Salvadorans head to the polls once again

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

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

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

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

Lawyers are disappearing in Mexico and Central America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

University of Scranton recognizes Sr. Peggy with Arrupe Award

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congrats Sr. Peggy!

Democrats play hardball with Central America aid request

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CICIG doesn't make life uncomfortable enough in Guatemala

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

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

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

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

Number of poor in Latin America rose between 2013 and 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go check out the When We Were Young project.

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

What happened to these children after the wars ended?

The stories are powerful and the multimedia presentation is intriguing.

 

Honduras: A Government Failing to Protect its People

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

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

Don't miss the entire series:

Deported Back to Limbo: the Forced Exodus from Mexico

Honduras’ Military: On the Streets and in the Government

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

The Key to Everything: Investigations and Justice in Honduras

San Pedro Sula: Nearly a War Zone

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

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

Kino Border Initiative's El Comedor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he was my conclusion:

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

Go read the rest of my answer.

Don't call them the Falklands!

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

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

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

El Salvador's gang ceasefire is bad news for police

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing?

Take a read - what are your thoughts?

Nicaraguans demand action over chronic kidney disease

Photograph: Oswaldo Rivas /Reuters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Immigration policy halted by Texas judge

NYT

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

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

...

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

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

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

US maintains restrictions on military aid to Guatemala

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

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

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

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

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

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

Washington Post endorses Obama aid request for Central America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally,

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

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

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

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

702,000 children between seven and 17 years old work in Guatemala

Some stats on child labor in Guatemala:

A total of 702,000 children between seven and 17 years old work in Guatemala, mostly indigenous children from rural areas...

Out of the total, 427,000 are indigenous children, of whom 336,000 live in countryside areas, while 274,846 are from mixed ethnic groups...

One percent of working children, work at night, while a similar percent work from afternoon to evening....

Most working children in Guatemala (60.5 percent) have unpaid jobs, 19.1 percent work for private individuals, 13.6 percent are laborers, 2.9 percent carry out housework and only 1.1 percent work for themselves, while 2.8 percent refused to answer this question.

97.2 percent of respondents ruled out having access to social insurance, while 11.5 percent said they worked exposed to toxic substances.

See also this article from Alberto Arce on Poverty, violence push Honduran children to work from December.

Police kidnap Honduran businessman

Yesterday, I linked to a story on Twitter about how four policemen were arrested shortly after they had kidnapped a businessman in Honduras. The police belonged to the Military Police, a unit created when Juan Orlando Hernandez was a member of Congress in 2013. The police were seeking $6,000 for their victim. I commented that some things never change. With all the recent reforms and specially vetted units, police are frequently still the perpetrators of violence in Central America.

However, I was thinking more historically than today. In The Protection Racket State that I blogged about a few weeks ago, there are several stories about El Salvador's security forces kidnapping wealthy businessmen during the 1970s and 1980s and then demanding ransom. Many security officials got rich at the same time that the guerrilla cells that would eventually form the FMLN were kidnapping the same group of people to build their war chest. While kidnappings and killings of wealthy businessmen in the 1970s and 1980s were committed by the FMLN, so too were many committed by the military and police which often made it difficult to actually determine who had been responsible for what.

The protection racket comes in to play because the military then played up on citizens' fears of kidnapping and violence to justify their continued rule. Things were so bad that they tried to convince Salvadorans (and the US) that they needed them. They would not only demand political support from the elites that they were kidnapping and protecting, but financial support as well. We'll try our best to prevent your kidnapping if you pay extra - just a little extortion, a protection racket.

The military/police have been kidnapping elites and businessmen for at least 40 years. When, in the case of El Salvador, we talk about an elite-military alliance that controlled the country from 1932 on, we are largely correct. However, it was not absolute. Each had its own preferences that caused them to work against the interests of the other. ARENA was formed because they could no longer rely upon the military to protect elite interests and because of the soft reforms that the US was pushing to transform the country in order to prevent and win the war. Part of the divide between some elites and military in the late 1980s was due to the fact that military/police kidnappings of civilian elites had increased.

I imagine that some of the police and security firms are making out pretty nicely from the insecurity in the region, and many are even contributing to it.

I spend way too much time reading about El Salvador and Guatemala

A few links to El Salvador and Guatemala this afternoon:

Educating on the border – building solidarity in the Guatemala-Mexico border region

Stopping the Next Border Surge

El Salvador to launch investigation into Swiss HSBC accounts

Power to the People, But Really: Participatory Democracy in El Salvador

Congressman Grijalva Speaks Out For Public Control Of Water In El Salvador

OAS Deploys Electoral Observation Mission to El Salvador

El Salvador’s Upcoming Election: A Window for Reform?

Voting in 2015 elections

ARENA y FMLN llegan a las urnas con un pulso parejo

Unholy Alliances: How Employers in El Salvador’s Garment Industry Collude with a Corrupt Labor Federation, Company Unions and Violent Gangs to Suppress Workers’ Rights

Rural Towns in El Salvador Join “War Tourism” Trend

How Forensic Analysis May Bring Closure To Guatemalan Families In The D.C. Area.

FAFG

Thousands of Central Americans fled to the United States during the region's civil wars and shortly after their conclusions. While some of those who sought a new life in the US have been war criminals, most were simply looking to escape the violence and poverty of their countries. In a report for American University Radio, Armando Trull investigates How Forensic Analysis May Bring Closure To Guatemalan Families In The D.C. Area.

Over the decades, the Foundation DNA database has grown as more remains are exhumed and so has the database of survivors looking for their “seres queridos desaparecidos” — disappeared loved ones.

"We have been able to gain their trust by respecting their customs, by respecting the land, by respecting the bones," Peccerelli says.

It's through that respect and trust that the FAFG has identified nearly 1,600 remains. Peccerelli says the remains are returned to relatives for a dignified burial. And when there is some bit of clothing along with the bones, the impact on the survivors can be visceral.

"This T-shirt, this pair of pants, this belt that was made by the wife for her husband actually means that this is the person that was missing, this is their loved one, this is the person that they've been dreaming about and looking for over three decades," Peccerelli says.

Peccerelli says the Foundation will expand its services to the United States.

“There are many people in the United States — over 1.5 million Guatemalans that are there because of the conflict, that have people that are missing, that were disappeared, that were forcibly disappeared," he says.

Outreach efforts to Guatemalan immigrants have begun, first in Los Angeles and now in the metro D.C. area.

“To let them know that there is something they can do, that there is now an organization that is willing to take their DNA samples and their stories and search for the bodies," Peccerelli says.

The article includes audio and video. You can also watch Fredy Peccerelli speak about his forensic work in this video.

Last year, PRI put together a story on A Push is on in the US to reunite families torn apart by El Salvador's Civil War.

Unlikely progress for Ríos Montt's prosecution in Guatemala

I spoke with Stephanie van den Berg of the International Justice Tribune last week about developments in the Efrain Rios Montt case in Guatemala. Unfortunately, the write-up of my interview with Stephanie is behind a pay wall in Unlikely progress for Ríos Montt's prosecution in Guatemala.

The trial of ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt [IJT-153] resumed last month in Guatemala after his 2013 genocide conviction was annulled on a technicality. The trial was set back to where it left off on 19 April 2013, when the tribunal had heard all prosecution witnesses but still needed to hear some defence witnesses and closing arguments. But just a few days after restarting, the trial ground to a halt again and was quickly suspended with no outlook on when it could resume.

Then you can read the positions from the New York Times Editorial Board and Adriana Beltrán and Marc Hanson of WOLA on US assistance to Central America. Here was my take with U.S. Can’t Solve Central America’s Problems With Money Alone for the World Politics Review.

Here's my question: Is asking for $1 billion for FY 2016 better than asking for $100 million in additional funding for each of the next ten years? (Obviously, the Congress isn't capable of committing to that but while we have to think in the billions, we also have to think in the years, decades.)

Now, maybe the US is thinking the best of both world's - a $1 billion dollar investment in year one followed by significant increases in assistance in following years. That would seem to make sense. Perhaps in 2-3 years, Honduras and Guatemala could make progress to the extent that they would qualify for hundred million dollar plus Millennium Challenge Corporations Compacts.

Did Bill O’Reilly Cover Up a War Crime in El Salvador?

Greg Grandin asks Did Bill O’Reilly Cover Up a War Crime in El Salvador? There is probably something more to the story but something just seems lacking here. Bill O'Reilly traveled to El Salvador in the first half of 1982 and reported on a massacre that allegedly took place in Meanguera, in the department of Mozote. The massacre ("wipe out a small village") was perhaps carried out by the FMLN.

