* Haiti: President Michel Martelly lashed out against an alleged sexual assault of a Haitian teen by U.N. troops from Uruguay and deemed it “an act that revolts the national conscience.” (Update: According to one Uruguayan legislator there are "two more videos and photographs" depicting abuse by U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti).
* Guatemala: The race for the presidency hasn’t show signs of slowing down ahead of Sunday's first round of elections.
* Brazil: Is the Brazilian economy about to go on the decline?
* U.S.: According to a government report released last week the Latino unemployment rate is 11.6%, a figure that nearly doubles “when the underemployed and discouraged workers are included.”
Image Source – AP via The Guardian (Haitian President Michel Martelly urged a full investigation into the supposed sexual assault of a teen by Uruguayan U.N. peacekeepers).
Online Sources- The Independent, insdecostarica.com, Bloomberg, Fox News Latino
* World: Clashes broke out at the trial against former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak while ex-president Jacques Chirac of France faces a maximum ten-year prison sentence if convicted of corruption.
* Africa: The U.N. warned that as many as 750,000 people could die in the upcoming months due to a famine that originated in Somalia.
* Libya: Authorities in China denied a report by Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper alleging that Chinese firms were planning to sell $200 million in weapons to deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
* Japan: At least 34 people died as a result of one of the worst typhoons to hit Japan in recent years.
Image – Reuters via The Guardian (“Riot police clash with anti-Mubarak protestors on the first day of the former Egyptian president's return to trial.”)
Online Sources- Voice of America, euronews, MSNBC, CNN, BBC News
Several Latin American cities, such as the Colombian capital of Bogota last February, have held car-free days designed to raise environmental awareness. Bolivia upped the ante on Sunday with the "Day of the Pedestrian", which restricted individual auto users public transit buses nationwide during ten hours. "The city is not only for vehicles but also for the people," declared La Paz mayor Luis Revilla as street performers and marathon runners took to the auto-free streets yesterday.
Sunday's activities came amid protests against the construction of a major highway through the Amazon rainforest.
* Chile: Two days of national mourning were declared in honor of twenty-one people that are beloved to have died after an air force plane crashed off near the remote Juan Fernandez islands.
* Haiti: Five Uruguayan U.N. peacekeepers were recalled from Haiti over allegations that troops sexually assaulted an eighteen-year-old man.
* Cuba: President Raul Castro is among the thousands of Cubans paying tribute to Defense Minister Julio Casas who died on Saturday at the age of 75.
* Latin America: A “sharp decline” in Peruvian silver mining this year has allowed Mexico to overtake the Andean country to become the world’s top silver producer.
Image – Reuters via BBC News (The Chilean navy search for bodies and aircraft wreckage near the Juan Fernandez Islands. Among those still missing from Saturday's accident is popular television host Felipe Camiroaga.)
Online Sources- Xinhua, The Guardian, MarketWatch, UPI
* Brazil: Brookfield Asset Management or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mall.
* Guatemala: Local health authorities claimed that as many as 2500 people may’ve been infected with sexually transmitted diseases during a series of medical experiments conducted in the 1940s by U.S. researchers.
* U.S.: As part of a court settlement the Environmental Protection Agency admitted that there was discrimination against Latino schoolchildren who were exposed to toxic pesticides in California.
* Peru: The government is expected soon present a plan that would raise mining royalties in order to pay for new social programs backed by President Ollanta Humala.
Image – LAHT (Outdoor facade of the Sambil shopping mall in Caracas, Venezuela. Foreign firms like Brookfield Asset Management and the Westfield Group are behind a boom in the construction and development of shopping malls in Brazil.)
Online Sources- The Globe and Mail, Fox News Latino, Reuters, BBC News, The Latin Americanist
* Chile: Three months after Chilean police came under fire for using tear gas against protesters officers are again embroiled in controversy after a demonstrator was killed.
* U.S.: Spanish-language media sources are enjoying greater financial stability and growth compared to their mainstream counterparts according to the Pew Research Center.
* Mexico: The Nuevo Leon state government will launch a corruption investigation in light of last week’s deadly casino fire arson that killed 52 people.
* Colombia: Legislators approved a law that punishes people found guilty of discrimination based on areas like gender, race, sexual orientation and religion.
Image – Reuters via BBC News (“Manuel Gutierrez's death came amid heightened social tensions.” Despite initial denials by police, investigators discovered that the sixteen-year-old anti-government protester was killed by a police weapon.) Online Sources- UPI, Voice Of America, Fox News Latino, The Latin Americanist, MSNBC
* U.S.: Kenneth Melson resigned from his post as chief of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in response to criticism over the ill-fated "Operation Fast and Furious" gun trafficking program.
* Haiti: A Human Rights Watch report found that thousands of impoverished Haitian women continue to face great economic and health hardships since a major earthquake struck in January 2010.
* Latin America: The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean concluded that regional economic growth for this year will be slightly less than originally prognosticated.
* U.S.: According to the Pew Research Center population growth and increased high school graduation rates have helped boost Hispanic college enrollment.
Image – Matt York/AP via CSMonitor.com (“A cache of seized weapons is on display at a news conference in Phoenix in January. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is under fire over a Phoenix-based gun-trafficking investigation called 'Fast and Furious,' in which agents allowed as many as 2,500 high-powered firearms into the hands of straw purchasers in hopes of making a bigger case. Some of those weapons have turned up at crime scenes in the United States and Mexico.”)
Online Sources- Huffington Post, Monsters and Critics, CNN, Reuters
* Libya: Rebels gave besieged leader Muammar Gaddafi a deadline of the Saturday to "peacefully surrender."
* Asia: The Food and Agriculture Organization warned of a possible resurgence of the H5N1 avian flu virus in several Asian nations.
* South Africa: Police in Johannesburg clashed with backers of Julius Malema, the head of the African National Congress' youth wing.
* India: A court ordered the postponement of the execution of three people convicted of participating in the 1991 assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Image Source - AP via MSNBC ("Libyan rebel fighters prepare to patrol the village of Heisha on Tuesday.") Online Source - BBC News, Al Jazeera English, Sydney Morning Herald, CNN
Last year it was revealed that U.S. government researchers exploited thousands of Guatemalans for a series of experiments on sexually transmitted diseases in the 1940s. President Barack Obama subsequently apologized to his Guatemalan counterpart, Alvaro Colom, and ordered a bioethics panel to investigate the experiments and they revealed some of their preliminary findings yesterday. What they discovered was absolutely jaw-dropping:
Approximately 1300 people including prison inmates and mentally disabled individuals were used as guinea pigs in the experiments that members of the panel described as a "shameful piece of medical history" and terribly unethical even for its time.
In some of the worst cases seven women with epilepsy were injected with syphilis in the back of their heads while a dying female syphilis patient woman was infected with numerous diseases including gonorrhea.
The actions in Guatemala led by head researcher Dr. John Cutler from 1946 to 1948 were amazingly similar to a 1943 experiment where Indiana prison inmates were deliberately infected with gonorrhea.
Guatemala's Vice President Rafael Espada told BBC News that his country's government will extend a public apology since local doctors were involved in the gruesome procedures.
The video below via PBS News Hour from last October includes an interview with Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby who ironically uncovered documents on the Guatemalan experiments while researching the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study:
* Venezuela: Human Rights Watch urged the Venezuelan government to protect Umberto Prado, an activist who has been highly critical of the country’s prison system.
* Haiti: Political infighting and gridlock have hindered Haiti's reconstruction in the three months since President Michel Martelly was inagurated.
* Honduras: According to the country’s Human Rights Commissioner roughly 2400 women “died violently” since 2002 including twelve femicide victims whose bodies were found over the past week.
* Bolivia: Seven members of a Bolivian Mennonite community where sentenced to twenty-five years in prison after being convicted of raping over one hundred girls and women.
Image – AP via BBC News (“An inmate's relative argues with national guardsmen outside the El Rodeo I prison.” Venezuelan prison authorities were heavily criticized after twenty-two people died in a riot at that facility last June.) Online Sources- Honduras Weekly, AlertNet, Voice of America, BBC News
According to the Latin American Federation of Associations for Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (FEDEFAM) a “forced disappearance consists of a kidnapping, carried out by agents of the State or organized groups of private individuals who act with State support or tolerance, in which the victim ‘disappears’.” The plights of these victims and the pain their families face will be remembered on the annual International Day of the Disappeared, which is this Tuesday.
Latin America has had a sordid history with disappearances such as the victims under the former authoritarian military regimes in countries like Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Yet the unfortunate issue of the disappeared continues to manifest itself in the Americas. Yesterday approximately one hundred protesters in the Mexican state of Coahuila urged authorities to do more in resolving the over 200 disappearance cases since 2008. Last month roughly 600 people including the families of dozens of disappeared Central American migrants marched from Mexico’s southern border to Mexico City.
