Weekend Headlines: July 26-27, 2014 (Updated)

* Venezuela: Former Venezuelan military intelligence chief Gen. Hugo Carvajal was arrested in Aruba could soon be extradited to the U.S. where he’s charged with drug trafficking and collaborating with Colombian rebels.

Update: Much to the disappointment of the U.S. State Department, Cavajal was released Sunday and returned to a "hero's welcome" in Caracas.

* Mexico: Rosa del Carmen Verduzco, the owner of a Mexican shelter recently raided by the authorities, denied allegations of sexual abuse against hundreds of residents but admitted to hitting children as a means of “correcting” them.

* Peru: The executive board of state-owned oil company Petroperu was reshuffled after it was revealed that children were employed to clean an oil spill.

* Brazil: Brazil's National Indian Foundation claimed that they made contact with an isolated indigenous group near the border with Peru that has been hurt by disease and violent attacks.

Video Source – CNN en Español via YouTube (The Venezuelan government has accused the U.S. of orchestrating the “kidnapping” of Hugo Carvajal, the head of military intelligence from 2004-2008 during late president Hugo Chavez' rule).
 
Online Sources including Update – Fox News Latino; Los Angeles Times; The Latin Americanist; VOXXI; Reuters; ABC News

Daily Headlines: July 21, 2014

* Uruguay: Officials in Uruguay claimed that the country’s harsh anti-tobacco laws, which includes banning smoking in all public enclosed spaces and prohibiting all tobacco advertising, has led to a 22% drop in the number of heart attacks nationwide.
 
* Mexico: A Mexican judge freed Rosa del Carmen Verduzco, the founder of a shelter where residents were reportedly abused and kept in squalid conditions, after a preliminary probe cleared her of any wrongdoing.

* Latin America: Chinese President Xi Jinping signed several economic agreements with Venezuela and Argentina as he enters the tail end of his official visit to Latin America.

* Colombia: Spanish police captured Hernán Alonso Villa, the main “enforcer” of Colombia’s Office of Envigado drug gang, who will likely be extradited to face trial on some 400 counts of murder.

Video Source – YouTube user insidermedicine

Online Sources – InSerbia News; Reuters The Latin Americanist; The Guardian; DW.de

Mexico: Families Denounced Shelter Abuses for Years

Mexican officials this week raided a shelter in Michoacán and rescued nearly 600 people including 458 children who received all sorts of abuse, resided in squalid conditions and were obligated to eat spoiled food.  For families of some of the residents of the “La Gran Famila” (“The Great Family”), the liberation of their loved ones couldn’t have come soon enough.

In the case of twenty-eight-year-old Veronica Gamiña, she claimed that she left her nine-year-old child at the residence four years ago but her subsequent attempts to reclaim her child were made nearly impossible by shelter founder Rosa del Carmen Verduzco.

“First they told me that I had to fill out documents explaining why I wanted to take my child back then they asked me to pay 37,000 pesos (roughly $2800).  I only earn 800 pesos a week and I cannot save enough money,” said the restaurant worker to the press outside of the raided shelter on Wednesday.

Another parent alleged that she gave birth to two kids while she was at the shelter that had been functioning for forty years.  She was permitted by to leave the compound but forced to leave her children behind where “Mama Rosa” claimed the minors as her own according to Tomas Zeron, federal chief of criminal investigations.

"Victim No. 4 said she had been held in the group home against her will since she was 18," said Zeron about another supposed case of abuse at “La Gran Famila”. "She was sexually abused by one of the administrators, and got pregnant as a result of the abuse. The same person beat her to cause an abortion, beating her in the stomach on several occasions."

Michoacán Gov. Salvador Jara told the press that he was in the dark about the supposed horrors in the shelter until he became governor last month.  Yet that cannot excuse the apparent incompetence of local and federal authorities that may have been aware of the problems for years.  As reported in SDPnoticias.com, an August 2010 investigation by one of Mexico’s most important newspapers described the abuses at the shelter and possibly why “Mama Rosa” may have gotten away with her actions for decades: