperfect, but it would still end three decades of impunity for Guatemala's former leader.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
Activists hold posters during a demonstration calling for the government of US President Obama to stop deportations of Mexican and Central American migrants, outside the United States embassy building in Mexico City, last week. (Edgard Garrido/Reuters)
Mixed feelings south of the border on Senate immigration plan
If anyone is an activist for the rights of Mexican migrants, it is Adriana Cortes, the head of the Community Foundation of the Bajio, a nongovernmental organization in the Mexican state of Guanajuato that focuses on local rural development.
So she hailed the new immigration proposal in the US Senate that would give special treatment to agricultural workers illegally in the US as the “just” product “of years of fighting,” Ms. Cortes says. But that doesn't mean she thinks it will necessarily be good for Mexico.
While the proposal is generally viewed as a score for Mexicans, who labor in American fields and food houses – and a blow to those seeking harsher penalties for illegal immigrants in the US – it is not entirely embraced from south of the border.
“From this side, I worry that yet again it will encourage Mexicans to try to make it to the US illegally, that they’ll think it will be easy to make a life there,” says Cortes. "But the conditions on the border aren't going to change." Cortes says she's seen great progress in rural Mexican communities in recent years as migrant workers illegally in the US returned home, injecting their communities with new skills and expertise.
RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Mexico? Take our quiz.
The Senate proposal for comprehensive immigration reform, which includes clauses to secure the border and grant paths to citizenship for millions of undocumented migrants already in the US, is expected to face stiff resistance in the States. Many of its points have been hotly debated and struck down for years as immigration reform has stalled. But it has brought hope to many in both the US and Mexico for its nod to the reliance of the American agricultural industry on undocumented immigrants.
“Individuals who have been working without legal status in the United States agricultural industry have been performing very important and difficult work to maintain America’s food supply while earning subsistence wages,” the proposal reads. “Due to the utmost importance in our nation maintaining the safety of its food supply, agricultural workers who commit to the long term stability of our nation’s agricultural industries will be treated differently than the rest of the undocumented population.”
The proposal has drawn praise from growers’ industries in the US. Tom Nassif, Western Growers President and CEO, praised senators from both parties who unveiled the plan Monday: “We have worked for years with Senators McCain and Flake on a solution for the immigration crisis facing agriculture. We applaud them for developing these principles and look forward to working together with them along with Senators Feinstein and Rubio to ensure the agriculture piece of this critical legislation addresses our industry’s concerns once and for all.”
But if it’s a boon to US agriculture, it might not bode well for agriculture south of the border.
Cortes works on local development in about a dozen communities in Guanajuato, helping rural Mexicans establish micro-enterprises in their communities so that they don’t have to emigrate to the US.
The Monitor visited one of those communities, Tamaula, at a time when US and Mexican demographers were counting “net zero” immigration to the US. In this tiny town, residents were returning home after years of working on farms and in US chicken processing plants. Armed with experience, older men and women have brought back new technologies for the fields. Young men, who once saw emigration as their only option, have been staying put, testing out the viability of a life at home, where, with opportunity, the vast majority would prefer to stay.
“There’s been much less emigration in recent years,” says Cortes. “That is what we consider success.”
Now, she says she wonders, how much that recent success will be tested.
Venezuelan police officers stand guard outside the morgue where the bodies of prisoners killed in a riot were taken in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, on Saturday. (Misael Castro/El Informador/AP)
Venezuela's fourth prison riot in two years raises questions
• David Smilde is the moderator of WOLA's blog: Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights. The views expressed are the author's own.
On Friday Jan. 25, an attempt by the Venezuelan National Guard to occupy and search the Uribana prison in Lara state resulted in 55 deaths (including one guardsman and two visiting evangelical pastors) and 88 injured.
The local newspaper in Lara state said the authorities promised that the procedure [to disarm prisoners] would take place peacefully. However, the first shots were heard at 10:05 AM, and at 10:30 the first ambulance with victims arrived at the local hospital. The firefight lasted several more hours and [by the next day] the authorities said they did not have full control of the prison.
