March 28, 2009
Amid Abuse in Brazil, Abortion Debate Flares
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — The waiting room at Pérola Byington Hospital resembles a small day care center many days. Young girls play on the cold tile floors or rock hyperactively in plastic chairs, while their mothers stare pensively at the red digital readout on a wall, signaling their place in line.
But this is a women’s health clinic specializing in treating victims of sexual violence. Of the 15 such cases the hospital averages each day, nearly half involve children under 12.
While much of Brazil has been riled by the case of a 9-year-old girl who aborted twins this month after claiming her stepfather raped her, her ordeal was an all too familiar one at the clinic.
The girl’s story of rape and pregnancy at such a young age seemingly caught the nation off guard, reviving a tense debate over reproductive rights in a country with more Catholics than any other. But doctors, clinic workers and other experts say her case is symptomatic of a widespread problem of sexual abuse of under-age girls — one that has long been neglected and may be getting worse.
“Unfortunately, this is becoming more and more common,” said Daniela Pedroso, a psychologist who has worked here for 11 years.
Weighing just 79 pounds and barely four feet tall, the 9-year-old girl, from Alagoinha, a town in the northeast, underwent an abortion when she was 15 weeks pregnant at one of the 55 centers authorized to perform the procedure in Brazil. Abortion is legal here only in cases of rape or when the mother’s life is at risk.
The doctors’ actions set off a swirl of controversy. A Brazilian archbishop summarily excommunicated everyone involved — the doctors for performing the abortion and the girl’s mother for allowing it — except for the stepfather, who stands accused of raping the girl over a number of years.
“The law of God is above any human law,” said José Cardoso Sobrinho, the archbishop, who argued that while rape was bad, abortion was even worse.
The storm intensified when a high-ranking Vatican official supported the excommunications. But then a conference of Brazilian bishops overruled Archbishop Sobrinho, saying that the child’s mother had acted “under pressure” from doctors who said the girl would die if she carried the babies to term, and that only doctors who “systematically” performed abortions should be thrown out of the church.
Finally, the Vatican’s top bioethics official, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, also criticized the initial stance, saying the “credibility of our teaching took a blow as it appeared, in the eyes of many, to be insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy.”
The case has brought to light other instances of young girls being raped and impregnated by family members, especially in the poorer northeastern region.
The number of legal abortions of girls ages 10 to 14 more than doubled last year to 49, up from 22 in 2007, the Ministry of Health reported. That was out of 3,050 legal abortions performed last year in a country of more than 190 million. But the vast majority of Brazil’s abortions are not legal. The Ministry of Health estimates about one million unsafe or clandestine abortions every year.
Brazil’s abortion laws are among the strictest in Latin America. Only Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua, which have banned abortion outright for any reason, are stricter, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which supports abortion rights.
In some parts of the region, most notably Mexico City, where first-trimester abortions are now legal, laws have been relaxed. But in other areas and countries, legislators have sought to toughen the restrictions on abortion.
Twenty years ago, Brazil had just one center to perform abortions. Today, beyond the 55 clinics that can perform them, another 400 or so treat patients that have been sexually abused.
“It’s still not enough,” said Beatriz Galli, a policy associate and human rights lawyer with Ipas, an organization pushing to expand women’s reproductive rights. Most state-financed clinics are in capitals that can be as far as an 11-hour boat ride away, and they are concentrated in the wealthier southeast region.
Anti-abortion advocates, who represent the majority in Brazil’s Congress, are pushing hard to make the law even tighter. Of some 50 abortion-related initiatives being studied in Congress, at least 40 seek to further criminalize abortion, according to a study by the Feminist Center for Studies and Advisory Services, a Brazilian group that supports less restrictive abortion laws. One would require home pregnancy tests to carry labels with warnings like “The penalty for abortion is one to three years in prison.”
Access to legal abortion clinics is also a challenge. The 9-year-old girl from Alagoinha sought medical treatment after complaining of pain. But with no legal abortion center near her home, she had to be driven about 140 miles to a state clinic in Recife. Doctors there said the girl’s uterus was too small to support one baby, let alone two.
The 9-year-old girl’s stepfather was arrested and accused of raping her and her 14-year-old sister on multiple occasions, the police later said.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, said he regretted the archbishop’s decision to excommunicate the two doctors, saying they had done the right thing in saving the young girl’s life. She will probably “need decades of psychological care to get her life back to normal,” he said.
Here at Pérola Byington Hospital, doctors said abortions were often necessary to protect the lives of sexual-violence victims. Of the 47 abortions performed at the hospital last year, 13 were girls under 18, all victims of rape.
In more than 80 percent of the cases, fathers or stepfathers committed the sexual abuse, doctors at the clinic said.
“A part of Brazilian society still doesn’t want to stop treating women like they are property,” said Jefferson Drezett, a gynecologist and coordinator of the sexual-abuse victims service at the hospital. “This has to change.”
Earlier this month, a 21-year-old woman walked into the hospital with her 6-year-old daughter. She said the 6-year-old had been sexually molested by the girl’s stepgrandfather, whom the woman was seeking to have arrested.
The woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, sat for an interview in a room with tiny chairs and dolls that is used for the psychological evaluation of victims. She said she had lived with him until she was 14, when she felt uncomfortable with his advances and asked her mother to leave him.
Fighting back tears, she said she worried that the man would abuse other children still living with him, including the daughters of his own son that are close to her daughter’s age.
“We don’t want to believe what happened,” she said. “We think this just happens on television, that it’s a fairy tale. But the reality is it can happen to any family, and it’s very difficult to deal with when it does.”
Mery Galanternick contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.
SOUTH AMERICA
March 30, 2009
In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself
By MARC LACEY
REYNOSA, Mexico — An army convoy on the hunt for traffickers rolled out of its base recently in this border town under the control of the Gulf Cartel — and an ominous voice crackled over a two-way radio frequency to announce just that. The voice, belonging to a cartel spy, then broadcast the soldiers’ route through the city, turn by turn, using the same military language as the soldiers.
“They’re following us,” Col. Juan José Gómez, who was monitoring the transmission from the front seat of an olive-green pickup truck, said with a shrug.
The presence of the informers, some of them former soldiers, highlights a central paradox in Mexico’s ambitious and bloody assault on the drug cartels that have ravaged the country. The nation has begun a war, but it cannot fully rely on the very institutions — the police, customs, the courts, the prisons, even the relatively clean army — most needed to carry it out.
The cartels bring in billions of dollars more than the Mexican government spends to defeat them, and they spend their wealth to bolster their ranks with an untold number of politicians, judges, prison guards and police officers — so many police officers, in fact, that entire forces in cities across Mexico have been disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.
Over the past year, the country’s top organized crime prosecutor has been arrested for receiving cartel cash, as was the director of Interpol in Mexico. The cartels even managed to slip a mole inside the United States Embassy. Those in important positions who have resisted taking cartel money are often shot to death, a powerful incentive to others who might be wavering.
More.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/world ... &th&emc=th
In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself
By MARC LACEY
REYNOSA, Mexico — An army convoy on the hunt for traffickers rolled out of its base recently in this border town under the control of the Gulf Cartel — and an ominous voice crackled over a two-way radio frequency to announce just that. The voice, belonging to a cartel spy, then broadcast the soldiers’ route through the city, turn by turn, using the same military language as the soldiers.
“They’re following us,” Col. Juan José Gómez, who was monitoring the transmission from the front seat of an olive-green pickup truck, said with a shrug.
The presence of the informers, some of them former soldiers, highlights a central paradox in Mexico’s ambitious and bloody assault on the drug cartels that have ravaged the country. The nation has begun a war, but it cannot fully rely on the very institutions — the police, customs, the courts, the prisons, even the relatively clean army — most needed to carry it out.
The cartels bring in billions of dollars more than the Mexican government spends to defeat them, and they spend their wealth to bolster their ranks with an untold number of politicians, judges, prison guards and police officers — so many police officers, in fact, that entire forces in cities across Mexico have been disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.
Over the past year, the country’s top organized crime prosecutor has been arrested for receiving cartel cash, as was the director of Interpol in Mexico. The cartels even managed to slip a mole inside the United States Embassy. Those in important positions who have resisted taking cartel money are often shot to death, a powerful incentive to others who might be wavering.
More.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/world ... &th&emc=th
April 16, 2009
Deals Help China Expand Sway in Latin America
By SIMON ROMERO and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
CARACAS, Venezuela — As Washington tries to rebuild its strained relationships in Latin America, China is stepping in vigorously, offering countries across the region large amounts of money while they struggle with sharply slowing economies, a plunge in commodity prices and restricted access to credit.
In recent weeks, China has been negotiating deals to double a development fund in Venezuela to $12 billion, lend Ecuador at least $1 billion to build a hydroelectric plant, provide Argentina with access to more than $10 billion in Chinese currency and lend Brazil’s national oil company $10 billion. The deals largely focus on China locking in natural resources like oil for years to come.
China’s trade with Latin America has grown quickly this decade, making it the region’s second largest trading partner after the United States. But the size and scope of these loans point to a deeper engagement with Latin America at a time when the Obama administration is starting to address the erosion of Washington’s influence in the hemisphere.
“This is how the balance of power shifts quietly during times of crisis,” said David Rothkopf, a former Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration. “The loans are an example of the checkbook power in the world moving to new places, with the Chinese becoming more active.”
Mr. Obama will meet with leaders from the region this weekend. They will discuss the economic crisis, including a plan to replenish the Inter-American Development Bank, a Washington-based pillar of clout that has suffered losses from the financial crisis. Leaders at the summit meeting are also expected to push Mr. Obama to further loosen the United States policy toward Cuba.
Meanwhile, China is rapidly increasing its lending in Latin America as it pursues not only long-term access to commodities like soybeans and iron ore, but also an alternative to investing in United States Treasury notes.
One of China’s new deals in Latin America, the $10 billion arrangement with Argentina, would allow Argentina reliable access to Chinese currency to help pay for imports from China. It may also help lead the way to China’s currency to eventually be used as an alternate reserve currency. The deal follows similar ones China has struck with countries like South Korea, Indonesia and Belarus.
As the financial crisis began to whipsaw international markets last year, the Federal Reserve made its own currency arrangements with central banks around the world, allocating $30 billion each to Brazil and Mexico. (Brazil has opted not to tap it for now.) But smaller economies in the region, including Argentina, which has been trying to dispel doubts about its ability to meet its international debt payments, were left out of those agreements.
Details of the Chinese deal with Argentina are still being ironed out, but an official at Argentina’s central bank said it would allow Argentina to avoid using scarce dollars for all its international transactions. The takeover of billions of dollars in private pension funds, among other moves, led Argentines to pull the equivalent of nearly $23 billion, much of it in dollars, out of the country last year.
Dante Sica, the lead economist at Abeceb, a consulting firm in Buenos Aires, said the Chinese overtures in the region were made possible by the “lack of attention that the United States showed to Latin America during the entire Bush administration.”
China is also seizing opportunities in Latin America when traditional lenders over which the United States holds some sway, like the Inter-American Development Bank, are pushing up against their limits.
Just one of China’s planned loans, the $10 billion for Brazil’s national oil company, is almost as much as the $11.2 billion in all approved financing by the Inter-American Bank in 2008. Brazil is expected to use the loan for offshore exploration, while agreeing to export as much as 100,000 barrels of oil a day to China, according to the oil company.
The Inter-American bank, in which the United States has de facto veto power in some matters, is trying to triple its capital and increase lending to $18 billion this year. But the replenishment involves delicate negotiations among member nations, made all the more difficult after the bank lost almost $1 billion last year.
China will also have a role in these talks, having become a member of the bank this year.
China has also pushed into Latin American countries where the United States has negligible influence, like Venezuela.
In February, China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, traveled to Caracas to meet with President Hugo Chávez. The two men announced that a Chinese-backed development fund based here would grow to $12 billion from $6 billion, giving Venezuela access to hard currency while agreeing to increase oil shipments to China to one million barrels a day from a level of about 380,000 barrels.
Mr. Chávez’s government contends the Chinese aid differs from other multilateral loans because it comes without strings attached, like scrutiny of internal finances. But the Chinese fund has generated criticism among his opponents, who view it as an affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty.
“The fund is a swindle to the nation,” said Luis Díaz, a lawmaker who claims that China locked in low prices for the oil Venezuela is using as repayment.
Despite forging ties to Venezuela and extending loans to other nations that have chafed at Washington’s clout, Beijing has bolstered its presence without bombast, perhaps out of an awareness that its relationship with the United States is still of paramount importance. But this deference may not last.
“This is China playing the long game,” said Gregory Chin, a political scientist at York University in Toronto. “If this ultimately translates into political influence, then that is how the game is played.”
Simon Romero reported from Caracas, and Alexei Barrionuevo from Rio de Janeiro.
Deals Help China Expand Sway in Latin America
By SIMON ROMERO and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
CARACAS, Venezuela — As Washington tries to rebuild its strained relationships in Latin America, China is stepping in vigorously, offering countries across the region large amounts of money while they struggle with sharply slowing economies, a plunge in commodity prices and restricted access to credit.
In recent weeks, China has been negotiating deals to double a development fund in Venezuela to $12 billion, lend Ecuador at least $1 billion to build a hydroelectric plant, provide Argentina with access to more than $10 billion in Chinese currency and lend Brazil’s national oil company $10 billion. The deals largely focus on China locking in natural resources like oil for years to come.
China’s trade with Latin America has grown quickly this decade, making it the region’s second largest trading partner after the United States. But the size and scope of these loans point to a deeper engagement with Latin America at a time when the Obama administration is starting to address the erosion of Washington’s influence in the hemisphere.
“This is how the balance of power shifts quietly during times of crisis,” said David Rothkopf, a former Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration. “The loans are an example of the checkbook power in the world moving to new places, with the Chinese becoming more active.”
Mr. Obama will meet with leaders from the region this weekend. They will discuss the economic crisis, including a plan to replenish the Inter-American Development Bank, a Washington-based pillar of clout that has suffered losses from the financial crisis. Leaders at the summit meeting are also expected to push Mr. Obama to further loosen the United States policy toward Cuba.
Meanwhile, China is rapidly increasing its lending in Latin America as it pursues not only long-term access to commodities like soybeans and iron ore, but also an alternative to investing in United States Treasury notes.
One of China’s new deals in Latin America, the $10 billion arrangement with Argentina, would allow Argentina reliable access to Chinese currency to help pay for imports from China. It may also help lead the way to China’s currency to eventually be used as an alternate reserve currency. The deal follows similar ones China has struck with countries like South Korea, Indonesia and Belarus.
As the financial crisis began to whipsaw international markets last year, the Federal Reserve made its own currency arrangements with central banks around the world, allocating $30 billion each to Brazil and Mexico. (Brazil has opted not to tap it for now.) But smaller economies in the region, including Argentina, which has been trying to dispel doubts about its ability to meet its international debt payments, were left out of those agreements.
Details of the Chinese deal with Argentina are still being ironed out, but an official at Argentina’s central bank said it would allow Argentina to avoid using scarce dollars for all its international transactions. The takeover of billions of dollars in private pension funds, among other moves, led Argentines to pull the equivalent of nearly $23 billion, much of it in dollars, out of the country last year.
Dante Sica, the lead economist at Abeceb, a consulting firm in Buenos Aires, said the Chinese overtures in the region were made possible by the “lack of attention that the United States showed to Latin America during the entire Bush administration.”
China is also seizing opportunities in Latin America when traditional lenders over which the United States holds some sway, like the Inter-American Development Bank, are pushing up against their limits.
Just one of China’s planned loans, the $10 billion for Brazil’s national oil company, is almost as much as the $11.2 billion in all approved financing by the Inter-American Bank in 2008. Brazil is expected to use the loan for offshore exploration, while agreeing to export as much as 100,000 barrels of oil a day to China, according to the oil company.
The Inter-American bank, in which the United States has de facto veto power in some matters, is trying to triple its capital and increase lending to $18 billion this year. But the replenishment involves delicate negotiations among member nations, made all the more difficult after the bank lost almost $1 billion last year.
China will also have a role in these talks, having become a member of the bank this year.
China has also pushed into Latin American countries where the United States has negligible influence, like Venezuela.
In February, China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, traveled to Caracas to meet with President Hugo Chávez. The two men announced that a Chinese-backed development fund based here would grow to $12 billion from $6 billion, giving Venezuela access to hard currency while agreeing to increase oil shipments to China to one million barrels a day from a level of about 380,000 barrels.
Mr. Chávez’s government contends the Chinese aid differs from other multilateral loans because it comes without strings attached, like scrutiny of internal finances. But the Chinese fund has generated criticism among his opponents, who view it as an affront to Venezuela’s sovereignty.
“The fund is a swindle to the nation,” said Luis Díaz, a lawmaker who claims that China locked in low prices for the oil Venezuela is using as repayment.
Despite forging ties to Venezuela and extending loans to other nations that have chafed at Washington’s clout, Beijing has bolstered its presence without bombast, perhaps out of an awareness that its relationship with the United States is still of paramount importance. But this deference may not last.
“This is China playing the long game,” said Gregory Chin, a political scientist at York University in Toronto. “If this ultimately translates into political influence, then that is how the game is played.”
Simon Romero reported from Caracas, and Alexei Barrionuevo from Rio de Janeiro.
There are photos at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/world ... ?th&emc=th
April 25, 2009
Fighting Deadly Flu, Mexico Shuts Schools
By MARC LACEY and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials, scrambling to control a swine flu outbreak that has killed as many as 61 people and infected possibly hundreds more in recent weeks, closed museums and shuttered schools for millions of students in and around the capital on Friday, and urged people with flu symptoms to stay home from work.
“We’re dealing with a new flu virus that constitutes a respiratory epidemic that so far is controllable,” Mexico’s health minister, José Ángel Córdova, told reporters after huddling with President Felipe Calderón and other top officials on Thursday night to come up with an action plan. He said the virus had mutated from pigs and had at some point been transmitted to humans.
The new strain contains gene sequences from North American and Eurasian swine flus, North American bird flu and North American human flu, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A similar virus has been found in the American Southwest, where officials have reported eight nonfatal cases.
Most of Mexico’s dead were young, healthy adults, and none were over 60 or under 3 years old, the World Health Organization said. That alarms health officials because seasonal flus cause most of their deaths among infants and bedridden elderly people, but pandemic flus — like the 1918 Spanish flu, and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics — often strike young, healthy people the hardest.
Mexican officials promised a huge immunization campaign in the capital in the coming days, while urging people to avoid large gatherings and to refrain from shaking hands or greeting women with a kiss on the right cheek, as is common in Mexico.
Mexico City closed museums and other cultural venues, and advised people not to attend movies or public events. Seven million students, from kindergartners to college students, were kept from classes in Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico on Friday, in what news organizations called the first citywide closing of schools since a powerful earthquake in 1985.
Because of the situation, the World Health Organization planned to consider raising the world pandemic flu alert to 4 from 3. Such a high level of alert — meaning that sustained human-to-human transmission of a new virus has been detected — has not been reached in recent years, even with the H5N1 avian flu circulating in Asia and Egypt, and would “really raise the hackles of everyone around the world,” said Dr. Robert G. Webster, a flu virus expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
Mexico’s flu season is usually over by now, but health officials have noticed a significant spike in flu cases since mid-March. The W.H.O. said there had been 800 cases in Mexico in recent weeks, 60 of them fatal, of a flulike illness that appeared to be more serious than the regular seasonal flu. Mr. Córdova said Friday that there were 1,004 possible cases.
Still, only a small number have been confirmed as cases of the new H1N1 swine flu, according to Gregory Hartl, a W.H.O. spokesman. Mexican authorities confirmed 16 deaths from swine flu and said 45 others were under investigation, most of them in the Mexico City area. The C.D.C. said that eight nonfatal cases had been confirmed in the United States, and that it had sent teams to California and Texas to investigate.
“We are worried,” said Dr. Richard Besser, the acting head of the C.D.C. “We don’t know if this will lead to the next pandemic, but we will be monitoring it and taking it seriously.”
There is no point in trying to use containment measures in the United States, he said, because the swine flu virus has already appeared from San Antonio to San Diego, without any obvious connections among cases. Containment measures usually work only when a disease is confined to a small area, he said.
The C.D.C. refrained from warning people not to visit Mexico. Even so, the outbreak comes at an awful time for tourism officials, who have been struggling to counter the perception that violence has made Mexico unsafe for travelers. The outbreak was also causing alarm among Mexicans, many of whom rushed to buy masks or get checkups.
“I hope it’s not something grave,” said Claudia Cruz, who took her 11-year-old son, Efrain, to a clinic on Friday after hearing the government warnings.
Health officials urged anyone with a fever, a cough, a sore throat, shortness of breath or muscle and joint pain to seek medical attention.
When a new virus emerges, it can sweep through the population, said Dr. Anne Moscona, a flu specialist at Cornell University’s medical school. The Spanish flu is believed to have infected at least 25 percent of the United States population, but killed less than 3 percent of those infected.
The leading theory on why so many young, healthy people die in pandemics is the “cytokine storm,” in which vigorous immune systems pour out antibodies to attack the new virus. That can inflame lung cells until they leak fluid, which can overwhelm the lungs, Dr. Moscona said.
But older people who have had the flu repeatedly in their lives may have some antibodies that provide cross-protection to the new strain, she said. And immune responses among the aged are not as vigorous.
Despite the alarm in recent years over the H5N1 avian flu, which is still circulating in China, Indonesia, Egypt and elsewhere, some flu experts argued that it would never cause a pandemic, because no H5 strain ever had. All previous pandemics have been caused by H1s, H2s or H3s.
Among the swine flu cases in the United States, none had had any contact with pigs; cases involving a father and daughter and two 16-year-old schoolmates convinced the authorities that the virus was being transmitted from person to person.
In Canada, hit by the SARS epidemic in 2003, health officials urged those who had recently traveled to Mexico and become ill to seek treatment immediately.
Marc Lacey reported from Mexico City, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/world ... ?th&emc=th
April 25, 2009
Fighting Deadly Flu, Mexico Shuts Schools
By MARC LACEY and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials, scrambling to control a swine flu outbreak that has killed as many as 61 people and infected possibly hundreds more in recent weeks, closed museums and shuttered schools for millions of students in and around the capital on Friday, and urged people with flu symptoms to stay home from work.
“We’re dealing with a new flu virus that constitutes a respiratory epidemic that so far is controllable,” Mexico’s health minister, José Ángel Córdova, told reporters after huddling with President Felipe Calderón and other top officials on Thursday night to come up with an action plan. He said the virus had mutated from pigs and had at some point been transmitted to humans.
The new strain contains gene sequences from North American and Eurasian swine flus, North American bird flu and North American human flu, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A similar virus has been found in the American Southwest, where officials have reported eight nonfatal cases.
Most of Mexico’s dead were young, healthy adults, and none were over 60 or under 3 years old, the World Health Organization said. That alarms health officials because seasonal flus cause most of their deaths among infants and bedridden elderly people, but pandemic flus — like the 1918 Spanish flu, and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics — often strike young, healthy people the hardest.
Mexican officials promised a huge immunization campaign in the capital in the coming days, while urging people to avoid large gatherings and to refrain from shaking hands or greeting women with a kiss on the right cheek, as is common in Mexico.
Mexico City closed museums and other cultural venues, and advised people not to attend movies or public events. Seven million students, from kindergartners to college students, were kept from classes in Mexico City and the neighboring State of Mexico on Friday, in what news organizations called the first citywide closing of schools since a powerful earthquake in 1985.
Because of the situation, the World Health Organization planned to consider raising the world pandemic flu alert to 4 from 3. Such a high level of alert — meaning that sustained human-to-human transmission of a new virus has been detected — has not been reached in recent years, even with the H5N1 avian flu circulating in Asia and Egypt, and would “really raise the hackles of everyone around the world,” said Dr. Robert G. Webster, a flu virus expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.
Mexico’s flu season is usually over by now, but health officials have noticed a significant spike in flu cases since mid-March. The W.H.O. said there had been 800 cases in Mexico in recent weeks, 60 of them fatal, of a flulike illness that appeared to be more serious than the regular seasonal flu. Mr. Córdova said Friday that there were 1,004 possible cases.
Still, only a small number have been confirmed as cases of the new H1N1 swine flu, according to Gregory Hartl, a W.H.O. spokesman. Mexican authorities confirmed 16 deaths from swine flu and said 45 others were under investigation, most of them in the Mexico City area. The C.D.C. said that eight nonfatal cases had been confirmed in the United States, and that it had sent teams to California and Texas to investigate.
“We are worried,” said Dr. Richard Besser, the acting head of the C.D.C. “We don’t know if this will lead to the next pandemic, but we will be monitoring it and taking it seriously.”
There is no point in trying to use containment measures in the United States, he said, because the swine flu virus has already appeared from San Antonio to San Diego, without any obvious connections among cases. Containment measures usually work only when a disease is confined to a small area, he said.
