Daily Headlines: October 28, 2016

* Brazil: Brazilian authorities warned that a recent outbreak of prison violence between the PCC and Comando Vermelho criminal groups could spill on to the streets.

* Panama: The Panamanian government took a big step in its push to remove the stigma from the Panama Papers leak by signing a multilateral treaty to combat tax evasion.

* Cuba: The United Sates Food and Drug Administration has purportedly given the green light for the clinical trial of a Cuban lung cancer medicine known as CIMAvax.

* Haiti: Spain’s soccer federation has been ordered to return around $240,000 in public funds that were misappropriated instead of being spent on a project in Haiti.

YouTube Source – AFP 

Online Sources – InSight Crime, ESPN FC, Reuters, The Latin Americanist, CBC

Daily Headlines: September 21, 2016 (Updated)

* Brazil: A Brazilian judge determined ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will need to stand trial over allegedly accepting some $1.1 in bribes in connection to the Lava Jato corruption scandal.

Update (September 22nd): Guido Mantega, the former Finance Minister under Lula, was detained for several hours and then released on Thursday as part of the Lava Jato probe.  

* Latin America: Outgoing United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he felt “tremendous regret” over a cholera outbreak that hit Haiti, while the Venezuelan government is upset with critical remarks made by Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski at the UN General Assembly.

* United States: A new study found that the number of undocumented migrants from Mexico to the United States has dropped from a high of 6.9 million in 2007 to 5.8 million in 2014, and those from Central America have sharply increased in recent years.

* Honduras: Authorities began the transfer of thirty-seven “high-risk prisoners” including former gang leaders to a new maximum-security facility as part of planned reforms to the corrections system.

YouTube Source – AFP 

Online Sources including Update – ABC News, The Miami Herald, Reuters, InSight Crime, BBC News, Reuters

Daily Headlines: July 1, 2016

* El Salvador: Around 300 protesters marched to the residence of El Salvador’s president and called for better prison conditions for inmates including suspected gang members targeted in a security crackdown.

* Brazil: The head of Brazil’s anti-doping agency was replaced though the sports ministry claimed it had nothing to do with the suspension of its Rio de Janeiro laboratory weeks before the start of the Olympics.

* Latin America: “We cannot remain frozen in the face of a decision that could be difficult and catastrophic,” said Mexico’s economics secretary in reference to the possible aftermath of this year’s U.S. presidential election.

* Colombia: Thirty-three people were arrested and eleven tons of cocaine seized in a joint counternarcotics operation involving Italian and Colombian authorities.

YouTube Source – CCTV Americas Now (From December 2012: An “in-depth look at the issue of prison overcrowding in El Salvador, where many are packed into penitentiaries way beyond their limits forced to live a life of filth.”)

Online Sources – The Washington Post, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, MercoPress

Daily Headlines: March 30, 2016

* Costa Rica: A Costa Rican court convicted and sentenced four men to prison sentences of between 74 and 90 years for the 2013 murder of sea turtle conservationist Jairo Mora Sandoval.

* Argentina: British Prime Minister David Cameron tried to downplay a U.N. commission decision finding that waters around the disputed Falkland Islands belong to Argentina.

* Venezuela: In the latest clash between Venezuela’s government and opposition, President Nicolás Maduro threatened with vetoing a law granting amnesty to political prisoners.

* El Salvador: Salvadoran authorities declared a state of emergency for the prison system and cracked down against inmates allied to street gangs.

YouTube Source – Vice News (Video uploaded in June 2015).

Online Sources – The Telegraph, The Guardian, Tico Times, euronews

Daily Headlines: February 23, 2016

* Honduras: An international mission to combat widespread corruption in Honduras began its work though protesters believe the group lacks the strength of a similar investigative panel in nearby Guatemala.

* Peru: NASA scientists are conducting an experiment in Peru using potatoes in order to figure out the viability of growing crops on Mars.

* Nicaragua: Nicaraguan officials paroled 8149 inmates and repatriated nearly 100 foreign convicts as part of a plan to ease severe prison overcrowding.

* U.S.: A new study found that 71% of Latinos believe speaking Spanish is not a prerequisite to being considered as Hispanic though roughly three in four respondents speak the language at home.

YouTube Source – AFP (“Thousands of people (last August) hold a march with torches in the Honduran capital to protest against corruption and demand the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernandez and a UN probe into impunity”.)

Online Sources – ABC News, Popular Science, Yahoo News, Fox News Latino

Daily Headlines: October 26, 2015

* Latin America: Elections were held in four countries of the Americas yesterday including Guatemala where Jimmy Morales became president-elect while a runoff will be needed to see who will replace Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

* Brazil: A recent Human Rights Watch report blasted Brazilian prison authorities for allowing inmates to takeover severely overcrowded Pernambuco prisons.

* Mexico: Six people died in Mexico as a result of accidents related to Hurricane Patricia though damage was minimal and the death toll was lower than anticipated.

* Colombia: Forensics investigators last week positively identified the remains of three women who may have been tortured and killed by security forces during the 1985 Palace of Justice siege.

YouTube Source – euronews (Official results of Haiti’s presidential elections, which involved a whopping fifty-four candidates, are expected to be revealed around November 4th).

Online Sources – Human Rights Watch, Fox News Latino, Colombia Reports, Reuters, CNN

Daily Headlines: August 24, 2015

* Guatemala: During a televised speech on Sunday night, a defiant President Otto Pérez Molina refused to step down from his post despite being implicated by investigators in a growing customs fraud scandal.

* Peru: President Ollanta Humala is expected to sign into law a proposal allowing the Peruvian military to shoot down suspected aircraft attempting to smuggle drugs.

* El Salvador: “An internal dispute involving the feared Barrio 18 gang” is believed to have been the cause of a prison riot that left at least fourteen people dead.

* U.S.: A recent survey found that the environment is a topic that has gained importance among potential Latino voters.

YouTube Source – teleSUR English (“Thousands of demonstrators demanded the ouster of Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina on Saturday following the arrest of Vice President Roxana Baldetti in a graft scandal that has rocked the country.”)

Online Sources – Bloomberg, The Indpendent, RTE, NPR

Daily Headlines: June 24, 2015

* Brazil: A new report found that Brazil has the world’s fourth-largest prison population with some 607,730 inmates crammed in correctional facilities built for about 377,000 detainees.

* Peru: Investigators found the remains of 17 people in a mass grave who may have been killed in the 1980s during the armed conflict between the Peruvian government and the Shining Path guerillas.

* Puerto Rico: The executive director of Puerto Rico’s Electric Energy Authority. which is over $9 billion in debt, resigned on Tuesday.

* Colombia: U.S. justice officials announced charges related to drug trafficking against seventeen members of Colombia’s Clan Usuga criminal gang.

YouTube Source – CCTV America 

Online Sources – BBC News, Reuters, Fox News Latino, ABC News

Daily Headlines: May 26, 2015

* Cuba: Tourism in Cuba grew by 14% between January and May including a 36% boost from U.S. visitors traveling to the island despite restrictions.

* South America: Police are looking into alleged e-mail threat made last month by the Islamic State against the presidents of Argentina and Chile.

* Puerto Rico: Legislators in Puerto Rico continue to hammer out the final details of a $1.2 billon tax proposal that could be signed into law as early as next week.

* Brazil: At least eight people died following a riot at a Brazilian prison built for 644 inmates but housing over 1400 prisoners.

YouTube Source – Bloomberg Business (Video uploaded in March 2015).
 
Online Sources – International Business Times, Reuters, ABC News, The Guardian

Daily Headlines: October 7, 2014

* Ecuador: As many as 2500 “micro-traffickers” of drugs could be freed from prisons in Ecuador as part of a new crime law that took effect in August.

* Argentina: U.S. federal judge Thomas Griesa continues to put pressure on the Argentine government in its legal battle against paying millions of dollars to bondholders.

* Colombia: At least eleven residents of a Colombian indigenous village died due to a lighting strike yesterday.

* Haiti: Researchers examining a shipwreck near Cap-Haitien, Haiti concluded that it did not belong to the Santa Maria, one of the three vessels used by Christopher Columbus in his 1492 voyage to the Americas.

Video Source – The Washington Office on Latin America via YouTube

Online Sources – NBC News; CNN; MercoPress; The Latin Americanist; The Guardian

Inmate Decapitated in Brazilian Prison Riot

For the second time in less than two weeks an inmate was assaulted and beheaded amid violence in a Brazilian prison.

According to the Amazonia state military police, two people died in a prison after fight broke out amid the prisoners.  One of the deceased was decapitated and had his head thrown over the prison walls onto the street.  The other fatality was stabbed to death during the riot that lasted approximately nine hours.

The incident in Parintins comes after at least five prisoners died during a bloody disturbance in Paraná state from August 24-26.  Two inmates were decapitated and killed during a 45-hour standoff between police and prisoners protesting over alleged abuses committed by the guards in the Cascavel facility. 

The Brazilian prison system is plagued with problems including correctional facilities overrun by gangs like the notorious First Command of the Capital and where nearly half of the roughly 550,000 inmates are awaiting trial.  But perhaps the biggest challenge is massive overcrowding in prisons like the one in Parintins that was nearly at double its capacity.  Nearly 2200 inmates are crammed into the Pedrinhas prison that was built to house only 1770 and where last December prisoners filmed themselves next to decapitated bodies “showing them off like trophies.”

Brazil’s prison woes were one of the topics discussed during Monday’s televised presidential debate that included incumbent Dilma Rousseff and her main challenger, Marina Silva.  Though economic issues dominated the highly tense debate Rousseff did admit that conditions in the worst correctional facilities were “barbaric.”

Overcrowding in prisons isn’t just a problem in Brazil but also throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.  A recent report by the Iberoamerican Ombudsman Federation found that fourteen countries in the region have overpopulated prisons and half of these have prison populations at over double the capacity.  This may explain why a study from the Venezuelan Prison Observatory concluded that at least 150 inmates died in that South American country this year.  But even in nations with low prison overcrowding like Chile other problems persist such as instances of physical abuse by guards against inmates.

Daily Headlines: June 9, 2014

* Brazil: A recent report found that the Brazilian prison system houses nearly 568,000 inmates despite only having a capacity of 357,219 prisoners.

* Venezuela: A photo of a bearded and jailed Leopoldo Lopez was published while anti-government protesters in Caracas called for his liberation and the resignation of President Nicolás Maduro.

* Argentina: The Argentine men’s national soccer team backed their country’s claim of the Falklands by posing with a banner reading “The Malvinas are Argentine” prior to a friendly match on Saturday.

* Guatemala: A Swiss court sentenced Guatemala's former police chief Erwin Sperisen to life in prison for the extrajudicial killings of seven inmates in 2007.

Video Source – euronews via YouTube
 
Online Sources – LAHT; ABC News; BBC News; The Washington Post

Daily Headlines: May 19, 2014

* Colombia: In news that could boost the chances of President Juan Manuel Santos winning next Sunday's presidential election, opposition candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga was videotaped meeting with suspected hacker Andrés Sepulveda while the Colombian government reached a partial agreement with the FARC rebels.

* Argentina: Paleontologists in the Patagonia region of Argentina believed they have found the remains of what may have been the biggest dinosaur in history.

* U.S.: Victor Espinoza of Mexico is two-thirds of the way through to becoming the first Latin American jockey to guide a horse to the Triple Crown.

* Brazil: Inmates at a maximum security prison in northeastern Brazil freed 127 people held hostage following a riot over the weekend.

Online Sources - New York Daily News; Reuters; ABC News; GlobalPost; The Epoch Times

Video Source - euronews via YouTube

Lawyers Seek Impeachment of Troubled Brazilian Governor

A group of human rights lawyers filed a request today for the impeachment of a Brazilian governor who has come under fire over rampant prison violence.

The twelve attorneys representing the Lawyers Collective of Human Rights (Cadhu, in Portuguese) appealed to the Maranhão state legislature and claimed that Gov. Roseana Sarney is at fault for major overcrowding of local prisons as well as serious violations of the human rights of inmates.

“The impeachment law says that the chief of the executive branch may be removed from office if, in the case of violation of basic rights, he or she doesn’t hold anyone accountable for the abuses,” said Cadhu member Eloisa Machado de Almeida.

“We have long denounced the chaos that has worsened this state government.  They had the information to investigate and ensure that (violence in Maranhão prisons) did not occur,” said fellow petitioner Murilo Henrique Morelli. 

