All posts tagged Crime & Violence

Argentina: Joining the BRICS?

By Andrés Serbin*

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. President Joe Biden, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, and Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi pose for a G7 leaders’ photograph during a NATO summit at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on March 24, 2022 / Michael Kappaler / Flickr / Creative Commons license

The BRICS countries’ efforts to expand the group’s influence in the Global South is giving momentum to Argentina’s bid for membership, but the timeline and outcome of the admission process is far from certain. During a virtual summit hosted by Beijing in June, the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – continued efforts to revitalize the group and follow up on expansion proposals initially agreed to in 2017.

  • Conceived as an alternative to the G7 when launched in 2009, the BRICS represent 42 percent of the planet’s population, 24 percent of world GDP, and more than 16 percent of global growth, according to 2019 World Bank estimates. Each member plays a significantly different role in international affairs, but the group is moving in a unified fashion to position themselves as a decisive factor in the global governance architecture and as a voice of the “Global South” that advocates an economic and political alternative for emerging economies. Brazilian analyst Oliver Stuenkel notes that the five “share a profound skepticism of the U.S. international liberal order and perceived danger that unipolarity represents to their interests.”
  • The June summit reviewed initiatives to increase economic cooperation and development, promote multilateralism and world peace, and create a vaccine research and development center. As a reaction to Western economic sanctions, Russia proposed the development of a “de-dollarized” financial space for trade between the group’s economies – a proposal already introduced in the discussions of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the main Eurasian cooperation institution. The group also took up China’s 2017 proposal for a “BRICS Plus” – expansion to incorporate new members of the Global South, including Argentina.

The Argentina proposal faces obstacles within the BRICS even though Russia, China, and India (whose foreign minister visited Buenos Aires last week) support it and Celso Amorim, former and likely future foreign minister if Brazilian President Lula da Silva is reelected, has said Brazil will support as well.

  • Political and geopolitical challenges within the group include differences in how members relate to the international liberal order. Ties to the West vary from Russia’s more belligerent position to China’s more cautious one and India’s ambiguity. There are marked differences in their foreign policies that potential new members could aggravate.
  • Members also have different viewpoints on whether to incorporate regional integration blocs such MERCOSUR, whose own heterogeneities, tensions, and conflicts can hinder the expansion process and bloc effectiveness. At a MERCOSUR Summit in July, key leaders’ absences and a divisive debate about the signing of an FTA between Uruguay and China revealed differences. While Paraguay keeps diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the other three full members of the group have close diplomatic and economic ties with the PRC.

Argentina’s application has also given rise to divided views and opinions in the country itself. Despite the fact that all sectors of the ruling coalition can be considered “Peronists,” the current government has pursued an erratic and at times contradictory foreign policy, including conflicting positions regarding international relations, alignments, and alliances. Argentine sinologists disagree on the feasibility of membership, and many more Argentines object because it would hurt relations with the United States, Europe, and the IMF, which has recently helped the country avoid defaulting on $44 billion the Fund previously loaned it. A simultaneous application by Iran – some of whose government officials Argentine justice blames for several terrorist acts in Argentina, including the bombing of Israel’s Embassy and the Jewish local organization AMIA – doesn’t help to build consensus on the issue.

Notwithstanding the divergent opinions in Argentina and among the BRICS, interest on both sides has been persistent and shows signs of growing – even if not necessarily resulting in admission in the near future. Argentina’s interest in pursuing a relationship with the BRICS has continued through governments of different political persuasions since 2014. The need to maintain good relations with traditional partners is key, and the agreement with the IMF presents another reason for caution. It is not clear if Argentina’s incorporation could complicate its geopolitical position without yielding tangible benefits.

  • For the BRICS, the shared interest – a desire to curtail U.S. and Western influence and create a counterweight to it – helps them overcome their differences and seems unlikely to change soon, but obstacles to the evolution of the global transition they seek will also remain in the short term. However, in the context of the current debate in Latin America, BRICS expansion fits the increasing regional aspiration to promote active non-alignment amid an increasingly turbulent international order.

September 7, 2022

*Andrés Serbin is an international analyst and president of the Regional Coordinator of Economic and Social Research (CRIES), a regional think tank and network focused on Latin America and the Caribbean. He is also co-chair of the Asia and the Americas section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) and author of Guerra y transición global (War and Global Transition), recently published.

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on September 7, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in El Salvador
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on September 7, 2022

https://aulablog.net/2022/09/07/argentina-joining-the-brics/

El Salvador: Young Women and Mothers Lack Opportunities after Incarceration

By Carina Cione*

Volunteers from Glasswing International and the U.S. Embassy paint a local library / U.S. Embassy in El Salvador / Flickr / Creative Commons license

Incarcerated young women in El Salvador face immense obstacles to creating new lives for themselves after release from detention, but programs to empower them offer a glimmer of hope. Interviews conducted as part of the CLALS-FLACSO Vidas Sitiadas (Besieged Lives) project have documented the challenges facing young Salvadoran women and provide strong evidence that others throughout Latin America face similar situations.