According to the International Red Cross (IRC) governments throughout the region to either prevent or solve disappearances have not done enough. As Guilhem Ravier, collaborator for the IRC’s on the disappeared in Colombia, said to EFE:
“The magnitude of this problem is huge. There is no other way to describe it. We don’t even know exactly how many people have disappeared but we think it’s a lot. There are many families who, throughout the recent decades of armed conflict, wait for news about their loved ones and suffer in the uncertainty of not knowing.”
One of the most notable instances of a disappearance in the Americas is the case of Argentine teen Luciano Arruga. His whereabouts are unknown since January 31, 2009 when Buenos Aires police intercepted him. Several eyewitnesses have come forward and claimed that they saw him being harassed and beaten at a police station. There are too many questions that have been unanswered in the over thirty months that Arruga has gone missing though he continues to be remembered by friends and family as seen in the following video from last January:
Video Source - YouTube Online Sources- BBC News, Latin American Federation of Associations for Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared, NACLA, Milenio, Diario ABC Color, Global Voices Online
* Mexico: Over 1000 demonstrators took to the streets of Monterrey to denounce political leaders in the aftermath of last week's deadly arson attack. (Update: Authorities arrested five suspects linked to the attack and claimed that they are supposedly linked to the Zetas drug gang.)
* Central America:El Salvador and Honduras became the latest Latin American countries to urge state recognition of Palestine.
* Puerto Rico: Local Sen. Roberto Arango quit from his post after sexually explicit photos supposedly of him appeared on "an iPhone application for gays and bisexuals."
* Guatemala: Increasing violence and how to combat organized crime were two of the main topics discussed at last week's debate between Guatemala's three leading presidential candidates.
Image Source - Reuters via BBC News ("Casino staff who survived gathered a day after the attack to pray for those who died." At least 52 people died in the incident last week that authorities blamed on drug gangs.)
Online Sources - CNN, PRESS TV, MSNBC, Boston.com
* India: Anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare said that he will end his thirteen-day hunger strike after the Indian parliament agreed to his main demands.
* World: International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde urged governments to "act now" in order to avoid "seeing the fragile recovery derailed."
* Pakistan: According to an unnamed "senior Obama administration official" Al Qaeda's second-in-command was killed in a raid in Pakistan.
* Japan: Prime Minister Naoto Kan resinged from his post amidst dismal approval ratings and anger over the government's handling of March's earthquake and tsunami.
Online Sources - BBC News, CBS News, Reuters Image Source - AP via New York Times ("A girl waved an Indian flag and another sang a patriotic song beside Anna Hazare, who was on a hunger strike in New Delhi against corruption.")
There are some news stories from Latin America that are covered by covered by the local press but overlooked or ignored by the English-language mainstream media sources. Here are just a few of these stories that have caught our attention:
* Argentina: Camila Sanchez, a two-year-old girl in a vegetative state since her birth, has been in the center of the debate over the right to life in Argentina. Legislators have discussed several proposals that would permit a "dignified death", which has been strongly advocated by Sanchez' mother. The bills have run into some opposition such as the mom of ex-Soda Stereo front man Gustavo Cerati.
* Mexico: There has been increased criticism of President Felipe Calderon's anti-drug offensive in the aftermath of an arson attack that killed at least 52 people. In an interview given to the EFE news agency acclaimed author Carlos Fuentes called on "help from Israeli, French or German police to combat crime" in Mexico. Fuentes also called on the decriminalizing of some drug use; a position he has stated before as part of a working group of intellectuals and former leaders critical of regional counternarcotics policies.
* Colombia: An anti-violence protest in solidarity with some twelve local theater groups will be held this Tuesday in Bogota. These groups, including some from the most impoverished neighborhoods of the city, were the aim of intimidation allegedly by the "Aguilas Negras" (Black Eagles) criminal gang. "It's a threat against our culture, civil society, and the country," said one of the targeted actors who will participate in the march on the same day that the gang ordered the actors to leave the Bogota.
* Peru: The mother of a Peruvian nanny jailed in the U.S. urged President Ollanta Humala to intervene on her behalf. Luz Fernandes claimed that she has felt "abandoned" by the Peruvian government in the legal battle to help her daughter, Ada Cuadros. A retrial is expected to start soon for Cuadros who was originally sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly killing a fourteen-month-old child that she was babysitting.
Video Source - C5N via YouTube Online Sources - La Republica, Trme, Milenio, El Universal (Mexico and Venezuela), Clarin.com, Radio Santa Fe, El Observador, El Espectador
* Haiti: President Michel Martelly lashed out against an alleged sexual assault of a Haitian teen by U.N. troops from Uruguay and deemed it “an act that revolts the national conscience.” (Update: According to one Uruguayan legislator there are "two more videos and photographs" depicting abuse by U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti).