The C.D.C. refrained from warning people not to visit Mexico. Even so, the outbreak comes at an awful time for tourism officials, who have been struggling to counter the perception that violence has made Mexico unsafe for travelers. The outbreak was also causing alarm among Mexicans, many of whom rushed to buy masks or get checkups.
“I hope it’s not something grave,” said Claudia Cruz, who took her 11-year-old son, Efrain, to a clinic on Friday after hearing the government warnings.
Health officials urged anyone with a fever, a cough, a sore throat, shortness of breath or muscle and joint pain to seek medical attention.
When a new virus emerges, it can sweep through the population, said Dr. Anne Moscona, a flu specialist at Cornell University’s medical school. The Spanish flu is believed to have infected at least 25 percent of the United States population, but killed less than 3 percent of those infected.
The leading theory on why so many young, healthy people die in pandemics is the “cytokine storm,” in which vigorous immune systems pour out antibodies to attack the new virus. That can inflame lung cells until they leak fluid, which can overwhelm the lungs, Dr. Moscona said.
But older people who have had the flu repeatedly in their lives may have some antibodies that provide cross-protection to the new strain, she said. And immune responses among the aged are not as vigorous.
Despite the alarm in recent years over the H5N1 avian flu, which is still circulating in China, Indonesia, Egypt and elsewhere, some flu experts argued that it would never cause a pandemic, because no H5 strain ever had. All previous pandemics have been caused by H1s, H2s or H3s.
Among the swine flu cases in the United States, none had had any contact with pigs; cases involving a father and daughter and two 16-year-old schoolmates convinced the authorities that the virus was being transmitted from person to person.
In Canada, hit by the SARS epidemic in 2003, health officials urged those who had recently traveled to Mexico and become ill to seek treatment immediately.
Marc Lacey reported from Mexico City, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Ian Austen contributed reporting from Ottawa.
April 26, 2009
Mexico Takes Powers to Isolate Cases of Swine Flu
By MARC LACEY and ELISABETH MALKIN
MEXICO CITY — This sprawling capital was on edge Saturday as jittery residents ventured out wearing surgical masks and President Felipe Calderón published an order that would give his government emergency powers to address a deadly flu outbreak, including isolating those who have contracted the virus, inspecting the homes of affected people and ordering the cancellation of public events.
White-coated health care workers fanned out across the international airport here to look for ailing passengers, and thousands of callers fearful they might have contracted the rare swine flu flooded government health hot lines. Health officials also began notifying restaurants, bars and nightclubs throughout the city that they should close.
Of those Mexicans who did go out in public, many took the advice of the authorities and donned the masks, which are known here as tapabocas, or cover-your-mouths, and were being handed out by soldiers and health workers at subway stops and on street corners.
“My government will not delay one minute to take all the necessary measures to deal with this epidemic,” Mr. Calderón said in Oaxaca State during the opening of a new hospital, which he said would set aside an area for anyone who might be affected by the new swine flu strain that has already killed as many as 81 people in Mexico and sickened more than 1,300 others.
Mr. Calderón pointed out that he and the other officials who attended the ceremony intentionally did not greet each other with handshakes or kisses on the cheek, which health officials have urged Mexicans to avoid.
At a news conference Saturday night to address the crisis, Mexico’s health minister, José Ángel Córdova, said 20 of the 81 reported deaths were confirmed to have been caused by swine flu, while the rest are being studied. Most of the cases of illness were reported in the center of the country, but there were other cases in pockets to the north and south.
The government also announced at the news conference that schools in and around the capital that serve millions of students would remain closed until May 6.
With 20 million people packed together tight, Mexico City typically bursts forth on the weekends into parks, playgrounds, cultural centers and sidewalk cafes. But things were quieter than usual on Saturday.
The government encouraged people to stay home by canceling concerts, closing museums and banning spectators from two big soccer matches on Sunday that will be played in front of television cameras, but no live crowd.
At street corners on Saturday, even many of the jugglers, dancers and musicians who eke out a living collecting spare change when the traffic lights turn red were wearing bright blue surgical masks.
The newspaper Reforma reported that President Obama, who recently visited Mexico, was escorted around Mexico City’s national anthropology museum on April 16 by Felipe Solis, an archaeologist who died the next day from flu-like symptoms. But Dr. Córdova said that it does not appear that Mr. Solis died of influenza.
White House officials said Saturday that they were aware of the news reports in Mexico but that there was no reason to be concerned about Mr. Obama’s health, that he had no symptoms and that his medical staff had recommended he not be tested.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said Saturday that it had sent a team of experts to Mexico to assist with the investigation of the outbreak, which has already been reported in Texas and California and possibly in New York, raising fears that it could spread into a global pandemic.
The possible New York cases were reported at a Queens high school, where eight students tested positive for a type of influenza that health officials suspect could be the new swine flu. Some of the school’s students had traveled to Mexico recently.
Still, the World Health Organization, which held a meeting on Saturday to discuss the outbreak, chose not to raise the level of global pandemic flu alert, which has been at a Level 3 because of the avian flu.
Epidemiologists want to know exactly when the first cases occurred in Mexico. Mexican health officials said they first noticed a huge spike in flu cases in late March. In mid-April, they began noticing that otherwise healthy people were dying from the virus. But it was only on Thursday night that officials first sounded an alarm to the population by closing schools, after United States health officials announced a possible swine flu outbreak.
By issuing the emergency decree Saturday, Mr. Calderón may have been trying to head off criticism that his government had been too slow to act. He had earlier called in the army to distribute four million masks throughout the capital and its suburbs.
Lt. Raymundo Morales Merla, who stood outside a military transport truck parked outside a downtown subway station on Saturday, led a group of 27 soldiers who had arrived at 7 a.m. to hand out as many masks as they could.
The scene at the airport was alarming, with doctors stationed at the entrances to answer questions and to keep an eye out for obviously sick people. Regular public address announcements in English and Spanish warned travelers that anyone exhibiting any symptoms should cancel their flight and immediately seek medical attention.
Even Sunday Mass will probably be affected. The Roman Catholic Church gave worshipers the option to listen to Masses on the radio and told priests who decided to hold services to be brief and put Communion wafers in worshipers’ hands instead of their mouths.
Axel de la Macorra, 46, a physics professor at National Autonomous University of Mexico, said he became worried when he learned recently that a 31-year-man who played at a tennis club he once belonged to had suddenly died. “He got sick at the beginning of April and two weeks later, he was dead,” said Mr. de la Macorra, who was weighing whether to attend a First Communion with 200 guests on Saturday.
“My mother told me to wear it so I did,” said Noel Ledezma, 29, who had his mask pulled down so he could sip a coffee and eat a muffin as he walked to work. “Who knows who will be next.”
Sarahe Gomez, who was selling jewelry at a mall in the upscale Polanco neighborhood, spoke through a mask to the few customers who visited her kiosk. “I’m in the middle of all these people and one of them could have it,” she said. “The virus could be anywhere. It could be right here.”
She then took a half step back.
“This is no joke,” said Servando Peneda, 42, a lawyer who ventured out to pay a bill, but left his two sons home. “There’s 20 million of us in this city and I’d say half of us have these masks on today. I know all of us will die one day, but I want to last out the week.”
Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting from Mexico City, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/world ... &th&emc=th
Mexico Takes Powers to Isolate Cases of Swine Flu
By MARC LACEY and ELISABETH MALKIN
MEXICO CITY — This sprawling capital was on edge Saturday as jittery residents ventured out wearing surgical masks and President Felipe Calderón published an order that would give his government emergency powers to address a deadly flu outbreak, including isolating those who have contracted the virus, inspecting the homes of affected people and ordering the cancellation of public events.
White-coated health care workers fanned out across the international airport here to look for ailing passengers, and thousands of callers fearful they might have contracted the rare swine flu flooded government health hot lines. Health officials also began notifying restaurants, bars and nightclubs throughout the city that they should close.
Of those Mexicans who did go out in public, many took the advice of the authorities and donned the masks, which are known here as tapabocas, or cover-your-mouths, and were being handed out by soldiers and health workers at subway stops and on street corners.
“My government will not delay one minute to take all the necessary measures to deal with this epidemic,” Mr. Calderón said in Oaxaca State during the opening of a new hospital, which he said would set aside an area for anyone who might be affected by the new swine flu strain that has already killed as many as 81 people in Mexico and sickened more than 1,300 others.
Mr. Calderón pointed out that he and the other officials who attended the ceremony intentionally did not greet each other with handshakes or kisses on the cheek, which health officials have urged Mexicans to avoid.
At a news conference Saturday night to address the crisis, Mexico’s health minister, José Ángel Córdova, said 20 of the 81 reported deaths were confirmed to have been caused by swine flu, while the rest are being studied. Most of the cases of illness were reported in the center of the country, but there were other cases in pockets to the north and south.
The government also announced at the news conference that schools in and around the capital that serve millions of students would remain closed until May 6.
With 20 million people packed together tight, Mexico City typically bursts forth on the weekends into parks, playgrounds, cultural centers and sidewalk cafes. But things were quieter than usual on Saturday.
The government encouraged people to stay home by canceling concerts, closing museums and banning spectators from two big soccer matches on Sunday that will be played in front of television cameras, but no live crowd.
At street corners on Saturday, even many of the jugglers, dancers and musicians who eke out a living collecting spare change when the traffic lights turn red were wearing bright blue surgical masks.
The newspaper Reforma reported that President Obama, who recently visited Mexico, was escorted around Mexico City’s national anthropology museum on April 16 by Felipe Solis, an archaeologist who died the next day from flu-like symptoms. But Dr. Córdova said that it does not appear that Mr. Solis died of influenza.
White House officials said Saturday that they were aware of the news reports in Mexico but that there was no reason to be concerned about Mr. Obama’s health, that he had no symptoms and that his medical staff had recommended he not be tested.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said Saturday that it had sent a team of experts to Mexico to assist with the investigation of the outbreak, which has already been reported in Texas and California and possibly in New York, raising fears that it could spread into a global pandemic.
The possible New York cases were reported at a Queens high school, where eight students tested positive for a type of influenza that health officials suspect could be the new swine flu. Some of the school’s students had traveled to Mexico recently.
Still, the World Health Organization, which held a meeting on Saturday to discuss the outbreak, chose not to raise the level of global pandemic flu alert, which has been at a Level 3 because of the avian flu.
Epidemiologists want to know exactly when the first cases occurred in Mexico. Mexican health officials said they first noticed a huge spike in flu cases in late March. In mid-April, they began noticing that otherwise healthy people were dying from the virus. But it was only on Thursday night that officials first sounded an alarm to the population by closing schools, after United States health officials announced a possible swine flu outbreak.
By issuing the emergency decree Saturday, Mr. Calderón may have been trying to head off criticism that his government had been too slow to act. He had earlier called in the army to distribute four million masks throughout the capital and its suburbs.
Lt. Raymundo Morales Merla, who stood outside a military transport truck parked outside a downtown subway station on Saturday, led a group of 27 soldiers who had arrived at 7 a.m. to hand out as many masks as they could.
The scene at the airport was alarming, with doctors stationed at the entrances to answer questions and to keep an eye out for obviously sick people. Regular public address announcements in English and Spanish warned travelers that anyone exhibiting any symptoms should cancel their flight and immediately seek medical attention.
Even Sunday Mass will probably be affected. The Roman Catholic Church gave worshipers the option to listen to Masses on the radio and told priests who decided to hold services to be brief and put Communion wafers in worshipers’ hands instead of their mouths.
Axel de la Macorra, 46, a physics professor at National Autonomous University of Mexico, said he became worried when he learned recently that a 31-year-man who played at a tennis club he once belonged to had suddenly died. “He got sick at the beginning of April and two weeks later, he was dead,” said Mr. de la Macorra, who was weighing whether to attend a First Communion with 200 guests on Saturday.
“My mother told me to wear it so I did,” said Noel Ledezma, 29, who had his mask pulled down so he could sip a coffee and eat a muffin as he walked to work. “Who knows who will be next.”
Sarahe Gomez, who was selling jewelry at a mall in the upscale Polanco neighborhood, spoke through a mask to the few customers who visited her kiosk. “I’m in the middle of all these people and one of them could have it,” she said. “The virus could be anywhere. It could be right here.”
She then took a half step back.
“This is no joke,” said Servando Peneda, 42, a lawyer who ventured out to pay a bill, but left his two sons home. “There’s 20 million of us in this city and I’d say half of us have these masks on today. I know all of us will die one day, but I want to last out the week.”
Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting from Mexico City, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/world ... &th&emc=th
April 27, 2009
Mexican Tourism, Already Hurt by Violence, Bears Blow of a Health Scare
By MARC LACEY
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s tourism industry was in crisis even before the government announced the presence of a deadly influenza virus a few days ago and began handing out surgical masks by the millions and shuttering virtually all public gathering spots in the capital.
The industry has been grappling in recent months with fears that Mexico’s drug war has made the country too risky to visit. Now comes a mysterious virus that runs the risk of turning the country into a no-go zone in the minds of many travelers.
Rafael García González, president of the Mexico City Hotel Association, reported a 20 percent drop in national tourism to the capital over the weekend and said the effects of the crisis on international visitors were still being assessed. Daniel Loaeza, vice president of the National Restaurant Association, said the closing of restaurants for even a few days could mean significant damage to the industry.
Alejandro Rojas, Mexico City’s secretary of tourism, met with Rodolfo Elizondo, the national tourism director, and others in the industry on Sunday to assess how the health crisis could affect tourism and to mount an aggressive response.
“We are going to come to an agreement to distribute to the world the real situation in Mexico,” Mr. Rojas told the newspaper Reforma.
Still, the news from health officials only seems to get worse, with the number of deaths believed tied to the flu virus rising to 103, according to government officials, and the number of people suspected to have been sickened across the country about 1,600 since April 13.
Mexican officials took pains to note that no government had issued an official ban on travel to Mexico. But there were worrisome indications on the horizon, with Hong Kong issuing a strong warning against travel here.
For those who had already arrived, many of the recommended tourist destinations, including historical sites, museums and top restaurants, have been shut down on the order of health officials. And Mayor Marcelo Ebrard told reporters on Sunday that if the epidemic grew worse he might order additional measures, including the closing of the public transportation system.
Double-decker tour buses continued to traverse Mexico’s capital over the weekend, rolling past the majestic National Palace, areas in the expansive Chapultepec Park, including the zoo, and the Frida Kahlo Museum. But the tourists aboard, who took in the sights wearing face masks, were unable to go inside the popular attractions because of the emergency measures.
“It’s such a shame,” said Elena Rogova, who was visiting from Moscow with a friend. “We wanted to go to the Anthropology Museum and the Frida Kahlo Museum and so many other museums. All we can do is walk.”
Another visitor, Paula Sezenna, walking along the Paseo de la Reforma, found a silver lining to the crisis. Ms. Sezenna, who was on a business trip from Italy, said the normal crowds at the pyramids of Teotihuacan outside the capital on weekends had thinned considerably.
Warned at a youth hostel that they should not go downtown, a group of women from Australia and New Zealand decided to go anyway, equipped with hand sanitizer and accepting masks from a soldier once they got to the Zócalo, the city’s central square. “We put them on for photos,” said Stephanie Gawne, 24, who professed not to be alarmed.
But Jessamyn Cull, 23, said she had been recovering from the flu when she arrived. “I am a tad worried,” she said, indicating that the group might leave Mexico soon and head for their next stop in Guatemala.
There was no apparent rush to leave the country at Mexico City’s airport, although a few foreign tourists said in interviews there that they had changed their flights to return home early.
“I was afraid they would stop people from flying back to the United States,” said Tom Dillon, 43, who was returning to New York.
A soccer team from the German School of White Plains considered its trip a bust. The boys had arrived to play in a tournament on Friday and Saturday, only to find that all their matches had been canceled.
The United States Embassy in Mexico City, which has warned Americans about the effects of drug violence in a travel alert, said there were no constraints on travel between the United States and Mexico. But after Mexico decided to limit public gatherings, the embassy said it would suspend the processing of thousands of tourist visas this week.
Elisabeth Malkin and Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting.
****
April 27, 2009
U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Responding to what some health officials feared could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.
Other nations imposed travel bans or made plans to quarantine air travelers as confirmed cases also appeared in Mexico and Canada and suspect cases emerged elsewhere.
Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be a month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.
“We’re in a period in which the picture is evolving,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization. “We need to know the extent to which it causes mild and serious infections.”
Without that knowledge — which is unlikely to emerge soon because only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case — his agency’s panel of experts was unwilling to raise the global pandemic alert level, even though it officially saw the outbreak as a public health emergency and opened its emergency response center.
As a news conference in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the emergency declaration “standard operating procedure,” and said she would rather call it a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”
“It’s like declaring one for a hurricane,” she said. “It means we can release funds and take other measures. The hurricane may not actually hit.”
American investigators said they expected more cases here, but noted that virtually all so far had been mild and urged Americans not to panic.
The speed and the scope of the world’s response showed the value of preparations made because of the avian flu and SARS scares, public health experts said.
The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children. One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.
Border patrols and airport security officers are to begin asking travelers if they have had the flu or a fever; those who appear ill will be stopped, taken aside and given masks while they arrange for medical care.
“This is moving fast and we expect to see more cases,” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the news conference with Ms. Napolitano. “But we view this as a marathon.”
He advised Americans to wash their hands frequently, to cover coughs and sneezes and to stay home if they felt ill; but he stopped short of advice now given in Mexico to wear masks and not kiss or touch anyone. He praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.
Besides the eight New York cases, officials said they had confirmed seven in California, two in Kansas, two in Texas and one in Ohio. The virus looked identical to the one in Mexico believed to have killed 103 people — including 22 people whose deaths were confirmed to be from swine flu — and sickened about 1,600. As of Sunday night, there were no swine flu deaths in the United States, and one hospitalization.
Other governments tried to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases including in New Zealand and Spain.
Dr. Fukuda of the W.H.O. said his agency would decide Tuesday whether to raise the pandemic alert level to 4. Such a move would prompt more travel bans, and the agency has been reluctant historically to take actions that hurt member nations.
Canada confirmed six cases, at opposite ends of the country: four in Nova Scotia and two in British Columbia. Canadian health officials said the victims had only mild symptoms and had either recently traveled to Mexico or been in contact with someone who had.
Other governments issued advisories urging citizens not to visit Mexico. China, Japan, Hong Kong and others set up quarantines for anyone possibly infected. Russia and other countries banned pork imports from Mexico, though people cannot get the flu from eating pork.
In the United States, the C.D.C. confirmed that eight students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens, had been infected with the new swine flu. At a news conference on Sunday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that all those cases had been mild and that city hospitals had not seen a surge in severe lung infections.
On the streets of New York, people seemed relatively unconcerned, in sharp contrast to Mexico City, where soldiers handed out masks.
Hong Kong, shaped by lasting scars as an epicenter of the SARS outbreak, announced very tough measures. Officials there urged travelers to avoid Mexico and ordered the immediate detention of anyone arriving with a fever higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit after traveling through any city with a confirmed case, which would include New York.
Everyone stopped will be sent to a hospital for a flu test and held until it is negative. Since Hong Kong has Asia’s busiest airport hub, the policy could severely disrupt international travel.
The central question is how many mild cases Mexico has had, Dr. Martin S. Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control, said in an interview.
“We may just be looking at the tip of the iceberg, which would give you a skewed initial estimate of the case fatality rate,” he said, meaning that there might have been tens of thousands of mild infections around the 1,300 cases of serious disease and 80 or more deaths. If that is true, as the flu spreads, it would not be surprising if most cases were mild.
Even in 1918, according to the C.D.C., the virus infected at least 500 million of the world’s 1.5 billion people to kill 50 million. Many would have been saved if antiflu drugs, antibiotics and mechanical ventilators had existed.
Another hypothesis, Dr. Cetron said, is that some other factor in Mexico increased lethality, like co-infection with another microbe or an unwittingly dangerous treatment.
Flu experts would also like to know whether current flu shots give any protection because it will be months before a new vaccine can be made.
There is an H1N1 human strain in this year’s shot, and all H1N1 flus are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain. But flus pick up many mutations, and there will be no proof of protection until the C.D.C. can test stored blood serum containing flu shot antibodies against the new virus. Those tests are under way, said an expert who sent the C.D.C. his blood samples.
Reporting was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington, Jack Healy from New York, Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong and Ian Austen from Ottawa.
Mexican Tourism, Already Hurt by Violence, Bears Blow of a Health Scare
By MARC LACEY
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s tourism industry was in crisis even before the government announced the presence of a deadly influenza virus a few days ago and began handing out surgical masks by the millions and shuttering virtually all public gathering spots in the capital.
The industry has been grappling in recent months with fears that Mexico’s drug war has made the country too risky to visit. Now comes a mysterious virus that runs the risk of turning the country into a no-go zone in the minds of many travelers.
Rafael García González, president of the Mexico City Hotel Association, reported a 20 percent drop in national tourism to the capital over the weekend and said the effects of the crisis on international visitors were still being assessed. Daniel Loaeza, vice president of the National Restaurant Association, said the closing of restaurants for even a few days could mean significant damage to the industry.
Alejandro Rojas, Mexico City’s secretary of tourism, met with Rodolfo Elizondo, the national tourism director, and others in the industry on Sunday to assess how the health crisis could affect tourism and to mount an aggressive response.
“We are going to come to an agreement to distribute to the world the real situation in Mexico,” Mr. Rojas told the newspaper Reforma.
Still, the news from health officials only seems to get worse, with the number of deaths believed tied to the flu virus rising to 103, according to government officials, and the number of people suspected to have been sickened across the country about 1,600 since April 13.
Mexican officials took pains to note that no government had issued an official ban on travel to Mexico. But there were worrisome indications on the horizon, with Hong Kong issuing a strong warning against travel here.
For those who had already arrived, many of the recommended tourist destinations, including historical sites, museums and top restaurants, have been shut down on the order of health officials. And Mayor Marcelo Ebrard told reporters on Sunday that if the epidemic grew worse he might order additional measures, including the closing of the public transportation system.
Double-decker tour buses continued to traverse Mexico’s capital over the weekend, rolling past the majestic National Palace, areas in the expansive Chapultepec Park, including the zoo, and the Frida Kahlo Museum. But the tourists aboard, who took in the sights wearing face masks, were unable to go inside the popular attractions because of the emergency measures.
“It’s such a shame,” said Elena Rogova, who was visiting from Moscow with a friend. “We wanted to go to the Anthropology Museum and the Frida Kahlo Museum and so many other museums. All we can do is walk.”
Another visitor, Paula Sezenna, walking along the Paseo de la Reforma, found a silver lining to the crisis. Ms. Sezenna, who was on a business trip from Italy, said the normal crowds at the pyramids of Teotihuacan outside the capital on weekends had thinned considerably.
Warned at a youth hostel that they should not go downtown, a group of women from Australia and New Zealand decided to go anyway, equipped with hand sanitizer and accepting masks from a soldier once they got to the Zócalo, the city’s central square. “We put them on for photos,” said Stephanie Gawne, 24, who professed not to be alarmed.
But Jessamyn Cull, 23, said she had been recovering from the flu when she arrived. “I am a tad worried,” she said, indicating that the group might leave Mexico soon and head for their next stop in Guatemala.
There was no apparent rush to leave the country at Mexico City’s airport, although a few foreign tourists said in interviews there that they had changed their flights to return home early.
“I was afraid they would stop people from flying back to the United States,” said Tom Dillon, 43, who was returning to New York.
A soccer team from the German School of White Plains considered its trip a bust. The boys had arrived to play in a tournament on Friday and Saturday, only to find that all their matches had been canceled.
The United States Embassy in Mexico City, which has warned Americans about the effects of drug violence in a travel alert, said there were no constraints on travel between the United States and Mexico. But after Mexico decided to limit public gatherings, the embassy said it would suspend the processing of thousands of tourist visas this week.
Elisabeth Malkin and Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting.
****
April 27, 2009
U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Responding to what some health officials feared could be the leading edge of a global pandemic emerging from Mexico, American health officials declared a public health emergency on Sunday as 20 cases of swine flu were confirmed in this country, including eight in New York City.
Other nations imposed travel bans or made plans to quarantine air travelers as confirmed cases also appeared in Mexico and Canada and suspect cases emerged elsewhere.
Top global flu experts struggled to predict how dangerous the new A (H1N1) swine flu strain would be as it became clear that they had too little information about Mexico’s outbreak — in particular how many cases had occurred in what is thought to be a month before the outbreak was detected, and whether the virus was mutating to be more lethal, or less.
“We’re in a period in which the picture is evolving,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the World Health Organization. “We need to know the extent to which it causes mild and serious infections.”
Without that knowledge — which is unlikely to emerge soon because only two laboratories, in Atlanta and Winnipeg, Canada, can confirm a case — his agency’s panel of experts was unwilling to raise the global pandemic alert level, even though it officially saw the outbreak as a public health emergency and opened its emergency response center.
As a news conference in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the emergency declaration “standard operating procedure,” and said she would rather call it a “declaration of emergency preparedness.”