  • The stigma of a criminal past compounds the systemic exclusion young Salvadoran women often face before arrest just for being from high-crime neighborhoods. Previous offenders who lack support face dismal job prospects. The Vidas Sitiadas reports, which also examined conditions in four other countries, indicate that access to the formal job market is extremely limited; employers turn down job applicants with criminal records. Becoming a student can be just as difficult since universities have the right to refuse admission based on criminal histories. The period of “re-entry” is stressful and lonely as women strive to re-build healthy relationships, establish and maintain financial independence, secure healthcare, and recover from their potentially traumatic incarceration experiences.
  • The problem has surged over the last two decades, as rates of imprisonment in Latin America have risen dramatically, with mass incarceration increasingly impacting women. In El Salvador, since President Nayib Bukele launched a crackdown on gangs in 2019, the number of inmates has since skyrocketed (50,000 just since late March), according to UN experts, human rights agencies, and press reports. The government provides free tattoo removal services for former gang members seeking to break ties with their past, but attention to reintegration programs and post-release services to equip previous offenders with coping skills has been negligible. 

Nonetheless, Vidas Sitiadas and other studies have identified programs for released prisoners that, while still in relatively early phases, appear promising. Two examples in El Salvador:

  • Glasswing International runs the Club de Niñas, in collaboration with prison authorities in San Salvador, for young women in detention facilities or those who are recently released who want to overcome sociocultural barriers to independence. The three-year-old program teaches strategies for surviving traditional gender roles and expectations, healing trauma in a safe space, and breaking out of the conditions and mindsets that led them to criminality. Researchers working with Glasswing found that all of the women serving criminal sentences had suffered repeated episodes of violence beginning in childhood – neglect, abuse, sexual violence, exposure to community violence, parental alcohol abuse, and parental fighting. Many had fled their dangerous home environments at a young age and joined gangs, which provided them with basic necessities, a steady income, and protection – but also subjected them to physical and psychological abuse. The Club encourages them to feel a frisson of optimism for the first time in their young adulthood.
  • Yo Cambio, a four-year-old program run at various Salvadoran prisons, teaches craftsmanship skills to hundreds of inmates that they can use to secure a job upon release. It builds “peaceful co-living” in prison and offers free tattoo removal services for former gang members seeking to break ties with their past. To join the initiative, the inmates have to demonstrate that they practice “positive mindsets” and exhibit wanting to change before joining. 

Programs like these can point to preliminary indicators of success in at least some facilities. Young women interviewed by Vidas Sitiadas valued the safe place that Club de Niñas gave them for honest conversation and building stronger senses of community and self-worth. They underwent skills training to strengthen their likelihood of securing employment post-release, which in turn also helps secure their safety from past abusers. The interviews also show that participants are embarking on a process of developing new prosocial identities, reflecting a desire to engage in positive relationships, and trying to break with past attitudes of rebellion. Mothers promised to try to be better for their children.

Adjustment back into society for previously imprisoned people is anything but simple. The UN General Assembly in 2010 approved a resolution on the treatment of women who are in prison and have been released – called “The Bangkok Rules” – that specifies that they must be provided comprehensive re-entry support by social welfare services, local organizations, and probation authorities. Adherence to such guidelines has not been the norm in El Salvador. The systemic barriers to former prisoners becoming successful members of society remain.

  • Efforts like those identified by Vidas Sitiadas are premised on the hope that progress is possible even if locally and incrementally, but society-level outcomes will change only after broader obstacles to successful reintegration, such as geographic exclusion, are resolved. Studies show that, when re-entering into unchanged social and economic conditions, most previous offenders resort to familiar criminal behavior and fall back into dangerous social circles to meet their basic needs. They also lack accessible mental healthcare to help them grapple with trauma experienced before and during incarceration. But, while programs like Club de Niñas and Yo Cambio alone can’t solve such deep-rooted problems for everyone, they improve individual lives and are proof of concept that, if embraced by political leaders, could have a broader impact. 

August 25, 2022

*Carina Cione is Program Coordinator at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. For additional information about the project undertaken by FLACSO-Costa Rica and its partners, please consult the Vidas Sitiadas website.

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on August 25, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in El Salvador
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on August 25, 2022

https://aulablog.net/2022/08/25/el-salvador-young-women-and-mothers-lack-opportunities-after-incarceration/

Latin America: Violence Against Young Women Worsened During COVID-19

By Carina Cione*

Young women gathering together in Cali, Colombia / Universidad del Valle / Creative Commons license

A research and practice-oriented initiative coordinated by la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) of Costa Rica has confirmed that the harmful impact of systemic violence and marginalization on the lives of vulnerable women in Latin American cities has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Vidas Sitiadas (Besieged Lives) project corroborated widespread anecdotes about the depth of the vulnerability of young women and mothers to gender-based violence, intimidation, and discrimination – in both public and private spaces – in the region. Women are targeted by gangs in their communities, and by masculine family members or partners behind closed doors in their homes. Often merely because of the neighborhoods in which they live, they suffer from systemic exclusion – shunned by society and excluded from much of their countries’ economic, social, and political lives.

  • The Vidas Sitiadas project found that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these problems. State-imposed quarantine measures confined families to close living quarters, and the burdens on mothers and sisters to keep the home running and to care for the ill multiplied. Loss of family income brought stress and conflict more deeply into homes, worsening already-unstable family dynamics.
  • The pandemic also reduced women’s economic independence. In 2020 and 2021, opportunities to earn money on the formal and informal market evaporated. Neighborhoods are less safe, and traveling through gang-controlled areas in Latin America poses increasing dangers for young women. Of 21 young mothers interviewed by FLACSO-Argentina, only 10 had remained employed during the first years of the pandemic. Most had low incomes and were unable to work remotely, which led them to financially depend upon others to make ends meet. That dependence on male family members, partners, and exes led to greater manipulation and exploitation than before 2020.

Through hundreds of interviews and survey responses, project researchers documented that violence, more than any other underlying factor, is what causes the sensation of living a vida sitiada – a life under siege. Across all five country reports, the majority of young women reported being witnesses or victims of abuse in the home as children, which they said had a “very radical impact” on their daily lives. Many were cared for by mothers or grandmothers who were abused and then, in turn, engaged in physical or psychological abuse of them. A large portion of participants’ fathers were absent. Sexual abuse was common, and some women had even witnessed gang-related homicides of family members.

  • Robbery and sexual violence, including harassment, aggressive touching, and rape, in public spaces are frequent phenomena for women. These crimes often force them to avoid certain parts of their own neighborhoods, to forgo essential travel outside the home, and to severely curtail social contact, thus hindering their ability to develop support networks. The Vidas Sitiadas studies reveal even tougher circumstances during COVID-19. In a survey by Universidad del Valle, half of low-income young women said that their communities in Cali, Colombia, have become more violent since 2020. They avoid spending time outside of their homes, especially in the early morning hours, but 15-20 percent still feel “very unsafe” on the street in the afternoons and early evenings. This limits their ability to cultivate personal connections and impedes their financial independence.
  • Traveling to work is also a risk. Espacio Público, a think tank, and Arbusta, an information technology company in Santiago, Chile, found that 30 percent of young women who commuted in the first years of the pandemic had experienced intimidation or abuse on their way to work. A third of these women face travel times of 60-90 minutes each way – a long time, especially in a vehicle in which passengers do not feel safe. Women who cannot reach their jobs safely either decide to quit or learn a trade they can master in the safety of their homes.

In addition to death, disease, and economic challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed and even reversed progress some Latin American societies had been making, if haltingly, toward updating gender roles and reducing stigmas pertaining to women’s place in society. In some sectors, it has contributed to the re-normalization of violence in the daily lives of women and girls by making many neighborhoods less safe and putting extraordinary stress on families. Women’s exclusion has deepened as COVID-19 has erased their access to jobs and the stigma of being from dangerous neighborhoods further reduces their prospects.

  • The Vidas Sitiadas project, coordinated by La Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Costa Rica with funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, examines several efforts launched in recent years to begin addressing the underlying systemic causes of the challenges facing young women in these societies. They focus on giving them a chance to get a job, to learn work and personal skills, and to build the personal confidence to improve their lot. Advocates face the usual obstacles to calls for resources to address the big problems, including systemic economic inequity, the epidemic of social violence, and the residual culture of gender discrimination. But the Vidas Sitiadas initiatives have demonstrated that at least modest steps can be made to help women overcome the violent and manipulative environments in which they live.

August 4, 2022

*Carina Cione is Program Coordinator at the Center for Latin American & Latino Studies. For additional information about the project undertaken by FLACSO-Costa Rica and its partners, please consult the Vidas Sitiadas website.

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on August 4, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on August 4, 2022

https://aulablog.net/2022/08/04/latin-america-violence-against-young-women-worsened-during-covid-19/

Latin America-Caribbean: Illicit Fishing is Environmental Security Challenge

By A.J. Manuzzi*

The Ecuadorian naval vessel, LAE Island San Cristobal / Defense Visual Information Distribution Service / Creative Commons license

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and associated crimes are undermining coastal communities throughout Latin America and the Caribbean – hurting the economic wellbeing of licit fishers and reducing coastal and ocean biodiversity, fish stocks, and food security. The EU and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have made ending IUU fishing a priority because it contributes to overfishing, enables labor abuses, and violates international norms on sovereignty and biodiversity.

IUU fishing comprises a diverse slate of illicit acts, including foreign vessels fishing in another country’s sovereign waters without permission; disregard for international environmental laws; and inadequate catch reporting to state authorities. Illicit actors include large distant-water fleets (DWFs) backed by states like China, Taiwan, and Japan as well as individual locally based artisanal vessels with small crews. 

  • Latin America represents only 2.1 percent of global aquaculture production, but its losses to IUU fishing – losses that experts estimate to be $2.3 billion a year – make it the third-hardest hit continent. According to a 2020 study by the Fisheries Economics Research Unit and the Sea Around Us organization at the University of British Columbia, income losses are as high as $600 million, and tax revenue losses are as high as $300 million dollars, with the other $1.4 billion owing to the general redirection of catches from legitimate to the illicit seafood trade.
  • Costa Rica has seen by-kill of young fish from the use of illegal nets as well as incursions by illegal fishermen in its offshore national parks. Until recently, Ecuador faced a flotilla of as many as 340 Chinese vessels catching and storing marine life around the Galapagos Islands. In Jamaica, depleted seafood stocks have pushed local fishers into deeper waters, where there is a risk of collision with IUU fishers searching for diminishing sources of conch and lobster. In Suriname, IUU fishers have been known to steal the nets of domestic fishers.

IUU fishing often involves forced labor and other crimes, further harming coastal communities and billions of people worldwide whose economies and diets are tied to fish. By undercutting legal market prices, it threatens the livelihood of licit fishers who pay fair wages and don’t have the same technological advantages. 

