Daily Headlines: September 28, 2016

* Peru: Vladimiro Montesinos, the shady former Peruvian intelligence chief who was instrumental in the rise and fall of Alberto Fujimori from the presidency, was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison for the kidnapping and burning of three people.

* Panama: Panamanian officials formally sought the extradition from the United States (US) of ex-President Ricardo Martinelli who is accused of using public funds for illegal surveillance.

* Puerto Rico: US Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen warned that Puerto Rico is facing a fiscal crisis and claimed it’s up to Congress or the White House to formulate an adequate solution.

* Latin America: The Pan American Health Organization declared the Americas are free from all endemic cases of measles “after years of intense efforts to vaccinate children under the age of five.”

YouTube Source – Journeyman Pictures (Documentary from December 2003.)

Online Sources – UPI, Reuters, Voice of America

Daily Headlines: May 27, 2016

* Mexico: While questions continue in the official investigation of the 43 Ayotzinapa college students missing since September 2014, one of the survivors of the attack against his classmates has sought political asylum in the U.S.

* El Salvador: The Salvadoran legislature approved issuing $152 million in bonds in order to finance proposals to combat rampant gang violence.

* Brazil: Police are searching for at least thirty suspects behind the gang rape of a sixteen-year-old girl in Rio de Janeiro that was recorded and uploaded on Twitter.

* Panama: The Panamanian Supreme Court urged the federal government to seek the extradition of ex-President Ricardo Martinelli from the U.S.

YouTube Source – AJ+ (Video uploaded in September 2015.  Yesterday marked twenty months since the 43 Ayotzinapa students have disappeared and may have been murdered).
 
Online Sources – The Atlantic, Vice News, euronews, CBC, Reuters

Daily Headlines: February 4, 2016

* Ecuador: British authorities threatened with arresting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange if he decides to leave the Ecuador’s embassy in London where he has been given refuge since June 2012.

* Chile: A Chilean judge ordered the remains of the late Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda to be returned to his tomb nearly three years after they were uncovered.

* Cuba: Cuba’s foreign minister claimed that relations between his country and the U.S. would not be fully normalized until the trade embargo against the island is eliminated.

* Panama: Software giant SAP will pay a $3.9 million settlement in relation to a bribery scandal involving former Panamanian government officials including ex-president Ricardo Martinelli.

YouTube Source – Reuters (“The founder of whistleblower website, Wikileaks, returns to the spotlight ahead of a U.N. panel decision that could determine whether he has been ‘arbitrarily detained’ in London”.)

Online Sources – euronews, The Register, Reuters, Fox News Latino

Daily Headlines: May 7, 2015

* Cuba: U.S. firms are reportedly “uninterested” in drilling for oil off the Cuban coast despite the push to improve diplomatic and economic ties between both countries.

* Colombia: A new study found that Colombia accounts for a whopping 85% of the population of displaced individuals in the Americas.

* Panama: Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela accused his predecessor, Ricardo Martinelli, of having lost $100 million in government funds due to corruption.

* Peru: Peru will join eleven other countries including Chile, Japan and the U.S. in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade alliance.

YouTube Source – NewsyBusiness (Video uploaded in December 2014).
 
Online Sources – Reuters, teleSUR English, Zee News, Peru this Week

Daily Headlines: February 5, 2015

* Mexico: Mexican priest Gregorio Lopez Geronimo protested outside of the White House yesterday in order to call attention to the case of forty-three students missing for more than four months.

* Dominican Republic: Activists denounced as a “failure” government efforts to naturalize tens of thousands of Dominican-born people of Haitian descent whose citizenship was stripped in a controversial 2013 court ruling.

* Venezuela: Ex-mayor Enzo Scarano was freed from prison nearly one year after he was convicted for allegedly inciting violence during anti-government protests.

* Panama: Will former President Ricardo Martinelli return to Panama where he’s accused of being a key figure in a growing corruption scandal?

Video Source – YouTube user teleSUR English (“Protests demanding the safe return of the 42 missing Ayotzinapa students were held in 20 US cities (last month) to coincide with the visit to Washington by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto”.)
 
Online Sources – Fox News Latino; GlobalPost; El Universal; Stuff.co.nz

Veep Varela Victorious in Panama’s Presidential Election

Voters in Panama gave Vice President Juan Carlos Varela a promotion and elected him as the Central American country’s next president.