“It’s like declaring one for a hurricane,” she said. “It means we can release funds and take other measures. The hurricane may not actually hit.”
American investigators said they expected more cases here, but noted that virtually all so far had been mild and urged Americans not to panic.
The speed and the scope of the world’s response showed the value of preparations made because of the avian flu and SARS scares, public health experts said.
The emergency declaration in the United States lets the government free more money for antiviral drugs and give some previously unapproved tests and drugs to children. One-quarter of the national stockpile of 50 million courses of antiflu drugs will be released.
Border patrols and airport security officers are to begin asking travelers if they have had the flu or a fever; those who appear ill will be stopped, taken aside and given masks while they arrange for medical care.
“This is moving fast and we expect to see more cases,” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the news conference with Ms. Napolitano. “But we view this as a marathon.”
He advised Americans to wash their hands frequently, to cover coughs and sneezes and to stay home if they felt ill; but he stopped short of advice now given in Mexico to wear masks and not kiss or touch anyone. He praised decisions to close individual schools in New York and Texas but did not call for more widespread closings.
Besides the eight New York cases, officials said they had confirmed seven in California, two in Kansas, two in Texas and one in Ohio. The virus looked identical to the one in Mexico believed to have killed 103 people — including 22 people whose deaths were confirmed to be from swine flu — and sickened about 1,600. As of Sunday night, there were no swine flu deaths in the United States, and one hospitalization.
Other governments tried to contain the infection amid reports of potential new cases including in New Zealand and Spain.
Dr. Fukuda of the W.H.O. said his agency would decide Tuesday whether to raise the pandemic alert level to 4. Such a move would prompt more travel bans, and the agency has been reluctant historically to take actions that hurt member nations.
Canada confirmed six cases, at opposite ends of the country: four in Nova Scotia and two in British Columbia. Canadian health officials said the victims had only mild symptoms and had either recently traveled to Mexico or been in contact with someone who had.
Other governments issued advisories urging citizens not to visit Mexico. China, Japan, Hong Kong and others set up quarantines for anyone possibly infected. Russia and other countries banned pork imports from Mexico, though people cannot get the flu from eating pork.
In the United States, the C.D.C. confirmed that eight students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens, had been infected with the new swine flu. At a news conference on Sunday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that all those cases had been mild and that city hospitals had not seen a surge in severe lung infections.
On the streets of New York, people seemed relatively unconcerned, in sharp contrast to Mexico City, where soldiers handed out masks.
Hong Kong, shaped by lasting scars as an epicenter of the SARS outbreak, announced very tough measures. Officials there urged travelers to avoid Mexico and ordered the immediate detention of anyone arriving with a fever higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit after traveling through any city with a confirmed case, which would include New York.
Everyone stopped will be sent to a hospital for a flu test and held until it is negative. Since Hong Kong has Asia’s busiest airport hub, the policy could severely disrupt international travel.
The central question is how many mild cases Mexico has had, Dr. Martin S. Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control, said in an interview.
“We may just be looking at the tip of the iceberg, which would give you a skewed initial estimate of the case fatality rate,” he said, meaning that there might have been tens of thousands of mild infections around the 1,300 cases of serious disease and 80 or more deaths. If that is true, as the flu spreads, it would not be surprising if most cases were mild.
Even in 1918, according to the C.D.C., the virus infected at least 500 million of the world’s 1.5 billion people to kill 50 million. Many would have been saved if antiflu drugs, antibiotics and mechanical ventilators had existed.
Another hypothesis, Dr. Cetron said, is that some other factor in Mexico increased lethality, like co-infection with another microbe or an unwittingly dangerous treatment.
Flu experts would also like to know whether current flu shots give any protection because it will be months before a new vaccine can be made.
There is an H1N1 human strain in this year’s shot, and all H1N1 flus are descendants of the 1918 pandemic strain. But flus pick up many mutations, and there will be no proof of protection until the C.D.C. can test stored blood serum containing flu shot antibodies against the new virus. Those tests are under way, said an expert who sent the C.D.C. his blood samples.
Reporting was contributed by Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington, Jack Healy from New York, Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong and Ian Austen from Ottawa.
There is a related hilarious video linked in the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/world ... ?th&emc=th
May 10, 2009
Paternity Makes Punch Line of Paraguay President
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — The baby jokes just keep coming.
Fernando Lugo, the former priest who is now the country’s president, shocked the nation last month by admitting to fathering one child — and possibly more — before the Vatican had returned him to layman status.
Now the Internet here is buzzing with an irreverent video (link: http://www.ultimahora.com/notas/219113- ... al—de-Lugo) showing him in a baby carriage, magically impregnating each woman he passes on the street. A popular television show in neighboring Argentina has dedicated a tango to him and recommended that he use contraception. A local cumbia song is even mocking his campaign slogan.
“The playboy has heart, but he doesn’t use a condom,” goes the refrain, playing on the slogan that helped get him elected, “Lugo has heart.”
Even his closest advisers say they were stunned and dismayed by the revelations — and cannot rule out the possibility of more secret babies turning up.
“He isn’t sure, so we can’t be sure of exactly what could be coming,” said Miguel López Perito, his chief of staff and a close friend, speaking about the current paternity claims and any others.
“He didn’t open up about this issue to me,” he said. “I respected that, as he is not a person who talks about his personal life. Although I knew this could explode at any moment, I never knew specifically what was out there.”
When he assumed the presidency of Paraguay last August, Mr. Lugo took on a heavy task. After 61 years of one-party rule, the country was consistently rated one of the world’s most corrupt. Mr. Lugo, a bearded former Roman Catholic bishop, had no political experience, yet he stormed into office on the faith of the nation’s poor.
He had run a campaign focused on ethics, morality and transparency — attributes he associated with the church — so Mr. Lugo’s admission that he was not quite the innocent servant of Scripture he seemed has devastated and disillusioned many here, some of whom are calling for his resignation.
“I feel betrayed,” Gladys Bernal, a 50-year-old nurse who broke from the long-entrenched Colorado Party to vote for Mr. Lugo, said at an outdoor meeting recently organized by women who made speeches and waved signs like “Who will defend us from Lugo now?”
Since news broke last month about a 2-year-old that the president has recognized as his, two other women have come forward with similar assertions. One woman is awaiting DNA test results to confirm paternity and says that Mr. Lugo, now 57, was still a bishop when they became involved, when she was 18.
The mother of the boy he did accept as his, Viviana Carrillo, originally said in a court filing that she was only 16 when they first had sex, but appeared to change her story recently to avoid statutory rape charges against Mr. Lugo.
He is not the first priest to father a child, something that is surprisingly common in this deeply Catholic country of 6.8 million people. In Paraguay’s traditional, macho culture, men are actually revered for fathering children with multiple women.
But Mr. Lugo was seen as a departure from the politics of patronage that characterized the Colorado Party, even after its longtime leader, the dictator Alfredo Stroessner, was ousted in 1989. Now the disenchanted voters who elected Mr. Lugo worry that the scandal will scuttle their chance for change.
“For the foreigners, this will be just a story about a bishop having children,” said Gustavo Arzamendia, 35, a hotel clerk here. “But for the Paraguayans, it is much more than that. He was our last hope, the person people really believed could make a real break from the past.”
The president has not acknowledged having more than one child, though he has hinted that it is possible. After the second and third women came forward last month, he apologized for the scandal and asked for forgiveness, but he did not refute the women’s assertions.
His lawyer, Marcos Fariña, said Mr. Lugo would have no problem recognizing paternity if the claims were proved in court.
Mr. Lugo resigned from the diocese in San Pedro in 2005 and requested laicization in order to run for office. Ms. Carrillo, the mother of the child he acknowledges, now says their sexual relationship began only three years ago when she was 23 — not 16 as her original paternity suit asserted.
Mr. Lugo continued to serve as a priest, offering Mass and administering the Sacrament, until at least December 2006, and Pope Benedict XVI did not grant Mr. Lugo status as a lay person until last July, after the baby was born.
The unceasing jokes aside, bomb threats at government buildings and anti-Lugo public gatherings in recent days have led Mr. Lugo’s supporters to suggest that there is a conspiracy afoot to destabilize him.
The Colorado Party dismissed that claim. “We don’t need any conspiracy,” said Liliana Samaniego, the party’s president. “President Lugo has conspired against himself. He presented himself as the candidate of ethics, of morality, of transparency, and in the end that image was a big lie.”
The administration has had other early problems, including the replacement of six government ministers in the past three weeks. Mr. López Perito, the president’s chief of staff, also acknowledged that despite Mr. Lugo’s quest to do away with entrenched patronage, he has so far been able to oust only about 1,200 of 230,000 state employees.
A promise of agrarian reform is being impeded by problems figuring out who owns what land; the official registry says people have title to one-fourth more land than there is national territory.
Then there are the accounts of Mr. Lugo’s supposed lovers to contend with.
The latest to come forward was Damiana Hortensia Morán, 39, a former Lugo campaign worker who said she began a love affair with him in 2006. He insisted on keeping the affair secret, she said, never staying all night with her, but she got pregnant despite her use of an IUD, which she called a miracle.
“I love him unconditionally,” said Ms. Morán, whose son is now 17 months old. “And I want my son to know this man, whom I admire so much.”
For Benigna Leguizamón, any feelings of admiration are now stained by anger. She asserts that Mr. Lugo seduced her over three months in 2001, at the diocese in San Pedro. Then 18, she already had a 6-month-old daughter.
Now 25, she says that they have a son, Lucas Fernando — named after Mr. Lugo — who is 6. Mr. Lugo continued to see her until he was 2, she said, but did not keep his promises to support her financially.
Ms. Leguizamón has filed suit and is seeking DNA confirmation that Mr. Lugo is the father. Mr. Fariña, the lawyer, declined to say whether claims of the affair were true. He said Saturday that DNA tests might be sent out of the country and take as much as a month.
“What is important to me is that he takes care of his child,” Ms. Leguizamón said. “No one is paying me, and I am not interested in the least in whether his presidency fails or not.”
Andrea Machain contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/world ... ?th&emc=th
May 10, 2009
Paternity Makes Punch Line of Paraguay President
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — The baby jokes just keep coming.
Fernando Lugo, the former priest who is now the country’s president, shocked the nation last month by admitting to fathering one child — and possibly more — before the Vatican had returned him to layman status.
Now the Internet here is buzzing with an irreverent video (link: http://www.ultimahora.com/notas/219113- ... al—de-Lugo) showing him in a baby carriage, magically impregnating each woman he passes on the street. A popular television show in neighboring Argentina has dedicated a tango to him and recommended that he use contraception. A local cumbia song is even mocking his campaign slogan.
“The playboy has heart, but he doesn’t use a condom,” goes the refrain, playing on the slogan that helped get him elected, “Lugo has heart.”
Even his closest advisers say they were stunned and dismayed by the revelations — and cannot rule out the possibility of more secret babies turning up.
“He isn’t sure, so we can’t be sure of exactly what could be coming,” said Miguel López Perito, his chief of staff and a close friend, speaking about the current paternity claims and any others.
“He didn’t open up about this issue to me,” he said. “I respected that, as he is not a person who talks about his personal life. Although I knew this could explode at any moment, I never knew specifically what was out there.”
When he assumed the presidency of Paraguay last August, Mr. Lugo took on a heavy task. After 61 years of one-party rule, the country was consistently rated one of the world’s most corrupt. Mr. Lugo, a bearded former Roman Catholic bishop, had no political experience, yet he stormed into office on the faith of the nation’s poor.
He had run a campaign focused on ethics, morality and transparency — attributes he associated with the church — so Mr. Lugo’s admission that he was not quite the innocent servant of Scripture he seemed has devastated and disillusioned many here, some of whom are calling for his resignation.
“I feel betrayed,” Gladys Bernal, a 50-year-old nurse who broke from the long-entrenched Colorado Party to vote for Mr. Lugo, said at an outdoor meeting recently organized by women who made speeches and waved signs like “Who will defend us from Lugo now?”
Since news broke last month about a 2-year-old that the president has recognized as his, two other women have come forward with similar assertions. One woman is awaiting DNA test results to confirm paternity and says that Mr. Lugo, now 57, was still a bishop when they became involved, when she was 18.
The mother of the boy he did accept as his, Viviana Carrillo, originally said in a court filing that she was only 16 when they first had sex, but appeared to change her story recently to avoid statutory rape charges against Mr. Lugo.
He is not the first priest to father a child, something that is surprisingly common in this deeply Catholic country of 6.8 million people. In Paraguay’s traditional, macho culture, men are actually revered for fathering children with multiple women.
But Mr. Lugo was seen as a departure from the politics of patronage that characterized the Colorado Party, even after its longtime leader, the dictator Alfredo Stroessner, was ousted in 1989. Now the disenchanted voters who elected Mr. Lugo worry that the scandal will scuttle their chance for change.
“For the foreigners, this will be just a story about a bishop having children,” said Gustavo Arzamendia, 35, a hotel clerk here. “But for the Paraguayans, it is much more than that. He was our last hope, the person people really believed could make a real break from the past.”
The president has not acknowledged having more than one child, though he has hinted that it is possible. After the second and third women came forward last month, he apologized for the scandal and asked for forgiveness, but he did not refute the women’s assertions.
His lawyer, Marcos Fariña, said Mr. Lugo would have no problem recognizing paternity if the claims were proved in court.
Mr. Lugo resigned from the diocese in San Pedro in 2005 and requested laicization in order to run for office. Ms. Carrillo, the mother of the child he acknowledges, now says their sexual relationship began only three years ago when she was 23 — not 16 as her original paternity suit asserted.
Mr. Lugo continued to serve as a priest, offering Mass and administering the Sacrament, until at least December 2006, and Pope Benedict XVI did not grant Mr. Lugo status as a lay person until last July, after the baby was born.
The unceasing jokes aside, bomb threats at government buildings and anti-Lugo public gatherings in recent days have led Mr. Lugo’s supporters to suggest that there is a conspiracy afoot to destabilize him.
The Colorado Party dismissed that claim. “We don’t need any conspiracy,” said Liliana Samaniego, the party’s president. “President Lugo has conspired against himself. He presented himself as the candidate of ethics, of morality, of transparency, and in the end that image was a big lie.”
The administration has had other early problems, including the replacement of six government ministers in the past three weeks. Mr. López Perito, the president’s chief of staff, also acknowledged that despite Mr. Lugo’s quest to do away with entrenched patronage, he has so far been able to oust only about 1,200 of 230,000 state employees.
A promise of agrarian reform is being impeded by problems figuring out who owns what land; the official registry says people have title to one-fourth more land than there is national territory.
Then there are the accounts of Mr. Lugo’s supposed lovers to contend with.
The latest to come forward was Damiana Hortensia Morán, 39, a former Lugo campaign worker who said she began a love affair with him in 2006. He insisted on keeping the affair secret, she said, never staying all night with her, but she got pregnant despite her use of an IUD, which she called a miracle.
“I love him unconditionally,” said Ms. Morán, whose son is now 17 months old. “And I want my son to know this man, whom I admire so much.”
For Benigna Leguizamón, any feelings of admiration are now stained by anger. She asserts that Mr. Lugo seduced her over three months in 2001, at the diocese in San Pedro. Then 18, she already had a 6-month-old daughter.
Now 25, she says that they have a son, Lucas Fernando — named after Mr. Lugo — who is 6. Mr. Lugo continued to see her until he was 2, she said, but did not keep his promises to support her financially.
Ms. Leguizamón has filed suit and is seeking DNA confirmation that Mr. Lugo is the father. Mr. Fariña, the lawyer, declined to say whether claims of the affair were true. He said Saturday that DNA tests might be sent out of the country and take as much as a month.
“What is important to me is that he takes care of his child,” Ms. Leguizamón said. “No one is paying me, and I am not interested in the least in whether his presidency fails or not.”
Andrea Machain contributed reporting.
May 20, 2009
Venezuela’s Hope of More Sway Dims as Riches Dip
By SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS — President Hugo Chávez’s push to extend his sway in Latin America is waning amid low oil prices and disorder in Venezuela’s own energy industry.
In recent years, Mr. Chávez has used his nation’s oil wealth to drive his socialist-inspired agenda at home and draw other countries in the region into his sphere of influence, helping to consolidate a leftward political shift in parts of Latin America.
But more than a dozen big projects intended to broaden his nation’s reach are in limbo — including a gas pipeline across the continent and at least eight refineries, from Jamaica to Uruguay — as Venezuela grapples with falling revenues and other troubles in its national oil company.
Venezuela is also cutting back sharply on other types of financial support for its neighbors, a cornerstone of its regional influence. One recent study by the Center of Economic Investigations, a financial consulting firm here, found that Venezuela had announced plans to spend only about $6 billion abroad this year, down from $79 billion in 2008.
That includes proposed spending on everything from military purchases to aid, and points to a major weakening of Mr. Chávez’s oil diplomacy. Gone, for instance, are multibillion-dollar outlays to buy Argentine bonds, replaced by modest loans like $9 million for growing rice in Haiti.
Now countries that have been dependent on Venezuelan aid are turning elsewhere. Argentina locked in a $10 billion deal with China to help it buy Chinese imports, while Ecuador, a close ally of Venezuela, is rekindling ties to the International Monetary Fund, the kind of Western-dominated institution that Mr. Chávez scorns.
Some Venezuelan allies even appear to be warming to the Obama administration, sometimes in areas like military training. This month, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador sent a personal pilot to study at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala.
More.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/world ... ?th&emc=th
Venezuela’s Hope of More Sway Dims as Riches Dip
By SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS — President Hugo Chávez’s push to extend his sway in Latin America is waning amid low oil prices and disorder in Venezuela’s own energy industry.
In recent years, Mr. Chávez has used his nation’s oil wealth to drive his socialist-inspired agenda at home and draw other countries in the region into his sphere of influence, helping to consolidate a leftward political shift in parts of Latin America.
But more than a dozen big projects intended to broaden his nation’s reach are in limbo — including a gas pipeline across the continent and at least eight refineries, from Jamaica to Uruguay — as Venezuela grapples with falling revenues and other troubles in its national oil company.
Venezuela is also cutting back sharply on other types of financial support for its neighbors, a cornerstone of its regional influence. One recent study by the Center of Economic Investigations, a financial consulting firm here, found that Venezuela had announced plans to spend only about $6 billion abroad this year, down from $79 billion in 2008.
That includes proposed spending on everything from military purchases to aid, and points to a major weakening of Mr. Chávez’s oil diplomacy. Gone, for instance, are multibillion-dollar outlays to buy Argentine bonds, replaced by modest loans like $9 million for growing rice in Haiti.
Now countries that have been dependent on Venezuelan aid are turning elsewhere. Argentina locked in a $10 billion deal with China to help it buy Chinese imports, while Ecuador, a close ally of Venezuela, is rekindling ties to the International Monetary Fund, the kind of Western-dominated institution that Mr. Chávez scorns.
Some Venezuelan allies even appear to be warming to the Obama administration, sometimes in areas like military training. This month, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador sent a personal pilot to study at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala.
More.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/world ... ?th&emc=th
There is an amazing video and more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/world ... ?th&emc=th
October 17, 2009
In Mexican Drug War, Investigators Are Fearful
By MARC LACEY
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The hit men moved in on their target, shot him dead and then disappeared in a matter of seconds. It would have been a perfect case for José Ibarra Limón, one of this violent border city’s most dogged crime investigators — had he not been the victim.
Mexico has never been particularly adept at bringing criminals to justice, and the drug war has made things worse. Investigators are now swamped with homicides and other drug crimes, most of which they will never crack. On top of the standard obstacles — too little expertise, too much corruption — is one that seems to grow by the day: outright fear of becoming the next body in the street.
Mr. Ibarra was killed on July 27 in what his bosses at the federal attorney general’s office consider an assassination related to a case he was investigating. As if to prove the point, less than a month later, one of the lawyers who had worked for Mr. Ibarra also turned up dead. Two days afterward, an investigator named to replace Mr. Ibarra insisted on being transferred out of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico’s murder capital.
The current prosecutor investigating Mr. Ibarra’s cases is working anonymously, his or her name kept secret by the government.
The Mexican government knows that revamping its problem-plagued justice system is an essential part of breaking the cartels that control vast areas of Mexico. Major efforts are under way to make the judiciary faster and fairer, and the United States has contributed millions of dollars to help bring more criminals to justice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/world ... ?th&emc=th
October 17, 2009
In Mexican Drug War, Investigators Are Fearful
By MARC LACEY
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The hit men moved in on their target, shot him dead and then disappeared in a matter of seconds. It would have been a perfect case for José Ibarra Limón, one of this violent border city’s most dogged crime investigators — had he not been the victim.
Mexico has never been particularly adept at bringing criminals to justice, and the drug war has made things worse. Investigators are now swamped with homicides and other drug crimes, most of which they will never crack. On top of the standard obstacles — too little expertise, too much corruption — is one that seems to grow by the day: outright fear of becoming the next body in the street.
Mr. Ibarra was killed on July 27 in what his bosses at the federal attorney general’s office consider an assassination related to a case he was investigating. As if to prove the point, less than a month later, one of the lawyers who had worked for Mr. Ibarra also turned up dead. Two days afterward, an investigator named to replace Mr. Ibarra insisted on being transferred out of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico’s murder capital.
The current prosecutor investigating Mr. Ibarra’s cases is working anonymously, his or her name kept secret by the government.
The Mexican government knows that revamping its problem-plagued justice system is an essential part of breaking the cartels that control vast areas of Mexico. Major efforts are under way to make the judiciary faster and fairer, and the United States has contributed millions of dollars to help bring more criminals to justice.
October 18, 2009
Migrants Going North Now Risk Kidnappings
By MARC LACEY
TECATE, Mexico — For 37 days, the Salvadoran immigrant was held captive in a crowded room near the border with scores of people, all of them Central Americans who had been kidnapped while heading north, hoping to cross into the United States. He finally got out in August, he said, after the Mexican Army raided the house in the middle of the night to free them.
“The army said: ‘Don’t run. We’re here to help you,’ ” recalled the migrant, a 30-year-old father of three who insisted that his name not be printed for fear of either being kidnapped again or deported. “I kept running.”
Getting to “el norte” has never been a cakewalk. Along with long treks through desert terrain, death-defying river crossings and perilous rides clinging onto trains, there have always been con men and crooked police officers preying on migrants along the way.
But Mexican human rights groups that monitor migration say the threats foreigners face as they cross Mexico for the United States have grown significantly in recent months. Organized crime groups have begun taking aim at migrants as major sources of illicit revenue, even as the financial crisis in the United States has reduced the number of people willing to risk the journey.
Kidnapping people for ransom is a pervasive problem in this country, although victims have typically been prosperous people with bank accounts that can be emptied at the nearest A.T.M., or those with relatives willing to hand over significant sums to save them.
Migrants may typically be poor, often with little in their pockets except the scrawled telephone numbers of relatives who have migrated before them, but they have usually notified friends or relatives in the United States that they are on their way. To kidnappers, those contacts are golden. “They beat me and kept beating me until I handed over my telephone numbers,” said the Salvadoran immigrant, interviewed at a center for migrants in Reynosa, just across the border with Texas.
In many ways, the man’s account was typical. A study by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission released this year found 9,758 migrants who had been kidnapped as they tried to cross the border into the United States between September 2008 and February 2009. The commission noted that migrants were typically terrified to report such crimes out of fear of being deported by Mexican immigration authorities and that the actual number of victims was probably much higher.
The stories the commission heard in interviews with victims were alarming. There were frequent rapes of female migrants. Fierce beatings were carried out. As a lesson to other captives, the kidnappers killed some migrants who did not hand over the telephone numbers of their relatives.
“They said that if they did not receive payment, they would take away my kidney afterward and throw me into the river so the big lizards would eat me,” a Honduran man who was kidnapped in Tabasco State told commission investigators.
He said he had been kidnapped along with 60 or so others, all Central Americans. The men who took them said they were coyotes, or human smugglers, and promised to feed them and help them cross into the United States. Instead, the men forced the captives over 30 days to call relatives in the United States and extract thousands of dollars from them in order to be released.
The amounts demanded ranged from $1,500 to $10,000, sizable sums on top of the several thousand dollars that the migrants had already paid smugglers to make the crossing.
One victim, a Honduran man kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo at the Texas border, told investigators that he was close to reaching the United States when he fell for a swindle. Two women approached and offered him a day job for about $10, money that he desperately needed.
But there was no job awaiting him at the house where he was taken. Instead, he and a half dozen other migrants were beaten over the course of two weeks and frequently photographed. The captors demanded the e-mail addresses of relatives and sent the desperate-looking photos in order to extract ransoms, he said.
The man said his relatives paid what the kidnappers had demanded, so he and others who had come up with the ransom money were blindfolded one evening and taken to the bank of a river. Dumped alongside them was the body of a Salvadoran migrant whom the captors had killed. The kidnappers fired several rounds at the ground and demanded that everyone jump into the river, the man said. The group never made it across, though, and was later picked up by the Mexican authorities.