  • Overfishing reduces supplies for local communities. The FAO estimates that total fish consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean will increase 33 percent by 2030 (more than any other region). Overfishing by IUU actors has already forced the Dominican Republic and Jamaica to increase imports of fish and seafood and impose new catch quotas that, when expanded in other countries, would likely affect the more than 3 million people in the region who work in fishing or aquaculture.
  • Related crimes are committed by artisanal fishers operating in coastal waters, where they illegally harvest seaweed, pursue endangered species, fish in the off-season, or engage in smuggling; domestic industrial fishers who misreport catches; and DWFs that use flags of convenience to trick authorities. 
  • IUU fishers threaten biodiversity because they are heavily skewed toward immediate predation, with little concern for the long-term economic impact and environmental costs. They also complicate states’ fishery sustainability efforts, making implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goal to eliminate IUU fishing fall far behind. In addition, shark finning is prominent in Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Chile despite domestic and international laws against it. Nine of the 12 shark species found aboard a Chinese IUU freighter off Ecuador in 2017 were endangered. 

The regulatory frameworks for fighting IUU fishing are weak; enforcement tools are lacking; and most countries lack the resolve to address the problem. The current international framework includes a hodgepodge of international and national agreements and initiatives, without the active engagement of many of the world’s largest fishing nations. 

  • The cornerstone is the Agreement on Port State Measures (PSMA), which binds signatories to reduce illicit fishing by denying IUU fishing vessels access to port services and to lessen access of illicit catch to international markets. International bodies such as the FAO provide tools for tracking vessels, but regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) and advocacy groups like Oceana say that there is only limited sovereign commitment to the rules. Some of the most seriously affected countries are those with the fewest resources to combat the problem.

The combination of IUU fishing and related crimes, such as labor abuses and copy-cat practices by local fishers, pose threats to national economies, food security, and ultimately regional stability. What’s needed is obvious: enhanced monitoring, control, and surveillance capacity; updated legal instruments and increased judicial sanctions; and more resolute multilateral action on fishing subsidies and ocean protection. One question is whether the victims of IUU fishing themselves can muster the national and regional resolve to address the problem – sacrificing the short-term gain of permissiveness for the long-term goal of protecting strategic interests. Without that resolve, Latin America and the Caribbean will continue to be victimized by IUU fishing and the inequality, labor abuses, resource exploitation, and violations of national sovereignty it enables.

July 21, 2022

*A.J. Manuzzi is a Master’s student in International Affairs in the School of International Service. This article draws on research he performed as a Research Assistant for a CLALS project on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on July 21, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Caribbean, Regional Snapshot
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on July 21, 2022

https://aulablog.net/2022/07/21/latin-america-caribbean-illicit-fishing-is-environmental-security-challenge/

Colombia: Example of Increased Criminality by Women

By Nataly Rendón González*

A prison in Colombia/Flickr/Creative Commons License

Emerging data about women’s involvement in criminal activities is stimulating debate on how best to understand – and solve – the problem. Research into female crime is still insipient, but Colombian researchers and officials have produced data indicating that the focus on male criminal behavior has obscured a growing problem among women. 

  • Female crime is increasing worldwide, and Colombia is no exception. The Centro de Investigación en Política Criminal reported in 2018 that the number of women in Colombian prisons grew 53 percent from 2000 to 2017, with drug-related offenses ranking highest. Between 1991 and 2018, the number of women in prison per 100,000 inhabitants increased by 219 percent, with 1,500 women deprived of liberty in 1991 and 7,944 in 2018.
  • Medellín has developed data providing an interesting context for analyzing the role of women in crime. Although the number of murders in the city decreased from the 1990s to 2014, Medellín remains among the cities with the highest homicide rates in the world – due to demobilized combatants and, especially, the increase of criminal gangs. Observers have also tracked an increase of women committing “minor” crimes, defined locally as crimes “easier” for women to perform because they do not “compromise physical integrity.”

Experts are debating whether the feminine “liberalization” – including women’s growing presence in educational, political, and economic contexts – could be fueling the trend. Expanding opportunity has allowed women to acquire greater skills and reduce the wage gap between genders – thereby decreasing incentives to participate in criminal activity. But some observers posit that the decrease in families’ ability to provide “surveillance and protection” of underage women has created circumstances in which less-successful women gravitate to crime. 

  • Universidad de los Andes Professor (and National Police Major) Ervyn Norza-Céspedes documented as long ago as 2012 that the crimes with the highest participation by women are theft (30.52 percent of female crime); manufacture, transport, possession of narcotics (32.54 percent); and assault (9.27 percent). The average violator is 27-36 years old and either works as a housekeeper or is unemployed.
  • Studies show that women with lower education and economic resources are most vulnerable. The National Penitentiary and Prison Institute of Colombia (INPEC) found that 69.7 percent of Colombian women in prison did not attend secondary school – a conclusion supported by other research confirming a correlation between education and criminal activity. INPEC also found that 66.9 percent of the women criminals lived in the country’s estratos 1 and 2 (roughly low-lower class and lower-class) and that 72.8 percent of them received incomes below two monthly minimum wages in the household.

Additional data collection, research, and analysis are obviously needed to better define the trends in female crimes, the causes, and the implications for society in Colombia and throughout the region. Although preliminary research showing the relationship between the different types of crime and the perpetrators’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics appears logical, a deeper understanding will be particularly important to finding solutions to this growing problem. 

  • In theory, the increase in crimes committed by women could be controlled with public empowerment policies aimed at increasing employment opportunities for female housekeepers and less-educated women in lower socioeconomic estratos. Additionally, crime policy with a gender focus may include feasible and appropriate ways of reducing the opportunities that some women are currently seeing to commit crimes. This policy can be useful to improving reintegration possibilities and mitigating the vulnerabilities to which women are exposed when they come into the penal system. Further research may also aid the development of alternatives for caring for women who have committed crimes that do not involve physical violence – to help them embrace legal economic opportunities.

