Mar 292009
Apologies for the silence during the latter part of the week. We were accompanying more visitors from Colombia, who were here for Monday’s hearings in the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.
- At the hearings, the head of the “Justice and Peace” unit in Colombia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office (FiscalÃa) declared that some of the paramilitary leaders extradited to the United States would participate in as many as 60 confessions, via closed-circuit television, over the next few months.
- The Miami Herald ran a front-page story by Steven Dudley about the “Justice and Peace” testimony of Raúl Hasbún, a paramilitary leader in the Urabá banana-producing region who was the key link between the paramilitaries and banana exporting companies like Chiquita Brands.
- The Washington Post ran a piece by Juan Forero about paramilitary-linked companies’ theft of land from Afro-Colombian communities, and the government’s halting efforts to return some of the land.
- Highly recommended is “Shoveling Water,” a 25-minute video from Witness for Peace explaining why the drug war has failed in Colombia. The footage and interviews are stunning.
- Colombia’s Constitutional Court has served as an important check on executive power, and has issued important decisions limiting the scope of security statutes, the Justice and Peace law, and laws that would have limited small farmers’ land rights. It will also rule over any attempt later this year to change Colombia’s constitution to allow President Ãlvaro Uribe to run for a third term. As six justices’ terms come to an end, President Uribe has nominated a list of mostly unknown lawyers to replace them, Cambio magazine explains. The effect on checks and balances in Colombia’s state is expected to be enormous.
- The Colombian newsmagazine Semana presents a jarringly conflicting range of views on the state of the FARC, a year after the March 26, 2008 death of the group’s maximum leader “Manuel Marulanda.”
- The FARC were certainly more active during this anniversary week. There was fierce combat in Guaviare department, and the guerrillas enforced “armed stoppages” (paros armados) that halted nearly all road traffic in the departments of Arauca and Putumayo. The author of the “Colombian Journey” blog, who lives in Arauca, gives an account of life in the town of Arauquita during the armed stoppage.
- President Ãlvaro Uribe’s closest advisor, José Obdulio Gaviria, recently left his post and is now writing columns for Colombia’s El Tiempo newspaper. His latest, alleging that the FARC is quietly manipulating the Democratic Party, is so full of paranoid inaccuracies that it would be an amusing parody of extremist ravings – were it not written by someone so close to the country’s president.
“A tiny sector of the Democratic Party defends the points of view of the Latin American extreme left, and defines the FARC as an ‘armed opposition’ party. The FARC (through this tiny sector) influences Democratic policy against Colombia. They have conditioned and limited U.S. cooperation – which they call aid – to, they say, prevent our soldiers from repressing, displacing, and plundering the people.”
- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent two days in Mexico this week. Links to her public statements during the trip are here, and links to coverage of the trip are here.
- Bolivian President Evo Morales, incensed about the effect that a maritime border negotiation between Peru and Chile might have on Bolivia’s hope of someday recovering access to the Pacific, once again called Peruvian President Alán GarcÃa “fat.”
- Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva absolved brown-eyed people of responsibility for the world financial crisis: “It is a crisis caused and encouraged by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything, but are now showing that they know nothing.”
- “He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he’s a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality.” – Hugo Chávez, talking about Barack Obama last weekend.
March 29th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Any word on these six obscure lawyers that have been nominated to the constitutional court?
March 29th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
In seeing the video Shoveling Water, It had not occurred to me that fumigations might be another strategy for raising coca price on the streets, or so the reporter seems to hint. Whether policy makers in the sates and consequently in banana countries, are dead morons or they are well aware of the nefarious market they are sustaining and motivating. Both prospects are repugnant.
March 30th, 2009 at 6:25 am
Did anyone read about the “biggest drug bust in 10 years” in Bolivia?
Government Minister Alfredo Rada…in remarks broadcast today on La Paz-based Radio Fides, said the anti-drug police force, known as the FELCN, discovered a 400-hectare (988-acre) property in Santa Cruz province that was being used as a “factory of drugs, of cocaine.†He said the FELCN had already dismantled the factory.
“Its magnitude and characteristics would have to make it the biggest strike to narcotics trafficking, not only under President Evo Morales, but in the past decade,†Rada said.
…
The FELCN arrested two Colombian citizens and a Bolivian as part of the operation, Rada said.
The factory was discovered in nearly the same location where two days earlier Bolivian agents forced a Paraguay-bound plane to land and found 340 kilos of cocaine aboard, Rada said, speaking later in the day on state radio Patria Nueva.
…
Morales expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration on Nov. 3, accusing the agency of trying to undermine his government. The U.S. government has denied the allegations.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aVvnojvS5hbc&refer=latin_america
Does no on else find it strange that 4 months after the DEA was expelled, this happens?
As Otto over at Inka Cola News puts it:
“Strange how these people suddenly get put out of business after the DEA leaves, isn’t it? Beats me how the world’s premier drugs squad with all that technology and manpower and funding and stuff could miss a 1,000 hectare (sic – should read ‘acres’-DS) cocaine factory all this time, then the small brown people are put in charge and the biggest freakin’ bust in a decade happens.
Unless……………..”
http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2009/03/bolivia-thisll-confuse-em.html
March 30th, 2009 at 11:04 am
not just that Jaime, but look, the drug warrior Biden’s daughter snorting cocaine
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2009/03/world-exclusive-vice-president-biden%E2%80%99s-daughter-caught-cocaine-scandal
straight out of Traffic…… karma is a bitch
March 30th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
“It is a crisis caused and encouraged by the irrational behaviour of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything, but are now showing that they know nothing.â€
I’m sorry.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Para dejar constancia, a quien le importe, de lo siguiente:
-As six justices’ terms come to an end, President Uribe has nominated a list of mostly unknown lawyers to replace them, Cambio magazine explains. The effect on checks and balances in Colombia’s state is expected to be enormous.
Esto es inexacto y da a entender que se van a cambiar seis (6) de los magistrados cuando la realidad es que se van a cambiar (y se cambiaron) dos (2). Otra cosa es que los candidatos en las ternas para esos dos cupos hayan sido seis.
Cito del mismo enlace a la revista semana publicado arriba:
-En contados dÃas el Congreso elegirá dos nuevos magistrados de la Corte Constitucional y le dará fin asà al proceso de relevo de seis de sus nueve miembros.
March 30th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Mr. Bustos, let me explain the law of supply and demand. Static demand combined with decreasing supply leads to higher prices. The price of cocaine on the streets of the U.S. is up because there is less cocaine getting into the market. This is due to increased seizures in Colombia and transit zone countries, turmoil among Mexican drug cartels and coca eradication. This is what is supposed to happen. Don’t be such a simpleton.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:15 am
Well, I won’t argue with Evo about President Garcia’s size.
I also don’t think José Obdulio Gaviria isn’t paranoid in the least.