Human rights workers say Mexican migrants are not singled out by kidnappers as often as foreigners, mostly Central Americans, but also Ecuadoreans, Brazilians, Chileans and Peruvians. The foreigners are more vulnerable, less familiar with their surroundings and less likely to report what happened to them to the authorities, advocates say.
“If people don’t come forward, we don’t know the extent of the problem,” said Angélica Martínez, a state prosecutor in Tecate, a border town east of Tijuana, where the authorities were pursuing a kidnapper who goes by the nickname “El Gato,” who was believed to prey on migrants.
Complicating the problem, migrants complain that the police are sometimes in league with the kidnappers, rounding up victims and handing them over to kidnappers for a fee. Mexican law enforcement officials acknowledge that some individual officers may be involved in organized crime, but they say the problem is not as widespread as often portrayed and is being combated on a national level.
The Salvadoran victim who was kidnapped in Reynosa said he had first been to the United States in 1999. He had stayed three years, working in the fields and in a furniture store in North Carolina, before returning to El Salvador. After what he had endured, he said he was mulling whether to give up the opportunity of higher wages in the United States and return home.
“There was danger of robbery back then,” he said of his first crossing 10 years ago. “It’s always been dangerous. But now it’s gotten even worse. We’re poor and we’re trying to get ahead. We’re doing this for our kids. I’d advise people to be careful and to pray to God.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/world ... nted=print
Migrants Going North Now Risk Kidnappings
By MARC LACEY
TECATE, Mexico — For 37 days, the Salvadoran immigrant was held captive in a crowded room near the border with scores of people, all of them Central Americans who had been kidnapped while heading north, hoping to cross into the United States. He finally got out in August, he said, after the Mexican Army raided the house in the middle of the night to free them.
“The army said: ‘Don’t run. We’re here to help you,’ ” recalled the migrant, a 30-year-old father of three who insisted that his name not be printed for fear of either being kidnapped again or deported. “I kept running.”
Getting to “el norte” has never been a cakewalk. Along with long treks through desert terrain, death-defying river crossings and perilous rides clinging onto trains, there have always been con men and crooked police officers preying on migrants along the way.
But Mexican human rights groups that monitor migration say the threats foreigners face as they cross Mexico for the United States have grown significantly in recent months. Organized crime groups have begun taking aim at migrants as major sources of illicit revenue, even as the financial crisis in the United States has reduced the number of people willing to risk the journey.
Kidnapping people for ransom is a pervasive problem in this country, although victims have typically been prosperous people with bank accounts that can be emptied at the nearest A.T.M., or those with relatives willing to hand over significant sums to save them.
Migrants may typically be poor, often with little in their pockets except the scrawled telephone numbers of relatives who have migrated before them, but they have usually notified friends or relatives in the United States that they are on their way. To kidnappers, those contacts are golden. “They beat me and kept beating me until I handed over my telephone numbers,” said the Salvadoran immigrant, interviewed at a center for migrants in Reynosa, just across the border with Texas.
In many ways, the man’s account was typical. A study by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission released this year found 9,758 migrants who had been kidnapped as they tried to cross the border into the United States between September 2008 and February 2009. The commission noted that migrants were typically terrified to report such crimes out of fear of being deported by Mexican immigration authorities and that the actual number of victims was probably much higher.
The stories the commission heard in interviews with victims were alarming. There were frequent rapes of female migrants. Fierce beatings were carried out. As a lesson to other captives, the kidnappers killed some migrants who did not hand over the telephone numbers of their relatives.
“They said that if they did not receive payment, they would take away my kidney afterward and throw me into the river so the big lizards would eat me,” a Honduran man who was kidnapped in Tabasco State told commission investigators.
He said he had been kidnapped along with 60 or so others, all Central Americans. The men who took them said they were coyotes, or human smugglers, and promised to feed them and help them cross into the United States. Instead, the men forced the captives over 30 days to call relatives in the United States and extract thousands of dollars from them in order to be released.
The amounts demanded ranged from $1,500 to $10,000, sizable sums on top of the several thousand dollars that the migrants had already paid smugglers to make the crossing.
One victim, a Honduran man kidnapped in Nuevo Laredo at the Texas border, told investigators that he was close to reaching the United States when he fell for a swindle. Two women approached and offered him a day job for about $10, money that he desperately needed.
But there was no job awaiting him at the house where he was taken. Instead, he and a half dozen other migrants were beaten over the course of two weeks and frequently photographed. The captors demanded the e-mail addresses of relatives and sent the desperate-looking photos in order to extract ransoms, he said.
The man said his relatives paid what the kidnappers had demanded, so he and others who had come up with the ransom money were blindfolded one evening and taken to the bank of a river. Dumped alongside them was the body of a Salvadoran migrant whom the captors had killed. The kidnappers fired several rounds at the ground and demanded that everyone jump into the river, the man said. The group never made it across, though, and was later picked up by the Mexican authorities.
Human rights workers say Mexican migrants are not singled out by kidnappers as often as foreigners, mostly Central Americans, but also Ecuadoreans, Brazilians, Chileans and Peruvians. The foreigners are more vulnerable, less familiar with their surroundings and less likely to report what happened to them to the authorities, advocates say.
“If people don’t come forward, we don’t know the extent of the problem,” said Angélica Martínez, a state prosecutor in Tecate, a border town east of Tijuana, where the authorities were pursuing a kidnapper who goes by the nickname “El Gato,” who was believed to prey on migrants.
Complicating the problem, migrants complain that the police are sometimes in league with the kidnappers, rounding up victims and handing them over to kidnappers for a fee. Mexican law enforcement officials acknowledge that some individual officers may be involved in organized crime, but they say the problem is not as widespread as often portrayed and is being combated on a national level.
The Salvadoran victim who was kidnapped in Reynosa said he had first been to the United States in 1999. He had stayed three years, working in the fields and in a furniture store in North Carolina, before returning to El Salvador. After what he had endured, he said he was mulling whether to give up the opportunity of higher wages in the United States and return home.
“There was danger of robbery back then,” he said of his first crossing 10 years ago. “It’s always been dangerous. But now it’s gotten even worse. We’re poor and we’re trying to get ahead. We’re doing this for our kids. I’d advise people to be careful and to pray to God.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/world ... nted=print
October 29, 2009
Chilean President Rides High as Term Ends
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
SANTIAGO, Chile — At first, breaking the gender barrier in South America did not go smoothly for Michelle Bachelet.
In 2006, she had just captured the world’s attention, becoming the first woman to be elected president of this deeply conservative country. And she had done it alone, without the famous husbands that had propelled other female presidents in Latin America.
But one month after taking office, Ms. Bachelet faced huge student demonstrations across the country. Her support fell further when a new public transportation system turned chaotic, leading critics to lampoon her with an image of her riding atop a city bus toward the edge of a cliff.
“There was the distinct impression that she was not in control,” said Marta Lagos, director of Market Opinion Research International, a polling company in Chile.
But with only five months until she leaves office, Ms. Bachelet is increasingly likely to be remembered as one of her country’s most popular leaders. Polls this month show her public approval to be above 70 percent, and in recent weeks she has recorded the highest levels since Chile went from dictatorship to democracy in 1990.
Analysts and pollsters attribute her stunning turnaround to her handling of the economy during the global financial crisis and to her decision to save billions of dollars in revenues from copper sales during the last commodity boom. That aggressive saving gave the country money to spend on pension reform and Ms. Bachelet’s ambitious program of social protections for women and children, despite the financial crisis.
Ms. Bachelet is among a handful of Latin American leaders, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, whose handling of the crisis has strengthened their popularity. Both Brazil and Chile are now emerging from recession, with Chile’s government saying the economy will grow by 5 percent next year.
Ms. Bachelet, a professed agnostic and single mother of three in a country that legalized divorce only five years ago, shattered the mold of traditional Chilean politicians in this Roman Catholic stronghold. At the start, she said, the political establishment tried to portray her as weak and disrespectful of the office of the president.
“It was an important challenge in the first few years,” Ms. Bachelet, 58, said in a recent interview, noting the way other powerful women had urged her to toughen up and “scream and insult” to be respected. “I took a gamble,” she added, “to exercise leadership without losing my feminine nature.”
Now, with Chile’s presidential election less than two months away and term limits preventing her from running again, rival candidates are scrambling to be photographed next to her, including some who initially criticized her for not spending the copper windfall during the boom.
As she took power, Ms. Bachelet introduced a cabinet of 20 ministers: 10 men and 10 women, a gender parity no previous Chilean president had tried.
But her administration quickly stumbled in April 2006, when more than 100,000 high school students demonstrated for improvements in public education. Her popularity falling, she replaced three ministers in July.
The following February, the introduction of the Transantiago public transportation system, designed by the administration of her predecessor, President Ricardo Lagos, turned into a major embarrassment when it proved confusing and could not satisfy demand.
She replaced five more ministers in March 2007, three of them women succeeded by men. By September, the outcry over Transantiago had pushed her approval rating down to 35 percent.
“I have said it was a mistake,” Ms. Bachelet said. “It was a good idea, but it created problems for the day-to-day life of the people, and that was not acceptable.” She said she did what was necessary to try to alleviate the problems.
Ms. Bachelet had faced worse before. Her father, an air force general, was tortured for months under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and died in prison. Military officials also detained and tortured Ms. Bachelet and her mother before they were allowed to go into exile in Australia. Ms. Bachelet returned in 1979.
After democracy was restored, she worked for the National AIDS Commission. In 2000, President Lagos named her health minister, and she drew controversy for allowing the free distribution of the morning-after pill for victims of sexual abuse. Later, she was appointed defense minister, the first woman in a Latin American country to hold such a post.
But the economic front is where she turned around her presidency.
Ms. Bachelet resisted the cries of politicians to use revenues from copper sales to try to close Chile’s inequality gap, one of the world’s worst. Instead, during her first three years in office, her government set aside $35 billion in revenue from the boom. When the global financial crisis hit, the value of Chile’s exports sank by more than 30 percent. But by then Chile had nearly $20 billion invested in overseas sovereign wealth funds alone.
“We have the distinction of perhaps having the only sovereign funds that made money during the crisis,” said Andrés Velasco, Chile’s finance minister.
Last year, after carrying high public debt for more than two decades, Chile became a net creditor for the first time in its history, Mr. Velasco said.
With billions of dollars saved, Ms. Bachelet’s government legalized alimony payments to divorced women and tripled the number of free early child care centers for low-income families. It added a minimum pension guarantee for the very poor and for low-income homemakers. The government is on pace to complete its goal of creating 3,500 child care centers, said María Estela Ortiz, executive vice president of Chile’s National Board of Day Care Centers.
Ms. Bachelet, a pediatrician, said, “I believe that if you want to fight inequality you have to do it starting at infancy.”
Opposition politicians who once criticized her social-protection efforts as a retreat to an era of big government are now saying they will try to expand her programs to the middle class.
Her unorthodox style has left a mark on the country’s political culture, analysts said. During her state of the nation address in May, she joked about losing a shoe while kicking a soccer ball at a stadium inauguration, saying investment in four new stadiums would include money for “the flying shoe.” In the recent interview, she joked that her gender parity plan for the cabinet was intended to ensure that everyone had a dance partner.
That personal air has also inspired criticism, for example, when she was photographed taking an early-morning ocean swim in Brazil last year during a conference of regional leaders, or received popular artists like Bono and Shakira.
“She did things that were not presidential in the eyes of the Chilean establishment,” said Ms. Lagos, the pollster. “It is very difficult to go back. She lowered the presidency closer to the people.”
Pascale Bonnefoy contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/world ... nted=print
Chilean President Rides High as Term Ends
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
SANTIAGO, Chile — At first, breaking the gender barrier in South America did not go smoothly for Michelle Bachelet.
In 2006, she had just captured the world’s attention, becoming the first woman to be elected president of this deeply conservative country. And she had done it alone, without the famous husbands that had propelled other female presidents in Latin America.
But one month after taking office, Ms. Bachelet faced huge student demonstrations across the country. Her support fell further when a new public transportation system turned chaotic, leading critics to lampoon her with an image of her riding atop a city bus toward the edge of a cliff.
“There was the distinct impression that she was not in control,” said Marta Lagos, director of Market Opinion Research International, a polling company in Chile.
But with only five months until she leaves office, Ms. Bachelet is increasingly likely to be remembered as one of her country’s most popular leaders. Polls this month show her public approval to be above 70 percent, and in recent weeks she has recorded the highest levels since Chile went from dictatorship to democracy in 1990.
Analysts and pollsters attribute her stunning turnaround to her handling of the economy during the global financial crisis and to her decision to save billions of dollars in revenues from copper sales during the last commodity boom. That aggressive saving gave the country money to spend on pension reform and Ms. Bachelet’s ambitious program of social protections for women and children, despite the financial crisis.
Ms. Bachelet is among a handful of Latin American leaders, including President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, whose handling of the crisis has strengthened their popularity. Both Brazil and Chile are now emerging from recession, with Chile’s government saying the economy will grow by 5 percent next year.
Ms. Bachelet, a professed agnostic and single mother of three in a country that legalized divorce only five years ago, shattered the mold of traditional Chilean politicians in this Roman Catholic stronghold. At the start, she said, the political establishment tried to portray her as weak and disrespectful of the office of the president.
“It was an important challenge in the first few years,” Ms. Bachelet, 58, said in a recent interview, noting the way other powerful women had urged her to toughen up and “scream and insult” to be respected. “I took a gamble,” she added, “to exercise leadership without losing my feminine nature.”
Now, with Chile’s presidential election less than two months away and term limits preventing her from running again, rival candidates are scrambling to be photographed next to her, including some who initially criticized her for not spending the copper windfall during the boom.
As she took power, Ms. Bachelet introduced a cabinet of 20 ministers: 10 men and 10 women, a gender parity no previous Chilean president had tried.
But her administration quickly stumbled in April 2006, when more than 100,000 high school students demonstrated for improvements in public education. Her popularity falling, she replaced three ministers in July.
The following February, the introduction of the Transantiago public transportation system, designed by the administration of her predecessor, President Ricardo Lagos, turned into a major embarrassment when it proved confusing and could not satisfy demand.
She replaced five more ministers in March 2007, three of them women succeeded by men. By September, the outcry over Transantiago had pushed her approval rating down to 35 percent.
“I have said it was a mistake,” Ms. Bachelet said. “It was a good idea, but it created problems for the day-to-day life of the people, and that was not acceptable.” She said she did what was necessary to try to alleviate the problems.
Ms. Bachelet had faced worse before. Her father, an air force general, was tortured for months under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and died in prison. Military officials also detained and tortured Ms. Bachelet and her mother before they were allowed to go into exile in Australia. Ms. Bachelet returned in 1979.
After democracy was restored, she worked for the National AIDS Commission. In 2000, President Lagos named her health minister, and she drew controversy for allowing the free distribution of the morning-after pill for victims of sexual abuse. Later, she was appointed defense minister, the first woman in a Latin American country to hold such a post.
But the economic front is where she turned around her presidency.
Ms. Bachelet resisted the cries of politicians to use revenues from copper sales to try to close Chile’s inequality gap, one of the world’s worst. Instead, during her first three years in office, her government set aside $35 billion in revenue from the boom. When the global financial crisis hit, the value of Chile’s exports sank by more than 30 percent. But by then Chile had nearly $20 billion invested in overseas sovereign wealth funds alone.
“We have the distinction of perhaps having the only sovereign funds that made money during the crisis,” said Andrés Velasco, Chile’s finance minister.
Last year, after carrying high public debt for more than two decades, Chile became a net creditor for the first time in its history, Mr. Velasco said.
With billions of dollars saved, Ms. Bachelet’s government legalized alimony payments to divorced women and tripled the number of free early child care centers for low-income families. It added a minimum pension guarantee for the very poor and for low-income homemakers. The government is on pace to complete its goal of creating 3,500 child care centers, said María Estela Ortiz, executive vice president of Chile’s National Board of Day Care Centers.
Ms. Bachelet, a pediatrician, said, “I believe that if you want to fight inequality you have to do it starting at infancy.”
Opposition politicians who once criticized her social-protection efforts as a retreat to an era of big government are now saying they will try to expand her programs to the middle class.
Her unorthodox style has left a mark on the country’s political culture, analysts said. During her state of the nation address in May, she joked about losing a shoe while kicking a soccer ball at a stadium inauguration, saying investment in four new stadiums would include money for “the flying shoe.” In the recent interview, she joked that her gender parity plan for the cabinet was intended to ensure that everyone had a dance partner.
That personal air has also inspired criticism, for example, when she was photographed taking an early-morning ocean swim in Brazil last year during a conference of regional leaders, or received popular artists like Bono and Shakira.
“She did things that were not presidential in the eyes of the Chilean establishment,” said Ms. Lagos, the pollster. “It is very difficult to go back. She lowered the presidency closer to the people.”
Pascale Bonnefoy contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/world ... nted=print
November 8, 2009
Ecosystem in Peru Is Losing a Key Ally
By SIMON ROMERO
ICA, Peru — A small grove of huarango, the storied Peruvian tree that can live over a millennium, rests like a mirage amid the sand dunes on this city’s edge. The tree has provided the inhabitants of this desert with food and timber since before the Nazca civilization etched geoglyphs into the empty plain south of here about 2,000 years ago.
The huarango, a giant relative of the mesquite tree of the American Southwest, survived the rise and fall of Pre-Hispanic civilizations, and plunder by Spanish conquistadors, whose chroniclers were astounded by the abundance of huarango forests and the strange Andean camelids, like guanacos and llamas, that flourished there.
Today, though, Peruvians pose what might be a final challenge to the fragile ecosystem supported by the huarango near the southwestern coast of Peru. Villagers are cutting down the remnants of these once vast forests. They covet the tree as a source of charcoal and firewood.
The depletion of the huarango is raising alarm among ecologists and fostering a nascent effort to save it.
“We don’t realize that we are cutting off one of our own limbs when we destroy a huarango,” said Consuelo Borda, 34, who helps direct a small reforestation project here, explaining how the tree’s pods can be ground into flour, sweetened into molasses or fermented into beer.
But many Peruvians view the huarango as prime wood for charcoal to cook a signature chicken dish called “pollo broaster.” The long-burning huarango, a hardwood rivaling teak, outlasts other forms of charcoal. Villagers react to a prohibition by regional authorities on cutting down huarango with a shrug.
“The woodcutters come at night, using handsaws instead of chainsaws to avoid detection,” said Reina Juárez, 66, a maize farmer in San Pedro, a village of about 24 families near a grove of huarango on the outskirts of Ica. “They remove the wood by donkey and then sell it.”
That the huarango survives at all to be harvested may be something of a miracle. Following centuries of systematic deforestation, only about 1 percent of the original huarango woodlands that once existed in the Peruvian desert remain, according to archaeologists and ecologists.
Few trees are as well suited to the hyperarid ecosystem of the Atacama-Sechura Desert, nestled between the Andes and the Pacific. The huarango captures moisture coming from the west as sea mist. Its roots are among the longest of any tree, extending more than 150 feet to tap subterranean water channels.
The resilience of the huarango and its role in taming one of the world’s driest climates have long beguiled this country’s poets. Schoolchildren here, for instance, recite the words of José María Arguedas, a leading 20th-century writer: “The huarangos let in the sun, while keeping out the fire.”
But poetry is one thing. The necessities of human civilizations, and their capacity to wreak havoc on the ecosystems on which they depend, are another.
A team of British archaeologists described in a groundbreaking study this month how the Nazca, who etched their lines in the desert a thousand years before the arrival of the Spanish, induced an environmental catastrophe by clearing the huarango to plant crops like cotton and maize, exposing the landscape to desert winds, erosion and floods.
David Beresford-Jones, an archaeologist at Cambridge University who was a co-author of the study, said that perhaps the only fragment of old-growth huarango woodland left is in Usaca, about a five-hour drive from Ica, where there are still some trees that were alive when the Incas conquered the southern coast of Peru in the 15th century.
“It takes centuries for the huarango to be of substantial size, and only a few hours to fell it with a chainsaw,” Mr. Beresford-Jones said. “The tragedy is that this remnant is being chain-sawed by charcoal burners as we speak.”
With support from Britain’s Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and Trees for Cities, a British charity promoting tree planting in urban areas, Ms. Borda’s reforestation project seeks to reverse the damage by the charcoal harvesters, whose mud ovens dot the desert landscape in villages around Ica.
It is an uphill struggle in an impoverished desert. The black market for huarango in raw firewood form thrives. A carbonero, or charcoal seller, can sell a kilogram of charcoal made from the tree for about 50 cents, or a bushel of huarango as firewood for about $1 — bargains in a place where a gallon of natural gas costs more than $10.
So far, Ms. Borda’s arduous project has planted about 20,000 huarangos in Ica and nearby areas. It also teaches schoolchildren about the history of the huarango in Peruvian culture and its significance as a keystone species for the desert, its roots fixing nitrogen in poor soil and its leaves and pods providing organic material as forage.
But researchers say the project is a trifle of what must be done to reforest Peru’s deserts.
“Peru needs a massive rethink about its development trajectory,” said Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a paleoecologist with the French Institute of Andean Studies who worked on the Nazca study with Mr. Beresford-Jones, the Cambridge University archaeologist, analyzing pollen that showed the transformation of Nazca lands from rich in huarango to fields of maize and cotton to the virtually lifeless desert that exists today.
“With Peru’s glaciers predicted to disappear by 2050, the Andes need trees to capture the moisture coming from Amazonia, which is also the source of water going down to the coast,” said Mr. Chepstow-Lusty in an interview from Cuzco, in Peru’s highlands. “Hence a major program of reforestation is required, both in the Andes and on the coast.”
Nothing on this scale is happening around Ica. Instead, the growth that one sees in poor villages are of shantytowns called pueblos jóvenes, where residents eke out a living as farmhands or in mining camps.
Outside one village, Santa Luisa, the buzz of a chainsaw interrupted the silence of the desert next to an oven preparing charcoal.
The chainsaw’s owner, a woodcutter from the highlands named Rolando Dávila, 48, swore that he no longer cut down huarango but focused instead on the espino, another hardy tree known as acacia macarantha. “But we all know huarango is the prize of the desert,” he said. “For many of us, the wood of the huarango is the only way to survive.”
Andrea Zárate contributed reporting from Lima, Peru.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/world ... &th&emc=th
Ecosystem in Peru Is Losing a Key Ally
By SIMON ROMERO
ICA, Peru — A small grove of huarango, the storied Peruvian tree that can live over a millennium, rests like a mirage amid the sand dunes on this city’s edge. The tree has provided the inhabitants of this desert with food and timber since before the Nazca civilization etched geoglyphs into the empty plain south of here about 2,000 years ago.
The huarango, a giant relative of the mesquite tree of the American Southwest, survived the rise and fall of Pre-Hispanic civilizations, and plunder by Spanish conquistadors, whose chroniclers were astounded by the abundance of huarango forests and the strange Andean camelids, like guanacos and llamas, that flourished there.
Today, though, Peruvians pose what might be a final challenge to the fragile ecosystem supported by the huarango near the southwestern coast of Peru. Villagers are cutting down the remnants of these once vast forests. They covet the tree as a source of charcoal and firewood.
The depletion of the huarango is raising alarm among ecologists and fostering a nascent effort to save it.
“We don’t realize that we are cutting off one of our own limbs when we destroy a huarango,” said Consuelo Borda, 34, who helps direct a small reforestation project here, explaining how the tree’s pods can be ground into flour, sweetened into molasses or fermented into beer.
But many Peruvians view the huarango as prime wood for charcoal to cook a signature chicken dish called “pollo broaster.” The long-burning huarango, a hardwood rivaling teak, outlasts other forms of charcoal. Villagers react to a prohibition by regional authorities on cutting down huarango with a shrug.
“The woodcutters come at night, using handsaws instead of chainsaws to avoid detection,” said Reina Juárez, 66, a maize farmer in San Pedro, a village of about 24 families near a grove of huarango on the outskirts of Ica. “They remove the wood by donkey and then sell it.”
That the huarango survives at all to be harvested may be something of a miracle. Following centuries of systematic deforestation, only about 1 percent of the original huarango woodlands that once existed in the Peruvian desert remain, according to archaeologists and ecologists.
Few trees are as well suited to the hyperarid ecosystem of the Atacama-Sechura Desert, nestled between the Andes and the Pacific. The huarango captures moisture coming from the west as sea mist. Its roots are among the longest of any tree, extending more than 150 feet to tap subterranean water channels.
The resilience of the huarango and its role in taming one of the world’s driest climates have long beguiled this country’s poets. Schoolchildren here, for instance, recite the words of José María Arguedas, a leading 20th-century writer: “The huarangos let in the sun, while keeping out the fire.”
But poetry is one thing. The necessities of human civilizations, and their capacity to wreak havoc on the ecosystems on which they depend, are another.
A team of British archaeologists described in a groundbreaking study this month how the Nazca, who etched their lines in the desert a thousand years before the arrival of the Spanish, induced an environmental catastrophe by clearing the huarango to plant crops like cotton and maize, exposing the landscape to desert winds, erosion and floods.
David Beresford-Jones, an archaeologist at Cambridge University who was a co-author of the study, said that perhaps the only fragment of old-growth huarango woodland left is in Usaca, about a five-hour drive from Ica, where there are still some trees that were alive when the Incas conquered the southern coast of Peru in the 15th century.
“It takes centuries for the huarango to be of substantial size, and only a few hours to fell it with a chainsaw,” Mr. Beresford-Jones said. “The tragedy is that this remnant is being chain-sawed by charcoal burners as we speak.”
With support from Britain’s Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and Trees for Cities, a British charity promoting tree planting in urban areas, Ms. Borda’s reforestation project seeks to reverse the damage by the charcoal harvesters, whose mud ovens dot the desert landscape in villages around Ica.
It is an uphill struggle in an impoverished desert. The black market for huarango in raw firewood form thrives. A carbonero, or charcoal seller, can sell a kilogram of charcoal made from the tree for about 50 cents, or a bushel of huarango as firewood for about $1 — bargains in a place where a gallon of natural gas costs more than $10.
So far, Ms. Borda’s arduous project has planted about 20,000 huarangos in Ica and nearby areas. It also teaches schoolchildren about the history of the huarango in Peruvian culture and its significance as a keystone species for the desert, its roots fixing nitrogen in poor soil and its leaves and pods providing organic material as forage.
But researchers say the project is a trifle of what must be done to reforest Peru’s deserts.
“Peru needs a massive rethink about its development trajectory,” said Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a paleoecologist with the French Institute of Andean Studies who worked on the Nazca study with Mr. Beresford-Jones, the Cambridge University archaeologist, analyzing pollen that showed the transformation of Nazca lands from rich in huarango to fields of maize and cotton to the virtually lifeless desert that exists today.
“With Peru’s glaciers predicted to disappear by 2050, the Andes need trees to capture the moisture coming from Amazonia, which is also the source of water going down to the coast,” said Mr. Chepstow-Lusty in an interview from Cuzco, in Peru’s highlands. “Hence a major program of reforestation is required, both in the Andes and on the coast.”
Nothing on this scale is happening around Ica. Instead, the growth that one sees in poor villages are of shantytowns called pueblos jóvenes, where residents eke out a living as farmhands or in mining camps.
Outside one village, Santa Luisa, the buzz of a chainsaw interrupted the silence of the desert next to an oven preparing charcoal.
The chainsaw’s owner, a woodcutter from the highlands named Rolando Dávila, 48, swore that he no longer cut down huarango but focused instead on the espino, another hardy tree known as acacia macarantha. “But we all know huarango is the prize of the desert,” he said. “For many of us, the wood of the huarango is the only way to survive.”
Andrea Zárate contributed reporting from Lima, Peru.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/world ... &th&emc=th
November 11, 2009
Blackouts Plague Energy-Rich Venezuela
By SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS, Venezuela — This country may be an energy colossus, with the largest conventional oil reserves outside the Middle East and one of the world’s mightiest hydroelectric systems, but that has not prevented it from enduring serious electricity and water shortages that seem only to be getting worse.
President Hugo Chávez has been facing a public outcry in recent weeks over power failures that, after six nationwide blackouts in the last two years, are cutting electricity for hours each day in rural areas and in industrial cities like Valencia and Ciudad Guayana. Now, water rationing has been introduced here in the capital.
The deterioration of services is perplexing to many here, especially because the country had grown used to cheap, plentiful electricity and water in recent decades. But even as the oil boom was enriching his government and Mr. Chávez asserted greater control over utilities and other industries in this decade, public services seemed only to decay, adding to residents’ frustrations.
With oil revenues declining and the economy slowing, the shortages may have no quick fixes in sight. The government announced some emergency measures this week, including limits on imports of air-conditioning systems, rate increases for consumers of large amounts of power and the building of new gas-fired power plants, which would not be completed until the middle of the next decade.
Skepticism also persists over another plan — to develop a nuclear energy program — because it would require billions of dollars and extensive training of Venezuelan scientists at a time of budget shortfalls and falling oil production. Potential diplomatic resistance to Venezuela’s cooperation on nuclear matters with Iran could slow these ambitions further.
“We’re paying for the mistakes of this president and his incompetent managers,” said Aixa López, 39, president of the Committee of Blackout Victims, which has organized protests in several cities. In some cities, protesters have left household appliances on the steps of state electricity companies.
In response, the president is embarking on his own crusade: pushing Venezuelans to conserve by mocking their consumption habits.
He began his critique last month with the amount of time citizens spent under their shower heads, saying three-minute showers were sufficient. “I’ve counted and I don’t end up stinking,” he said. “I guarantee it.”
Then he went after the country’s ubiquitous love motels and shopping malls, accusing them of waste. “Buy your own generator,” he threatened, “or I’ll cut off your lights.” He similarly laid blame with “oligarchs,” a frequently used insult here for the rich, for overconsumption of water in gardens and swimming pools.
Mr. Chávez is even going after his countrymen’s expanding waistlines. “Watch out for the fat people,” he said last month, citing a study finding a jump in obesity. “Time to lose weight through dieting and exercise.”
While Mr. Chávez zeroes in on such issues, Venezuela’s declining public services offer what may be a view into the “resource curse”: the idea that some countries with abundant natural resources have societies hampered by sometimes sharp political discord, stunted growth and glaring inefficiencies.
On paper, at least, Venezuela should be swimming in surplus power. The country has huge reserves of oil and natural gas and sizable coal deposits. Its Guri dam complex, built with postwar oil riches in the 1960s, ranks as one of the world’s largest hydroelectric projects.
Guri provides Venezuela with as much as three-quarters of its electricity and, just as crucial, allows Venezuela to export about 500,000 barrels of oil a day that might otherwise be needed to meet electricity demand.
But energy economists here said a combination of negligence and poor planning pushed Guri to its limit in this decade, while other electricity projects, including several built in recent years to be fueled by natural gas, remain completely or partly idle.
Mr. Chávez’s government blames relatively low rainfall this year for low water levels at Guri and for declining water supplies for Caracas. But former officials in Mr. Chávez’s government interviewed here said the problems were more daunting than a lack of rain.
They said the president encouraged consumption with a 2002 decree freezing electricity and other utility rates. A time-zone change by Mr. Chávez in 2007 that turned clocks back half an hour also led consumption to climb (the sun sets earlier here than before).
Meanwhile, nationalization effectively halted renewable-energy projects, like a plan by the AES Corporation, which used to control the main electricity company in Caracas, for a wind farm on the Paraguaná Peninsula. Despite Venezuela’s large wind and solar potential, renewable energy here remains negligible.
Most significant, though, may be the government’s failure to use its immense natural gas reserves, the second largest in the Western Hemisphere after those of the United States, to fuel existing power plants.
Venezuela’s gas is technically hard to extract because almost 90 percent of it is associated with oil, but major projects have languished even as Venezuela’s neighbor, Trinidad, taps adjacent gas reserves with ease. Venezuela relies on Colombia, with which ties are increasingly tense, for gas imports.
As a result, there is a disconnect between Venezuela’s energy potential and its ability to keep the lights on. Billboards here extol a “natural gas revolution” and the prowess demonstrated by a satellite put into orbit last year with China’s assistance, while daily blackouts plague poor areas where the satellite was supposed to help provide phone and Internet services.
“The problem isn’t a lack of money,” said Víctor Poleo, a former Energy Ministry official under Mr. Chávez. “It’s the irresponsible and corrupt militarism that has replaced the professionalism of the industry.”
Meanwhile, homes and businesses across the country are adapting to the erratic supply of power and, here in Caracas, of water. Sales of small generators, candles and water storage tanks are surging. Reflecting the unease of the already strained industrial base, which developed around access to ample and cheap power, Sidor, a steel maker in Ciudad Guayana, said it was shutting down its furnaces five hours a day because of the cuts.
“If this crisis teaches us something,” said Fernando Branger, an energy expert at the Institute of Superior Administration Studies, a Caracas business school, “it is that the immensity of our energy reserves means nothing if we cannot even get them out of the ground.”
María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world ... nted=print
Blackouts Plague Energy-Rich Venezuela
By SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS, Venezuela — This country may be an energy colossus, with the largest conventional oil reserves outside the Middle East and one of the world’s mightiest hydroelectric systems, but that has not prevented it from enduring serious electricity and water shortages that seem only to be getting worse.
President Hugo Chávez has been facing a public outcry in recent weeks over power failures that, after six nationwide blackouts in the last two years, are cutting electricity for hours each day in rural areas and in industrial cities like Valencia and Ciudad Guayana. Now, water rationing has been introduced here in the capital.
The deterioration of services is perplexing to many here, especially because the country had grown used to cheap, plentiful electricity and water in recent decades. But even as the oil boom was enriching his government and Mr. Chávez asserted greater control over utilities and other industries in this decade, public services seemed only to decay, adding to residents’ frustrations.
With oil revenues declining and the economy slowing, the shortages may have no quick fixes in sight. The government announced some emergency measures this week, including limits on imports of air-conditioning systems, rate increases for consumers of large amounts of power and the building of new gas-fired power plants, which would not be completed until the middle of the next decade.
Skepticism also persists over another plan — to develop a nuclear energy program — because it would require billions of dollars and extensive training of Venezuelan scientists at a time of budget shortfalls and falling oil production. Potential diplomatic resistance to Venezuela’s cooperation on nuclear matters with Iran could slow these ambitions further.
“We’re paying for the mistakes of this president and his incompetent managers,” said Aixa López, 39, president of the Committee of Blackout Victims, which has organized protests in several cities. In some cities, protesters have left household appliances on the steps of state electricity companies.
In response, the president is embarking on his own crusade: pushing Venezuelans to conserve by mocking their consumption habits.
He began his critique last month with the amount of time citizens spent under their shower heads, saying three-minute showers were sufficient. “I’ve counted and I don’t end up stinking,” he said. “I guarantee it.”
Then he went after the country’s ubiquitous love motels and shopping malls, accusing them of waste. “Buy your own generator,” he threatened, “or I’ll cut off your lights.” He similarly laid blame with “oligarchs,” a frequently used insult here for the rich, for overconsumption of water in gardens and swimming pools.
Mr. Chávez is even going after his countrymen’s expanding waistlines. “Watch out for the fat people,” he said last month, citing a study finding a jump in obesity. “Time to lose weight through dieting and exercise.”
While Mr. Chávez zeroes in on such issues, Venezuela’s declining public services offer what may be a view into the “resource curse”: the idea that some countries with abundant natural resources have societies hampered by sometimes sharp political discord, stunted growth and glaring inefficiencies.
On paper, at least, Venezuela should be swimming in surplus power. The country has huge reserves of oil and natural gas and sizable coal deposits. Its Guri dam complex, built with postwar oil riches in the 1960s, ranks as one of the world’s largest hydroelectric projects.
Guri provides Venezuela with as much as three-quarters of its electricity and, just as crucial, allows Venezuela to export about 500,000 barrels of oil a day that might otherwise be needed to meet electricity demand.
But energy economists here said a combination of negligence and poor planning pushed Guri to its limit in this decade, while other electricity projects, including several built in recent years to be fueled by natural gas, remain completely or partly idle.
Mr. Chávez’s government blames relatively low rainfall this year for low water levels at Guri and for declining water supplies for Caracas. But former officials in Mr. Chávez’s government interviewed here said the problems were more daunting than a lack of rain.
They said the president encouraged consumption with a 2002 decree freezing electricity and other utility rates. A time-zone change by Mr. Chávez in 2007 that turned clocks back half an hour also led consumption to climb (the sun sets earlier here than before).
Meanwhile, nationalization effectively halted renewable-energy projects, like a plan by the AES Corporation, which used to control the main electricity company in Caracas, for a wind farm on the Paraguaná Peninsula. Despite Venezuela’s large wind and solar potential, renewable energy here remains negligible.
Most significant, though, may be the government’s failure to use its immense natural gas reserves, the second largest in the Western Hemisphere after those of the United States, to fuel existing power plants.
Venezuela’s gas is technically hard to extract because almost 90 percent of it is associated with oil, but major projects have languished even as Venezuela’s neighbor, Trinidad, taps adjacent gas reserves with ease. Venezuela relies on Colombia, with which ties are increasingly tense, for gas imports.
As a result, there is a disconnect between Venezuela’s energy potential and its ability to keep the lights on. Billboards here extol a “natural gas revolution” and the prowess demonstrated by a satellite put into orbit last year with China’s assistance, while daily blackouts plague poor areas where the satellite was supposed to help provide phone and Internet services.
“The problem isn’t a lack of money,” said Víctor Poleo, a former Energy Ministry official under Mr. Chávez. “It’s the irresponsible and corrupt militarism that has replaced the professionalism of the industry.”
Meanwhile, homes and businesses across the country are adapting to the erratic supply of power and, here in Caracas, of water. Sales of small generators, candles and water storage tanks are surging. Reflecting the unease of the already strained industrial base, which developed around access to ample and cheap power, Sidor, a steel maker in Ciudad Guayana, said it was shutting down its furnaces five hours a day because of the cuts.
“If this crisis teaches us something,” said Fernando Branger, an energy expert at the Institute of Superior Administration Studies, a Caracas business school, “it is that the immensity of our energy reserves means nothing if we cannot even get them out of the ground.”
María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world ... nted=print
Revenge in Drug War Chills Mexico
By ELISABETH MALKIN
MEXICO CITY — It had been an elaborate farewell to one of Mexico’s fallen heroes.
Ensign Melquisedet Angulo Córdova, a special forces sailor killed last week during the government’s most successful raid on a top drug lord in years, received a stirring public tribute in which the secretary of the navy presented his mother with the flag that covered her son’s coffin.
Then, only hours after the grieving family had finished burying him in his hometown the next day, gunmen burst into the family’s house and sprayed the rooms with gunfire, killing his mother and three other relatives, officials said Tuesday.
It was a chilling epilogue to the navy-led operation that killed the drug lord, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and six of his gunmen. And it appeared to be intended as a clear warning to the military forces on the front line of President Felipe Calderón’s war against Mexico’s drug cartels: not only you, but your family is a target as well.
Prosecutors, police chiefs and thousands of others have been killed in the violence gripping Mexico, with whole families sometimes coming under attack during a cartel’s assassination attempt. But going after the family of a sailor who had already been killed is an exceedingly rare form of intimidation, analysts say, and illustrates how little progress the government has made toward one of its most important goals: reclaiming a sense of peace and order for Mexicans caught in the cross-fire.
“There will be more reprisals, both symbolic ones and strategic ones,” said Guillermo Zepeda, a security expert with the Center of Research for Development, in Mexico City. “They will take revenge against not only the top people, but anybody who participates.”
The military and police forces who have been fighting the drug war typically cover their faces with ski masks to protect their identities. But the government generally releases the names of police officers and soldiers who have been killed in the drug war.
Responding to the killings on Tuesday, Mr. Calderón said, “These contemptible events are proof of how unscrupulously organized crime operates, attacking innocent lives, and they can only strengthen us in our determination to banish this singular cancer.”
The gunmen killed Ensign Angulo’s mother, Irma Córdova Palma, and his sister Yolidabey, 22, just after midnight on Tuesday as they slept, said Tabasco State officials. An aunt, Josefa Angulo Flores, 46, died on her way to the hospital and Ensign Angulo’s brother Benito died shortly after he was admitted to the hospital. Another sister, who was not identified, was injured.
Ensign Angulo, 30, was killed Dec. 16 when military forces surrounded an upscale apartment complex in the city of Cuernavaca, an hour’s drive south of Mexico City, and cornered Mr. Beltrán Leyva, who American and Mexican officials say was one of Mexico’s most violent drug lords.
Although Mr. Calderón called the death of Mr. Beltrán Leyva a significant victory in the drug war, federal officials warned almost immediately that it could spawn more violence.
Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez told reporters the morning after the raid against Mr. Beltrán Leyva that his subordinates would battle among one another to take his place at the head of the cartel that bears his name.
But what officials did not expect was that among the first victims would be the innocent.
Throughout the three-year-old drug war, Mexican officials have argued that only a tiny percentage of the dead are noncombatants. Indeed, the vast majority of the dead are believed to be members of drug gangs settling scores. Half of the bodies are not even claimed by their families, government officials have said.
But the government has also proved to be powerless to protect many of its own forces in the drug war, much less innocent bystanders. In just one case in July, gunmen suspected of being cartel members killed 12 federal police officers in the western state of Michoacán in retaliation for the arrest of one of their leaders.
The killings on Tuesday underscore how vulnerable civilians are. Many local police forces are corrupted by drug money, officials say, and even when they are not, they are no match for the drug gangs’ firepower.
In one of the most frightening attacks directed at civilians, suspected cartel members threw grenades into a crowd celebrating Independence Day in the president’s hometown in 2008, killing eight people. It seemed to crystallize the fear that the cartels could strike wherever and whenever they wanted, despite the deployment of thousands of troops against them.
Analysts said that new levels of narcoterrorism were possible as the drug gangs tried to spread fear among those fighting them.
“Any objective could be vulnerable,” Mr. Zepeda, the security expert, said. “The state should be expecting it.”
Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world ... nted=print
By ELISABETH MALKIN
MEXICO CITY — It had been an elaborate farewell to one of Mexico’s fallen heroes.
Ensign Melquisedet Angulo Córdova, a special forces sailor killed last week during the government’s most successful raid on a top drug lord in years, received a stirring public tribute in which the secretary of the navy presented his mother with the flag that covered her son’s coffin.
Then, only hours after the grieving family had finished burying him in his hometown the next day, gunmen burst into the family’s house and sprayed the rooms with gunfire, killing his mother and three other relatives, officials said Tuesday.
It was a chilling epilogue to the navy-led operation that killed the drug lord, Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and six of his gunmen. And it appeared to be intended as a clear warning to the military forces on the front line of President Felipe Calderón’s war against Mexico’s drug cartels: not only you, but your family is a target as well.
Prosecutors, police chiefs and thousands of others have been killed in the violence gripping Mexico, with whole families sometimes coming under attack during a cartel’s assassination attempt. But going after the family of a sailor who had already been killed is an exceedingly rare form of intimidation, analysts say, and illustrates how little progress the government has made toward one of its most important goals: reclaiming a sense of peace and order for Mexicans caught in the cross-fire.
“There will be more reprisals, both symbolic ones and strategic ones,” said Guillermo Zepeda, a security expert with the Center of Research for Development, in Mexico City. “They will take revenge against not only the top people, but anybody who participates.”
The military and police forces who have been fighting the drug war typically cover their faces with ski masks to protect their identities. But the government generally releases the names of police officers and soldiers who have been killed in the drug war.
Responding to the killings on Tuesday, Mr. Calderón said, “These contemptible events are proof of how unscrupulously organized crime operates, attacking innocent lives, and they can only strengthen us in our determination to banish this singular cancer.”
The gunmen killed Ensign Angulo’s mother, Irma Córdova Palma, and his sister Yolidabey, 22, just after midnight on Tuesday as they slept, said Tabasco State officials. An aunt, Josefa Angulo Flores, 46, died on her way to the hospital and Ensign Angulo’s brother Benito died shortly after he was admitted to the hospital. Another sister, who was not identified, was injured.
Ensign Angulo, 30, was killed Dec. 16 when military forces surrounded an upscale apartment complex in the city of Cuernavaca, an hour’s drive south of Mexico City, and cornered Mr. Beltrán Leyva, who American and Mexican officials say was one of Mexico’s most violent drug lords.
Although Mr. Calderón called the death of Mr. Beltrán Leyva a significant victory in the drug war, federal officials warned almost immediately that it could spawn more violence.
Attorney General Arturo Chávez Chávez told reporters the morning after the raid against Mr. Beltrán Leyva that his subordinates would battle among one another to take his place at the head of the cartel that bears his name.
But what officials did not expect was that among the first victims would be the innocent.
Throughout the three-year-old drug war, Mexican officials have argued that only a tiny percentage of the dead are noncombatants. Indeed, the vast majority of the dead are believed to be members of drug gangs settling scores. Half of the bodies are not even claimed by their families, government officials have said.
But the government has also proved to be powerless to protect many of its own forces in the drug war, much less innocent bystanders. In just one case in July, gunmen suspected of being cartel members killed 12 federal police officers in the western state of Michoacán in retaliation for the arrest of one of their leaders.
The killings on Tuesday underscore how vulnerable civilians are. Many local police forces are corrupted by drug money, officials say, and even when they are not, they are no match for the drug gangs’ firepower.
In one of the most frightening attacks directed at civilians, suspected cartel members threw grenades into a crowd celebrating Independence Day in the president’s hometown in 2008, killing eight people. It seemed to crystallize the fear that the cartels could strike wherever and whenever they wanted, despite the deployment of thousands of troops against them.
Analysts said that new levels of narcoterrorism were possible as the drug gangs tried to spread fear among those fighting them.
“Any objective could be vulnerable,” Mr. Zepeda, the security expert, said. “The state should be expecting it.”
Antonio Betancourt contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world ... nted=print
January 7, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
The Happiest People
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica
Hmmm. You think it’s a coincidence? Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth.
There are several ways of measuring happiness in countries, all inexact, but this pearl of Central America does stunningly well by whatever system is used. For example, the World Database of Happiness, compiled by a Dutch sociologist on the basis of answers to surveys by Gallup and others, lists Costa Rica in the top spot out of 148 nations.
That’s because Costa Ricans, asked to rate their own happiness on a 10-point scale, average 8.5. Denmark is next at 8.3, the United States ranks 20th at 7.4 and Togo and Tanzania bring up the caboose at 2.6.
Scholars also calculate happiness by determining “happy life years.” This figure results from merging average self-reported happiness, as above, with life expectancy. Using this system, Costa Rica again easily tops the list. The United States is 19th, and Zimbabwe comes in last.
A third approach is the “happy planet index,” devised by the New Economics Foundation, a liberal think tank. This combines happiness and longevity but adjusts for environmental impact — such as the carbon that countries spew.
Here again, Costa Rica wins the day, for achieving contentment and longevity in an environmentally sustainable way. The Dominican Republic ranks second, the United States 114th (because of its huge ecological footprint) and Zimbabwe is last.
Maybe Costa Rican contentment has something to do with the chance to explore dazzling beaches on both sides of the country, when one isn’t admiring the sloths in the jungle (sloths truly are slothful, I discovered; they are the tortoises of the trees). Costa Rica has done an unusually good job preserving nature, and it’s surely easier to be happy while basking in sunshine and greenery than while shivering up north and suffering “nature deficit disorder.”
After dragging my 12-year-old daughter through Honduran slums and Nicaraguan villages on this trip, she was delighted to see a Costa Rican beach and stroll through a national park. Among her favorite animals now: iguanas and sloths.
(Note to boss: Maybe we should have a columnist based in Costa Rica?)
What sets Costa Rica apart is its remarkable decision in 1949 to dissolve its armed forces and invest instead in education. Increased schooling created a more stable society, less prone to the conflicts that have raged elsewhere in Central America. Education also boosted the economy, enabling the country to become a major exporter of computer chips and improving English-language skills so as to attract American eco-tourists.
I’m not antimilitary. But the evidence is strong that education is often a far better investment than artillery.
In Costa Rica, rising education levels also fostered impressive gender equality so that it ranks higher than the United States in the World Economic Forum gender gap index. This allows Costa Rica to use its female population more productively than is true in most of the region. Likewise, education nurtured improvements in health care, with life expectancy now about the same as in the United States — a bit longer in some data sets, a bit shorter in others.
Rising education levels also led the country to preserve its lush environment as an economic asset. Costa Rica is an ecological pioneer, introducing a carbon tax in 1997. The Environmental Performance Index, a collaboration of Yale and Columbia Universities, ranks Costa Rica at No. 5 in the world, the best outside Europe.
This emphasis on the environment hasn’t sabotaged Costa Rica’s economy but has bolstered it. Indeed, Costa Rica is one of the few countries that is seeing migration from the United States: Yankees are moving here to enjoy a low-cost retirement. My hunch is that in 25 years, we’ll see large numbers of English-speaking retirement communities along the Costa Rican coast.
Latin countries generally do well in happiness surveys. Mexico and Colombia rank higher than the United States in self-reported contentment. Perhaps one reason is a cultural emphasis on family and friends, on social capital over financial capital — but then again, Mexicans sometimes slip into the United States, presumably in pursuit of both happiness and assets.
Cross-country comparisons of happiness are controversial and uncertain. But what does seem quite clear is that Costa Rica’s national decision to invest in education rather than arms has paid rich dividends. Maybe the lesson for the United States is that we should devote fewer resources to shoring up foreign armies and more to bolstering schools both at home and abroad.
In the meantime, I encourage you to conduct your own research in Costa Rica, exploring those magnificent beaches or admiring those slothful sloths. It’ll surely make you happy.
•
I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/opini ... istof.html
Op-Ed Columnist
The Happiest People
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica
Hmmm. You think it’s a coincidence? Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth.
There are several ways of measuring happiness in countries, all inexact, but this pearl of Central America does stunningly well by whatever system is used. For example, the World Database of Happiness, compiled by a Dutch sociologist on the basis of answers to surveys by Gallup and others, lists Costa Rica in the top spot out of 148 nations.
That’s because Costa Ricans, asked to rate their own happiness on a 10-point scale, average 8.5. Denmark is next at 8.3, the United States ranks 20th at 7.4 and Togo and Tanzania bring up the caboose at 2.6.
Scholars also calculate happiness by determining “happy life years.” This figure results from merging average self-reported happiness, as above, with life expectancy. Using this system, Costa Rica again easily tops the list. The United States is 19th, and Zimbabwe comes in last.
A third approach is the “happy planet index,” devised by the New Economics Foundation, a liberal think tank. This combines happiness and longevity but adjusts for environmental impact — such as the carbon that countries spew.
Here again, Costa Rica wins the day, for achieving contentment and longevity in an environmentally sustainable way. The Dominican Republic ranks second, the United States 114th (because of its huge ecological footprint) and Zimbabwe is last.
Maybe Costa Rican contentment has something to do with the chance to explore dazzling beaches on both sides of the country, when one isn’t admiring the sloths in the jungle (sloths truly are slothful, I discovered; they are the tortoises of the trees). Costa Rica has done an unusually good job preserving nature, and it’s surely easier to be happy while basking in sunshine and greenery than while shivering up north and suffering “nature deficit disorder.”
After dragging my 12-year-old daughter through Honduran slums and Nicaraguan villages on this trip, she was delighted to see a Costa Rican beach and stroll through a national park. Among her favorite animals now: iguanas and sloths.
(Note to boss: Maybe we should have a columnist based in Costa Rica?)
What sets Costa Rica apart is its remarkable decision in 1949 to dissolve its armed forces and invest instead in education. Increased schooling created a more stable society, less prone to the conflicts that have raged elsewhere in Central America. Education also boosted the economy, enabling the country to become a major exporter of computer chips and improving English-language skills so as to attract American eco-tourists.
I’m not antimilitary. But the evidence is strong that education is often a far better investment than artillery.
In Costa Rica, rising education levels also fostered impressive gender equality so that it ranks higher than the United States in the World Economic Forum gender gap index. This allows Costa Rica to use its female population more productively than is true in most of the region. Likewise, education nurtured improvements in health care, with life expectancy now about the same as in the United States — a bit longer in some data sets, a bit shorter in others.
Rising education levels also led the country to preserve its lush environment as an economic asset. Costa Rica is an ecological pioneer, introducing a carbon tax in 1997. The Environmental Performance Index, a collaboration of Yale and Columbia Universities, ranks Costa Rica at No. 5 in the world, the best outside Europe.
This emphasis on the environment hasn’t sabotaged Costa Rica’s economy but has bolstered it. Indeed, Costa Rica is one of the few countries that is seeing migration from the United States: Yankees are moving here to enjoy a low-cost retirement. My hunch is that in 25 years, we’ll see large numbers of English-speaking retirement communities along the Costa Rican coast.
Latin countries generally do well in happiness surveys. Mexico and Colombia rank higher than the United States in self-reported contentment. Perhaps one reason is a cultural emphasis on family and friends, on social capital over financial capital — but then again, Mexicans sometimes slip into the United States, presumably in pursuit of both happiness and assets.
Cross-country comparisons of happiness are controversial and uncertain. But what does seem quite clear is that Costa Rica’s national decision to invest in education rather than arms has paid rich dividends. Maybe the lesson for the United States is that we should devote fewer resources to shoring up foreign armies and more to bolstering schools both at home and abroad.
In the meantime, I encourage you to conduct your own research in Costa Rica, exploring those magnificent beaches or admiring those slothful sloths. It’ll surely make you happy.
•
I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/opini ... istof.html
Fearing Drug Cartels, Reporters in Mexico Retreat
By MARC LACEY
REYNOSA, Mexico — The big philosophical question in this gritty border town does not concern trees falling in the forest but bodies falling on the concrete: Does a shootout actually happen if the newspapers print nothing about it, the radio and television stations broadcast nothing, and the authorities never confirm that it occurred?
As two powerful groups of drug traffickers engaged in fierce urban combat in Reynosa in recent weeks, the reality that many residents were living and the one that the increasingly timid news media and the image-conscious politicians portrayed were difficult to reconcile.
“You begin to wonder what the truth is,” said one of Reynosa’s frustrated and fearful residents, Eunice Peña, a professor of communications. “Is it what you saw, or what the media and the officials say? You even wonder if you were imagining it.”
Angry residents who witnessed the carnage began to fill the void, posting raw videos and photos taken with cellphones.
“The pictures do not lie,” said a journalist in McAllen, Tex., who monitors what is happening south of the border online but has stopped venturing there himself. “You can hear the gunshots. You can see the bodies. You know it’s bad.”
The Mexican government’s drug offensive, employing tens of thousands of soldiers, marines and federal police officers, has unleashed ever increasing levels of violence over the last three years as traffickers have fought to protect their lucrative smuggling routes. Journalists have long been among the victims, but the attacks on members of the media now under way in Reynosa and elsewhere along a long stretch of border from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros are at their worst.
Traffickers have gone after the media with a vengeance in these strategic border towns where drugs are smuggled across by the ton. They have shot up newsrooms, kidnapped and killed staff members and called up the media regularly with threats that were not the least bit veiled. Back off, the thugs said. Do not dare print our names. We will kill you the next time you publish a photograph like that.
“They mean what they say,” said one of the many terrified journalists who used to cover the police beat in Reynosa. “I’m censoring myself. There’s no other way to put it. But so is everybody else.”
When they are not issuing threats, journalists say, the drug runners are buying off reporters with everything from cash to romps with prostitutes. The traffickers are not always so press shy. When they post banners on bridges expounding on their twisted view of the world or commit some particularly gory crime, they often seek out coverage.
But not now. And the current news blackout along the border has only amplified fears, as false rumors of impending shootouts circulate unchecked, prompting many parents to pull their children from school and businesses to close.
It means that a mother can huddle on the floor of a closet with her daughter for what seems like eternity as fierce gunfire is exchanged outside their home, as occurred here recently, and then find not a word of it in the next day’s paper.
And it means that helicopters can swoop overhead, military vehicles can roar through the streets and the entire neighborhood can sound like a war movie, and television can lead off the next day’s broadcast talking about something else. Even some authorities, including Mayor Óscar Lubbert of Reynosa, acknowledge that without news reports, it is harder for them to get a full picture of how much blood is spilled overnight, partly because the traffickers sometimes haul their dead comrades away before the sun comes up.
The violence was so fearsome last month that the American Embassy in Mexico City temporarily closed the consular agency in Reynosa, which offers assistance to Americans, many of whom manage the hundreds of manufacturing plants based here. Closed on Feb. 24, the office reopened on March 8 after a lull in the bloodshed, which has continued sporadically in recent days with clashes between traffickers and the police.
What remains unclear is whether the combatants have called it quits or are merely reloading for more battles to come.
Rarely, if ever, do the local news media mention the names of the groups engaged in combat or their top leadership. The Texas press broke the story that the Drug Enforcement Administration traced the upsurge in violence in Reynosa to Jan. 18, when a member of the Gulf Cartel killed a top lieutenant of the rival Zeta gang named Victor Mendoza. The Zetas, founded by former members of the Mexican special forces and known for both their organization and their brutality, demanded the shooter. The Gulf Cartel, which once used the Zetas as enforcers but now vows to eliminate them, refused.
In the weeks that followed, fierce shootouts broke out along long stretches of the border, and the local reporters went silent.
“Before, if there was a shootout, the scene would be full of journalists,” said one of the many reporters who has given up covering the drug war here out of fear and who insisted on anonymity for the same reason. “Now, sometimes there will not be a single journalist. Everyone stays away.”
The fear extends to the Texas side of the border, where most news organizations now bar their journalists from crossing into Reynosa. When journalists do try to get a glimpse of Reynosa’s underbelly, bad things can happen. A reporter and camera man working for Mexico City-based Milenio TV were picked up by traffickers early this month and viciously beaten overnight, prompting them to catch the next flight out.
Days later, a reporter for The Dallas Morning News quickly left Reynosa after he and a television crew were approached by a man on the streets who warned them they lacked permission to report there and ordered them to leave.
They were the lucky ones. A local radio reporter died recently from a beating, according to local journalists, who say five other colleagues have disappeared in the last month. The authorities have confirmed only one of the disappearances, that of Miguel Ángel Domínguez Zamora of Reynosa’s newspaper El Mañana, who disappeared March 1.
“We’re all watching our backs,” said a Reynosa journalist, whose voice trembled.
One troubling aspect of the kidnappings and killings of journalists in Mexico is that nobody knows for sure which cases involve crusading reporters doing their jobs in revealing the truth and which involve careless or crooked reporters who had become too close to a cartel.
Ciro Gómez Leyva, the news director at Milenio who had sent the crew to Reynosa, wrote an angry column recently taking President Felipe Calderón to task for his declaration that no part of the country was outside the control of the government. “Journalism is dead in Reynosa,” Mr. Gómez declared flatly.
The violence and what it has done to the news media has become, by necessity, a part of journalism instruction along the border. At one Reynosa university, communications professors talk about the importance of staying neutral and how it can be deadly to take sides. They also steer their students, until the climate along the border changes, into jobs covering politics, culture or sports. Anything but crime.
Violence Flares in Acapulco
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) — Thirteen people were killed in and around the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco early Saturday apparently in drug-related violence, with four victims found beheaded, security officials said.
Five of those killed were police officers whose nighttime patrol was attacked by gunmen on the outskirts of the city, the officials said in a statement.
The bullet-riddled bodies of eight other men were discovered in different areas around Acapulco, and four of them had been beheaded, the officials added.
Rival drug gangs in recent years have fought over territory in Acapulco, where any resurgence in violence could hurt the tourism industry. More violence flared later on Saturday in Guerrero State, with Mexican soldiers exchanging fire with gunmen, the newspaper Reforma reported. One soldier and 10 gunmen were killed, the paper said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/world ... nted=print
By MARC LACEY
REYNOSA, Mexico — The big philosophical question in this gritty border town does not concern trees falling in the forest but bodies falling on the concrete: Does a shootout actually happen if the newspapers print nothing about it, the radio and television stations broadcast nothing, and the authorities never confirm that it occurred?
As two powerful groups of drug traffickers engaged in fierce urban combat in Reynosa in recent weeks, the reality that many residents were living and the one that the increasingly timid news media and the image-conscious politicians portrayed were difficult to reconcile.
“You begin to wonder what the truth is,” said one of Reynosa’s frustrated and fearful residents, Eunice Peña, a professor of communications. “Is it what you saw, or what the media and the officials say? You even wonder if you were imagining it.”
Angry residents who witnessed the carnage began to fill the void, posting raw videos and photos taken with cellphones.
“The pictures do not lie,” said a journalist in McAllen, Tex., who monitors what is happening south of the border online but has stopped venturing there himself. “You can hear the gunshots. You can see the bodies. You know it’s bad.”
The Mexican government’s drug offensive, employing tens of thousands of soldiers, marines and federal police officers, has unleashed ever increasing levels of violence over the last three years as traffickers have fought to protect their lucrative smuggling routes. Journalists have long been among the victims, but the attacks on members of the media now under way in Reynosa and elsewhere along a long stretch of border from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros are at their worst.
Traffickers have gone after the media with a vengeance in these strategic border towns where drugs are smuggled across by the ton. They have shot up newsrooms, kidnapped and killed staff members and called up the media regularly with threats that were not the least bit veiled. Back off, the thugs said. Do not dare print our names. We will kill you the next time you publish a photograph like that.
“They mean what they say,” said one of the many terrified journalists who used to cover the police beat in Reynosa. “I’m censoring myself. There’s no other way to put it. But so is everybody else.”
When they are not issuing threats, journalists say, the drug runners are buying off reporters with everything from cash to romps with prostitutes. The traffickers are not always so press shy. When they post banners on bridges expounding on their twisted view of the world or commit some particularly gory crime, they often seek out coverage.
But not now. And the current news blackout along the border has only amplified fears, as false rumors of impending shootouts circulate unchecked, prompting many parents to pull their children from school and businesses to close.
It means that a mother can huddle on the floor of a closet with her daughter for what seems like eternity as fierce gunfire is exchanged outside their home, as occurred here recently, and then find not a word of it in the next day’s paper.
And it means that helicopters can swoop overhead, military vehicles can roar through the streets and the entire neighborhood can sound like a war movie, and television can lead off the next day’s broadcast talking about something else. Even some authorities, including Mayor Óscar Lubbert of Reynosa, acknowledge that without news reports, it is harder for them to get a full picture of how much blood is spilled overnight, partly because the traffickers sometimes haul their dead comrades away before the sun comes up.
The violence was so fearsome last month that the American Embassy in Mexico City temporarily closed the consular agency in Reynosa, which offers assistance to Americans, many of whom manage the hundreds of manufacturing plants based here. Closed on Feb. 24, the office reopened on March 8 after a lull in the bloodshed, which has continued sporadically in recent days with clashes between traffickers and the police.
What remains unclear is whether the combatants have called it quits or are merely reloading for more battles to come.
Rarely, if ever, do the local news media mention the names of the groups engaged in combat or their top leadership. The Texas press broke the story that the Drug Enforcement Administration traced the upsurge in violence in Reynosa to Jan. 18, when a member of the Gulf Cartel killed a top lieutenant of the rival Zeta gang named Victor Mendoza. The Zetas, founded by former members of the Mexican special forces and known for both their organization and their brutality, demanded the shooter. The Gulf Cartel, which once used the Zetas as enforcers but now vows to eliminate them, refused.
In the weeks that followed, fierce shootouts broke out along long stretches of the border, and the local reporters went silent.
“Before, if there was a shootout, the scene would be full of journalists,” said one of the many reporters who has given up covering the drug war here out of fear and who insisted on anonymity for the same reason. “Now, sometimes there will not be a single journalist. Everyone stays away.”
The fear extends to the Texas side of the border, where most news organizations now bar their journalists from crossing into Reynosa. When journalists do try to get a glimpse of Reynosa’s underbelly, bad things can happen. A reporter and camera man working for Mexico City-based Milenio TV were picked up by traffickers early this month and viciously beaten overnight, prompting them to catch the next flight out.
Days later, a reporter for The Dallas Morning News quickly left Reynosa after he and a television crew were approached by a man on the streets who warned them they lacked permission to report there and ordered them to leave.
They were the lucky ones. A local radio reporter died recently from a beating, according to local journalists, who say five other colleagues have disappeared in the last month. The authorities have confirmed only one of the disappearances, that of Miguel Ángel Domínguez Zamora of Reynosa’s newspaper El Mañana, who disappeared March 1.
“We’re all watching our backs,” said a Reynosa journalist, whose voice trembled.
One troubling aspect of the kidnappings and killings of journalists in Mexico is that nobody knows for sure which cases involve crusading reporters doing their jobs in revealing the truth and which involve careless or crooked reporters who had become too close to a cartel.
Ciro Gómez Leyva, the news director at Milenio who had sent the crew to Reynosa, wrote an angry column recently taking President Felipe Calderón to task for his declaration that no part of the country was outside the control of the government. “Journalism is dead in Reynosa,” Mr. Gómez declared flatly.
The violence and what it has done to the news media has become, by necessity, a part of journalism instruction along the border. At one Reynosa university, communications professors talk about the importance of staying neutral and how it can be deadly to take sides. They also steer their students, until the climate along the border changes, into jobs covering politics, culture or sports. Anything but crime.
Violence Flares in Acapulco
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) — Thirteen people were killed in and around the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco early Saturday apparently in drug-related violence, with four victims found beheaded, security officials said.
Five of those killed were police officers whose nighttime patrol was attacked by gunmen on the outskirts of the city, the officials said in a statement.
The bullet-riddled bodies of eight other men were discovered in different areas around Acapulco, and four of them had been beheaded, the officials added.
Rival drug gangs in recent years have fought over territory in Acapulco, where any resurgence in violence could hurt the tourism industry. More violence flared later on Saturday in Guerrero State, with Mexican soldiers exchanging fire with gunmen, the newspaper Reforma reported. One soldier and 10 gunmen were killed, the paper said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/world ... nted=print
March 28, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor
Human Currency in Mexico’s Drug Trade
By MARIO BELLATIN
Mexico City
IN Mexico, there is a strange practice known as the “art of renting.” If you’re arrested for drunken driving, for example, you can pay someone to spend two nights in jail in your place. Some hospitals require that a relative be on hand for each patient, so I have seen old women hire themselves out to sit in waiting rooms pretending to be mothers and wives. It’s rumored that childless adults who want to visit the Children’s Museum here, on days when grownups must be accompanied by minors to enter, can rent a child outside the entrance.
In much the same way, you can rent people to beat up or kill your enemy or lend their names as signatories for your shady business deals. I’ve often thought of renting another person to write under my name. Then someone else would have to address the drug-related violence, like the killing of an American consulate worker and her husband this month in Ciudad Juárez. Hillary Clinton met with our president, Felipe Calderón, last week to discuss a new counternarcotics strategy. Perhaps the writer impersonating me would be able to muster some enthusiasm about the results.
All of us here are scared of the drug violence, and yet most don’t take it personally. Ordinary citizens feel that this situation barely affects them. Bad things happen to other people ... over there.
It’s as if the whole country were made up of people who rent and people who are rented, as if one half of society has contracted the other to carry out the role of mutilated corpse, hit man, corrupt official or missing woman. There are no victims or criminals — just hired men.
Only by distancing ourselves is it possible to function in a country where there can be 24 men found lying on the side of a highway, each one with a bullet in his head, or where the corpses of kidnapped people can be found to have their mouths stuffed with magnificent bouquets of yellow flowers.
Amazingly, people here are not shocked by such images. They are not novel. Today’s violence is indistinguishable from all of the violence of our history. The victims of drug gangs take the place of the hundreds of women murdered in Juárez in the last decades, of massacred indigenous people and of the plague of kidnappings and torture from the southern to the northern border.
Perhaps we’ve managed to forget, as we buy and sell one another so extravagantly, that death’s deals alone are permanent.
Mario Bellatin is the author of the novel “Beauty Salon.” This article was translated by Kurt Hollander from the Spanish.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opini ... ?th&emc=th
Op-Ed Contributor
Human Currency in Mexico’s Drug Trade
By MARIO BELLATIN
Mexico City
IN Mexico, there is a strange practice known as the “art of renting.” If you’re arrested for drunken driving, for example, you can pay someone to spend two nights in jail in your place. Some hospitals require that a relative be on hand for each patient, so I have seen old women hire themselves out to sit in waiting rooms pretending to be mothers and wives. It’s rumored that childless adults who want to visit the Children’s Museum here, on days when grownups must be accompanied by minors to enter, can rent a child outside the entrance.
In much the same way, you can rent people to beat up or kill your enemy or lend their names as signatories for your shady business deals. I’ve often thought of renting another person to write under my name. Then someone else would have to address the drug-related violence, like the killing of an American consulate worker and her husband this month in Ciudad Juárez. Hillary Clinton met with our president, Felipe Calderón, last week to discuss a new counternarcotics strategy. Perhaps the writer impersonating me would be able to muster some enthusiasm about the results.
All of us here are scared of the drug violence, and yet most don’t take it personally. Ordinary citizens feel that this situation barely affects them. Bad things happen to other people ... over there.
It’s as if the whole country were made up of people who rent and people who are rented, as if one half of society has contracted the other to carry out the role of mutilated corpse, hit man, corrupt official or missing woman. There are no victims or criminals — just hired men.
Only by distancing ourselves is it possible to function in a country where there can be 24 men found lying on the side of a highway, each one with a bullet in his head, or where the corpses of kidnapped people can be found to have their mouths stuffed with magnificent bouquets of yellow flowers.
Amazingly, people here are not shocked by such images. They are not novel. Today’s violence is indistinguishable from all of the violence of our history. The victims of drug gangs take the place of the hundreds of women murdered in Juárez in the last decades, of massacred indigenous people and of the plague of kidnappings and torture from the southern to the northern border.
Perhaps we’ve managed to forget, as we buy and sell one another so extravagantly, that death’s deals alone are permanent.
Mario Bellatin is the author of the novel “Beauty Salon.” This article was translated by Kurt Hollander from the Spanish.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opini ... ?th&emc=th
Argentina legalizes same-sex marriage
New law is a first for Latin America
By Indalecio Alvarez, Agence France-PresseJuly 16, 2010
A rgentina on Thursday became the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, following a landmark Senate vote which stirred controversy in the majority Roman Catholic nation.
The law was backed by the centre-left government of President Cristina Kirchner and adopted in a 33-27 vote, with three abstentions, after 15 hours of debate.
"It's a positive step which defends the right of the minority in Argentina," Kirchner said to Argentine media on Thursday.
The issue raised heated debate in this nation of 40 million, 90 per cent of whom describe themselves as Roman Catholic.
Hundreds of people cheered outside the Senate as the bill passed, with some chanting "equality, equality," and other tearful couples embracing.
As priests and their supporters held images of the Virgin Mary and prayed in the street, some gay and leftist campaigners shouted: "Church, you garbage. You're a dictatorship."
Police had to separate opposing groups who hurled eggs and oranges at each other outside the Senate the previous day.
"Argentina has taken a step forward, but out in the street . . . it will take time for hatred and resentment to heal," said former president Adolfo Rodriguez Saa.
The Catholic Church had called unsuccessfully for a national referendum on the issue, which had drawn support from opposing political parties.
The law alters the legal code to no longer refer to a husband and wife, but rather refer to "the marrying parties." Same-sex couples will now have the same rights as heterosexuals regarding adoptions, social security and family issues.
Argentina follows the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and Iceland. Civil unions for same-sex couples -- seen as legally significant if a step short of same-sex marriage -- are allowed in Uruguay, Colombia and Buenos Aires.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 6&sponsor=
New law is a first for Latin America
By Indalecio Alvarez, Agence France-PresseJuly 16, 2010
A rgentina on Thursday became the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, following a landmark Senate vote which stirred controversy in the majority Roman Catholic nation.
The law was backed by the centre-left government of President Cristina Kirchner and adopted in a 33-27 vote, with three abstentions, after 15 hours of debate.
"It's a positive step which defends the right of the minority in Argentina," Kirchner said to Argentine media on Thursday.
The issue raised heated debate in this nation of 40 million, 90 per cent of whom describe themselves as Roman Catholic.
Hundreds of people cheered outside the Senate as the bill passed, with some chanting "equality, equality," and other tearful couples embracing.
As priests and their supporters held images of the Virgin Mary and prayed in the street, some gay and leftist campaigners shouted: "Church, you garbage. You're a dictatorship."
Police had to separate opposing groups who hurled eggs and oranges at each other outside the Senate the previous day.
"Argentina has taken a step forward, but out in the street . . . it will take time for hatred and resentment to heal," said former president Adolfo Rodriguez Saa.
The Catholic Church had called unsuccessfully for a national referendum on the issue, which had drawn support from opposing political parties.
The law alters the legal code to no longer refer to a husband and wife, but rather refer to "the marrying parties." Same-sex couples will now have the same rights as heterosexuals regarding adoptions, social security and family issues.
Argentina follows the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and Iceland. Civil unions for same-sex couples -- seen as legally significant if a step short of same-sex marriage -- are allowed in Uruguay, Colombia and Buenos Aires.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/story_prin ... 6&sponsor=
July 29, 2010
Colombia Can Win Mexico’s Drug War
By GUSTAVO A. FLORES-MACÍAS
Ithaca, N.Y.
BOTH the United States and Mexico have approached the war on Mexican drug cartels with Colombia in mind.
Washington’s Merida Initiative, loosely modeled on its Plan Colombia antidrug campaign from a decade ago, provides Mexico with money for helicopters, police training and command-and-control technology. The Mexican government, meanwhile, has taken steps to modernize its judicial system, purge the police of corruption and improve intelligence services.
But according to a Government Accountability Office report released this summer, the billions of dollars spent by Mexico and the United States over the last four years have done little to thwart Mexico’s cartels.
The problem is that the two countries have ignored a fundamental lesson from the Colombian experience: foreign aid, security cooperation and judicial reform were necessary but not sufficient conditions for reducing violence. Plan Colombia succeeded because, at the same time that it stepped up its antidrug efforts, Colombia aggressively reformed its tax system and greatly improved government accountability. Unless Mexico can do the same, antidrug efforts there will fail.
Like Mexico, Colombia confronted a domestic security crisis that it could not afford to resolve without higher tax revenues. So it created a “wealth tax” directed at the country’s richest taxpayers, earmarked to finance the security effort.
Then, realizing that the wealthy would tolerate increased taxes only if they believed the government was not squandering resources through corruption or inefficiency, President Álvaro Uribe mandated that security forces provide annual, publicly available reports on how money is spent and how effectively it is used.