January 28, 2022

* Nataly Rendón González teaches at the Escuela de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas of the Universidad EIA (formerly the Escuela de Ingeniería de Antioquia) and is a Global Scholar in AU’s Program for Gender Analysis in Economics.

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on January 28, 2022  •  Permalink
Posted in Colombia
Tagged

Posted by clalsstaff on January 28, 2022

https://aulablog.net/2022/01/28/colombia-example-of-increased-criminality-by-women/

Honduras: Is the Coup Finally Over?

By Fulton Armstrong*

Honduran President-elect Xiomara Castro/ hablaguante/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

Honduran President-elect Xiomara Castro’s actions since her election on November 28 reflect optimism that the country can turn the page on the 12 tumultuous years since the military coup that forced her husband out of the country at gunpoint – and realism about the monumental tasks ahead. The voter turnout (69.28 percent) and her 15-point victory over the incumbent party’s candidate were historic. So was the level of violence – 23 candidates murdered – during the campaign.

A similarly historic basket of problems awaits Xiomara when she’s inaugurated on January 27.

  • Experts say that the government is bankrupt because of corruption, mismanagement, downturns in commodities on which the country has traditionally depended, two major hurricanes last year, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The country’s foreign debt burden is more than $16 billion (nearly 60 percent of GDP), and the economy contracted 9 percent last year. Former Finance Minister Hugo Noé, Xiomara’s senior policy advisor during the campaign, says his team is already dialoguing with the IMF on a new debt deal.
  • U.S. investigations into outgoing President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) are reportedly very close to seeking his extradition for trial – which would thrust Xiomara’s young administration into a potentially major political crisis. JOH’s broad network of accomplices are not likely to go quietly either.

Most of the President-elect’s early actions have centered on building an effective transition to what she calls un estado solidario – drawing positive feedback even from potential opponents so far.

  • A transition commission is beginning a national consultation on priorities, especially “the elimination of poverty and hunger” among the 74 percent of Hondurans who are poor and 53 percent extremely poor. Noting that corruption is a major root cause of the country’s economic mess, Xiomara is calling for vigorous anticorruption efforts, including some with UN support, and for repealing the “impunity laws” and “secrecy laws” that have allowed illegal dealing that saps government resources. To address the violence that terrorizes citizens and drives them to migrate, she says she “will fight narco-trafficking head-on.”
  • She has pledged to fight for the protection of women and their rights. Honduras has the highest rate of femicide (4.7 cases per 100,000 women last year, according to CEPAL) and gender violence in the hemisphere – an ugly reality that analysts say is another root cause of migration. She’s advocated an unspecified loosening of restrictions on abortion, which is currently forbidden even in rape cases.
  • Potential opponents have so far gone along. The military high command, whose loyalty JOH worked hard to win, has released a statement committing to working with Xiomara and stating that “she will be the President and commander of the Armed Forces.” JOH allies in the business sector and traditionally conservative media such as the country’s largest newspaper, El Heraldo, have welcomed her.

Rhetoric that the 2009 coup reversed a flourishing democracy is exaggerated – it has always been a flawed democracy and ousted President Mel Zelaya, like his peers, was a flawed leader. But this vote and early reactions indicate broad agreement that the past 12 years have exhausted the country. Xiomara’s Partido Libertad y Refundación (LIBRE) has soundly thumped the country’s two traditional parties, sending both back to re-think their strategies.

  • Governing is likely to be a learning process for Xiomara. Some of her early foreign policy statements – such as repeating her pledge to normalize relations with China (a sovereign decision the United States and most in the hemisphere have taken) and issuing unvarnished praise for Venezuelan Presidents Chávez and Maduro – have drawn unwelcome attention, but she pulled back and quickly put the focus back on her top domestic priorities. She also has to continue finessing coalition politics; her vice president, right-of-center sportscaster Salvador Nasrala, seemed to wander during the campaign but turned out to be a good asset. Her husband, to whom she’s referred as her “best advisor,” still has a reputation that will require some managing.

The U.S. reaction to her government will be crucial. Xiomara’s agenda, with its focus on the “root causes” of the country’s multiple crises, could make her an ideal ally to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who’s worked hard to focus U.S. policy on those drivers. Neither woman can be expected to do magic, but stopping Honduras’s slide, which started under the putschist regime in 2009 and continued under the two National Party presidents who came after, would be a major victory in itself. The surge in Hondurans encountered on the U.S. border – up to about 300,000 in the past 12 months – has grabbed Washington’s attention, but the real test will be whether the Administration and the Honduran government can seriously address the root causes as promised.

December 9, 2021

1 Comment
by clalsstaff on December 9, 2021  •  Permalink
Posted in Honduras
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on December 9, 2021

https://aulablog.net/2021/12/09/honduras-is-the-coup-finally-over/

Brazil: When Will the Government Act to Reduce Firearm Deaths Among Children?

By Beatriz Rey and Estevan Muniz*

Brazilian police
Police in a city in Brazil./ dfactory/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License

Gun-related violence against Brazilian children and teenagers has been alarmingly high for years – rising to 9,818 in 2017 and 8,253 in 2018 – but the Brazilian government has paid little attention to the issue. Seventy percent of the over 140,000 children and teenagers (0-19 years old) killed in firearm-related incidents between 2001 and 2018 were Black. While exact figures remain elusive, the independent Brazilian Public Security Forum estimates about one in almost five of the deaths – 2,884 children and teenagers in the two-year period 2017‑18 – resulted from police interventions.

  • The issue first appeared on the Congressional agenda in 1992, when legislators created a Parliamentary Inquiry Committee (CPI) in the Chamber of Deputies to investigate the high number of killings of children and teenagers. Of the eight bills proposed by the CPI, only two became law – one establishing restrictions on private security companies and one removing some immunities from military police who commit crimes against civilians. Neither law has directly impacted the killing of children and teenagers. Several other bills, including one that would have created a National Code for Gun Ownership, failed.
  • Legislators instituted another CPI in 2015 (in the Senate) to examine homicides among Black youths. Their work resulted in a single bill (PLS 240/2016) that proposed a National Plan to Combat the Killing of Young People. The plan aims to reduce the number of youth homicides to less than 10 for every 100,000 youths over the next 10 years and to prosecute up to 80 percent of crimes against them. The Senate approved the bill (now called PL 9796/2018) in 2018, but no Chamber vote has occurred.
  • An executive branch initiative, enacted by the administration of former President Lula da Silva in partnership with UNICEF and the Favelas Observatory in 2009, was the Program for the Reduction of Lethal Violence Against Adolescents and Youth (PRVL), which attempted to mobilize key societal actors, produce indicators of lethality, and analyze cases of successful mortality reduction. The PRVL is no longer active; it was discontinued during the Dilma Rousseff administration.

Squabbling between the left and right has led to inconsistent and short-lived policies that have failed to reduce gun violence. The two Cardoso administrations (1995-2002) took only incremental steps in addressing law and order issues. Fears of failure and popular blame made Lula (2003-11) reluctant to implement his own National Public Security Plan. He eventually enacted the National Plan of Public Security and Citizenship (PRONASCI) in his second term, but Rousseff (2011-16) discontinued it – reflecting the lack of a coherent proposal from the left in the face of lobbying from the Armed Forces, police associations, and police chiefs within an institutional legacy of the dictatorship (1964‑85).

  • The lack of effective policy action is also due to the policymakers’ cognitive and institutional constraints. Leaders can only focus on a limited set of issues at once, and building majorities in legislatures on contentious issues has proven beyond them. Earlier this year a few legislators attempted to schedule a vote on the bill creating a National Plan to Combat the Killing of Young People (PL 9796/2018) in the Chamber of Deputies – where it’s been stuck since 2018 – but the COVID‑19 pandemic shifted all attention away.

After years of government failure to protect the lives of thousands of children and teenagers, civic action might be the only feasible way to tackle the issue. Mobilization has achieved successes in other areas such as education, where civil society groups recently pressed deputies and the executive branch to approve the National Fund for Basic Education (Fundeb).  

  • A window of opportunity currently exists to push the Senate-approved draft bill – PL 9796/2018 – to the Chamber floor. It enjoys broad civil society support and, unlike proposals from the 1992 CPI, offers comprehensive national guidelines, goals, and strategies for the federal government, states, and municipalities. In this sense, bill 9796/2018 provides a consensus-based roadmap for future political negotiation.
  • While a lack of data on the link between police violence and race makes it hard to target policy solutions for Black children and teenagers, progress on the broader issue of police violence will especially affect this vulnerable segment of the Brazilian population. The renewed focus on race and police violence in Brazil presents the opportunity for popular mobilization to bring necessary attention to the issue. Reigniting this policy conversation could represent a first step towards preventing future deaths.

September 23, 2020

* Beatriz Rey is a CLALS Research Fellow. Estevan Muniz is a journalist at TV Globo and a filmmaker. This is an adaptation of an article first published by the Wilson Center.

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on September 23, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Brazil
Tagged

Posted by clalsstaff on September 23, 2020

https://aulablog.net/2020/09/23/brazil-when-will-the-government-act-to-reduce-firearm-deaths-among-children/

The Perils of Quédate en Casa: COVID-19 and Gender Violence in Latin America

By Brenda Werth*

Women performing "A Rapist in Your Path" holding up signs

A Rapist in Your Path – Brasília/ Mídia NINJA/ Flickr/ Creative Commons License (not modified)

Stay-at-home orders during the COVID‑19 pandemic have had a devastating impact on women in Latin America and brought mass protests against gender violence to a screeching, and troubling, halt. Since the foundational march of NiUnaMenos in June 2015 in Buenos Aires, Latin American activists have revolutionized protest against gender violence in a spectacularly public way, bringing together hundreds of thousands of women and allies on the streets of major cities to denounce gender violence and demand protection of gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights. Since its debut last November, the flashmob Un violador en tu camino (A Rapist in Your Path), created by the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis, has been performed in more than 200 cities around the world, decrying the role of the state and police in perpetuating gender violence.

  • Even as the coronavirus began to spread, movements against gender violence continued to expand. In March, millions of women marched to commemorate International Women’s Day to demand an end to femicide and gender inequality. In Madrid, among the posters condemning gender violence were some declaring “The patriarchy kills more than the coronavirus.” By March 15, however, Spain was on lockdown, and by the end of the month most Latin American countries had instituted either partial or total lockdowns. Suddenly, slogans condemning gender violence and demanding gender equality were replaced by the urgent message for people to stay home: “Quédate en casa.”