Panama’s electoral tribunal declared Varela the winner on Sunday night after deciding that he held an “insurmountable” lead over his main rivals, ruling party candidate Jose Domingo Arias and former Panama City Mayor Juan Carlos Navarro.  At the time Varela was declared president-elect, he had 39% of the vote compared to Arias’ 32% and Navarro’s 28%.

Varela won even though the last polls taken in the weeks prior to the election placed him behind Arias and Navarro in the three-way dogfight for the presidency.  Yet much like Costa Rica’s presidential race, enough voters were apparently swayed by Varela’s strong anti-corruption platform.  In addition, there may have been discontent that if Arias were to win then he would be a puppet controlled by current President Ricardo Martinelli.  (Indeed, Arias’ vice presidential pick was First Lady Marta Linares while Martinelli crisscrossed the country over the last few weeks actively campaigning for Arias).

“This government is going to fight against inequality and is not going to tolerate corruption,” Varela told supporters shortly after he won the election.  “Better days will come to Panama, with a government that is human, decent and visionary,” he added.

Sunday’s election, which was marked by a peaceful and high turnout, was the latest chapter in the ugly rivalry between Varela and Martinelli.  Both were partners when Martinelli was elected to the high office in 2009 but that relationship quickly unraveled:

Central American Leaders Blast Nicaragua at U.N.

Yesterday we looked at Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and her speech at the U.N. general assembly (UNGA) that criticized alleged U.S. surveillance.  Yet she was not the only Latin American leader at the UNGA to critique the actions of a country in the Americas.

Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli denounced what he referred as Nicaragua’s “attempt to expand its maritime boundaries.”

In his speech to the UNGA today, Martinelli acknowledged that Nicaragua has the right to file a claim with the appropriate UN authorities seeking to “extend its continental shelf by over 200 nautical miles.”  But he also expressed his “deep and profound worry” that Nicaragua’s maritime claims could endanger treaties between that country and other Latin American states.

“The Panamanian government and its people are upset that we have not been consulted before Nicaragua filed its case,” Martinelli added.

Martinelli refrained from discussing at the UNGA Nicaragua’s plans to build an interoceanic canal that would rival the Panama Canal that’s currently undergoing a $5 billon expansion.

Martinelli’s remarks were more measured in tone than those of his Costa Rican counterpart, Laura Chinchilla, at the UNGA.

Daily Headlines: October 16, 2012

* Argentina: A court sentenced three former navy officers to life in prison for their roles in the killing of sixteen political prisoners in the 1972 Massacre of Trelew.

* Mexico: More than 120 people were arrested after police raided three colleges in Michoacán that had been occupied for over a week by student protesters.

* Haiti: Musician Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti charity closed due to massive debt and allegations of possible fraud.

* Panama: Is President Ricardo Martinelli‘s suggestion to adopt the euro as legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar a good idea?

Video Source – YouTube via antifaztrailers

Online Sources- ABC News, BBC News, euronews, The A.V. Club

Daily Headlines: April 26, 2012

* Venezuela: Suspected drug trafficker Walid Makled claimed in court that he maintained close ties to Eladio Aponte, a former Venezuelan Supreme Court judge who alleged that government officials have links to drug traffickers.

* South America: Standard & Poor's downgraded its credit rating outlook for Argentina in the wake of the government takeover of YPF, while Moody’s revised Uruguay's rating outlook from stable to positive.
 
* Brazil: President Dilma Rousseff is expected to use her line-item veto powers against a controversial environmental bill that critics believe will lead to increased deforestation.

* Panama: Security minister Jose Raul Mulino denied corruption allegations linking President Ricardo Martinelli to an Italian associate of disgraced ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Video Source – YouTube via NTDTV (Suspected drug trafficker Walid Makled was sought by both the U.S. and Venezuela but he was eventually extradited from Colombia to its South American neighbor in May 2011). 
 
Online Sources- UPI, Reuters, MSNBC, CBS News, AFP

Daily Headlines: April 25, 2012

* Dominican Republic: A delegation from the U.S. Department of Labor will reportedly look into accusations of child labor and abuses of Dominican sugar workers.

* Latin America: A gunned down Brazilian newspaper reporter became the fourth journalist killed in that country this year, while Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli publicly apologized for calling a local reporter a drug addict.

* Mexico: Approximately half of state prosecuting authorities will not investigate allegations of $24 million in bribes paid by Wal-Mart’s Mexican division.

* Paraguay: After years of delays 2005 court decision to return ancestral lands to the indigenous Yakye Axa community is supposedly being implemented.

Image Source – Flickr via ruurmo (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Online Sources- MSNBC, USA TODAY, LAHT, Chicago Tribune, Deutsche Welle

Sobredosis de TV: Trafficking in Panama

Note: We’ve used the Soda Stereo song title “De Musica Ligera” to describe our series of posts looking at the world of music. Today we commence another series named after another Soda song in order to highlight TV programs that have caught our attention.

One of the hottest topics during the recent Summit of the Americas was whether drug legalization should be considered as a major policy change to the “war on drugs.” With numerous Central American countries facing problems with drug-related violence, it should come as no surprise that one of the strongest regional proponents of legalization was the president of Guatemala, Otto Perez Molina.

Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli mentioned last month that Molina’s proposal to decriminalize drugs “deserved discussion and analysis”. For years Panama has been a major hub for money launderers though there have been recent increases in gang violence and a greater presence of drug trafficking groups. Thus, Martinelli’s willingness to examine alternatives to current counternarcotics strategies could be seen as a necessity in the face of increased insecurity in his country.

Tonight’s edition of "Dan Rather Reports" examines the consequences of the global drug trade on Panama. The following very brief video shows surveillance footage captured by the U.S. Coast Guard of “souped-up fishing boats” used by drug traffickers off the Panamanian coast:

Dan Rather Reports" premieres tonight on HDNet at 8:00 p.m. ET with an encore presentation at 11:00 p.m. ET.

Video Source – YouTube via HDNet

Online Sources – InSight Crime, Caribbean Journal, The Latin Americanist

Weekend Headlines: May 14-15, 2011

* Panama: According to documents uncovered by Wikileaks, president Ricardo Martinelli “ridiculed a member of his cabinet” and China refused an offer for diplomatic recognition from Panama.

* Cuba: The official Granma newspaper claimed that dissident Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia died of natural causes rather than at the hands of the police.

* Mexico: President Felipe Calderon supported the “powerful (economic) argument” used by his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama in a push for federal immigration reform.

* El Salvador: A former Salvadoran army officer pled guilty in a U.S. federal court for trying to sell arms to Colombia’s FARC guerillas.

Image – Mercopress
Online Sources- Newsroom Panama, AFP, Miami Herald, LAHT, MSNBC

Daily Headlines: March 7, 2011

* South America: Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli said that he would backtrack on a controversial mining law while opposition was raised over a planned open-pit gold mine in neighboring Colombia.

* Brazil: As Brazil increases its prominence on the world political and economic stage so has their favorability around the world according to a poll by the BBC World Service.

* U.S.: Did the former head of the Cuban American National Foundation provide funds to suspected bomber and ex-CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles?

* Mexico: Over 700 homosexual couples have tied the knot in Mexico City during the first year that the metropolis legalized same-sex marriages.

Image – AFP via BBC News (“Indigenous Panamanians blocked a major road with their protest” last month against a controversial mining law.)
Online Sources- BBC News, The Advocate, Sify, Reuters, GlobalPost

Daily Headlines: October 27, 2010

* Latin America: Uruguay’s Diego Forlan (image), Argentine Lio Messi, and Maicon of brazil are among the finalists for this year’s Ballon d'Or.

* Bolivia: President Evo Morales met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in order to attract more Iranian investment and to strengthen bilateral ties.

* Panama: Is President Ricardo Martinelli turning into a “strongman”?

* Peru: Ecuador has joined Peru’s claim seeking the return of thousands of Incan relics being held by Yale University.

Image – The Guardian
Online Sources- Time, Reuters, Xinhua, USA TODAY

Weekend Headlines: October 9-10, 2010

* Argentina: Several Latin American sides played in soccer friendlies on Friday with the most notable result being Japan's suprising 1-0 win over Argentina.

* Caribbean: Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and other parts of the Caribbean are on high alert due to Hurricane Otto.

* Panama: President Ricardo Martinelli scrapped a controversial proposal that was not well received by some Panamanians.

* Costa Rica: No immediate reports of damage or injuries were made as a result of a 5.9-magnitude earthquake that shook Costa Rica last night.