However, the problem is that O'Reilly did not investigate or report on the massacre that the Atlacatl Battalion did carry out in El Mozote, Morazan a few months earlier. It's doesn't look good for O'Reilly but covering up seems a bit too strong. He reported on one alleged massacre in Meanguera and should have reported on another massacre.

A few other issues from the article. El Mozote wasn't a liberation theology town. From all reports, the towns people were mainly evangelicals. They tried to remain neutral during the war. It is an important detail because Mark Danner's book is subtitled "A Parable of the Cold War." There was no neutrality in El Salvador's civil war or in Latin America's Cold War - that is one of the lessons to the book. The lesson is not that liberation theology folks would be killed. That might be another lesson but not as part of El Mozote.

The other issue is that there were people in the US Embassy (I can't remember off the top of my head but I believe it was Ambassador Hinton, maybe even Greentree) who pushed back against State Department officials in the US. Reagan administration officials wanted to say that there was no massacre at El Mozote but Embassy officials in El Salvador would no go that far. They would say that they did not have any evidence of a massacre. Technically, they were right because no one actually made it to El Salvador to investigate. After speaking with refugees from the area, however, they were convinced that something bad had happened. They didn't exactly know what that "bad was but they had an inkling that what had been reported was accurate. They avoided doing things, however, that would have revealed the truth to them.

Those are important historical details to El Mozote. No matter the reason, however, O'Reilly traveling to El Salvador in early 1982 and only reporting on an alleged FMLN massacre would be a gross violation of journalistic standards. I don't know whether he mentioned El Mozote in any of his other reporting at the time.

Alfonso Portillo's triumphant return to Guatemala?

As Alfonso Portillo prepares for his release from a US prison after serving time for conspiracy to launder $2.5 million in donations from Taiwan, some Guatemalans are looking to the former president to propel them to the presidency. 

Hard as it is to believe, Portillo is seen as an asset to those with hopes of winning September's national elections. That paves the way for his return to politics via the vice presidency. Here's Nic Wirtz's take in Americas Quarterly:

Portillo is, at the very least, a polemic figure in Guatemalan politics. In a survey of former presidents by national magazine Contrapoder, Portillo’s government (2000-2004) was named the best by 45.5 percent of those asked. The most recent poll, from July 2014 by Borge y Asociados, saw 52 percent of participants claim that Portillo was the best president of the democratic period, and 51 percent said they would vote for him again. However, the results were markedly different in 2002—during Portillo’s government—when the same company found that 57 percent of respondents said that Portillo’s time in power was the most corrupt in Guatemalan history.

“Why do people support Portillo? On economic policy, and I do not mean radical or socialist policies, but simply with the rules, market liberalization, competition, no tax privileges,”Gutiérrez told Nómada last week. “That caused a huge relief that allowed people access to cheaper products. He [Portillo] represents the myth of Robin Hood, the hero who took from the rich to give to the poor.”

Whether Portillo is a changed man looking for redemption or is merely seizing the opportunity to return to office is immaterial. His very presence changes the political climate and will force opponents and voters to make tough decisions in September’s election.

As of right now, Alejandro Sinibaldi of the Patriotic Party and Manuel Baldizon of the LIDER party are the front runners for the presidency.

Be sure to get your ropa interior once again.

Trans Sex Worker Who Transformed A Gang-Controlled Prison

J. Lester Feder and Nicola Chávez Courtright report on Karla Avelar, [Meet] The Trans Sex Worker Who Transformed A Gang-Controlled Prison.

Avelar was so at ease inside the prison that it is hard to imagine that she was regularly raped and tortured while she was incarcerated there between 1996 and 2000. Avelar, now 37 years old, was one of the many trans sex workers from San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, who has done time there over the past several decades. The ones who passed through there around the same time as Avelar report being abused by guards and pressed into a kind of slavery by the gangs who controlled the prison.

Those days are over, thanks in part to a legal complaint Avelar herself filed after her release. The women who rubbed her back on her recent visit, just before Christmas, are among the roughly 50 inmates who live in Sector 2, a special unit that houses trans women along with a handful of gay men. They still interact with the other prisoners in some common areas — several of them have boyfriends in the men’s unit, and the prison supplies them with condoms — but they live and sleep in a part of the prison that is walled off from the men’s unit for their safety.

Like many stories out of El Salvador, this one is both horrifying and inspiring.

Romero's canonization held up by politics but...

Recognizing El Salvador's Oscar Romero a martyr and a saint has been held up because of politics, but don't blame Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict. Super Martyrio is the go to source for unofficial details on Archbishop Romero.

Super Martyrio has learned details of the cause that corroborate the legend of a cause of beatification blocked by Vatican authorities on suspicion of doctrinal irregularities and ideological exploitation by the Left. But, according to the information, the legend is wrong in supposing Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI had “blocked” the cause; in fact, the obstacles came from the Vatican Curia, and Pope Wojtyla in particular gave his support to counter their opposition, while Benedict remained neutral when he was part of the Curia and was favorably inclined as Pope. Although some parts of the narrative had already been aired, dramatic new details illustrate the diversion and almost total obstruction of the cause.

Conservative bishops from Latin America are to "blame" for obstacles that have hindered the canonization of Romero. Pope Francis and his two predecessors were on board.

There are new details emerging but it looks like everything is still consistent with what I wrote in 2010 on the 30th anniversary of Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination.

Reaganites Should Be Embarrassed

When discussing US policy towards El Salvador during the Cold War, it is often important to break down the actions/motivations/intentions of the US Embassy staff and ambassador, CIA personnel and station chief, and Defense attaches operating in El Salvador. They were not always on the same page and often competed against each other to gain the ears of officials in Washington. 

In Washington, we often have to sort through what was going on in the executive and the legislative branches, Republican and Democratic parties. We also have to look at what was going on in the State Department, USAID, and Defense Department. And we have to understand how they all cooperated with each other and, perhaps more frequently, how they operated against each other. Then there's trying to figure out what they said publicly versus what they thought and did privately. It's really not that simple.

However, when it comes to Roberto D'Aubuisson, some people just flat out embarrassed themselves, the US government, and the US people. 

Joel Gillon has a good one in The New Republic with Pope Francis Just Declared This Murdered Archbishop a Martyr. Reaganites Should Be Embarrassed.

After D'Aubuisson entered politics in 1982, then-U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Deane R. Hinton called D’Aubuisson a “fine young Democrat,” later declaring him “an intelligent man” and a “dynamic leader.” Senator Jesse Helms was an unabashed supporter, suggesting that D’Aubuission’s credentials as “free enterprise man” who was “deeply religious” were more important than accusations that he murdered civilians. Elliott Abrams, then assistant secretary of state for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, told a congressional committee that the former army major was not an extremist because one would have to be “involved in murder” to earn that designation.

Members of the Religious Right also offered their support to D’Aubuisson in the 1980s. Pat Robertson claimed to have gone to dinner with D’Aubuisson, calling him a “very nice fellow.” D’Aubuisson was honored at a 1984 dinner at the Capitol Hill Club by a number of conservative groups, including the Moral Majority, the National Pro-Life Action Committee, and The Washington Times. He was presented a plaque for his “continuing efforts for freedom.” On another visit to Washington, D’Aubuisson was chaperoned around the city by Young Americans for Freedom.

They should but I wouldn't hold my breath. 

And while what Ambassador Hinton said was horrifying, he left office one year later because he criticized right-wing death squads in El Salvador. Here is the New York Times in 1983 

The Administration official said Mr. Hinton was being replaced because he had grown weary of the job, one of the most grueling State Department diplomatic posts.

Mr. Hinton has been at the center of disputes in his last two years in San Salvador. He himself was Mr. Reagan's choice to replace Robert E. White as Ambassador. The Administration felt Mr. White was too sympathetic to the idea of negotiating with the insurgents in El Salvador; Mr. Hinton has on occasion criticized the Salvadoran Government for its human rights record.

Some officials have said recently that Mr. Hinton had also been ineffective in presenting the Administration's case on television. Others said he had embarrassed the White House by saying right-wing ''death squads'' were as much a threat to the Salvadoran Government as leftist insurgents.

An Administration official praised Mr. Hinton today for having done a good job under fire. He said Mr. Hinton wanted to leave his post soon and settle down. ''Deane is tired,'' the official said. ''He wants out.''