The stay-at-home orders have had severe consequences for women across the globe. In Latin America, where seven out of 10 femicides take place in the home, the weeks following the institution of quarantines saw surges in the reporting of domestic violence, primarily against women, children, and LGBTQ individuals. Calls to domestic violence hotlines increased 40 percent in Argentina, 60 percent in Mexico, and over 90 percent in Colombia. Financial precarity, unemployment, and lack of access to child and eldercare all exacerbated preexisting gender inequalities, creating a “perfect storm” for domestic violence.

  • Quarantines have proven crucial and effective in countering the health threat posed by coronavirus, but they have left victims of gender violence trapped under the same roof with their abusers. One unintended effect of quarantine is the reinforcement of the perception of domestic abuse as a private, family affair, separate from the public sphere, and excluded from the jurisdiction of the state.

Government responses to the increased domestic violence in Latin America have varied tremendously, ranging from acknowledgment to denial of the crisis.

  • Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, Argentina’s Minister of Women, Genders and Diversity, has issued a resolution explicitly allowing individuals to leave quarantine in order to seek assistance and protection against domestic violence. The Argentine government has also collaborated in building innovative campaigns blending awareness of both pandemics – gender violence and COVID‑19. The Barbijo Rojo (red mask) campaign refers to a code word women may employ when talking to pharmacists to let them know they are at risk of harm and unable to seek out help.
  • In comparison, denial has guided Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s response. His government has failed to implement any major policy changes to address the increase in gender violence during COVID‑19, and he has maintained that 90 percent of calls to domestic violence hotlines are false. According to AMLO, Mexico does not have the same problem as other cultures with domestic violence because “the Mexican family is exceptional.” The government’s campaign to address domestic violence during quarantine, Cuenta hasta 10, asks family members to “count until ten” before expressing anger in the home. According to Lulú Barrera, the campaign lacks “gender perspective” by disregarding the structural causes of gender violence and ultimately puts women at risk by asking them to sacrifice their wellbeing to maintain peace in the home.

While the health pandemic has highlighted the dire need for movements like NiUnaMenos and messages like that of  Un violador en tu camino to continue and expand, stay-at-home orders have halted collective public mobilizations and forced women to return to the private sphere of their homes. The movements have radically transformed awareness and perceptions of gender violence over the last five years, but the current crisis, including the alarming increase in domestic violence, shows the gender-violence pandemic remains strong and could get worse. Protecting public health through stay-at-home orders should not neglect the need to protect women. Solutions must be jointly envisioned and enacted by public health experts, activists, and political leaders.

June 29, 2020

* Brenda Werth is Associate Professor and Department Chair, World Languages and Cultures, at American University.

1 Comment
by clalsstaff on June 29, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Argentina, Mexico
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on June 29, 2020

https://aulablog.net/2020/06/29/the-perils-of-quedate-en-casa-covid-19-and-gender-violence-in-latin-america/

El Salvador: Unwilling to Face Up to the Past

By Héctor Silva Ávalos*

Mural of the martyrs of the UCA

Mural of the martyrs of the UCA/ GuanacoSolido503/ Wikimedia Commons/ Creative Commons License (not modified)

The trial of Salvadoran Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano, which began last week in Madrid, provides El Salvador a historic opportunity to learn from the past and reduce impunity in the future, but the government and elites appear unlikely to seize it. Montano is the only defendant in the trial for the murders of six Jesuit priests, five of them Spanish nationals, and two domestic staff on the campus of the Central American University in November 1989. The eight were killed by a Salvadoran Army unit trained by U.S. advisors in what was the last massacre of El Salvador’s civil war (1980-1992) and the first great cover-up by the Salvadoran judicial system of the post-war period, starting with evidence-tampering and later other obstructionism by then-President Freddy Cristiani.

  • In the 31 years since, successive presidents, attorneys general, and supreme courts have failed to prosecute the Salvadoran military high command for ordering the murder of the Jesuits and their helpers. Not even the two FMLN presidents, who governed from 2009 to 2019, took judicial action despite promises to seek justice for them. President Mauricio Funes, the first of them, actually protected a group of former high-ranking military officers that a Spanish Justice alleges were masterminds of the massacre.
  • Despite the country’s political progress since the war, the failure to bring the perpetrators to account has bred a system in which even younger Salvadorans have been raised believing that it is best not to mess with the wounds of the past. People are afraid to condemn impunity, which remains one of the country’s most enduring and democracy-threatening challenges.

President Nayib Bukele, who was elected last year as an outsider committed to ending the corruption of both the FMLN and its conservative counterpart, ARENA (1989‑2009), appears reluctant to grasp the Madrid trial as a way to promote accountability and end impunity. He so far has not made a public statement about it and in recent months has increasingly relied on the corrupt and authoritarian institutions whose legacy is on trial. Some of the police officers, lawyers, and politicians that were part of the cover-up are still active in El Salvador. Some police officials who obstructed the Jesuit investigation are now high-ranking officers in the Policía Nacional Civil (PNC) and, according to a variety of evidence, continue to promote a culture of impunity.

  • Bukele and his ARENA and FMLN counterparts in Congress are occupied in a never-ending confrontation over the COVID‑19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis. Moreover, the President’s security agenda, focused on crushing the gangs, has followed the path of his predecessors, giving the military enhanced powers and nudging the civilian police force back to its military roots. Bukele’s chief of police recently appeared in public wearing a military uniform, possibly violating laws passed in 1992 in fulfillment of the Peace Accords.