This is the fourth occurrence of such violence in less than two years (see our posts from last July here and here). In June and July 2011 a standoff at El Rodeo prison outside of Caracas left at least 25 dead (family members say 100 are still unaccounted for). In May 2012, a standoff between prisoners and authorities in La Planta prison in Caracas left at least 9 dead. And in June 2012 a prison conflict in Merida left 17 dead. What is different in this case is simply the number of dead. That said, at least in the El Rodeo and La Planta conflicts, family members and activists suggest that many more are still unaccounted for so the number of dead in those cases cannot be considered final.
Uribana opened in 1999 as a model prison but has succumbed to the same conditions of overcrowding and prisoner’s control common in the rest of Venezuela´s penitentiary system. Indeed Uribana has been for years a show case of problems typical of prison life in the country. It has been constantly made headlines with stories of tunnels, violent conflict between pranes (prison leaders), wild prisoner’s parties, and “Roman Coliseum” style gladiator fights between prisoners.
In 2007 the Inter-American Court for Human Rights put forth a sentence regarding the Uribana Prison demanding that the Venezuelan government ensure the safety of prisoners as well as disarm the prisoner population.
In a press release, the prisoner rights NGO Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones (OVP) said “while it is true that search and seizures are necessary to ensure adequate conditions in line with international standards, in our view the procedure in the Uribana Prison was not adequately coordinated nor carried out by expert personnel. They used disproportionate force.” OVP emphasized the need for proper training of security forces assigned to prisons in order to avoid further violence. They pointed out that in a 2006 sentence the Inter-American Court demanded that the Venezuelan government minimize the use of lethal force in prisons and develop clear legal norms for it.
Criticizing media coverage
As with previous cases of prison violence, the government has pointed the finger at the media. At 3:25 pm on Friday Penitentiary Minister Iris Valera appeared on TV to read a statement saying that a procedure at Uribana aimed at disarming the prisoners had become necessary as her office had received, in the previous 48 hours, information about prisoner infighting. She said the operation was kept secret “for obvious reasons,” and that they were surprised when Globovisión and local newspaper El Impulso were publicizing the operation. She accused them of being “detonators of violence.”
Globovisión responded [on Saturday, Jan. 26] by putting a video up on its webpage, showing the director of Uribana Prison, Nelson Bracca announcing the operation the day before. A note from official news agency Agencia Venezolana de Noticias also suggested that the operation had been announced beforehand.
In 2011 Globovision was fined by the National Telecommunications Council for its coverage of violent incidents at the Rodeo prison that year. The channel had been accused of “generating distress” when one of its reporters declared that the National Guard was “massacring the prisoners.”
Investigation and follow-up
In a nationally televised address in the early morning [the day after the incident], Vice-President Nicolas Maduro announced an investigation and declared that it had been the result of a “tragic confusion,” but insisted that the process of retaking control of the prisons “will continue because prisons have to be governed by the law.” While making brief mention of media sensationalism, warning the opposition to not take advantage of the situation, and blaming capitalism for crime and insecurity, his address was actually notable for assuming responsibility in terms quite different from Varela’s declarations.
In our view, these operations use militarized procedures to address what is essentially an administrative problem, and will likely continue to cause violence. The government first needs to address issues of prison administration, professionalize the guard staff, address overcrowding by actually bringing prisoners to trial (over half are on pretrial detention), and block cell phone connections. Until they address these problems, prison mafias will continue to run lucrative crime networks and stockpile arms regardless of how many search and seizures are carried out.
Today Varela announced that the Uribana Prison would be completely evacuated with the prisoners taken to other facilities. This is a strategy long used by Venezuelan authorities – most notably when then Mayor Antonio Ledezma dynamited the Reten de Catia prison on television – as if the problem had to do with the actual prison buildings. But it too has proven ineffective time and again as it simply leads to more overcrowding and the transfer of existing problems to new spaces.
– David Smilde is the moderator of WOLA's blog: Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights.
Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, comforts victims' relatives in Santa Maria, southern Brazil, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Ms. Rousseff cut short a visit to Chile early Sunday to go to Santa Maria after a deadly nightclub fire. (Roberto Stuckert Filho/Brazil's Presidency/AP)
Could Brazil's nightclub fire spur more regional accountability? (+video)
Today marks 500 days until the kickoff of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. It's a moment that normally would bring worldwide attention to the country, also host of the 2016 summer Olympics, as it seeks to secure a spot on the international stage.