Colombia also created a civilian Ministry of Defense, making the military accountable to democratically elected leaders. The new ministry put the armed services under a single chain of command directly responsible to the president and developed a cadre of experienced civil servants.
These steps quickly led to a steadier stream of funds devoted to antidrug efforts, more reliable security forces and, most important, strong public support. As a result, Colombia has made significant strides in fighting drug traffickers, guerrillas and paramilitaries: since Mr. Uribe’s election in 2002, coca production has decreased by a third, kidnappings have dropped by 90 percent and murders have fallen significantly.
Mexico stands to learn a valuable lesson from Colombia’s experience. At 11 percent of its gross domestic product, Mexico’s tax collection capacity ranks among the lowest in Latin American countries — compared, for example, with Brazil’s 23 percent. Without increased tax revenues, its antidrug efforts will not be sustainable.
Mexico’s security apparatus is also one of the most outdated in the hemisphere. Like pre-reform Colombia, it lacks a civilian minister of defense and civilian experts on military affairs, and so there is a lack of accountability and public support for the antidrug effort. Mexico desperately needs to reform its security agencies, something the United States can facilitate by providing technical assistance to strengthen Mexico’s judicial and security institutions.
There is no reason Mexico can’t follow Colombia’s lead — and every reason it should, as soon as possible. President Felipe Calderón, who has just two years before his term-limited presidency comes to an end, hails from the right-of-center, pro-business National Action Party, putting him in a strong position to sell tax increases to the wealthy.
Moreover, neither of the country’s other two leading parties, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party and the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party, shares President Calderón’s tough stance against drug cartels. This means that Mr. Calderón’s successor is unlikely to undertake major reforms.
Mr. Uribe’s reforms didn’t bring the Colombian drug crisis to an end overnight. But over time, they enabled the government to get the upper hand against the cartels. And for a country as deep in crisis as Mexico, they offer a clear path forward.
Gustavo A. Flores-Macías is an assistant professor of government and a research fellow at the Polson Institute for Global Development at Cornell.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opini ... ?th&emc=th
Colombia Can Win Mexico’s Drug War
By GUSTAVO A. FLORES-MACÍAS
Ithaca, N.Y.
BOTH the United States and Mexico have approached the war on Mexican drug cartels with Colombia in mind.
Washington’s Merida Initiative, loosely modeled on its Plan Colombia antidrug campaign from a decade ago, provides Mexico with money for helicopters, police training and command-and-control technology. The Mexican government, meanwhile, has taken steps to modernize its judicial system, purge the police of corruption and improve intelligence services.
But according to a Government Accountability Office report released this summer, the billions of dollars spent by Mexico and the United States over the last four years have done little to thwart Mexico’s cartels.
The problem is that the two countries have ignored a fundamental lesson from the Colombian experience: foreign aid, security cooperation and judicial reform were necessary but not sufficient conditions for reducing violence. Plan Colombia succeeded because, at the same time that it stepped up its antidrug efforts, Colombia aggressively reformed its tax system and greatly improved government accountability. Unless Mexico can do the same, antidrug efforts there will fail.
Like Mexico, Colombia confronted a domestic security crisis that it could not afford to resolve without higher tax revenues. So it created a “wealth tax” directed at the country’s richest taxpayers, earmarked to finance the security effort.
Then, realizing that the wealthy would tolerate increased taxes only if they believed the government was not squandering resources through corruption or inefficiency, President Álvaro Uribe mandated that security forces provide annual, publicly available reports on how money is spent and how effectively it is used.
Colombia also created a civilian Ministry of Defense, making the military accountable to democratically elected leaders. The new ministry put the armed services under a single chain of command directly responsible to the president and developed a cadre of experienced civil servants.
These steps quickly led to a steadier stream of funds devoted to antidrug efforts, more reliable security forces and, most important, strong public support. As a result, Colombia has made significant strides in fighting drug traffickers, guerrillas and paramilitaries: since Mr. Uribe’s election in 2002, coca production has decreased by a third, kidnappings have dropped by 90 percent and murders have fallen significantly.
Mexico stands to learn a valuable lesson from Colombia’s experience. At 11 percent of its gross domestic product, Mexico’s tax collection capacity ranks among the lowest in Latin American countries — compared, for example, with Brazil’s 23 percent. Without increased tax revenues, its antidrug efforts will not be sustainable.
Mexico’s security apparatus is also one of the most outdated in the hemisphere. Like pre-reform Colombia, it lacks a civilian minister of defense and civilian experts on military affairs, and so there is a lack of accountability and public support for the antidrug effort. Mexico desperately needs to reform its security agencies, something the United States can facilitate by providing technical assistance to strengthen Mexico’s judicial and security institutions.
There is no reason Mexico can’t follow Colombia’s lead — and every reason it should, as soon as possible. President Felipe Calderón, who has just two years before his term-limited presidency comes to an end, hails from the right-of-center, pro-business National Action Party, putting him in a strong position to sell tax increases to the wealthy.
Moreover, neither of the country’s other two leading parties, the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party and the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary Party, shares President Calderón’s tough stance against drug cartels. This means that Mr. Calderón’s successor is unlikely to undertake major reforms.
Mr. Uribe’s reforms didn’t bring the Colombian drug crisis to an end overnight. But over time, they enabled the government to get the upper hand against the cartels. And for a country as deep in crisis as Mexico, they offer a clear path forward.
Gustavo A. Flores-Macías is an assistant professor of government and a research fellow at the Polson Institute for Global Development at Cornell.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opini ... ?th&emc=th
There are a related multimedia and a video linked at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world ... venez.html
August 22, 2010
Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq, Wonders Why
By SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out.
In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.
Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives.
Venezuelans have absorbed such grim statistics for years. Those with means have hidden their homes behind walls and hired foreign security experts to advise them on how to avoid kidnappings and killings. And rich and poor alike have resigned themselves to living with a murder rate that the opposition says remains low on the list of the government’s priorities.
Then a front-page photograph in a leading independent newspaper — and the government’s reaction — shocked the nation, and rekindled public debate over violent crime.
The photo in the paper, El Nacional, is unquestionably gory. It shows a dozen homicide victims strewn about the city’s largest morgue, just a sample of an unusually anarchic two-day stretch in this already perilous place.
While many Venezuelans saw the picture as a sober reminder of their vulnerability and a chance to effect change, the government took a different stand.
A court ordered the paper to stop publishing images of violence, as if that would quiet growing questions about why the government — despite proclaiming a revolution that heralds socialist values — has been unable to close the dangerous gap between rich and poor and make the country’s streets safer.
“Forget the hundreds of children who die from stray bullets, or the kids who go through the horror of seeing their parents or older siblings killed before their eyes,” said Teodoro Petkoff, the editor of another newspaper here, mocking the court’s decision in a front-page editorial. “Their problem is the photograph.”
Venezuela is struggling with a decade-long surge in homicides, with about 118,541 since President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a group that compiles figures based on police files. (The government has stopped publicly releasing its own detailed homicide statistics, but has not disputed the group’s numbers, and news reports citing unreleased government figures suggest human rights groups may actually be undercounting murders).
There have been 43,792 homicides in Venezuela since 2007, according to the violence observatory, compared with about 28,000 deaths from drug-related violence in Mexico since that country’s assault on cartels began in late 2006.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world ... venez.html
August 22, 2010
Venezuela, More Deadly Than Iraq, Wonders Why
By SIMON ROMERO
CARACAS, Venezuela — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out.
In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.
Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives.
Venezuelans have absorbed such grim statistics for years. Those with means have hidden their homes behind walls and hired foreign security experts to advise them on how to avoid kidnappings and killings. And rich and poor alike have resigned themselves to living with a murder rate that the opposition says remains low on the list of the government’s priorities.
Then a front-page photograph in a leading independent newspaper — and the government’s reaction — shocked the nation, and rekindled public debate over violent crime.
The photo in the paper, El Nacional, is unquestionably gory. It shows a dozen homicide victims strewn about the city’s largest morgue, just a sample of an unusually anarchic two-day stretch in this already perilous place.
While many Venezuelans saw the picture as a sober reminder of their vulnerability and a chance to effect change, the government took a different stand.
A court ordered the paper to stop publishing images of violence, as if that would quiet growing questions about why the government — despite proclaiming a revolution that heralds socialist values — has been unable to close the dangerous gap between rich and poor and make the country’s streets safer.
“Forget the hundreds of children who die from stray bullets, or the kids who go through the horror of seeing their parents or older siblings killed before their eyes,” said Teodoro Petkoff, the editor of another newspaper here, mocking the court’s decision in a front-page editorial. “Their problem is the photograph.”
Venezuela is struggling with a decade-long surge in homicides, with about 118,541 since President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a group that compiles figures based on police files. (The government has stopped publicly releasing its own detailed homicide statistics, but has not disputed the group’s numbers, and news reports citing unreleased government figures suggest human rights groups may actually be undercounting murders).
There have been 43,792 homicides in Venezuela since 2007, according to the violence observatory, compared with about 28,000 deaths from drug-related violence in Mexico since that country’s assault on cartels began in late 2006.
-
From_Alamut
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:22 am
Re: SOUTH AMERICA
Keith Olbermann Special Comment: There Is No 'Ground Zero Mosque' - 08/16/10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZpT2Muxoo0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZpT2Muxoo0
June 18, 2011
Legalization Won’t Kill the Cartels
By SYLVIA LONGMIRE
St. Louis
FOR a growing number of American policy makers, politicians and activists, the best answer to the spiraling violence in Mexico is to legalize the marijuana that, they argue, fuels the country’s vicious cartels and smugglers. After all, according to official estimates, marijuana constitutes 60 percent of cartels’ drug profits. Legalization would move that trade into the open market, driving down the price and undermining the cartels’ power and influence.
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Marijuana legalization has many merits, but it would do little to hinder the long-term economics of the cartels — and the violent toll they take on Mexican society.
For one thing, if marijuana makes up 60 percent of the cartels’ profits, that still leaves another 40 percent, which includes the sale of methamphetamine, cocaine, and brown-powder and black-tar heroin. If marijuana were legalized, the cartels would still make huge profits from the sale of these other drugs.
Plus, there’s no reason the cartels couldn’t enter the legal market for the sale of marijuana, as organized crime groups did in the United States after the repeal of Prohibition.
Still, legalization would deliver a significant short-term hit to the cartels — if drug trafficking were the only activity they were engaged in. But cartels derive a growing slice of their income from other illegal activities. Some experts on organized crime in Latin America, like Edgardo Buscaglia, say that cartels earn just half their income from drugs.
Indeed, in recent years cartels have used an extensive portfolio of rackets and scams to diversify their income. For example, they used to kidnap rivals, informants and incompetent subordinates to punish, exact revenge or send a message. Now that they have seen that people are willing to pay heavy ransoms, kidnapping has become their second-most-lucrative venture, with the targets ranging from businessmen to migrants.
Another new source of cartel revenue is oil theft, long a problem for the Mexican government. The national oil company, Pemex, loses hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of petroleum every year to bandits and criminal gangs who tap into pipelines and siphon it off. Now the cartels are getting involved in this business, working with associates north of the border to sell the oil to American companies at huge markups.
In 2009 a federal court convicted an American businessman of helping to funnel $2 million in petroleum products stolen from Pemex by a Mexican cartel, eventually selling it to a Texas chemical plant owned by the German chemical company BASF. The chemical company claims never to have known where the products came from.
Cartels are also moving into the market in pirated goods in Latin America. The market used to be dominated by terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, who operated in the triborder area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Now the field is being overtaken by Mexican cartels, which already have so much control over the sale of pirated CDs, DVDs and software that many legitimate companies no longer even bother to distribute their full-price products in parts of Mexico.
Taking another page from traditional organized crime, cartels are also moving into extortion. A cartel representative will approach the owner of a business — whether a pharmacy or a taco stand — demanding a monthly stipend for “protection.” If those payments aren’t made on time, the business is often burned to the ground, or the owner is threatened, kidnapped or killed.
A popular cartel racket involves branded products. For example, a cartel member — most often from Los Zetas and La Familia Michoacana, two of the largest and most diversified cartels — will tell a music-store owner that he has to sell CDs with the Zetas logo stamped on them, with the cartel taking a 25 percent cut of the profits. Noncompliance isn’t an option.
With so many lines of business, it’s unlikely that Mexican cartels would close up shop in the event of legalization, even if it meant a serious drop in profits from their most successful product. Cartels are economic entities, and like any legitimate company the best are able to adapt in the face of a changing market.
This is not to say that drug legalization shouldn’t be considered for other reasons. We need to stop viewing casual users as criminals, and we need to treat addicts as people with health and emotional problems. Doing so would free up a significant amount of jail space, court time and law enforcement resources. What it won’t do, though, is stop the violence in Mexico.
Sylvia Longmire, a former officer and investigative special agent in the Air Force, is the author of the forthcoming book “Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico’s Drug Wars.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/opini ... emc=tha212
Legalization Won’t Kill the Cartels
By SYLVIA LONGMIRE
St. Louis
FOR a growing number of American policy makers, politicians and activists, the best answer to the spiraling violence in Mexico is to legalize the marijuana that, they argue, fuels the country’s vicious cartels and smugglers. After all, according to official estimates, marijuana constitutes 60 percent of cartels’ drug profits. Legalization would move that trade into the open market, driving down the price and undermining the cartels’ power and influence.
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Marijuana legalization has many merits, but it would do little to hinder the long-term economics of the cartels — and the violent toll they take on Mexican society.
For one thing, if marijuana makes up 60 percent of the cartels’ profits, that still leaves another 40 percent, which includes the sale of methamphetamine, cocaine, and brown-powder and black-tar heroin. If marijuana were legalized, the cartels would still make huge profits from the sale of these other drugs.
Plus, there’s no reason the cartels couldn’t enter the legal market for the sale of marijuana, as organized crime groups did in the United States after the repeal of Prohibition.
Still, legalization would deliver a significant short-term hit to the cartels — if drug trafficking were the only activity they were engaged in. But cartels derive a growing slice of their income from other illegal activities. Some experts on organized crime in Latin America, like Edgardo Buscaglia, say that cartels earn just half their income from drugs.
Indeed, in recent years cartels have used an extensive portfolio of rackets and scams to diversify their income. For example, they used to kidnap rivals, informants and incompetent subordinates to punish, exact revenge or send a message. Now that they have seen that people are willing to pay heavy ransoms, kidnapping has become their second-most-lucrative venture, with the targets ranging from businessmen to migrants.
Another new source of cartel revenue is oil theft, long a problem for the Mexican government. The national oil company, Pemex, loses hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of petroleum every year to bandits and criminal gangs who tap into pipelines and siphon it off. Now the cartels are getting involved in this business, working with associates north of the border to sell the oil to American companies at huge markups.
In 2009 a federal court convicted an American businessman of helping to funnel $2 million in petroleum products stolen from Pemex by a Mexican cartel, eventually selling it to a Texas chemical plant owned by the German chemical company BASF. The chemical company claims never to have known where the products came from.
Cartels are also moving into the market in pirated goods in Latin America. The market used to be dominated by terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, who operated in the triborder area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Now the field is being overtaken by Mexican cartels, which already have so much control over the sale of pirated CDs, DVDs and software that many legitimate companies no longer even bother to distribute their full-price products in parts of Mexico.
Taking another page from traditional organized crime, cartels are also moving into extortion. A cartel representative will approach the owner of a business — whether a pharmacy or a taco stand — demanding a monthly stipend for “protection.” If those payments aren’t made on time, the business is often burned to the ground, or the owner is threatened, kidnapped or killed.
A popular cartel racket involves branded products. For example, a cartel member — most often from Los Zetas and La Familia Michoacana, two of the largest and most diversified cartels — will tell a music-store owner that he has to sell CDs with the Zetas logo stamped on them, with the cartel taking a 25 percent cut of the profits. Noncompliance isn’t an option.
With so many lines of business, it’s unlikely that Mexican cartels would close up shop in the event of legalization, even if it meant a serious drop in profits from their most successful product. Cartels are economic entities, and like any legitimate company the best are able to adapt in the face of a changing market.
This is not to say that drug legalization shouldn’t be considered for other reasons. We need to stop viewing casual users as criminals, and we need to treat addicts as people with health and emotional problems. Doing so would free up a significant amount of jail space, court time and law enforcement resources. What it won’t do, though, is stop the violence in Mexico.
Sylvia Longmire, a former officer and investigative special agent in the Air Force, is the author of the forthcoming book “Cartel: The Coming Invasion of Mexico’s Drug Wars.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/opini ... emc=tha212
July 4, 2011
Brazil’s Giddy Convergence
By ROGER COHEN
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL — Tom Jobim is famous for having written “Girl from Ipanema,” the sensuous, playful anthem of a sensuous, playful land. He’s almost equally famous for having said, “Brazil is not for amateurs.”
I lived a quarter-century ago in that Brazil where if you didn’t have the “jeitinho,” or insider’s knack for circumventing rules, you were toast. It was a Brazil of hyperinflation and runaway violence that mocked the words on the national flag: “Order and Progress.” I went down to the city morgue one day, researching a story about poor kids who “surfed” the tops of trains for kicks, and an official idly lifted the lid of a garbage can in which a young man’s body was twisted like a corkscrew. I asked what had happened. He said he’d been murdered by fellow inmates at a prison and stuffed in there.
No, Brazil was not for amateurs.
Today, in the Brazil of the “Ms. Continuity” leader, President Dilma Rousseff, I’m not so sure. Certainly a lot of people suddenly fancy themselves as Brazil pros.
They’re piling in. They want a piece of the action in the big South American nation that posted 7.5 percent growth last year. Oil discoveries, a commodities boom, sound economic management, political stability, the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016 have combined to produce a Brazil fever that feels a touch heady to me.
In Leblon, the area adjacent to Ipanema where I used to live, apartment prices have quadrupled in a year. Sotheby’s International Realty is expecting a quadrupling of real estate sales this year, according to O Globo newspaper. The big price hikes reflect growing interest among foreigners, especially Europeans and Chinese who see opportunity ahead of the two big sporting events.
Take your pick of the head-turning figures. There were 12 new Brazilian billionaires on this year’s Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people. Foreign direct investment has grown at a compound rate of 26 percent over the past five years and reached close to $48.5 billion in 2010. Consumer credit is taking off. In a land where loans were long hard to get, the net stock of credit increased 21 percent in the past year. Streets are clogged with cars, restaurants full.
A bubble in the making? It’s possible. But Brazilian banks have generally proved prudent, and macroeconomic policies now have a steady track record over three presidencies, one that has contrived to ease the worst extremes of poverty while satisfying international investors eager to put capital behind Brazil’s rapid emergence.
A new buzzword in economic circles is “convergence,” the process by which the developing economies in which five billion people live (194 million of them in Brazil) are closing the gap on developed economies more than 150 years after the Industrial Revolution first opened the gulf. To arrive in Brazil these days from the United States or Europe is to feel the world turned on its head.
Breathless optimism replaces economic gloom. A new $22 billion high-speed train will link Rio and São Paulo. People believe their kids are going to live better than they do. Brazilians talk to the Indians and to the Chinese about investments; they feel the old powers are becoming marginal to the 21st century. China alone has invested $37.1 billion in Brazil since 2003, mainly in mining and oil.
What you think of convergence depends on where you sit. I’d say it’s a good thing — a lot of people are going to live a lot better before too long — but also very disruptive. Brazilians and Indians and Chinese and Indonesians and South Africans do better in part because, thanks to technology, they can do what were once U.S. or European jobs just as efficiently. Their gain is linked in some measure to American and European pain.
I talked here to an executive of a major international cement company who said it had just divested interests in Portugal in order to make investments of over $1 billion in Brazil. Extrapolate from that trend and you see the developed world’s huge economic challenge. Convergence will also place huge strains on the environment and resources — hence those Chinese investments in oil and iron ore.
For now, emergent powers and the developed nations talk more past each other than to each other. Institutions lag a changed world just as the infrastructure of these emergent powers lags the speed at which millions of people are joining the market. Indeed, lack of adequate infrastructure and lack of education are two of the main brakes on countries like Brazil.
I’m bullish on Brazil, but some of the new “pros” are going to get burned. Brazil remains a country of violent inequality. A few days ago a French tourist, Charles Damien Pierson, fell off the tram in Rio at the Lapa viaduct, slipped between a badly installed fence and the bridge, and tumbled to his death. Before the police got there, his wallet was stolen by kids.
Convergence will continue — and in time separate the real pros from the amateurs in the new global economy.
You can follow Roger Cohen on Twitter at twitter.com/nytimescohen .
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opini ... emc=tha212
Brazil’s Giddy Convergence
By ROGER COHEN
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL — Tom Jobim is famous for having written “Girl from Ipanema,” the sensuous, playful anthem of a sensuous, playful land. He’s almost equally famous for having said, “Brazil is not for amateurs.”
I lived a quarter-century ago in that Brazil where if you didn’t have the “jeitinho,” or insider’s knack for circumventing rules, you were toast. It was a Brazil of hyperinflation and runaway violence that mocked the words on the national flag: “Order and Progress.” I went down to the city morgue one day, researching a story about poor kids who “surfed” the tops of trains for kicks, and an official idly lifted the lid of a garbage can in which a young man’s body was twisted like a corkscrew. I asked what had happened. He said he’d been murdered by fellow inmates at a prison and stuffed in there.
No, Brazil was not for amateurs.
Today, in the Brazil of the “Ms. Continuity” leader, President Dilma Rousseff, I’m not so sure. Certainly a lot of people suddenly fancy themselves as Brazil pros.
They’re piling in. They want a piece of the action in the big South American nation that posted 7.5 percent growth last year. Oil discoveries, a commodities boom, sound economic management, political stability, the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016 have combined to produce a Brazil fever that feels a touch heady to me.
In Leblon, the area adjacent to Ipanema where I used to live, apartment prices have quadrupled in a year. Sotheby’s International Realty is expecting a quadrupling of real estate sales this year, according to O Globo newspaper. The big price hikes reflect growing interest among foreigners, especially Europeans and Chinese who see opportunity ahead of the two big sporting events.
Take your pick of the head-turning figures. There were 12 new Brazilian billionaires on this year’s Forbes list of the world’s wealthiest people. Foreign direct investment has grown at a compound rate of 26 percent over the past five years and reached close to $48.5 billion in 2010. Consumer credit is taking off. In a land where loans were long hard to get, the net stock of credit increased 21 percent in the past year. Streets are clogged with cars, restaurants full.
A bubble in the making? It’s possible. But Brazilian banks have generally proved prudent, and macroeconomic policies now have a steady track record over three presidencies, one that has contrived to ease the worst extremes of poverty while satisfying international investors eager to put capital behind Brazil’s rapid emergence.
A new buzzword in economic circles is “convergence,” the process by which the developing economies in which five billion people live (194 million of them in Brazil) are closing the gap on developed economies more than 150 years after the Industrial Revolution first opened the gulf. To arrive in Brazil these days from the United States or Europe is to feel the world turned on its head.
Breathless optimism replaces economic gloom. A new $22 billion high-speed train will link Rio and São Paulo. People believe their kids are going to live better than they do. Brazilians talk to the Indians and to the Chinese about investments; they feel the old powers are becoming marginal to the 21st century. China alone has invested $37.1 billion in Brazil since 2003, mainly in mining and oil.
What you think of convergence depends on where you sit. I’d say it’s a good thing — a lot of people are going to live a lot better before too long — but also very disruptive. Brazilians and Indians and Chinese and Indonesians and South Africans do better in part because, thanks to technology, they can do what were once U.S. or European jobs just as efficiently. Their gain is linked in some measure to American and European pain.
I talked here to an executive of a major international cement company who said it had just divested interests in Portugal in order to make investments of over $1 billion in Brazil. Extrapolate from that trend and you see the developed world’s huge economic challenge. Convergence will also place huge strains on the environment and resources — hence those Chinese investments in oil and iron ore.
For now, emergent powers and the developed nations talk more past each other than to each other. Institutions lag a changed world just as the infrastructure of these emergent powers lags the speed at which millions of people are joining the market. Indeed, lack of adequate infrastructure and lack of education are two of the main brakes on countries like Brazil.
I’m bullish on Brazil, but some of the new “pros” are going to get burned. Brazil remains a country of violent inequality. A few days ago a French tourist, Charles Damien Pierson, fell off the tram in Rio at the Lapa viaduct, slipped between a badly installed fence and the bridge, and tumbled to his death. Before the police got there, his wallet was stolen by kids.
Convergence will continue — and in time separate the real pros from the amateurs in the new global economy.
You can follow Roger Cohen on Twitter at twitter.com/nytimescohen .
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opini ... emc=tha212
Better Lives for Mexicans Cut Allure of Going North
Economic, demographic and social changes in Mexico are suppressing illegal immigration as much as the poor economy or legal crackdowns in the United States.
AGUA NEGRA, Mexico — The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive.
A growing body of evidence suggests that a mix of developments — expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families — are suppressing illegal traffic as much as economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the United States.