From what I remember, part of Ambassador Hinton's being tired was tied directly to death threats on his life from Roberto D'Aubuisson. Pulling out a single quote from the Ambassador, even several, does not tell the entire story.

However, at the end of the day, our relationship with Blowtorch Bob was clearly one of the darkest stains on our involvement in El Salvador.

I should have thought of this - US Churchwomen as martyrs

Heidi Schlumpf makes the case that four US Churchwomen who were killed in El Salvador in December 1980, Maryknoll Sisters Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel and lay missioner Jean Donovan, should also be recognized as martyrs and saints by the Catholic Church.

As with Romero, some Catholics question whether these women were killed in odium fidei, literally "in hatred for the faith." Traditionally this has meant death for refusing to renounce one's Christian beliefs. In August, Pope Francis told reporters that one of the questions the Vatican congregation faced with Romero's case was whether such hatred could also be because of the good works the person did because of his or her belief.

This week's announcement about Romero seems to have answered that question.

It seems that the reason why the Catholic Church in the Vatican has not been discussing whether these women should be recognized as martyrs or saints is because no one has asked them to consider the question. Investigating whether these women were martyrs and saints would have to start in the Church in El Salvador where they served or the United States where they were raised. The push would most like have to come their religious orders as well, the Maryknolls and the Ursuline Sisters, because of the organizational capacity and finances that are required to push to process forward. However, none seem to have been raising the issue.

Archbishop Oscar Romero recognized a martyr by Pope Francis

As I am sure you have heard by now, Pope Francis has signed off on recognizing Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero a martyr. The decision follows last month's ruling by a Vatican panel on that same issue. I have no doubt that Oscar Romero was killed because of his faith.

His faith caused him to speak out on behalf of the poor and the suffering. He spoke out against right-wing and left-wing violence. He spoke out against US support for the country's military. He supported Co-Madres and other groups that sought to promote human dignity. It was not leftist ideology that caused Romero to act and speak in this way, but his understanding of the Bible.

However, a concern that is often left out of a discussion of Romero's politics is his involvement with the October 1979 coup. He counseled those who participated in the removal of the old and establishment of the new government. He encouraged those who wavered to support the new government because it was, in many ways, the last opportunity to avoid full-scale civil war. However, he encouraged them to support the new government and to push it in a more positive direction, warts and all, because it was the Christian thing to do. The Christian faith required them to find a nonviolent solution to the escalating violence between the left and the right.

As a result, he received death threats from both the revolutionary left and the ultraright.

He supported the first junta but spoke out against the violence of the military. As the first junta became the second junta, Romero continued to speak out against the violence of the military and the US support for it. The US spoke publicly in favor of the military but privately it pushed for reform. The US also hoped that increased aid to the military would give it greater leverage over the Salvadoran military. Romero's continued outspokenness against military repression and criticism of US aid caused great friction between Archbishop Romero and the US government.

It is possible that our new Ambassador Robert White would have been able to find common ground with the Archbishop in order to avoid all out war, possible, but Romero was assassinated by right-wing assassins shortly after White's arrival in the country as Ambassador.

Panama's Martinelli flees to Italy?

Boz has a good take on former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli's current plight based off Tim Johnson's piece for McClatchy.

The most surprising part of this story is not the corruption (most people guessed something wasn't right about the Martinelli government), but the speed and effectiveness that the government of President Varela has acted. Martinelli worked hard at the end of his administration to construct a political shield that he assumed would allow him to avoid charges for several years. His political cover has unraveled far more quickly for Martinelli than for most other former Central American leaders who have faced similar corruption charges.

Martinelli holds Panamanian and Italian citizenship and is friends with former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi so, in a sense, it shouldn't be surprising that he sought sanctuary in Italy. I imagine that it is quite difficult to be extradited from Italy to Panama, if it ever comes to that, given that he holds Italian citizenship.

However, Martinelli is also a potential target in Italy.

1) The trials involving international corruption in Italy against Valter Lavítola and executives from Finmeccanica and its derivative firms which involve alleged backhanders to Martinelli, as yet to be demonstrated, as well as other crimes.

He disparagingly refers to this as ‘an Italian soap opera.’