Instead, Brazil is in the spotlight for a tragic club fire that took more than 230 lives, many of the victims under the age of 20. The fire was caused by a pyrotechnic display set off by band members late Saturday evening that caused the venue to fill up, within minutes, with a cloud of deadly smoke. Many of the victims were found in the bathrooms, with reports noting they may have mistaken it for an exit or were trying to escape through back windows.
Today FIFA, soccer's governing body, was slated to unveil the official World Cup poster in Brazil, but the event was canceled “in respect for the more than 200 people who died in a tragic incident in Santa Maria, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul,” the group said in a statement.
The deadly fire comes at a time when Brazil is under increased scrutiny for its preparedness to host upcoming mega-events. And negative press is likely to abound, as it has each time something tragic has occurred in Brazil since it found out it was to play host to two back-to-back events.
But maybe the spotlight can inspire widespread accountability in a region that has been plagued by multiple tragedies that are often due to lax safety standards, poor oversight, and overcrowded conditions.
The Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria was not unique in terms of club fires and deadly riots in Latin America.
Just last week, a prison riot in Venezuela left 54 dead, and nearly double that injured. The prison, Uribana, was holding 1,400 prisoners at the time that fighting broke out, according to Bloomberg, but is only designed to hold 850 prisoners. It follows another tragic incident in a jail in Venezuela in August 2012, when fighting left 20 dead, something Human Rights Watch said underscores the rampant overcrowding in Venezuelan prisons.
And tragic events reach beyond South America. A year ago, a fire broke out in a prison in Honduras and killed 350 people. And in June 2009 in Mexico, 49 victims, ages 3 and under were trapped inside a day-care facility in the city of Hermosillo in the northwest of the country.
Fires in nightclubs have been particularly common around the globe. The Associated Press looks at some of the most infamous tragedies in recent years including:
- A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out in December 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152.
- A December 2004 fire killed 194 people at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after a flare ignited ceiling foam.
- A nightclub fire in the US state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling.
As is the case in the wake of tragedies anywhere, politicians and safety inspectors have promised to investigate any wrongdoing in Brazil. The club owner and two band members have been arrested, according to CNN. Some reports note security guards may have been blocking some exits. Activists and safety officials repeatedly promise to improve overcrowding in prisons, and corruption that allows venues – from day-care facilities to drug rehabilitation centers to nightclubs – to get away with subpar standards that too often result in fatalities. Could this event push the sentiment that follows events of this sort to action? Will Brazil, which says it's fighting against a culture of impunity as it modernizes and becomes a global player, take a new lead?
Citizens will await impatiently to see justice served. In the meantime, there are precautions that individuals can take on their own, as John Barylick, author of "Killer Show" about the Rhode Island fire, lays out helpfully here.
The advice includes:
• Be observant. Is the concert venue rundown or well-maintained? Does the staff look well-trained?
• As you proceed to your seat, observe how long the process takes. Could you reverse it in a hurry? Do you pass through pinch points? Is furniture in the way?
• Once seated, take note of the nearest exit. (In an emergency, most people try to exit by the door they entered, which is usually not the closest, and is always overcrowded.) Then, share the location of that nearest exit with your entire party. Agree that at the first sign of trouble, you will all proceed to it without delay.
• Once the show begins, remain vigilant. If you think there's a problem, LEAVE IMMEDIATELY. Do not stay to "get your money's worth" despite concerns about safety. Do not remain to locate that jacket or bag you placed somewhere. No concert is worth your life. Better to read about an incident the next day than be counted as one of its statistics.
Trickling down: Latin America's glacier problem
• A version of this post ran on the author's blog, bloggingsbyboz.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
I'm fairly certain there are no glaciers in Brazil, but that doesn't mean South America's largest country doesn't have a melting glacier problem on its hands.
A new study shows glaciers in the tropical Andes have shrunk 30-50 percent in the last four decades. Glaciers provide a vital water source to parts of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. In fact, the Amazon starts with glacier water in Peru, though by the time it gets to Brazil the Amazon has plenty of other water sources to keep it going. Additionally, Brazil is investing in hydropower in Peru and that power source is likely to be impacted significantly by reduced glaciers. That means higher electricity costs for Peru and less chance that Peru will be able to export energy to Brazil.
The bigger problems for Brazil will be political. For Peru and Bolivia in particular, the loss of glaciers is likely to dry up drinking water supplies and harm agricultural output, which can affect political stability. For a Brazilian hegemon hoping to lead the continent, that sort of systemic political risk becomes their problem rather quickly. A crisis in either country will impact Brazil's trade, transportation lanes, migration and border security.
It's not as if Brazil doesn't have its own environmental challenges, but part of its leadership role means it needs to start planning for these sorts of challenges in other countries that will affect all of South America. That means that a country known best for its tropical forests and beaches and without a mountain over 10,000 feet must add melting glaciers to the list of problems it faces.
– James Bosworth is a freelance writer and consultant who runs Bloggings by Boz.
In this photo, a new smartphone is introduced during the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, last week. A smartphone app in Colombia uses crowdsourcing to document and fight child labor, where an estimated 1.5 million children between the ages of five and 17 work in such situations for more than 15 hours a week. (Jae C. Hong/AP)
Stopping child labor: There's an app for that
Kids at stoplights offering to wipe a windshield for a few coins, or little ones hawking goods at produce markets: In much of the developing world, it’s common to see children as young as eight or nine hard at work.
And it’s no different in Colombia, where an estimated 1.5 million children between the ages of five and 17 work in such situations for more than 15 hours a week. Nearly nine percent of kids aged five to 14 work, a 2011 government census found. Though the government was able to document the scope of child labor in Colombia, finding lasting solutions to end the practice, which can keep kids out of school and place them in dangerous work environments, has proved challenging around the globe.
But in Colombia, a new smart phone crowdsourcing application is helping authorities and researchers tackle the problem. Whenever users see a child working they can take a picture with their phone and log the location, which the app sends to the country’s child welfare agency.
The app, available for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry phones, is called “Yo digo: Aquí Estoy” (I say: I’m here), and it also goes by the name KidRescue.
“It’s a tool that puts the power to report child labor in the palm of anyone’s hands,” says Mauricio García, of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF), which receives the information, including photos, global positioning system coordinates, and other details, sent by users.
Since ICBF started using the information gathered by the app last February, about 3,800 reports have been filed, and not all of them from cell phone users in Colombia.
“We’ve gotten reports from Asia and Africa, because anyone can download the app from their phone’s app store,” says Claudia Aparicio, head of Fundación Telefónica in Colombia, the organization that spearheaded the crowdsourcing project as part of a broader campaign to fight child labor in Latin America. The organization maps all reports but only in Colombia is action taken at this time.
Colombia is not, by far, the worst country in the region in terms of child labor. Bolivia for example has rates as high as 40 percent. “But Colombia does have a problem and the government agencies here are willing to try different things,” Ms. Aparicio says.
The information is used principally to identify regions or parts of towns that are problem areas, and the times and periods when child labor is most common.
“We’ve discovered that most reports are filed in the afternoons and evening and during school breaks,” says Aparicio.
ICBF takes the detailed information sent by users and sends it to agency social workers and psychologists on the ground who try to verify the information. Once a child laborer is identified, officials verify whether the child is enrolled in school, and may call the parents and children in for counseling.
Children are often expected to work in family businesses that can range from informal trash collection to small manufacturing firms. While often child labor is associated with extreme poverty, it’s not always about putting food on the table. “Many people have the false notion that making a child work builds character and instills a sense of responsibility,” says Mr. García, adding that many parents do not realize that they may be limiting their children’s childhood.
The last resort is taking the children from the custody of their parents, says García. But agency intervention is often unwelcome. García recalls one effort to verify a report sent via the app that showed children working in a produce market.
“The workers there refused to let the officials in because often people see us as the child snatchers.”
Still, the app has helped get more than 60 children across the country off the streets and back in school, according to Aparicio. She says the Colombia experience is a pilot and eventually the app may be used by welfare agencies around the globe to help the estimated 150 million child workers worldwide reclaim their childhood.
