Plan Colombia and Beyond

Evo Morales was re-elected yesterday. (Photo source unknown, it came in our email.)

• Recent articles in Time, the Wall Street Journal, and Reuters discuss Latin American disenchantment with the Obama administration following its handling of the coup in Honduras.

• Citing poll data gathered in July and September, however, Gallup finds Latin Americans’ approval of U.S. leadership hitting a median of 51%, way up from 35% in 2008.

• Evo Morales was overwhelmingly re-elected to another term on Sunday. The best overview we’ve seen is the 3-part series and wrap-up on the Democracy Center’s “Blog from Bolivia.”

• The Government Accountability Office, the independent auditing arm of the U.S. Congress, issued a report [PDF] last week documenting very slow delivery of U.S. aid to Mexico under the “Mérida Initiative.” As the “Just the Facts” blog points out, the report bears some resemblance to a 2003 GAO report [PDF] documenting slow delivery of U.S. aid to Colombia under “Plan Colombia.”

• The Fellowship of Reconciliation shares [PDF], and analyzes, the latest list of Colombian military and police units vetted and cleared to receive U.S. assistance.

• Those involved in efforts to facilitate the next FARC unilateral hostage release in Colombia – which is to include Corporal Pablo Emilio Moncayo, whose father is a leading advocate of negotiations – say that they have entered the “logistical” phase. A good sign.

• Two excellent discussions of Colombia’s agrarian “counter-reform,” and the central role of narcotrafficking and forced displacement, appear on the websites of Semana magazine and the CINEP think-tank.

• Semana profiles the Colombian Army’s inspector-general, whose work on the “false positives” scandal is revealing strong divisions in the armed forces on the issue of human rights.

• Colombia’s Supreme Court handed a 40-year jail term to one of the most prominent “para-politicians,” former Sucre governor and ambassador to Chile Salvador Arana. He was found guilty of helping form paramilitary groups and conspiring to murder the mayor of the town of El Roble, Eudaldo Díaz (the subject of a recent edition of the Contravía television program).

• Sucre is one of several places where El Tiempo found that the relatives of convicted “para-politicians” are running to fill their loved ones’ former positions in the 2010 congressional elections.

• Captured paramilitary leader and narcotrafficker “Don Mario” testified last week that Vicente Castaño, one of the most powerful paramilitary leaders long believed to be a fugitive, committed suicide in March 2007.

• Citing multiple sources, Colombia’s INDEPAZ think-tank publishes a list [PDF] of 278 municipalities (counties, of which Colombia has about 1,100) that registered a presence of “new” or “emerging” paramilitary groups in 2009.

• Hard-right Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady is the latest conservative U.S. voice calling on Colombian President Álvaro Uribe not to run for another term in 2010.

• As Hugo Chávez moves drastically to cut off trade with Colombia, Venezuela in October ceased to be Colombia’s number-two trading partner (after the United States). China now occupies Colombia’s number-two position.

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Results (66.31% of urns counted):

1. Porfirio Lobo (National Party) 937,006 (55.9% of valid ballots)
2. Elvin Santos (Liberal Party) 639,481 (38.2%)
3. Bernardo Martínez (National Innovation Party) 37,029 (2.2%)
4. Felícito Ávila (Christian Democracy Social Party) 32,113 (1.9%)
5. César Ham (Democratic Unification) 30,334 (1.8%)

Western Hemisphere countries recognizing the election result:

• United States
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Panama
• Peru

The turnout:

In the 2005 presidential elections, 46 percent of eligible Hondurans turned out to vote. Honduras’ Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) has projected that more than 60 percent voted this time. The Honduras Coup 2009 blog reports that the pollster the TSE hired to make statistical projections and perform exit polling estimates a turnout of 47.6 percent. The pro-Zelaya “Resistance Front” is estimating turnout of 35-40 percent. Meanwhile, of ballots that were cast, 6 percent were blank or invalid.

Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela:

Having said that, let me stress the most important point, and that is that, while the election is a significant step in Honduras’ return to a democratic and constitutional order after the 28th June coup, it’s just that.  It’s only a step, and it’s not the last step….

A government of national unity needs to be formed.  The congress has to take a vote on the return of President Zelaya to office.

And another element of the San Jose Accord that I think would be very, very important as Honduras moves forward to try to reestablish the democratic and constitutional order is the formation and the structuring of a truth commission, which was also contemplated in the original Tegucigalpa framework and San Jose Accord.

And the truth commission would be a body that would look into the incidents and the situation that led to the coup, but at the same time, as the accord says, … it also will provide the elementos, as it says in the accord, the elements to help the Hondurans make the necessary reforms to their constitutional process and to bring about a fuller reconciliation of the Honduran people. …

The issue is not who is going to be the next president. The Honduran people decided that. The issue is whether the legitimate president of Honduras, who was overthrown in a coup d’état, will be returned to office by the congress on December 2^nd, as per the San Jose-Tegucigalpa Accord.

De facto president Roberto Micheletti:

On the way, many things have changed. Today, we are a nation whose sovereignty has been proved, with no fear of defending its sovereignty against even the largest [powers], and with the faith that if we act according to the law, we can achieve everything. Beyond paper and speeches, today our Honduras has gone out to confirm to the world that it is a dignified, free country, with no impositions and very proud of itself.

Resistance leader and independent pro-Zelaya presidential candidate Carlos Reyes:

We will keep rejecting any dialogue with the coup leaders. … We’ve had it up to here with dialogues. Why should we go on with so much dialogue if, with these dialogues, we have lost five months and we haven’t resolved absolutely anything.

The Honduran Congress is to vote Wednesday on whether to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya to head a “national unity government” until January 27, when Porfirio Lobo, the winner of yesterday’s vote, would take office.

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Honduras will hold a presidential election tomorrow, five months after a coup ejected President Manuel Zelaya and a military-backed interim government took over in Tegucigalpa. Back in September, the Obama administration’s State Department declared that the U.S. government could not recognize the elections’ result under those circumstances.

A presidential election is currently scheduled for November. That election must be undertaken in a free, fair and transparent manner. It must also be free of taint and open to all Hondurans to exercise their democratic franchise. At this moment, we would not be able to support the outcome of the scheduled elections. A positive conclusion of the Arias process would provide a sound basis for legitimate elections to proceed.

Since then, Zelaya sneaked back into the country, an accord to establish a unity government was signed but then ignored, and little else changed. But 3 weeks ago, the Obama administration’s position took an abrupt about-face: the U.S. government now intends to recognize the result of tomorrow’s vote.

Today’s Washington Post editorial page applauds this decision.

Elections have often been used to restore constitutional order in unstable countries; they brought a peaceful end to Augusto Pinochet’s right-wing dictatorship in Chile and to the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. In the case of Honduras, the election solution is particularly appropriate, since one had been scheduled before Mr. Zelaya was arrested and illegally deported from the country in June.

The temptation to “shake the Etch-a-Sketch” and just start over with post-election Honduras is understandable. But there are very strong reasons why the United States must not rush to confer recognition on the government that emerges from tomorrow’s vote, or to restore full aid and drop sanctions.

1. The people who carried out the June 28 coup will have gotten exactly what they wanted. The message will be that “crime does pay.” This is a terrible message for Latin America – and especially Central America – where democracy is colliding with economies and political systems that have traditionally concentrated wealth and power, including military power, in very few hands. While Manuel Zelaya was hardly a dynamic social movement leader, Honduras’s tiny elite viewed him as a threat and removed him, using the military, through extra-legal means. Elites throughout the region who are unhappy with elected leaders (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Paraguay come to mind, but there are several others) will view the U.S. government recognition of tomorrow’s elections as a capitulation. They will know that if they pull off a coup of their own, the United States’ opposition will be brittle and quickly reversed upon the slightest pretext.

2. The conditions for a fair vote were not in place. Determining the legitimacy of elections requires more than just observing what happens on election day. In the months before the voting, were some parties or candidates unable to assemble, organize and campaign peacefully? Did they have difficulty gaining fair access to the media? Were supporters of some candidates or political tendencies subject to official repression?

Here are links to several eyewitness reports indicating that the answer to these questions is “yes.” Honduras’s 2009 election campaign took place in a climate of fear in which media outlets were shuttered, candidates were put at unfair disadvantages, political activists were intimidated, and examples of military repression were frequent. These reports indicate that the Honduran elections do not meet the standards of Article 3 and 4 of the 2001 OAS Democratic Charter.

• November 27, Amnesty International: Stock pile of tear gas grenades in Honduras triggers fears of human rights abuses
• November 26, OAS: Special Rapporteurship for Freedom of Expression Expresses Its Deep Concern Regarding the Situation of Freedom of Expression in Honduras
• November 25, Washington Office on Latin America / Latin America Working Group: Honduran Presidential Elections November 29th: Basic Conditions for Free and Fair Elections Do Not Exist
• November 20, May I Speak Freely Media: Fear and Loathing in Honduras: Elections Under Repression
• November 18, Amnesty International: Amnesty International visits Honduras to assess human rights situation
• October 30, Human Rights Watch: Honduras: Investigate Abuses, Repeal Repressive Measures
• September 29, OAS: The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression Condemns the Suspension of Guarantees in Honduras and the Violations of the Right to Freedom of Expression
• September 28, Human Rights Watch: Honduras: Restore Press Freedom Immediately
• September 28, Committee to Protect Journalists: Honduras must allow pro-Zelaya broadcasters to reopen
• August 21, OAS: Preliminary Observations on the IACHR Visit to Honduras
• August 19, Amnesty International: Honduras: Human rights crisis threatens as repression increases

3. Recognizing the elections will put the United States at odds with most of the hemisphere. For the reasons above, the list of other countries planning to recognize the Honduran election result is small: it includes Costa Rica, Panama, perhaps Colombia, and few, if any, others. The Organization of American States will not be recognizing the result. If the Obama administration bucks the regional consensus, it will be viewed throughout the hemisphere as a return to the calculating unilateralism that so damaged perceptions of the United States during the Bush administration.

Seven months ago, at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, President Obama built much goodwill with promises of greater collaboration and consultation, especially with larger states like Brazil and Mexico. That goodwill – already drained by the administration’s handling of its military agreement with Colombia – will all but disappear if the United States goes it alone on Honduras.

Recognizing the Honduran elections is shortsighted and counterproductive – in sum, a terrible idea. But indefinite non-recognition of Honduras is not an attractive option, either. What should the United States do, then? George Vickers of the Open Society Institute lays out some guidelines in a November 25 post to Foreign Policy’s website.

[D]on’t bless these elections and walk away. Instead, Washington should maintain its suspension of government-to-government assistance and not recognize the newly elected regime until there is a full restoration of civil liberties and steps are taken to prosecute human rights abuses. Next, the Obama team should work with the Organization of American States and other democracies — the vast majority of which is reluctant to endorse these elections — to find a way to bring Honduras back into the international community. For starters, if the new government is to recover any semblance of legitimacy, it will need to ensure that adequate conditions exist for a broad and pluralistic debate and dialogue, including with respect to any constitutional issues. Moreover, such a dialogue should be seen as responding to the legitimate rights and concerns of Honduran citizens, rather than being branded as treason, as is customary for the coup government today.

Whether through a rewrite of their constitution or some other process, Hondurans – of all political stripes – need to work this out, with help from the international community. If the people running Honduras instead decide to crack down further and exclude other voices, the United States cannot reward them with recognition and aid.

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Happy Thanksgiving to our U.S. readers.

• Colombia will not send any cabinet ministers to today’s meeting of UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations, in Quito, Ecuador. The meeting sought to reduce tensions between Colombia and Venezuela, which remain very high following Colombia’s signing of a military agreement with the United States, warlike rhetoric from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and a series of incidents on the two countries’ common border. According to the Colombian Foreign Ministry’s statement, Colombia’s government will skip the UNASUR meeting because “the attitude and recent escalation of insults that the Colombian government and people have received do not allow us to foresee that the discussions at tomorrow’s meeting will take place with the tone of respect, objectivity and balance that this forum demands.” El Tiempo contends that the decision not to attend was triggered by a recent statement from Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva calling on Uribe and Chávez “to understand that war is not constructive, that the insane dispute is not constructive.” In the Colombian government’s view, Lula failed to credit Colombia for its recent policy of refusing to respond to Chávez’s provocations.

• The Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, a Bogotá-based think-tank, has published its annual overview of Colombia’s conflict. They find increases in all armed groups’ activity during 2009, with the “new” paramilitary groups responsible for the largest share of violence. They conclude that President Álvaro Uribe’s security policies, which reduced many violence measures since 2002, have “reached the ceiling” of what they were capable of doing.

• Semana magazine and El Tiempo have more bad security news: Medellín will surpass 2,000 murders this year, a 76 percent increase over 2008 and the worst level of violence since 2003. According to El Tiempo, 70 percent of those being killed are members of over 160 gangs active in the city.

• More than 12 years after paramilitaries killed up to 49 people in the village of Mapiripán, Meta, the army general who refused to respond to the town’s pleas for help has been found guilty by a civilian court of murder, kidnapping and falsifying public documents. Gen. Jaime Uscátegui has been sentenced to 40 years in prison. The paramilitaries’ first major operation in southern Colombia, Mapiripán occurred with evident support of the local security forces. Still, Gen. Uscátegui remains defiant, telling El Espectador that he is the victim of a smear campaign by human rights NGOs “because the head of a general is profitable.”

• Cartagena will host the Second Review Conference of the International Treaty to Ban Land Mines. Due to the guerrillas’ use of these devices, Colombia – a signatory of the treaty – has one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises caused by land mines. The United States is not a signatory of the landmine treaty; earlier this week, the Obama administration announced that it would continue the Bush administration’s policy of refusing to sign on. The sudden announcement earned a very sharp rebuke from Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy (D). On Wednesday the State Department clarified that the decision was not final, and the landmine policy remained under “comprehensive review.”

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Human rights defender Carmelo Agámez has been in jail for a year (photo source).

• The Wall Street Journal editorial page is perhaps the most conservative of any major U.S. daily. Today’s editorial sings the praises of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe. But it also urges him not to seek a third term.

• In a joint statement, the presidents of Brazil and Argentina “expressed their concern about the presence in the region of military forces from an extra-regional power,” a direct rebuke of the U.S.-Colombia military agreement signed last month.

• Carmelo Agámez, a leader of the Movement of Victims of State Crimes in Sucre, Colombia, has been an outspoken critic of the paramilitary groups who dominated his home region. Agámez has now been in jail for a year awaiting trial on charges of collaborating with… paramilitary groups. “Agámez’s unjust detention is just one emblematic example of a much bigger problem: the extensive use of malicious criminal investigations and trumped-up charges to silence human rights activists in Colombia,” writes Andrew Hudson of Human Rights First.

• The webcast of yesterday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the Cuba travel ban is worthwhile viewing for the impassioned, but often incredibly simplistic, statements from the members of Congress in attendance. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) and Rep. Howard Berman (D-California, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee) jointly published an op-ed Tuesday in the Miami Herald calling for an end to the travel ban. Human Rights Watch meanwhile released an extensive report contending that the human rights situation in Cuba is not improving.

• Cuba is the reason why a Florida senator has put a hold on Thomas Shannon’s nomination to be ambassador to Brazil. The lack of ambassadorial representation, Bloomberg reports, may have cost U.S. aerospace company Boeing a huge arms sale to Brazil.

• As the Obama administration moves to recognize the result of November 29 elections in coup-governed Honduras (read the incredibly tortured exchange on this subject in Wednesday’s State Department briefing), the “May I Speak Freely” website, which closely monitors Honduras, explains why this is a bad idea.

• With elections just a few weeks away, President Evo Morales leads polls by a wide margin in Bolivia, and center-right candidate Sebastián Piñera leads by a narrow margin in Chile.

• The Bush administration’s chief of Customs and Border Protection called publicly for a reinstatement of the U.S. assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, in order to limit the flow of weapons to drug cartels in Mexico.

• The Pan-American Health Organization reports that 43.4 percent of Guatemalan children under 6 suffer from chronic malnutrition. The percentage approaches 70 percent in rural areas. Child malnutrition is as severe in Guatemala as it is in Nigeria, Yemen, Ethiopia and Madagascar.

• “A big watch and cool knife get you only so far. Once they´re convinced you’re serious about their concerns (social, environmental and political) they take you seriously.” – from a Southern Command article about U.S. riverine training in Ecuador’s Amazon basin region.

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Photos found on a computer recovered from a FARC commander include this shot of a very young girl holding a rifle. (Source)

• In a surprise decision, Colombia’s National Electoral Commission last night declared invalid the signatures on petitions to allow President Álvaro Uribe to run for a third term. The signatures were needed for Colombia’s Congress to consider legislation to schedule a constitutional amendment referendum. That legislation was approved in September, and the referendum was expected to be held early next year. The Electoral Commission threw out the signatures, and potentially the referendum, arguing that the amount of money spent on the petition drive was illegal. The commission’s decision is appealable, and Uribe’s reelection backers are expected to do so.

• The latest bimonthly Invamer-Gallup poll gives President Uribe a 64 percent favorability rating, “the lowest favorability level the President has had in his seven years of government.” The Agro Ingreso Seguro scandal gets much blame.

• If you speak Spanish and have a sense of humor, don’t miss the two-part “Pequeño Tirano” cartoon about the Agro Ingreso Seguro scandal.

• The Commander of the U.S. Army decorated a Colombian Army instructor at the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, leading Colombia’s Defense Ministry to publish a release headlined, “Colombian Army is Recognized by the United States as a Leader in Human Rights Training.”

• The Obama administration finally has its own assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Arturo Valenzuela was approved in a Senate vote last Friday and sworn in on Tuesday.

• Trade agreements with Colombia and Panama “are going to have to wait,” said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke this week, citing a backlogged agenda of higher legislative priorities.

• The FARC launched its biggest attack of the year early this week. 200 guerrillas overran a contingent of soldiers guarding communications antennas in Corinto, Cauca, killing 9. The government has responded by deploying 2,500 soldiers and police to the zone.

• Colombia’s Semana magazine published a long and disturbing story about efforts to torpedo official investigations into illegal surveillance and wiretaps by the presidential intelligence service (DAS): “Threats against investigators, hidden microphones to follow them, prosecutors fired by [acting Prosecutor-General] Guillermo Mendoza, and great distrust of the detectives charged with gathering evidence.”

• “As I look across our hemisphere at our security challenges, the recurring and growing challenge remains illicit trafficking,” Southern Command Commander Gen. Douglas Fraser said in a speech (PDF) in Miami this week.

• Key congressional Democrats joined a growing chorus of dismay about the State Department’s decision to change position and recognize the Honduran elections even without a reversal of the June 28 coup. A spokesman for Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) told the Washington Post: “The State Department’s abrupt change of policy towards Honduras last week — recognizing the elections scheduled for Nov. 29 even if the coup regime does not meet its commitments under the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord — caused the collapse of an accord it helped negotiate.”

• U.S. and Ecuadorian diplomats held a U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Dialogue to seek improved relations. However, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, warned that Ecuador is in danger of losing trade benefits under the Andean Trade Preference and Drug Elimination Act: “Ecuador is sticky. It’s difficult. It’s not easy … Ecuador is not helping itself. It’s a word to the wise. If they want to continue, a lot of that is in their hands too.”

• Forbes magazine’s list of “The World’s Most Powerful People,” published this week, puts Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, head of the largest branch of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, at number 41. Forbes ranks Guzmán ahead of Dmitri Medvedev, Nicolas Sarkozy, and even Oprah Winfrey.

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• We’re all waiting to see whether the Honduran Congress (following an advisory opinion by the deeply anti-Zelaya Supreme Court) will approve an agreement reached late yesterday to allow Manuel Zelaya to return to the country’s presidency, four months after being deposed by a coup. The main points of the agreement between Zelaya and acting President Roberto Micheletti are laid out in Micheletti’s statement from last night. If the agreement is accepted, and Zelaya gets to serve out his term, the November 29 elections will receive international recognition. And the U.S. diplomats who traveled to Tegucigalpa this week to put pressure on both sides (mainly Thomas Shannon of the State Department and Daniel Restrepo of the National Security Council) will deserve a big congratulation. But let’s make sure this actually happens first.

• In a private ceremony this morning, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield and Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez signed the “Complementary agreement for cooperation and technical assistance in defense and security,” which formalizes a U.S. presence at seven Colombian military bases for ten years. We still do not know what else is in this agreement, which was negotiated in secret and will not require the approval of either country’s Congress, though in the United States it will be shared with both houses’ foreign relations committees before it goes into effect. (We will add a link to the agreement here if we manage to obtain a copy.) Recent press reports include a few clues, however.
  • El Nuevo Herald: “U.S. government officials told El Nuevo Herald that it was the Colombian government that requested that the details of the agreement be kept secret.”
  • El Espectador, which had a chance to see the secret opinion filed by the State Council, one of Colombia’s high courts, reports that the judicial body found the agreement, “both in its objectives and in its obligations, to be very broad and unbalanced for the country [Colombia].” Other excerpts:
    • “The United States determines the activities to be carried out, and Colombia is only a cooperating party.”
    • The accord “mentions the use of, and access to, military bases, without determining the form and limits of either.”
    • “No valid reason exists for why the United States can establish satellite receiving stations for radio and television broadcasts, without any licensing procedures or concessions and at no cost.”
    • “In addition, the State Council characterized as ‘imperious’ the renegotiation of immunity terms, ‘whose inequality is derived from the offering of this immunity to U.S. personnel without discrimination.’”
  • Semana: “Asked what changes in U.S.-Colombian military relations would justify the signing of a new treaty, a Defense Ministry source said that operations will take place where they have never operated before, and there will be sharing of sophisticated equipment not included in the accords signed under the “Plan Colombia” umbrella.

• Contravía, an investigative program on an independent Colombian television network, broadcast a show about Eudaldo Díaz, the mayor of El Roble, Sucre (in 3 parts [1 | 2 | 3]; part 1 is embedded below). At a 2003 televised meeting with President Uribe in Sucre’s capital, Díaz took the microphone to denounce that the paramilitaries, in league with many of Sucre’s top politicians present at the meeting, were going to kill him. A week later, Díaz was dead. The governor of Sucre at the time, Salvador Araña, is under investigation for allegedly ordering the murder. This week, days after the Contravía episode aired, a judge ordered that the chief of Sucre’s police at the time, Norman León, be investigated.

Photo source and article link

• The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere held a hearing Tuesday about Iran’s role in Latin America. Bloggings By Boz tries to discern patterns in this subcommittee’s hearings since the Democrats took control of the House in 2007.

• The Puerto Rican band Calle 13 had a concert in Manizales, Colombia cancelled after its lead singer showed up on MTV Latino wearing a T-shirt with messages accusing President Álvaro Uribe of supporting paramilitaries and criticizing Colombia’s U.S. base agreement. The band played Venezuela this week, where Hugo Chávez offered to sing with them. Politics aside, here’s a good song: “No Hay Nadie Como Tú,” by Calle 13 and the Mexican band Café Tacuba.

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Picture from El Colombiano’s coverage of paramilitary properties in Urabá, Colombia.

• Thursday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will draft a new bill, H.R. 2134, the “Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission Act of 2009.” The bill would establish a blue-ribbon panel to rethink the U.S. approach to drug interdiction in Latin America and the Caribbean. The House committee will then hold a 2:10 PM hearing “Assessing U.S. Drug Policy in the Americas.”

• Three articles in three days last week covered Washington conservatives’ intense lobby effort in support of the June 28 coup in Honduras. In them, we learn that former Clinton counsel Lanny Davis has been paid at least $350,000 so far, and that former Bush official Otto Reich thinks Honduras is “not the first time all the countries in the world have been wrong.”
  • Most thorough is Art Levine’s piece on the Daily Beast site, which appeared October 10.
  • Mary Beth Sheridan in the October 9 Washington Post.
  • Ginger Thompson and Ron Nixon in the October 8 New York Times.
  • Opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal from two of the coup’s allies, Davis and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina). Floor speech by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), who traveled to Honduras with DeMint in early October.

• Al Giordano publishes the results of a poll of Hondurans showing overwhelming opposition to the coup, albeit with tepid support for Manuel Zelaya.

• Charges that Honduran landowners have been recruiting former Colombian paramilitaries, presumably to defend the coup as mercenaries, first appeared in Colombia’s El Tiempo in mid-September, and were raised by a UN working group last week.

• With five months to go for congressional elections in Colombia, Semana magazine reports on how legislators who have run into trouble for ties to paramilitary groups are planning to keep control of their seats. Many are arranging for close associates, often family members, to run in their place.

• FARC leader Iván Márquez says that the organization will finally release two hostages – including Corporal Pablo Emilio Moncayo, whom it has held for nearly 11 years – “as soon as the Colombian government publicly ratifies that the guarantees and protocols,” presumably for security, are in place.

• Highly recommended: this investigation, in the Medellín daily El Colombiano, of the lands owned by top paramilitary leaders in the northwestern region of Urabá, which was one of the AUC’s centers of operation a decade ago.

• By a 44-24 vote, Argentina’s Senate on Saturday passed a controversial new media law tightening regulations on the press and limiting the number of outlets a single company can own. The vote is seen as a victory for President Cristina Fernández and a blow to the country’s biggest media conglomerate, the opposition-tilting Grupo Clarín.