Martinelli has not been mentioned in connection with the affair by Lavítola in Italy, the main accused party, but he has been cited by witnesses from the country such as Mauro Velocci – representative in Panama for Italian firm Svemark contracted to build modular prison units which were approved by the minister for security, Raúl Mulino – who did give details in the Italian courts of payments of alleged backhanders.

Go read Luis Manuel Arce's article on Scandalous corruption during R. Martinelli’s time in power, from which the paragraphs above come, for what appears to be strong coverage of Martinelli's troubles.

I also found it funny all the shady characters that Tim identifies who sought sanctuary in Panama.

Freewheeling Panama has been a favored destination for despots on the run, including the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who arrived in Panama in late 1979, fending off status as an international pariah. He spent several months on Isla Contadora before leaving for Egypt, where he died.

Among deposed regional leaders who now claim political asylum in Panama are former Guatemalan President Jorge Serrano, who arrived after being removed in 1993, former Haitian strongman Raoul Cedras, who came in 1994, and Abdalá Bucaram, a former Ecuadorean leader declared mentally unfit by that country’s Congress in 1997.

Fugitive Salvadoran President Francisco Flores spent several months in Panama last year before returning to face charges that he’d misappropriated $15 million donated by Taiwan’s government.

I thought he meant Panama City, as in Panama City, Florida. There are these Nicaraguans from the National Guard, these former Salvadoran generals, and a few Nazi war criminals.

Want some more?

Gerardo Machado, Cuba

Terrifying nickname: The Tropical Mussolini

Iron-fisted infamy: Four decades before El Comandante stormed Havana, Gerardo Machado brought dictatorship to Cuba like a gift-wrapped turd. Elected the island's fifth president in 1925, he exiled student dissidents and might have ordered soldiers to kill opposition leader Julio Antonio Mella. He even created La Porra (the Truncheon) — a bowel-loosening secret police force that tossed enemies into gulag-esque underground prisons.

Gilberto Jordán, Guatemala

Terrifying nickname: Kaibiles Killer

Iron-fisted infamy: In 1982, as a 26-year-old soldier in Guatemala's national army, Gilberto Jordán enlisted in an elite paramilitary team known as the Kaibiles. The red-beret-wearing soldiers were notorious for recklessly slaughtering any indigenous people unlucky enough to get in their way. On December 7, 1982, Jordán's unit of 20 soldiers surrounded the unfortunate town of Dos Erres. Jordán grabbed the first baby he saw and threw it down a well before his unit interrogated every man in the village, raped most of the women, and then murdered 251 townspeople — many by smashing their foreheads with a hammer and then throwing them down a well. "[He] sounds like a mass murderer," a federal judge said during his trial earlier this year. Jordán didn't argue.

Prosper Avril, Haiti

Terrifying nickname: The Intelligent Prosper Avril (frighteningly bestowed by François "Papa Doc" Duvalier)

Iron-fisted infamy: Prosper Avril rose to power through Haiti's military after joining the presidential guard of murderous dictator François Duvalier in 1969. He served as a trusted adviser to both Papa Doc and his son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, before staging a coup d'état in September 1988 and installing himself as a Duvalier-style dictator. He ruled with brutal force in Port-au-Prince for two years, throwing the opposition into jail and publicly beating and shaming them. Avril's thugs beat Evans Paul, the democratically elected mayor of Port-au-Prince, and then paraded the bleeding and bruised politician on national television. Amnesty International says Avril's brief presidency was "marred by gross human rights violations." He squirreled away hundreds of thousands of dollars embezzled from international aid and Haitian government coffers.

Telmo Ricardo Hurtado, Peru

Terrifying nickname: Butcher of the Andes

 Iron-fisted infamy: Peru. 1985. The manchaytimpu, a time of conflict. The government was locked in a death battle with Maoist rebels from the Shining Path, and armed paramilitary squads hunted the Andes for weapons caches and guerrillas. On August 14, Telmo Ricardo Hurtado — a thin, tan, 24-year-old second lieutenant with side-parted black hair — led 30 Peruvian soldiers into a village in Quebrada de Huancayo, a dusty green valley 14 hours from Lima. Hurtado filed the 70 or so villagers into a field while his troops ransacked their homes. Then he shepherded them into two houses, where his troops fired machine guns, threw grenades, and set the homes ablaze. Seventy-four people died.