These political compromises and alliances and competing priorities seem likely to keep El Salvador from embracing the historic opportunity presented by the Madrid trial – not just to bring justice to the victims of the UCA massacre, but to address the entrenched culture of impunity that has marked Salvadoran politics and its justice system for decades.

  • The United States, the Organization of American States (OAS), and others advocating human rights and transparency also seem likely to miss the opportunity the trial gives them to promote their stated values. The views of political players in Washington today reflect the same schizophrenia visible in the 1980s – with Democrats on Capitol Hill pushing for investigations into the massacres while the Republican Administrations allied themselves with the government and military. (The George H.W. Bush Administration even acquiesced in the harassment of witnesses, including a U.S. military official, who offered important information about the Salvadoran Army’s role in the Jesuit murders.) During the Obama Administration, the State Department gave key support to the extradition of Montano to Spain. Washington risks, once again, overlooking its own responsibilities in these horrible crimes of the past and the damage done to Central America’s fragile democracies.

June 16, 2020

* Héctor Silva Ávalos is a senior researcher and editor at InSight Crime and former CLALS fellow.

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on June 16, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in El Salvador
Tagged ,

Posted by clalsstaff on June 16, 2020

https://aulablog.net/2020/06/16/el-salvador-unwilling-to-face-up-to-the-past/

U.S.-Central America-Mexico: Migrant Caravan Shaking up Relations

By Fulton Armstrong

Honduran migrants meet with Mexican police in Chiapas

Honduran migrants meet with Mexican police in Chiapas. / Pedro Pardo / AFP Photo / Creative Commons

The underlying drivers of Central American migration remain the same as always – the lack of economic opportunity and strong institutions to protect citizens from violence and other threats – but the Trump administration’s accusations and threats in reaction to the caravan of migrants heading toward the United States is moving relations into uncharted territory, just two weeks after the parties congratulated themselves for progress made at a summit in Washington.

  • Honduran, Guatemalan, and now Mexican authorities have been unable to stop the peaceful caravan of 5,000-7,000 people without violating their rights and causing ugly incidents with high political costs at home. After shows of force, Guatemalan and Mexican border guards allowed them to pass, and local businesses and churches have spontaneously provided food, water, and shelter in each town.  Mexico originally said it would allow only those with current passports and identification to apply for refugee status, but, citing obligations under international agreements and national law, relented.  The migrants are now in Chiapas.

At a meeting with U.S. Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo on October 11, leaders from Central America’s three “Northern Triangle” countries – Honduran President Hernández, Guatemalan President Morales, and Salvadoran Vice President Ortiz – and Mexican Foreign Minister Videgaray trumpeted the progress that they had made in slowing the flow of migrants from the region to the United States since launching the Alianza para la Prosperidad in 2014.  CLALS research, other studies, and many press reports show, however, that the underlying drivers of migration remain essentially unchanged.

  • The Alianza may eventually foment economic growth and jobs, but multidimensional poverty and high underemployment continue to drive many to flee their homeland. An analysis by the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales (ICEFI) shows that about 6.2 million children, adolescents, and young adults in the Northern Triangle lack access to an educational system.  Homicide rates have declined, but the region remains one of the most violent in the world.  UN estimates show a steady increase in the number of gang members in all three countries, up to 20,000 each in El Salvador and Guatemala.  The gangs often fill voids left by government institutions that are underfunded and, often, weakened by corrupt officials’ embezzlement.  While violence has long been a driver of migration from urban areas, it is now causing new patterns of migration from rural areas as well.  Domestic violence and abuse, which UN data indicate affects up to 40 percent of girls and 16 percent of boys, is another problem some parents want children to escape.
  • President Trump has not acknowledged these drivers, and instead has portrayed the migrants in the caravan as an “onslaught” of criminals. (He also claimed that “unknown Middle Easterners” are among them but later admitted “there’s no proof of anything.”)  He apparently calculates that stirring up fear helps his allies in the U.S. Congress as midterm elections approach, as well as his campaign for a new wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.  He has threatened the Northern Triangle governments and Mexico for not stopping the migrants, tweeting Monday that he will “now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to [them]” because “they did nothing for us. Nothing.”  Mexican officials, relieved that the confrontation over the NAFTA renegotiation was resolved, now fear another major disruption in bilateral relations.

The migrant caravan is testing the administration’s relations with its closest allies in Central America.  Trump’s jettisoning of the nice talk from Pence’s recent summit will not in itself harm ties; the Central Americans and Mexicans are aware of his impulsive streak and may calculate that they can weather the windstorm.  His accusations and threats to suspend aid, however, reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the underlying drivers of the migration, and he seems unaware that his partners have been unwilling to undertake the political and economic reforms needed to address those drivers except in minor ways that U.S. aid enables.  Trump apparently thinks his partners should use force – even the military if needed (as he’s threatened on the U.S. border) – to stop the flight of humans from the miserable conditions in which they live.  He also apparently judges that the more migrants are made to suffer, such as through the separation of family members who manage to cross the border, the less likely they are to try.  The caravan’s provocations and Trump’s reactions could blow up the game that has allowed both sides to pretend the problem will go away with token programs, intimidation, and a wall.

October 24, 2018

Leave a comment
by clalsstaff on October 24, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Central America, Mexico, United States
Tagged , ,

Posted by clalsstaff on October 24, 2018

https://aulablog.net/2018/10/24/u-s-central-america-mexico-migrant-caravan-shaking-up-relations/

« Older Posts