• Writing in Tal Cual, Rocío San Miguel expresses concern about a new paramilitary body, the “Bolivarian Militia,” to be created by a law just approved by Venezuela’s nearly unanimously pro-government National Assembly.

• Venezuela is not allowing the OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission to pay a visit to the country, despite repeated requests from the country’s opposition that the Commission report on recent actions that erode democracy. Leaders of President Chávez’s political party say that the Commission is not welcome in Venezuela as long as it is presided by human rights lawyer Santiago Cantón, whom they say supported the failed April 2002 coup attempt in Caracas.

• “So how’s the uranium for Iran going? For the atomic bomb.” – Hugo Chávez, joking to his mining minister during a televised cabinet meeting last week.

• Bolivia’s government says it has surpassed is 2009 goal of 5,000 hectares of coca manually eradicated.

• U.S. oil company Chevron, which has been fighting an environmental contamination lawsuit from communities in Ecuador’s Amazon, is pushing to move the case from an Ecuadorian court – where it had been moved at Chevron’s request – to the World Court in the Hague. “This reframes the case as between Ecuador and Chevron,” writes a Los Angeles Times editorial. “And if it succeeds — shifting liability from the company to the Ecuadorean government — it could have a chilling effect on people all over the world who are engaged in legal battles with multinational corporations.”

• From the New York Times, reason to doubt that the Obama administration plans any dramatic changes to Cuba policy: “The New York Philharmonic scratched its trip to Cuba at the end of October because the United States Treasury Department said it would deny permission for a group of patrons to go along. Without them and their donations, the orchestra said on Thursday, it cannot afford to go.”
  • Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) protested this outcome on the floor of the Senate.
  • Despite this, the Inter-American Dialogue’s Marifeli Pérez-Stable sees the United States and Cuba “inching toward each other.”

• I just realized: we missed this blog’s 5th anniversary. The very first post appeared on October 6, 2004. You are reading post number 823. Thank you for visiting.

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From the Honduran daily Tiempo.

The Washington Post today chose to publish an op-ed by the de facto leader of Honduras’ coup government, Roberto Micheletti. He makes a strong pitch for U.S. and international recognition of the country’s November 29 elections, which will be taking place under his regime’s auspices. This is something that the U.S. State Department and the Organization of American States have so far refused to do.

In making this sales pitch, Micheletti makes a number of unprovable, outrageous, or patently false statements. For example:

“Amid all of the claims that are likely to be made in coming days, the former president [Zelaya] will not mention that the people of Honduras have moved on since the events of that day or that our citizens are looking forward to free, fair and transparent elections on Nov. 29.”

If “the people of Honduras have moved on,” then the Honduran security forces would not have needed to disperse thousands of protesters this morning, using tear gas and rubber bullets, from the area around the Brazilian embassy to Honduras, where returned President Manuel Zelaya is currently taking refuge. The Micheletti government’s actions this morning earned a quick condemnation from the chair of the OAS Permanent Council.

And it is impossible to talk about “free, fair and transparent elections.” Even if the balloting is spotless, those who forcibly removed the last elected leader are in power, the ability of pro-Zelaya candidates to campaign freely is uncertain, and the leader of a powerful political current – the deposed president – is unable to be present in the country, much less campaign.

“On June 28, the Honduran Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya for his blatant violations of our constitution, which marked the end of his presidency.”

If that is all that happened, there would be little controversy today. Had Zelaya been arrested, replaced constitutionally, and put on trial with due process, it would have been politically tumultuous for Honduras but would not have affected foreign recognition or support.

But that is not what happened. Instead, the army awoke the President at gunpoint and forced him, upon pain of death, to board a plane and leave the country. This took place even though the Honduran Constitution guarantees due process for people accused of crimes, and Honduran law has no provisions for forced exile or stripping of citizenship. Later, in the legislative proceeding that named Micheletti the country’s president, the coup leaders distributed, and read in the national media, an obviously forged resignation letter allegedly written by Zelaya.

All of these actions – violation of due process, forced exile, fraud – clearly violate Honduran law.

“To this day, an overwhelming majority of Hondurans support the actions that ensured the respect of the rule of law in our country.”

According to what polling or other evidence? A July Gallup poll of Hondurans found that “Forty-six percent said they disagreed with Zelaya’s ouster and 41 percent said they approved of it.”

“Underlying all the rhetoric about a military overthrow are facts. Simply put, coups do not leave civilians in control over the armed forces, as is the case in Honduras today. Neither do they allow the independent functioning of democratic institutions — the courts, the attorney general’s office, the electoral tribunal.”

A coup is  an illegal, often violent removal of a head of government. It can take many forms. A uniformed officer need not carry the title of “president” for the event to be considered a “coup.” If anything, the June 28 coup in Honduras ejected a leader of whom the armed forces disapproved (and who, indeed, was likely issuing it illegal orders), and replaced him with a leader whom the armed forces found more palatable.

Of the independent institutions Micheletti mentions, the courts and the attorney general’s office both actively supported the June 28 coup. Of course their functioning hasn’t been affected.

“Coups do not allow freedom of assembly, either. They do not guarantee freedom of the press, much less a respect for human rights. In Honduras, these freedoms remain intact and vibrant.”

This outrageous claim contradicts credible reports about the human rights situation inside Honduras. See, for instance, reports produced last month by the OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission and Amnesty International. For concerns about press freedom, see the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Honduras page or this article by the Council of the Americas. These sources give the lie to Micheletti’s statements, which the Washington Post should have taken the care to submit to even the most basic of fact-checking.

“The writer is president of Honduras.”

That line – which is how the Washington Post identifies Micheletti at the bottom of the column – may be the most misleading of the entire article. The Post failed even to insert the word “de facto” or “acting,” and thereby did its readers a disservice.

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Deposed President Manuel Zelaya has surprised us all by sneaking back into Tegucigalpa overland, and announcing his return from the safety of the Brazilian embassy. (The embassy, according to reports on Twitter, happens to be next door to the residence of the de facto post-coup president, Roberto Micheletti.)

Zelaya’s return is clearly a shock to Micheletti, who responded to early reports of Zelaya’s return as “media terrorism,” insisting that Zelaya was “in a suite in a Nicaraguan hotel.”

As thousands of supporters gather outside the Brazilian embassy, the obvious question is: now what?

• Micheletti is vowing to arrest Zelaya, but that appears unlikely since the President is technically on Brazilian soil and surrounded by a large number of supporters.

• Zelaya is offering to negotiate; if Micheletti digs in his heels and refuses, the result could be a long standoff in the middle of Tegucigalpa – one that risks outbreaks of violence in the capital and elsewhere.

• Unless, of course, the political ground under him caves in completely, and Micheletti has to give up power unilaterally – but that is far from certain given the solidity of elite and armed-forces support he appears to enjoy. For now, the coup government has the guns, and most of the political class, on its side.

• The best outcome would be for Micheletti immediately to accept the dialogue offer and reach an agreement to restore democratic order. An agreement, perhaps, along the lines of the San José Accord, which allows for Zelaya’s return with no further re-election discussion and a mutual amnesty. (The latter is probably necessary because both sides can credibly be accused of having broken Honduran law.)

Achieving this outcome will require quick, unanimous international pressure. Brazil, the United States, Oscar Arias and the OAS – as well as Europe and the rest of the Americas – must make clear to Micheletti, the coup government, and their contacts in Honduras’ pro-coup elite that they are all alone. The game is over. They must leave power – and for them, the best exit is the one that passes via the negotiating table.

A long standoff, with a high risk of violence, is in nobody’s interest. It’s time to negotiate a deal that allows Honduras to return to legality and democracy. The president must finish his term.

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• The Defense Council of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) will meet in Quito on Tuesday the 15th. Mutual confidence-building measures will be high on the agenda. Confidence-building will be ever more important as South America embarks on a wave of arms purchases, including two big ones announced last week.
  • Venezuela announced that it will buy 100 tanks and an unknown number of short-range missiles from Russia. (The New York Times questions whether Venezuela will be able to pay: “[President Hugo] Chávez would have to find a way to pay for the missiles while he struggles to meet other obligations. With oil prices dropping sharply from their peak last year, Venezuela owes an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion to a wide variety of foreign companies, including suppliers of basic items like food.”
  • Brazil will make a multi-billion-dollar purchase of French fighter aircraft. Argentina’s La Nación says that Brazil’s recent purchases from France, including a joint venture for a nuclear submarine, will also help revive Brazil’s nuclear energy program.
  • Meanwhile, Bolivia plans to buy from Russia a new presidential airplane and about $70 million more in military equipment. For its part, Chile may move in the other direction: President Michelle Bachelet has submitted legislation to do away with a legacy of the Pinochet years: the automatic transfer of 10 percent of the country’s copper profits to the armed forces’ procurement fund.

• In an unexpected move, Colombia’s acting attorney-general, Guillermo Mendoza, ordered the arrest of retired Gen. Francisco René Pedraza. He is charged with aiding and abetting the paramilitaries who carried out the horrific April 2001 Alto Naya massacre in Valle del Cauca and Cauca departments. Gen. Pedraza headed the Cali-based 3rd Brigade, which did nothing to stop Carlos Castaño’s AUC paramilitary organization – particularly Urabá-based paramilitary leader Éver Veloza, or “H.H.” – from forming the murderous Bloque Calima paramilitary front in 1999-2001. “The Sixth Division,” a 2001 report from Human Rights Watch, discusses the 3rd Brigade’s collaboration with the Bloque Calima.
  Note as of 8:30 September 14: El Espectador had this scoop late Friday: Gen. Pedraza was released, and the charges against him dropped, on Friday. It appears to be a technicality: “the prosecutor in charge of the case was not empowered to order his arrest.”

• El Tiempo shares the proof-of-life videos of ten FARC hostages, military and police officers who have been held for ten years or more. The Colombian Army intercepted the videos by stopping the messenger – believed to be on his way to delivering the videos to Colombian Senator and frequent hostage mediator Piedad Córdoba – on September 5. Global Post has a video about the long struggle of Gustavo Moncayo, father of one of the FARC’s remaining hostages, who does not appear in the intercepted videos.

• The Christian Science Monitor reports on the FARC’s increased use of homemade landmines, which has contributed to a 15 percent increase in Colombian military casualties since last year.

• Bloomberg, The Economist, and Semana magazine all discuss the unprecedented recent steps that Venezuela has been taking to reduce trade and travel ties to Colombia.

• Semana identifies Maximilano Bonilla, alias “Valenciano,” as the narcotrafficker seeking, through a wave of recent murders, to take control of the drug trade in a broad swath of northern Colombia that had been under the control of now-extradited paramilitary leaders.

• On September 10, the Mexican daily El Universal reported, Mexico registered its 5,000th organized crime-related killing of 2009, reaching 5,018 by the end of the day. In all of 2008, the newspaper counted about 5,600 such murders – so 2009 is virtually assured to be even more violent than last year. On Monday President Felipe Calderón replaced embattled Attorney-General Eduardo Medina Mora. Medina’s appointed successor, former Chihuahua state Attorney-General Arturo Chávez, has come under fire from Mexican human rights groups and other critics for failing to address two phenomena that marked his tenure: the hundreds of disappearances of women  in Ciudad Juárez, and the growth of the Juárez drug cartel.

• Two and a half months after the June 28 coup in which its military helped kick elected President Manuel Zelaya out of the country, the armed forces of Honduras are being excluded from U.S. military exercises and cooperation activities. These include the annual PANAMAX 2009 counter-terror exercise, which began September 11 (”Honduras withdrew from the exercise August 10″), and the August 17-21 Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program conference that U.S. Special Operations Command South hosted in Miami for Central American and Caribbean security forces.

• “August 21 marked the second time an American has graduated from the Brazilian Jungle Warfare Instruction Center (Centro de Instrucao de Guerra na Selva),” reports the U.S. Southern Command.

• Last Sunday, the UK’s Observer ran a series of 3 articles (1, 2, 3), one by former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, arguing that drug policy has failed in Latin America, and that a new policy is urgently needed.

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(Picture from Semana.)

• The Colombian newsmagazine Semana revealed that Colombia’s presidential intelligence service (DAS) is still spying on judges, journalists and opposition politicians. The shocking revelations come six months after these practices were first revealed. “The wiretapping and surveillance of members of the [Supreme] Court, journalists, politicians and some lawyers are still happening. And if that were not enough, they have extended to some presidential candidates, and, recently, to congressmen. ‘What is happening in the last few weeks that interests us? Simple: the [presidential reelection] referendum. We must know what the politicians are up to and what they are thinking,’ one of the people in charge of these monitoring tasks told Semana while he showed part of his labors. Surveillance using active or retired detectives, the use of vehicles disguised as taxis or telecommunications companies, and the use of wiretapping equipment not in official inventories are among the methods employed.” The response of former President and OAS Secretary-General César Gaviria was strong: “Uribe is a dictator who has turned the DAS into a criminal machine.“

• The Miami Herald ran a disturbing story Wednesday about the Colombian government’s inability to prosecute a U.S. sergeant and a contractor accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in 2007. “The suspects, Sgt. Michael Coen and contractor César Ruiz, were taken out of Colombia under diplomatic immunity, and do not face criminal charges in the United States in the rape in a room at Colombia’s Germán Olano Air Force Base in Melgar, 62 miles west of Bogotá.” Three weeks ago, the girl’s mother was denied the ability to testify about the case in Colombia’s Senate.