Image - The Globe and Mail ("Argentinian forward Lionel Messi reacts as Japanese players celebrate a goal during an international friendly match in Saitama, suburban Tokyo on Friday.")
Online Sources - CNN, LAHT, ESPN

More Crazy Expats in Latin America

This time in Panama. A few weeks back I got a text that a suspected "serial killer" was on the loose, suspected in the deaths of multiple people in the idyllic Bocas del Toro province near the Costa Rican border.

About a week later, the suspect, "Wild Bill Cortez" (real name: William Holbert) was arrested with his wife and suspected accomplice while crossing a river between Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

In one of those truly too shocking to be made up stories, Wild Bill (as he is universally known in Panama) is now charged with murdering five American expats to steal their properties. Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli called the saga "one of the first cases of serial murders in Central America."

The remains of all five were found in a shallow grave on the property he took after after killing one of the suspected victims - a hotel on a remote Bocas Island that he dubbed "Hacienda Cortez."

To gain possession of Hacienda Cortez, Bill is suspected of having killed Michael Brown along with Brown's wife and teenage son. It turns out Brown was in the witness protection program, having cooperated with authorities to turn in drug dealers in the US years before.

Questions remains as to whether more victims will emerge.

To get a full idea of Bill's craziness, check out this ABC News/Nightline video with footage from Bill's time as an outspoke white supremacist in his native North Carolina.

Image Source: ABC News ("Wild Bill" Cortez (Holbert) in Panama)

Online Sources: ABC News, CBS News, Nightline

Daily Headlines: May 25, 2010

* Venezuela: As part of a government-led crackdown on currency speculating Venezuelan authorities raided the county’s biggest private brokerage on Monday.

* Haiti: Is a “new comedy soap opera” set in a Haitian earthquake survivor camp tasteless or appropriate?

* Panama: President Ricardo Martinelli issued a state apology and a “recognition of mistakes” during Panama’s military rule between 1968 and 1989.

* Mexico: “El Tri” lost 3-1 to England at Wembley in an international friendly roughly two weeks ahead of the upcoming World Cup.

Image –The Telegraph (Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has widened a crackdown on brokers after accusing them of running a “parallel” exchange market).
Online Sources- The Guardian, ABS-CBN News, AP, Reuters

Weekend Headlines: March 20-21, 2010

* Haiti: The country’s physically disabled aren’t the only people with disabilities hurt by January’s tremor; according to the New York Times Haiti’s mental health system is at “the point of collapse.”

* Chile: The government may raise mining royalties as part of a plan to pay for post-earthquake reconstruction efforts.

* Guatemala: Local human rights groups are peeved at a judge’s decision to release the former army officer convicted of killing activist Bishop Juan Gerardi.

* Panama: An estimated 10,000 protesters marched in Panama City against the policies of President Ricardo Martinelli.

Image – Guardian UK (Some survivors of Haiti’s massive January earthquake live in makeshift tent camps).
Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, New York Times, Reuters, Washington Post, LAHT

Weekend Headlines: February 13-14, 2010

* Latin America: Apparently having solved all of his country’s problems Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli has set his sights on telenovelas from neighboring Colombia.

* U.S.: Could the successor to Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles be a Latino?

* Mexico: A sixteen-yard-long unfinished tunnel from Tijuana heading north towards the U.S. border was recently discovered.

* Costa Rica: Authorities arrested two suspected drug smugglers and confiscated over one ton of cocaine.

Image – El Espectador (Promo image from Colombian telenovela "Las Munecas de la Mafia" (Mafia Dolls).)
Online Sources- Variety, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, Reuters

Daily Headlines: January 21, 2010

* Ecuador: In the latest development in Ecuador’s lawsuit against Chevron, lawyers for the oil giant have requested the dismissal of an international arbitration board.

* Panama: Two of president Ricardo Martinelli’s bodyguards where among those arrested over an alleged kidnapping plot against Martinelli.

* Cuba: According to a leading Cuban dissident group the human rights situation on the island is not expected to improve this year.

* Brazil: The country ‘s Bovespa index fell the most in two months yesterday partly due to Chinese credit restructuring.

Image – Salon (Still taken from “Crude”, a documentary examining Ecuador environmental damage lawsuit against Chevron).
Online Sources -The Latin Americanist, Bloomberg, AHN, LAHT