Juan Angel Hernández Lara, Honduras

Terrifying nickname: Bandit of Battalion 3-16

Iron-fisted infamy: In the '80s, the CIA hired a crack team of assassins to carry out its nefarious plans against leftist guerrillas and politicians throughout Central America. Among the deadliest was a group of Honduran special forces with the ominously boring name of Battalion 3-16. Juan Angel Hernández Lara joined the battalion as a young army recruit and quickly became an officer. He later admitted his duties included shoving metal pins under suspects' fingernails, firing bullets into people's hands to force them to talk, and using plastic bags to smother government enemies.

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, Bolivia

Terrifying nickname: Bolivia's Dick Cheney

Iron-fisted infamy: As Bolivia's defense minister in 2003, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín presided over a government crackdown against mostly indigenous protesters who had blocked roads leading to La Paz. They were picketing plans to sell the country's natural gas reserves to foreign investors. On September 20, 2003, according to filings in an ongoing civil lawsuit, Berzaín flew on a military helicopter to a picturesque, backpacker-friendly hamlet called Sorata to negotiate the release of some tourists. The negotiations quickly went sour. In the lawsuit, victims claim the defense minister ordered troops to fire on the locals. That fight exploded into a month of widespread violence, now nicknamed Black October, that eventually led to 67 protesters dead under a hail of bullets from Berzaín's army. Berzaín said the deaths were collateral damage in a battle to save his country. Most Bolivians disagreed. They ran him and President Gonzalo "Goni" Sánchez de Lozada out of La Paz and into Miami exile by the end of the month.

We did say no to Fulgencio Batista and Anastasio "Tachito" Somoza. Batista was disappointed because he owned a house in Daytona Beach.

So who wins loses?

U.S. Can’t Solve Central America’s Problems With Money Alone

I have a new article with the World Politics Review entitled U.S. Can’t Solve Central America’s Problems With Money Alone.

On Jan. 29, in an op-ed for The New York Times, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden announced that the White House would request $1 billion from Congress in its 2016 budget to finance a range of development, security and good governance initiatives in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, often referred to as Central America’s Northern Triangle. The news is a welcome announcement for a region that is suffering from the effects of long-term poverty, inequality and insecurity. Despite the promise of U.S. aid, however, a great deal will have to fall into place for Washington’s new commitment to Central America to deliver much-needed results on the ground.

I'm skeptical that the president will get what he wants from Congress and that the US and its Northern Triangle partners have the ability to carry out meaningful reform in the short-term. However, even incremental improvements are worth the financial expenditures.

Check it out here.

Weak and Corrupt Justice Systems in Central America

Human Rights Watch recently released its World Report 2015. Insight Crime has a summary of the Latin American highlights, including some harsh words for Central America's justice systems.

Failing justice systems were particularly noted in the Central American nations of Guatemala and Honduras. Corrupt and ineffective courts have hindered the prosecution of powerful criminal organizations within both countries. In Honduras, corrupt courts are presided over by judges subject to intimidation and political interference, with reform efforts making little progress. A similar situation in Guatemala has resulted in high levels of impunity, allowing organized crime to engage in "widespread acts of violence and extortion," HRW said.

However the report did note some progress in Guatemala. In February nine members of the Zetas cartel were convicted for the massacre of 27 farmers in 2011 in the northern Peten region.

With regards to Guatemala, I am disappointed. The reforms supported by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) and the international community, the Public Prosecutor's office under Claudia Paz, and a reinvigorated civil society, had so much potential. Don't get me wrong, I still believe that the justice system is stronger today than it was five years ago, from criminal investigations all the way to prosecutions and sentencing. Impunity has been somewhat reduced and violent crime, homicide, has been reduced from approximately 46 to 32 per 100,000. Remember, El Salvador and Honduras have homicide rates that surpass 60 per 100,000, down from highs in both countries, and justice systems where estimates indicate that less than five percent of homicides are solved and result in prison sentences.

If the political and economic elites were on board with the reforms, conditions probably would have improved even more so. Unfortunately, they seem to want to obstruct at every turn. Obviously, not all of them, but enough to stymie much needed progress. The extent to which they went to capture the supreme and appellate court selection progress is evidence of their commitment. As of right now, President Otto Perez Molina seems to be content with saying good-bye to CICIG later this year. It will take some pressure from the international community to convince the Guatemalan elite that denying an extension to CICIG will cause more harm than good.