Daily Headlines: January 18, 2012

* El Salvador: President Mauricio Funes issued a formal apology for the state’s role in 1981’s El Mozote massacre, which claimed the lives of over 1000 civilians.

* Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez defended incoming defense minister Henry Rangel Silva against allegations that he helped drug traffickers and Colombian guerillas.

* Honduras: Over 150 U.S. Peace Corps volunteers left Honduras due to concerns over violence and security.

* Brazil: Police will reportedly continue to look into allegations that a contestant on the Brazilian version of "Big Brother" raped one of his housemates.

Video Source – YouTube via Al Jazeera English

Online Sources – NACLA, CNN, Reuters, BusinessWeek

Daily Headlines: December 23, 2011

* Peru: Defeated presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori admitted that her family is seeking a pardon for her father, disgraced and imprisoned ex-president Alberto Fujimori.

* U.S.: A judge blocked several provisions of South Carolina’s staunch anti-immigration law that had been opposed to be over a dozen Latin American governments.

* Cuba: Over 180,00 Cubans could obtain Spanish citizenship via a “grandchildren’s law” though that number could spike ahead of the December 27th deadline to apply for benefits.

* Brazil: The country’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.2% in November; thus making it the lowest mark since records began in 2002.

* Central America: Citing “security concerns” the U.S. Peace Corps program will pull out of Honduras and have cancelled training classes for El Salvador and Guatemala.

Image Source – Flickr via Pedro Rivas Ugaz (“The headlines of Lima-based newspapers one day after ex-president Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison” in 2009.) (CC BY 2.0).

Online Sources- MSNBC, Peru this Week, Bloomberg, LAHT, Fox News Latino

Ambassador Golbderg defends position in diplomatic debacle

Ambassador Philip Goldberg, who was declared persona non grata last week in Bolivia -- an event which set off an hemispheric chain-reaction of diplomatic drama and culminated in the Unasur meeting earlier this week -- defended the US and his own actions at a media roundtable discussion at the Inter-American Dialogue on Thursday morning.

“This action, sadly, has been a longtime coming,” Goldberg noted. “To give you the context… the first question I received (from the Bolivian press corps) when I began my tenure in October of 2006 was ‘is it true that you are part of a plot to assassinate President Morales?’ This was no auspicious beginning.”

Goldberg, a Senior Foreign Service member, dismissed the allegations that the embassy had encouraged Peace Corps volunteers to spy on their communities as “outrageous,” and that he had acted inappropriately in meeting with opposition governors. “Meeting with opposition governors is not only not inappropriate, it’s part of our work.” He noted that European envoys met with the same opposition governors around the same time, which he also considers appropriate.

Noting that no US ambassador had been told to leave his / her post in the region since 1988, Goldberg reflected on the larger issues of the historical significance of last week’s actions, and of future diplomatic relations.

“I understand the suspicions,” he explained. “But I think if you ask most people in Bolivia, they would tell you that, historically, I was one of the least active (ambassadors) in Bolivian affairs.” Playing down the historical components, Goldberg added: “I live in the here and now--not another time period,” and added that “all I can say is that the US has nothing to do with any move to divide or destabilize Bolivia.”

Goldberg did not, however, seize the opportunity to clearly denounce the anti-democratic measures and violence incited by the Bolivian opposition groups, as the leaders of Unasur did earlier this week.

To listen to the audio of the event held this morning, click here.

Sources: Inter-American Dialogue, ABC, Bloomberg, The Guardian/UK