Daily Headlines: April 30, 2015

* Puerto Rico: Puerto Rican legislators rejected a $2.9 billion tax plan that supporters claimed would have helped ease the commonwealth’s debt crises.

* Brazil: “No, I'm not going to be executed, I'm going to Brazil in a year's time,” was allegedly said by death row convict and possible schizophrenic Rodrigo Gularte shortly before he was killed by a firing squad in Indonesia on Tuesday.
 
* Argentina: Families of the 85 victims of the controversial AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires twenty-one years ago could soon receive a “one-time” financial compensation.

* Guatemala: An estimated 15,000 protesters recently called on the resignations of Guatemala’s president and vice president amid a growing corruption scandal potentially involving senior members of government.

YouTube Source – TIME (Video uploaded in March 2014).
 
Online Sources – Bloomberg, BBC News, The Guardian, The Latin Americanist, Global Voices Online

Indonesia Executes Convicted Brazilian National

Indonesian authorities today executed eight convicted drug smugglers including Rodrigo Gularte of Brazil despite an outcry from international governments and human rights groups.

The 42-year-old was shot by a firing squad at around midnight local time along with seven other convicts from Nigeria, Australia, Brazil and Indonesia. A Philippine woman was reportedly the only inmate spared from the execution that was scheduled last Saturday and confirmed by prison officials earlier today.

Gularte was one of three men detained in July 2004 at a Jakarta airport with approximately thirteen pounds of cocaine hidden inside of surfboards. He took the blame for the incident and was subsequently sentenced to death while his companions were let free.

Angelita Muxfeldt, Gularte’s cousin, believe that his mental state has been hammered by drug addiction and depression. She feels criminals exploited this and led him to commit what she called “his biggest mistake.”

Gularte was in a weakened state of health in the days leading to his execution while a last-minute appeal from Gularte’s lawyers was rebuffed. Attorneys argued in 2014 that their client suffered from schizophrenia and were hoping that his sentence would be commuted since its illegal to apply the depth penalty to prisoners with mental disorders in Indonesia. Meanwhile, an evaluation in March requested by Indonesia's prosecutor-general has purportedly not been released.

“The Brazilian is in a very deteriorated psychiatric state. He keeps affirming that it will not happen. At the same time he asks for the procedures to be sped up, that everything happens quickly,” said an anonymous Brazilian diplomatic official.