• The head of Colombia’s armed forces, Gen. Freddy Padilla, told Colombia’s Caracol Radio that the presence of U.S. troops at Colombian bases would not increase the presence of U.S. personnel in Colombia: “There is a tendency to diminish because better technologies exist every day, and technology reduces the number of men [needed].”

• The State Department canceled about $30 million in aid to Honduras yesterday, following a meeting between deposed President Manuel Zelaya and Secretary of State Clinton. My take is on the Huffington Post website.

• The U.S. oil giant Chevron released evidence from a hidden-camera sting operation against the Ecuadorian judge trying a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit demanding that the company pay for Amazon-basin pollution left behind decades ago by Texaco, which Chevron purchased in 2001. In the recordings, Judge Juan Núñez appears to say “Si, señor” when asked by an American businessman whether Chevron will lose the case – even though the judge has yet to return a verdict. “In a newspaper interview, Nuñez denied that he told Hansen [the businessman] a predetermined verdict,” reports Time. “His supporters say it’s unclear in the videos, especially given Hansen’s tortured Spanish, what exactly Nuñez is responding to.” Don’t miss the excellent pair of editorials the Los Angeles Times published about the case last weekend.

• Mexican President Felipe Calderón gave his third annual State of the Union address on Wednesday. Drug-related violence continued unabated, including the massacre of 18 people at a drug rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juárez. The U.S. government announced the release of $214 million in Mérida Initiative aid, including funds for five helicopters for the military. President Calderón’s approval rating stands at 68 percent, according to a poll published this week by Mexico’s Reforma newspaper.

• Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is in the midst of an 11-day tour to Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, Belarus and Russia. All six maintain distant or unfriendly relations with the United States. Asked about the trip, a State Department spokesman said the United States “respects every country’s sovereign decision” to maintain diplomatic relations with other countries.

• In Bolivia, three months before December 6 presidential elections, Evo Morales is polling between 41 and 52 percent, far higher than his divided rivals. An Equipos MORI poll revealed 41 percent of Bolivians ranked Morales as Bolivia’s best president since the restoration of democracy in 1982; Víctor Paz Estenssoro was a distant second with 24 percent.

• Peru’s drug-funded and increasingly active Shining Path insurgency shot down an army helicopter this week. The incident spurred Defense Minister Rafael Rey to appear before Congress for a discussion of the group’s new tactics, which include “well-planned, strategically planned tunnels, bases for antiaircraft guns, and explosive traps.”

• In Chile, a judge has issued 129 warrants for the arrest of members of the Pinochet regime’s internal security service, the DINA. They are to be charged with killings and disappearances of leftists during the dictatorship.

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• Asked on Thursday about plans to locate U.S. troops on Colombian bases, State Department spokesman Robert Wood simply said, “The United States has no plans to put bases in Colombia,” and went on to the next question. This curt, disingenuous response is terribly unhelpful at a time when Hugo Chávez is scoring political points railing against the ongoing base negotiations, even moderate leaders like Lula and Bachelet are voicing opposition, and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe had to spend an entire week traveling throughout South America to explain the base proposal to the region’s presidents. The way the basing deal has been presented to the region – “we’re increasing our presence on your continent, our mission will be broader, but we’re not going to tell you anything about it” – has undone much of the progress that President Obama had been making on U.S.-Latin American relations.
  • Note added 8:30AM August 8: President Obama went beyond the State Department’s reticence in an exchange with Hispanic media reporters late on the afternoon of Friday, August 7: “There have been those in the region who have been trying to play this up as part of a traditional anti-Yankee rhetoric. This is not accurate. … We have had a security agreement with Colombia for many years now. We have updated that agreement. We have no intent in establishing a U.S. military base in Colombia.”

• This press briefing took place the same day that the Wall Street Journal reported on a letter the State Department sent to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) with the headline “U.S. Decides Not to Impose Sanctions on Honduras.” This inspired the following exchange on Honduras, which hardly needs additional comment.

MR. WOOD: [W]e’re going to continue to try to convince both parties and go from there. But a coup took place in the country, and –
QUESTION: Well, you haven’t officially legally declared it a coup yet.
MR. WOOD: We have called it a coup. What we have said is that we legally can’t determine it to be a military coup. That review is still ongoing.
QUESTION: Why does it take so long to review whether there’s a military coup or not?
MR. WOOD: Well, look, there are a lot of legal issues here that have to be carefully examined before we can make that determination, and it requires information being shared amongst a number of parties. We need to be able to take a look at that information and make our best legal judgment as to whether or not –
QUESTION: It seems to be taking a very long time.
MR. WOOD: Well, things take time when you’re dealing with these kinds of very sensitive legal issues.

• Indigenous leaders were killed in Putumayo and Cauca, Colombia, this week. At least eight indigenous people have been killed in Cauca since July, and 67 so far this year in Colombia. Following a July 22-27 visit to Colombia, the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya, issued a press statement placing particular blame on “illegal armed groups, especially the FARC,” for attacks on indigenous Colombians. The statement also notes that “allegations of human rights violations by members of the security forces persist and remain unresolved.”

• After four years, Colombia’s prosecutor-general (fiscal general), Mario Iguarán, finished his term and left office. Assessments of his performance were generally positive, noting that although Iguarán served as a vice-minister of justice under President Uribe, he frequently showed independence from his old boss by pursuing politically sensitive cases like “para-politics,” “false positives” and other human rights cases against the military. (The prosecutor-general’s office is a separate branch of government in Colombia.) Iguarán’s replacement has not been ratified. President Uribe last month sent a list of three possible nominees for the Supreme Court’s approval, the most prominent among them Uribe’s former defense minister and OAS ambassador, Camilo Ospina. The court has so far refused to approve any of the three. It sent a letter to President Uribe “whether he insists on presenting the same names or whether he would prefer to reconsider them and present a new list of nominees.”

• Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez got a lot of attention this week for his opposition to U.S. use of Colombian bases, his denial that Swedish-made rockets were smuggled from Venezuela to the FARC during his government, and his intention to buy Russian tanks. Attacks on the media inside Venezuela received less attention. A group of government supporters stormed the headquarters of the country’s remaining pro-opposition television network, Globovisión, and set off tear-gas canisters. (President Chávez condemned the attack and promised to punish the ardently pro-Chávez ringleader.) More disturbingly, as The Guardian and others reported,

The government’s telecommunications agency said it would revoke the licences of up to 240 radio stations, almost 40% of the total, citing irregular paperwork. … The move followed last week’s introduction of a draft law to jail journalists and broadcasters who “harm the interests of the state”, “cause panic” or “disturb social peace.”

• On the 184th anniversary of the foundation of Bolivia’s armed forces, La Razón, a center-right La Paz daily, published a group of articles looking at the current state of civil-military relations in the country. One of the principal changes during the Evo Morales government has been greater military involvement in social and economic development projects. “At some point we have to change the concept of support for development, which includes them [the armed forces] as a helper. I think they should be the pillar of development,” Defense Minister Walker San Miguel says in an interview.

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The situation in Honduras is taking a turn sharply for the worse. The Oscar Arias-mediated talks have hit another impasse. A general strike has closed schools and hospitals and blocked roads. President Zelaya is talking about crossing the border from Nicaragua as early as today.

I’ve posted an analysis of policy options over on the opendemocracy.net website.

The outcome of the Oscar Arias process is uncertain as this article is being written, though the reported rejection by representatives of the coup government and Manuel Zelaya confirms the gap between them. If the Costa Rican president’s initiative does not move the process forward, the United States government must follow through with even tougher measures against the coup.

Read the rest there.

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• A video released by AP over the weekend shows top-ranking FARC leader Jorge Briceño, alias “Mono Jojoy,” in a speech last year reading a final statement from Manuel Marulanda, the guerrillas’ deceased maximum leader. The statement makes a reference to “aid in dollars to [Ecuadorian President Rafael] Correa’s campaign and subsequent conversations with his emissaries, including some agreements.” (See the 6:23 minute mark in the video embedded here and point (i) in the transcript reproduced by El Tiempo. The statement about payments, which Correa denies ever occurred, have caused a political firestorm in Ecuador just three weeks after the president was re-inaugurated following a strong victory in April elections within a new constitutional framework. The revelation comes just two weeks after an Ecuadorian judge issued an arrest warrant for Colombia’s recently resigned defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, for his role in a March 1, 2008 raid about a mile inside Ecuadorian territory that killed FARC leader Raúl Reyes and, among others, an Ecuadorian citizen.

• It has been two months since Santos resigned as Colombia’s defense minister, and Gen. Freddy Padilla, the head of the armed forces, has been sitting in the defense minister’s chair ever since, occupying both positions. This is the longest period in which a military officer has filled the defense minister’s position since 1991, when Colombia returned to having civilian defense ministers. (Generals occupied the position between the 1953 military coup and 1991.) With no successor apparent, it is unclear whether Gen. Padilla should still have the word “interim” in front of his title. Asked about this by El Espectador on July 11, the general replied, “This is not a transition from the military to civilians and back to the military. What is happening is compliance with the Constitution, which does not specify whether it should be a civilian or a soldier, retired or active-duty.”
  • Note as of 11:00 AM July 21: The “Confidenciales” section of Semana magazine has a brief note saying that the next defense minister will be Bernardo Moreno, the current secretary of the presidency and one of President Uribe’s closest advisors.

• Colombia’s Supreme Court votes tomorrow to choose its preferred candidate, among the three proposed by President Uribe, to be the country’s next prosecutor-general (fiscal general), head of a separate branch of government who will serve a four-year term. This post is critically important because of the central role it will play in investigating scandals like “para-politics,” “false positives,” and the DAS wiretaps, as well as other human rights and “Justice and Peace” cases. The odds-on favorite by far is Camilo Ospina, Uribe’s former defense minister and OAS ambassador. Ospina is controversial because of his authorship of directives rewarding soldiers for high body counts, which may have contributed to the “false positives” scandal in which hundreds of civilians were killed and later presented as armed-group members killed in combat. Ospina also faces questions for his relationship with Víctor Carranza, a businessman who controls much of Colombia’s emerald industry and is very widely accused of being a principal supporter of paramilitary groups. It is possible that Supreme Court magistrates, concerned about Ospina’s closeness to the president, will reject him and the other two candidates by submitting a majority of blank ballots – in effect, a “none of the above” vote.

• Addressing the issue of possible U.S. use of bases in Colombia, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield told reporters that there are currently about 250 U.S. military personnel in Colombia.

• Talks between Honduras’ coup government and ousted President Manuel Zelaya stalled on Sunday. The president installed after the military ejected Zelaya, Roberto Micheletti, rejected a seven-point proposal put forward by the talks’ mediator, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. The U.S. government is supporting Arias and calling for a “Honduran solution” to the dispute. Arias is warning of “a civil war and bloodshed” if dialogues fail. The Costa Rican government says talks may resume Wednesday.

• Meanwhile, the National Catholic Reporter reveals that although U.S. military aid to Honduras has been frozen, soldiers attending the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (to which Honduras is a top source of students) and other installations have not been sent home.

• Mexico’s drug cartel violence is getting ever worse. Last week saw the grisly torture and murder of twelve police in Michoacán state, at the hands of a local cartel calling itself “La Familia.” This organization, media reports indicate, coordinates its violence for maximum impact, and at times resembles a religious cult, espousing evangelical Christianity and carrying out social programs in poor neighborhoods.

• Nicaragua’s government celebrated the 30th anniversary of the July 19, 1979 Sandinista revolution that deposed dictator Anastasio Somoza. Much foreign press coverage focused on Nicaraguans‘ disaffection with the Sandinistas‘ current hard line and consolidation of presidential power. President Daniel Ortega, who at age 33 was a top leader of the junta that took power in 1979, said that he might seek a public “consultation,” Manuel Zelaya-style, about whether Nicaragua’s constitution should be changed to allow him to run again in 2012.

• The GAO has posted a report documenting increased cocaine trafficking through Venezuela at a time of decreased U.S.-Venezuelan cooperation on drug interdiction. The report was the subject of several articles in the U.S. and regional press, and generated an angry reaction from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez over the weekend.

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