“The majority of legislators represent the people of Maranhão and the residents are clamoring for peace,” Morelli added.

The Maranhão state legislature has fifteen days to create a commission to investigate the lawyers’ petition.

Gov. Sarney, daughter of former Brazilian President José Sarney, has yet to respond to the push for impeachment.  In the aftermath of the recent firebombing of a bus that killed one girl, she alleged that nearly 2800 extra spaces for prisoners were made available and that the spike in violence in her state was a “consequence of a growing population and the growing wealth in the state.”  (But as this article notes, Maranhão is Brazil’s second-most impoverished state and in 2013 the state’s population grew by almost 4% while the homicide rate soared by nearly 62%).

Daily Headlines: November 20, 2013

* Peru: A Peruvian consulting firm found that roughly 40% of people visiting the country this year are foodies interested in gastronomic tourism.

* U.S.: A new study concluded that Latinas under the age of 65 are 1.5 times as likely to die in a hospital of a heart attack than white males.

* Mexico: According to a report by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, 65 of the country's 101 most populated prisons were under the control of inmates instead of the authorities.

* Panama: On a visit to the Panama Canal, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden praised Panamanian officials for intercepting a shipment of Cuban arms bound for North Korea last July.

Online Sources  - Peru This Week; healthday.com; AFP; FRANCE24

Video Source - YouTube via user Peter Greenberg

Daily Headlines: August 13, 2013

* Mexico: Foreign investors and members of the political opposition are apparently doubtful over major energy reforms that were proposed yesterday by President Enrique Peña Nieto.

* Guatemala: Three of the judges who convicted ex-dictator Efrain Rios Montt on charges of genocide will reportedly receive protection from an “intense campaign to discredit and stigmatize them”.

* Colombia: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave his strong support for peace talks between the Colombian government and FARC rebels, and referred to Colombia as one of the world’s “very few success stories.”

* U.S.: Some of the Latino inmates who make up about 35% of the federal prison population could benefit from plans by Attorney General Eric Holder to alleviate severe overcrowding of U.S. correctional facilities.

Video Source – YouTube via Al Jazeera English

Online Sources- Reuters; ABC News; The Latin Americanist; Fox News Latino

55 Killed in Venezuelan Prison Riot (UPDATED)

At least fifty people died in a prison riot on Friday in Barquisimeto, Venezuela when armed inmates reportedly fought with National Guard troops.

According to Ruy Medina, a Lara state hospital official interviewed by the AFP, most of the approximately ninety casualties suffered from gunshot wounds.

He called the death toll "alarming," and also noted that fourteen of the injured had wounds severe enough to require surgery.

Penitentiary Service Minister Iris Varela blamed the incident on social networks and several local media outlets including the Globovision TV network.

In a statement issued on state TV, Varela claimed that these outlets reported that a weapons search would take place in the prison and this served as a "spark" for the riot to occur.

A BBC News correspondent said that "prisoners who had heard about the search in advance from news reports were waiting for the National Guard when they arrived."

Opposition leader and former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles pointed his finger at an "uncapable and irresponsible" federal government. He also mentioned how families of some inmates had "desperately" contacted him seeking information about their loved ones.

A 2012 report from the Amnesty International human rights group on Venezuela highlighted that "violence remained endemic in the chronically overcrowded prisons."

Update: On Saturday, Penitentiary Service Minister Iris Varela announced that the Uribana prison will be shut down in the wake of Friday's deadly prison riot.

Among those who will be transferred out are 125 women who were imprisoned in the female-only wing of Uribana.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro called the violence of Friday's riot "tragic" and said authorities have launched an investigation.

"The prisons have to be governed by law," said Maduro who has stood in for an ailing President Hugo Chavez for over six weeks.

A report in USA TODAY claimed that in 2012 "the Uribana prison reportedly held gladiatorial contests, fights organized by gang leaders in which contenders battled to the bloody end for the entertainment of inmates, according to local media reports. It was one of these bouts that left two dead and 128 injured in February at the site."bUnofficially at least 55 people were killed and 90 others wounded in this latest incident of violence in Venezuelan prisons.n prisons.