Relatives of those who died in the 2010 earthquake walk in single file to place a cross on a hilltop to remember those who died in the devastating earthquake three years ago, prior to a memorial service at Titanyen, a mass burial site north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Saturday. (Dieu Nalio Chery/AP)
Haitians heap the nation's burdens on a half-ton cross
Thousands of people dancing in the streets of Haiti’s capital is not that unusual, especially leading up to Carnival. But two days after a somber gathering commemorating the third anniversary of the 2010 earthquake, last night's bumping, grinding, dancing, and singing was far more organic and, some say, purely Haitian than the minimal weekend memorial.
Last night's crowd was gathered to greet a Haitian pied piper parade of sorts, for all ages, sizes, and strengths. From the southern tip of the country to the far northeast, some 435 miles, Haitians are relaying a half-ton piece of wood roped together like a cross.
The locals who dreamed up this quirky initiative refer to it as Kita Nago. Nago is a dance. Kita doesn’t mean anything, but the Creole phrase yon pa kita, yon pa nago means, loosely translated, "I’m not going anywhere, I’m staying right here."
The “why” behind this unlikely phenomenon seems to be a parenthesis. The movement has taken on a life of its own: It's a Haitian pilgrimage of sorts, but doesn't quite fit into one religious category. As the saying goes in Haiti, the country is "90 percent catholic, 100 percent vodou," and that was before the arrival of the evangelicals. In fact, Kita Nago organizer Anelus Jules says the wood by itself means nothing.
“It’s the energy it represents, the unity, the sacrifice, and determination for the country to work together – that’s the meaning,” Mr. Jules says.
By the time Kita Nago arrived in the capital last night the crowd had swelled to thousands.
Heavily armed security pushed back the people who came out to welcome the group, whose trajectory has spread by word of mouth, the Internet, and Facebook, where pictures are constantly updated. The cross carriers placed the wood down for the night in front of the famous statue of le Marron Inconnu. The sculpture depicts a runaway slave blowing a conch shell symbolizing his freedom and sits across from the grounds of the National Palace, which was leveled during the January 2010 quake. The distinctive white building's rubble was recently removed from the site.
A man in a grey shirt with RUN on the front and the back agrees that the cross represents Haiti. He’s walked more than 25 miles so far and intends to go all the way to the last stop in Ouanaminthe.
“It’s symbolic,” says Juno Francoise. “We Haitians have to create our own destiny. This is bringing us together to be able to do that.”
So many people standing shoulder to shoulder was reminiscent of the unity felt in the hours and days after the earthquake, a time when people worked together to rescue a neighbor – and a country – from the implosion of some 10 million cubic meters of rubble. Three years later, there’s a sense that the unity itself has crumbled. Lack of progress in reconstruction, political jockeying, and frustration with aid distribution has contributed to exhaustion and a tendency to focus on one’s own needs.
But maybe, just maybe, Kita Nago will be the kindle that reignites that flame of togetherness.
A man holding a framed image of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez and other parishioner file out of the Cathedral after attending a Mass to pray for the recovery of Chávez, in Havana, Cuba, Saturday. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)
Venezuela cracks down on TV station questioning Chávez move
• David Smilde is the moderator of WOLA's blog: Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights. The views expressed are the author's own.
After National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello publicly complained about a series of 90 second television spots produced and aired by [opposition] news channel Globovisión, the government media controlling agency Consejo Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (CONATEL) ordered Globovisión to stop airing them. It also announced it was opening a new administrative procedure (the eighth opened by the agency against Globovision), that could result in a fine of up to 10 percent of the channel’s gross earnings during the past fiscal year.
According to CONATEL General Director Pedro Maldonado, the timing of the opening of administrative procedure and Cabello’s complaint was a mere coincidence, since CONATEL had already been monitoring the spots during the months of December and January. CONATEL had concluded that the channel was violating article 27 of the Social Responsibility Law which prohibits information that “incites or promotes intolerance for religious or political reasons, for gender differences, racism or xenophobia…generates anguish in the population…fails to recognize legitimately constituted authorities… or promotes the violation of the legal order.”
The four spots (watch them here) present the full text of article 231 of the Constitution together with images of Nicolas Maduro, Cilia Flores, and President Hugo Chávez arguing that the Constitution should be respected at all costs. Article 231 establishes that the elected President will take possession of his post on Jan. 10 of the first year of his presidential period with a public oath to the National Assembly, or if that is not possible, to the Supreme Judicial Tribunal (TSJ). The TSJ recently interpreted this article saying it was not applicable in the current situation since President Chávez was not an elected but a reelected president, meaning there was a continuity of administration.
The day after CONATEL's announcment, the Communication and Information Ministry (MINCI), sent Globovisión a new clip related to Article 231 with orders to air it. Globovisión refused to do so arguing that CONATEL had ordered them not to transmit the previous clip “or any clip of similar content.” According to Globovisión’s description of the MINCI clip, Article 231 appears superimposed over images of a government sympathizer declaring that she voted for Chávez and wants him to finish his term.
On Thursday, Jan. 10 the Alianza por la Libertad de Expresión emited a press release rejecting CONATEL’s actions saying “International human rights instruments and the National Constitution establish the right to free and plural expression and information, which includes the freedom to search for, receive, and spread information and ideas of all kinds.” They called on CONATEL to drop its case. International non-governmental organizations Human Rights Watch and Reporters without Borders also criticized CONATEL’s actions.
– David Smilde is the moderator of WOLA's blog: Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights.
One of the dogs that was caught near the site of four fatal maulings sits inside a cage at a city dog pound in Mexico City, Wednesday, Jan. 9. Authorities have captured dozens of dogs near the scene of the attacks in the capital's poor Iztapalapa district. (Dario Lopez-Mills/AP)
Attack of the wild dogs in Mexico City?
Already mired in drug violence that has taken an average of 10,000 lives per year in the past six years, Mexico is now contending with another menace: wild dogs.
An alleged rash of deadly canine attacks in Mexico City has appalled residents here – even as doubt grows that the five fatalities announced in recent days were at the jaws of dogs – and provoked a hot debate about pet culture in the country.
The three separate, suspected dog attacks have taken place in a wooded park in Mexico City’s southern Iztapalapa borough, according to police reports. Authorities say the bodies were found mutilated by dog bites.
Among the victims are two 15-year-old girls, a 16-year-old boy, and a 26-year-old mother along with her 8-month-old son. All were found in the urban national park known as “Star Hill,” a popular spot for morning joggers, weekend hikers, and young couples looking for privacy.
RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Mexico? Take our quiz.
But swaths of the park are rarely frequented and largely abandoned by authorities. According to news reports, packs of dogs, perhaps left by owners who tired of their pets, live in caves around the hill.
Police rounded up more than 50 dogs and were testing their stomach contents. Twenty-five have since been released, according to news reports.
The news has provoked disbelief among locals, many of whom are strongly skeptical of official reports, and anger from people who live in the area. Authorities only began rounding up dogs after a Jan. 5 incident, although the first victim was reportedly found Dec. 17 and two more were discovered Dec. 29.
“At first, I just didn’t believe it,” says David Bandala, a Mexico City resident, while walking his dog on a recent day. “A gang of assassin dogs? There seem to be pieces missing from the puzzle.”
Although investigations into the attacks are ongoing, relatives of those killed are asking for a more thorough inquiry, while dog advocates have decried the roundup as inhumane.
Judging by the number of pet dogs in the city, which the city health department estimates at about 1.2 million, it might be fair to say that Mexicans love dogs. But the downside of the city’s pet culture – including barking dogs left on their rooftops at night and owners who fail to pick up after their dogs in parks – has been thrown in the spotlight. At worst, dogs are often abandoned.
“Even people who buy fancy-breed dogs get bored after a year and they leave them in the street, where they become wild,” says Mr. Bandala.
City sidewalks are often spotted with feces, even though prominent signs exhort better behavior, and many more owners never walk their dogs at all. It’s not unusual to see hungry-looking dogs on rooftops and balconies, permanently installed there to scare away would-be robbers.
There are thousands more strays. Sterilization is not especially common, although the city this week highlighted its free sterilization clinics.
Edilberto Alvarez works for the city as a park caretaker and laments that, mornings, the park is littered with droppings. Mr. Alvarez says he and his wife clean up regularly after their own two dogs at home. But he admits that he owns them for protection, and they never come down off the roof.
“We never take them for a walk,” he says. “We just keep them locked up.”
Previous
Become part of the Monitor community