Here in the red-earth highlands of Jalisco, one of Mexico’s top three states for emigration over the past century, a new dynamic has emerged. For a typical rural family like the Orozcos, heading to El Norte without papers is no longer an inevitable rite of passage. Instead, their homes are filling up with returning relatives; older brothers who once crossed illegally are awaiting visas; and the youngest Orozcos are staying put.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011 ... &emc=tha22
Economic, demographic and social changes in Mexico are suppressing illegal immigration as much as the poor economy or legal crackdowns in the United States.
AGUA NEGRA, Mexico — The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive.
A growing body of evidence suggests that a mix of developments — expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families — are suppressing illegal traffic as much as economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the United States.
Here in the red-earth highlands of Jalisco, one of Mexico’s top three states for emigration over the past century, a new dynamic has emerged. For a typical rural family like the Orozcos, heading to El Norte without papers is no longer an inevitable rite of passage. Instead, their homes are filling up with returning relatives; older brothers who once crossed illegally are awaiting visas; and the youngest Orozcos are staying put.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011 ... &emc=tha22
Pope Francis’ Visit to Latin America Will Test His Ability to Keep Catholics in the Fold
By WILLIAM NEUMANJULY 4, 2015
QUITO, Ecuador — Pope Francis has turned heads with bold stands on climate change and income inequality. He helped broker a historic thaw between the United States and Cuba. He has shaken up the stodgy brand of the Roman Catholic Church.
But for all his forays into international diplomacy and deftness at image-making, his trip to South America, which begins Sunday, will test his skills in what could be a much more difficult task: putting parishioners in pews and keeping them there.
When Francis was named pope in March 2013, becoming the first pontiff from Latin America, he was hailed by many as the kind of figure long needed by the Catholic Church to appeal to its vast base in poorer countries.
His selection signaled how vital the developing world is to the church’s future and offered a way to reverse its erosion in Latin America, a region that holds almost 40 percent of the world’s Catholics but has experienced a steady rise in secularism and competing branches of Christianity.
At the very least, the change of tone — by a pope who champions the poor and eschews many of the luxurious trappings of his office, and even poses for selfies with followers — has raised the hopes of many churchgoers.
“Before Pope Francis, the Catholic Church was out of reach,” said Rosario Zuñiga, a volunteer at a church here who credited Francis with “a new, more human” approach. “He has touched on very sensitive subjects about the attitude of the church regarding its own mistakes, like sex abuse.”
But whether a change of image at the top will be followed by results on the ground remains a pressing question around the region.
In Argentina, Francis’ native country, the director of a Catholic association said that while the pope had personally ignited excitement and interest, attendance at church services and the number of Catholic marriages had barely increased.
“There is an asymmetry,” said the director, Justo Carbajales, 56, a cardiologist. “Argentines have strengthened ties with the figure of the pope, but still not at all with the church.”
Here in the capital of Ecuador, where the pope will begin his visit to Latin America, Archbishop Fausto Trávez acknowledged concern over what he called the church’s decline in recent decades, including a dwindling number of priests.
But he said he thought that the pope’s influence could be seen through increased attendance at Mass, increased collections and a recent rise in the number of seminary students studying to become priests.
A billboard displayed in La Paz, Bolivia, on Friday promoted Pope Francis’ visit. Across the region, rival Christian groups and secularism are eroding the sway of the Catholic Church. Credit Juan Karita/Associated Press
“With everything that he says about the poor and about justice,” Archbishop Trávez said of Francis, “the young people become motivated.” He added that many had entered seminary “because the pope is doing things that they would like to do.”
Latin America and the Caribbean have 425 million Catholics, 39 percent of the world’s total, according to the Pew Research Center. But like a multinational corporation facing slumping sales, falling market share, rising competition and a fatigued brand, the church is vulnerable.
As recently as the early 1970s, at least 90 percent of Latin Americans were Catholic. But that number began to fall as Protestant churches grew. In a survey published in November by the Pew Center, 69 percent of adults in Latin America identified as Catholic.
What was once a gradual shift has become a flood, with Catholics now a minority in Uruguay and Honduras, and at just 50 percent in some other countries, according to the survey, which was based on more than 30,000 face-to-face interviews in 18 countries and Puerto Rico. In Brazil, the country with the world’s largest Catholic population, 61 percent of adults now identify as Catholic, the survey found, but 81 percent said they had been raised Catholic.
That is the landscape Francis will face on his first trip as pope to Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, with visits to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay.
“It’s a free market of faith in Latin America,” said Andrew Chesnut, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who was a consultant on the Pew survey. “The Catholic monopoly they had for four centuries is over.”
Just months after becoming pope, Francis attended celebrations of the church’s World Youth Day in Brazil. Now, more than two years into his papacy, he returns to the continent of his birth with a message of a church in transformation, having established himself globally as a figure able to provoke both fascination and controversy.
The Vatican said the pope appeared to have delivered a boost to the church, but also said it had no way to measure.
“We have recently observed widespread enthusiasm for the pope and an interest for the church that has been awakened in many countries in the world, including Latin America,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesman. “But we don’t have statistics or more precise data on this.”
Here in Latin America, the pope’s influence has extended beyond the religious sphere.
He played a role last year in secret negotiations between the United States and Cuba to restore full diplomatic relations after more than 50 years of hostility, writing letters to encourage the deal and then arranging for a Vatican meeting between the two sides. President Raúl Castro of Cuba met with Francis in May and even declared that he might consider returning to the church.
In Venezuela last year, President Nicolás Maduro, a leftist whose predecessor, Hugo Chávez, had testy relations with the church, has praised Francis, noting his advocacy for the poor. The shift allowed the Vatican’s ambassador to foster dialogue between the government and the opposition last year.
In Colombia, officials have talked about their hopes for a visit from Francis next year, as possible help in efforts to end more than 50 years of guerrilla war.
In Argentina, where Francis, as archbishop of Buenos Aires, had strained relations with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, he has mended fences and is often seen as a stabilizing influence for the country.
And in a particularly notable moment for the region, Francis this year cleared the way for the beatification of Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador, a defender of the poor who was assassinated in 1980 and is already regarded as a saint by many.
Nonetheless, the church faces numerous challenges. Many Catholics have left the church for Protestant congregations, especially Pentecostal churches.
Increasing numbers of people who were raised Catholic say that they are no longer associated with any church, especially in countries like Uruguay, Chile and Argentina.
The church has also been hurt by revelations of sexual abuse of children by priests. Francis has spoken out strongly on the topic, and he recently approved the creation of a tribunal to judge bishops accused of covering up or ignoring cases of sexual abuse. But in Chile, he has been fiercely criticized for naming as bishop a priest who was closely associated with a cleric at the center of a notorious sexual abuse scandal.
Although the countries that Francis will visit share in these regional trends, they have generally seen a more limited shift away from the Catholic Church, according to the Pew survey.
Paraguay registered the highest percentage of adults who identified as Catholics, at 89 percent. And both Paraguay and Ecuador have a relatively high percentage of Catholics who say that they practice a “charismatic” form of Catholicism — which sometimes includes jumping up and raising hands during services, or speaking in tongues — a phenomenon that has developed in recent years in response to the rise of Pentecostalism.
The three countries are also among the poorest and smallest in South America, making the pope’s visit in keeping with his focus on helping the poor and ministering to those on the periphery. And all three, particularly Bolivia, have large indigenous populations, which the church is losing.
“If there’s any one sector of Latin American society who have most abandoned the Catholic Church, it’s been the indigenous population,” Professor Chesnut said.
He said Pentecostal churches had been quick to employ indigenous ministers in countries like Guatemala and Bolivia, “whereas you could count, in many of these countries, the number of indigenous Catholic priests on two hands.”
The pope will preside over several Masses expected to draw hundreds of thousands of worshipers, and some will include texts in indigenous languages.
Still, the gap is hard to close. Archbishop Trávez said that although some seminary students in his archdiocese came from indigenous families, none of them speak their native languages.
As for the visit by Francis, Archbishop Trávez said, “I think that there are lots of people who realize that the pope is coming to rescue the lost sheep.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/world ... 05309&_r=0
By WILLIAM NEUMANJULY 4, 2015
QUITO, Ecuador — Pope Francis has turned heads with bold stands on climate change and income inequality. He helped broker a historic thaw between the United States and Cuba. He has shaken up the stodgy brand of the Roman Catholic Church.
But for all his forays into international diplomacy and deftness at image-making, his trip to South America, which begins Sunday, will test his skills in what could be a much more difficult task: putting parishioners in pews and keeping them there.
When Francis was named pope in March 2013, becoming the first pontiff from Latin America, he was hailed by many as the kind of figure long needed by the Catholic Church to appeal to its vast base in poorer countries.
His selection signaled how vital the developing world is to the church’s future and offered a way to reverse its erosion in Latin America, a region that holds almost 40 percent of the world’s Catholics but has experienced a steady rise in secularism and competing branches of Christianity.
At the very least, the change of tone — by a pope who champions the poor and eschews many of the luxurious trappings of his office, and even poses for selfies with followers — has raised the hopes of many churchgoers.
“Before Pope Francis, the Catholic Church was out of reach,” said Rosario Zuñiga, a volunteer at a church here who credited Francis with “a new, more human” approach. “He has touched on very sensitive subjects about the attitude of the church regarding its own mistakes, like sex abuse.”
But whether a change of image at the top will be followed by results on the ground remains a pressing question around the region.
In Argentina, Francis’ native country, the director of a Catholic association said that while the pope had personally ignited excitement and interest, attendance at church services and the number of Catholic marriages had barely increased.
“There is an asymmetry,” said the director, Justo Carbajales, 56, a cardiologist. “Argentines have strengthened ties with the figure of the pope, but still not at all with the church.”
Here in the capital of Ecuador, where the pope will begin his visit to Latin America, Archbishop Fausto Trávez acknowledged concern over what he called the church’s decline in recent decades, including a dwindling number of priests.
But he said he thought that the pope’s influence could be seen through increased attendance at Mass, increased collections and a recent rise in the number of seminary students studying to become priests.
A billboard displayed in La Paz, Bolivia, on Friday promoted Pope Francis’ visit. Across the region, rival Christian groups and secularism are eroding the sway of the Catholic Church. Credit Juan Karita/Associated Press
“With everything that he says about the poor and about justice,” Archbishop Trávez said of Francis, “the young people become motivated.” He added that many had entered seminary “because the pope is doing things that they would like to do.”
Latin America and the Caribbean have 425 million Catholics, 39 percent of the world’s total, according to the Pew Research Center. But like a multinational corporation facing slumping sales, falling market share, rising competition and a fatigued brand, the church is vulnerable.
As recently as the early 1970s, at least 90 percent of Latin Americans were Catholic. But that number began to fall as Protestant churches grew. In a survey published in November by the Pew Center, 69 percent of adults in Latin America identified as Catholic.
What was once a gradual shift has become a flood, with Catholics now a minority in Uruguay and Honduras, and at just 50 percent in some other countries, according to the survey, which was based on more than 30,000 face-to-face interviews in 18 countries and Puerto Rico. In Brazil, the country with the world’s largest Catholic population, 61 percent of adults now identify as Catholic, the survey found, but 81 percent said they had been raised Catholic.
That is the landscape Francis will face on his first trip as pope to Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, with visits to Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay.
“It’s a free market of faith in Latin America,” said Andrew Chesnut, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who was a consultant on the Pew survey. “The Catholic monopoly they had for four centuries is over.”
Just months after becoming pope, Francis attended celebrations of the church’s World Youth Day in Brazil. Now, more than two years into his papacy, he returns to the continent of his birth with a message of a church in transformation, having established himself globally as a figure able to provoke both fascination and controversy.
The Vatican said the pope appeared to have delivered a boost to the church, but also said it had no way to measure.
“We have recently observed widespread enthusiasm for the pope and an interest for the church that has been awakened in many countries in the world, including Latin America,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s spokesman. “But we don’t have statistics or more precise data on this.”
Here in Latin America, the pope’s influence has extended beyond the religious sphere.
He played a role last year in secret negotiations between the United States and Cuba to restore full diplomatic relations after more than 50 years of hostility, writing letters to encourage the deal and then arranging for a Vatican meeting between the two sides. President Raúl Castro of Cuba met with Francis in May and even declared that he might consider returning to the church.
In Venezuela last year, President Nicolás Maduro, a leftist whose predecessor, Hugo Chávez, had testy relations with the church, has praised Francis, noting his advocacy for the poor. The shift allowed the Vatican’s ambassador to foster dialogue between the government and the opposition last year.
In Colombia, officials have talked about their hopes for a visit from Francis next year, as possible help in efforts to end more than 50 years of guerrilla war.
In Argentina, where Francis, as archbishop of Buenos Aires, had strained relations with President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, he has mended fences and is often seen as a stabilizing influence for the country.
And in a particularly notable moment for the region, Francis this year cleared the way for the beatification of Archbishop Óscar Romero of El Salvador, a defender of the poor who was assassinated in 1980 and is already regarded as a saint by many.
Nonetheless, the church faces numerous challenges. Many Catholics have left the church for Protestant congregations, especially Pentecostal churches.
Increasing numbers of people who were raised Catholic say that they are no longer associated with any church, especially in countries like Uruguay, Chile and Argentina.
The church has also been hurt by revelations of sexual abuse of children by priests. Francis has spoken out strongly on the topic, and he recently approved the creation of a tribunal to judge bishops accused of covering up or ignoring cases of sexual abuse. But in Chile, he has been fiercely criticized for naming as bishop a priest who was closely associated with a cleric at the center of a notorious sexual abuse scandal.
Although the countries that Francis will visit share in these regional trends, they have generally seen a more limited shift away from the Catholic Church, according to the Pew survey.
Paraguay registered the highest percentage of adults who identified as Catholics, at 89 percent. And both Paraguay and Ecuador have a relatively high percentage of Catholics who say that they practice a “charismatic” form of Catholicism — which sometimes includes jumping up and raising hands during services, or speaking in tongues — a phenomenon that has developed in recent years in response to the rise of Pentecostalism.
The three countries are also among the poorest and smallest in South America, making the pope’s visit in keeping with his focus on helping the poor and ministering to those on the periphery. And all three, particularly Bolivia, have large indigenous populations, which the church is losing.
“If there’s any one sector of Latin American society who have most abandoned the Catholic Church, it’s been the indigenous population,” Professor Chesnut said.
He said Pentecostal churches had been quick to employ indigenous ministers in countries like Guatemala and Bolivia, “whereas you could count, in many of these countries, the number of indigenous Catholic priests on two hands.”
The pope will preside over several Masses expected to draw hundreds of thousands of worshipers, and some will include texts in indigenous languages.
Still, the gap is hard to close. Archbishop Trávez said that although some seminary students in his archdiocese came from indigenous families, none of them speak their native languages.
As for the visit by Francis, Archbishop Trávez said, “I think that there are lots of people who realize that the pope is coming to rescue the lost sheep.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/world ... 05309&_r=0
Do the Amazon’s Last Isolated Tribes Have a Future?
HIS name is Shuri, but everyone calls him Epa, which means father in the indigenous Pano language family. His wizened face and bare, gnomish feet are familiar to the villagers who live along the Curanja River, which flows through some of the densest rain forest of Peru’s vast Amazon region.
Most of Epa’s tribe remains deep in the jungle, unclothed, hunting with bows and arrows, picking medicinal plants to ward off illness, and avoiding outsiders. But such isolated peoples can no longer depend on the forest as a refuge. In the past year, throughout the Amazon, they have begun to emerge in settled areas in unpredictable, disturbing and occasionally violent ways, often because of hunger or desperation.
I met Epa at his camp just upstream from the last village, where the unbroken jungle begins. He boasts of his hunting prowess. But he also wears a soccer shirt and nylon shorts and spends time among and near the settled people on the river — indigenous people, only a generation or two removed from forest life, who have welcomed him into their villages.
Last October, the villagers traveled in wooden canoes to vote in local elections. When they returned, one hut had burned to the ground and many of the machetes, clothes, pots and pans, mosquito nets, hammocks and drying fruits and nuts in villages along the river were gone. Epa, who had stayed behind, admitted that he had set fire to the hut, saying it was an accident, but denied any other involvement. Villagers blame his tribe for the raid.
Villagers have spotted the people they call “the nakeds” stealing fruit from orchards. Even the clothes on scarecrows go missing. Some villagers suspect that the mild-mannered Epa is a spy, feeding intelligence to his tribe.
In other parts of the rain forest, violence by and against once-isolated people is suddenly on the rise. In May, just outside the Manú National Park south of the Curanja, a man from the isolated Mashco Piro tribe shot an arrow that killed a 20-year-old indigenous villager. Last year, several members of Peru’s isolated Xinane group waded across a river to seek help at a Brazilian settlement. A few of their relatives, they said, had died when they were attacked, possibly by drug traffickers.
There are other groups living beyond the reach of the global economy, in places like the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean and the mountains of New Guinea. But the planet’s largest and most diverse isolated cultures are centered in the Amazon, primarily in western Brazil and eastern Peru. They lack immunity from many Western diseases, modern weapons to defend themselves from armed intruders like drug smugglers and illegal loggers, and a voice in national politics.
They have good reason to stay hidden. European and African diseases killed tens of millions of Native Americans after Columbus landed. A century ago, thousands were coerced into working for the rubber barons. Even seemingly benevolent outsiders proved angels of death. In the 1950s, a visiting German ethnographer left behind a pathogen that killed some 200 people.
Anthropologists and nongovernmental organizations warn that drug trafficking, logging, mining and petroleum extraction, along with a changing climate, vanishing species and a shrinking forest, put these tribes at risk. Even TV crews searching for “uncontacted” natives pose a threat; according to a 2008 report by a Peruvian anthropologist, one crew that strayed beyond its permitted area has been implicated in the deaths of some 20 native people from flu.
The indigenous people who remain appear to be fighting among themselves for dwindling resources, like turtle eggs and piglike peccaries. Lifting his shirt, Epa showed me a scar on his torso — inflicted during an attack by tribal enemies, he said. He and his two wives and a mother-in-law live part time in their camp, close to a guard post staffed by indigenous people. He said he had avoided having children because he was always on the run.
Brazil and Peru have taken radically different approaches toward isolated peoples. For Brazil, which has pursued the sort of engagement pioneered by late 19th-century missionaries, the Amazon has long been a frontier to be tamed. Officials built small frontier posts in the jungle, planted gardens and let tribes gather the harvest. Enticed into contact, the isolated people would trade ornaments and forest products for metal tools and objects, and be drawn gradually into the labor force.
But abrupt contact with outsiders spread devastating disease and created debilitating dependence. The Nambikwara, for example, were about 5,000 strong around 1900. By the late 1960s, only 550 remained. Anthropologists and Brazilian frontiersmen called sertanistas likened the policy to genocide. One of them, Sydney Possuelo, who went on to head the isolated tribes unit of Funai, the Brazilian agency on indigenous affairs, persuaded the government in the late 1980s to impose a policy of no contact to protect the isolated peoples.
Recently, however, Brazil has slashed funding for Funai. Angry Brazilian anthropologists, indigenous groups and sertanistas cite the Amazonian land rush as the reason. Once land is protected, it cannot be sold to private or public developers. Under President Dilma Rousseff’s leadership, approval of applications to set aside land for indigenous peoples — both isolated and not — has virtually ceased.
Peru, by contrast, has only recently admitted that its isolated peoples even exist. It traditionally looks to the Pacific rather than its rain forest hinterland. Nine out of 10 Peruvians live in the Andes or along the coastal plain, but most of the country’s land is within the Amazon basin. As recently as 2007, Alan García, then the president, dismissed “the figure of the uncontacted native jungle dweller” as a fiction created by zealous environmentalists.
Since then, as evidence of their existence has become impossible to dispute, the government has moved to set up five reserves, covering an area larger than Massachusetts, as safety zones for the tribes, with more planned. But even if a reserve is created and adequately policed, petroleum companies can explore for and extract oil if it is considered in the national interest. “The region has seen massive death of isolated peoples due to contact with oil prospectors,” said the Peruvian anthropologist Beatriz Huertas.
Both nations see the Amazon as a treasure house of oil, timber and gold. Two continentwide projects crossing Brazil and Peru — the $2.8 billion, 1,600-mile Interoceanic Highway and the Chinese-sponsored $10 billion, 3,300-mile Twin Ocean Railroad — will no doubt stimulate both economies, but at a steep cost. The railroad, which China’s premier, Li Keqiang, lobbied for during a May visit to South America, would plow through tropical savanna and thick forest, cutting across Peru’s remote Madre de Dios region, home to hundreds of indigenous communities.
Development can’t be halted, but it can be carried out more intelligently and humanely than what happened in the 19th century in the United States. We know what works. Small frontier posts on rivers can protect reserves from intruders. Immunized health care workers can provide emergency care and snuff out potential epidemics among isolated peoples who emerge for help. Illegal loggers and miners can be prosecuted. Road and railroad construction and oil prospecting can respect the borders of reserves and parks. None require a huge financial investment. They do require an inclusive political approach and an awareness of history.
Last month the Peruvian government announced that it would help a small group of Mashco Piro that has appeared more than 100 times in the past year on the banks of the Madre de Dios River, the same group responsible for the May death of a villager. Tribe members accepting food and clothing from tourists and missionaries are at serious risk of disease and death, and villagers fear more violence. Advocates of isolated peoples are watching closely to see if Peru can ensure the long-term health of the Mashco Piro while protecting their land from outsiders.
Half a millennium after Columbus arrived, we have an opportunity — really one last chance — to avoid repeating the catastrophes endured by so many native peoples in the Americas. This is no longer the 19th century: We have more than enough information. We understand pathogens and can immunize those who might contact isolated peoples. We can acknowledge that some people don’t want to join the global economy. And we can protect them until they are ready to enter the modern mainstream, while extracting the resources that we need. We don’t have to commit another genocide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/opini ... ef=opinion
HIS name is Shuri, but everyone calls him Epa, which means father in the indigenous Pano language family. His wizened face and bare, gnomish feet are familiar to the villagers who live along the Curanja River, which flows through some of the densest rain forest of Peru’s vast Amazon region.
Most of Epa’s tribe remains deep in the jungle, unclothed, hunting with bows and arrows, picking medicinal plants to ward off illness, and avoiding outsiders. But such isolated peoples can no longer depend on the forest as a refuge. In the past year, throughout the Amazon, they have begun to emerge in settled areas in unpredictable, disturbing and occasionally violent ways, often because of hunger or desperation.
I met Epa at his camp just upstream from the last village, where the unbroken jungle begins. He boasts of his hunting prowess. But he also wears a soccer shirt and nylon shorts and spends time among and near the settled people on the river — indigenous people, only a generation or two removed from forest life, who have welcomed him into their villages.
Last October, the villagers traveled in wooden canoes to vote in local elections. When they returned, one hut had burned to the ground and many of the machetes, clothes, pots and pans, mosquito nets, hammocks and drying fruits and nuts in villages along the river were gone. Epa, who had stayed behind, admitted that he had set fire to the hut, saying it was an accident, but denied any other involvement. Villagers blame his tribe for the raid.
Villagers have spotted the people they call “the nakeds” stealing fruit from orchards. Even the clothes on scarecrows go missing. Some villagers suspect that the mild-mannered Epa is a spy, feeding intelligence to his tribe.
In other parts of the rain forest, violence by and against once-isolated people is suddenly on the rise. In May, just outside the Manú National Park south of the Curanja, a man from the isolated Mashco Piro tribe shot an arrow that killed a 20-year-old indigenous villager. Last year, several members of Peru’s isolated Xinane group waded across a river to seek help at a Brazilian settlement. A few of their relatives, they said, had died when they were attacked, possibly by drug traffickers.
There are other groups living beyond the reach of the global economy, in places like the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean and the mountains of New Guinea. But the planet’s largest and most diverse isolated cultures are centered in the Amazon, primarily in western Brazil and eastern Peru. They lack immunity from many Western diseases, modern weapons to defend themselves from armed intruders like drug smugglers and illegal loggers, and a voice in national politics.
They have good reason to stay hidden. European and African diseases killed tens of millions of Native Americans after Columbus landed. A century ago, thousands were coerced into working for the rubber barons. Even seemingly benevolent outsiders proved angels of death. In the 1950s, a visiting German ethnographer left behind a pathogen that killed some 200 people.
Anthropologists and nongovernmental organizations warn that drug trafficking, logging, mining and petroleum extraction, along with a changing climate, vanishing species and a shrinking forest, put these tribes at risk. Even TV crews searching for “uncontacted” natives pose a threat; according to a 2008 report by a Peruvian anthropologist, one crew that strayed beyond its permitted area has been implicated in the deaths of some 20 native people from flu.
The indigenous people who remain appear to be fighting among themselves for dwindling resources, like turtle eggs and piglike peccaries. Lifting his shirt, Epa showed me a scar on his torso — inflicted during an attack by tribal enemies, he said. He and his two wives and a mother-in-law live part time in their camp, close to a guard post staffed by indigenous people. He said he had avoided having children because he was always on the run.
Brazil and Peru have taken radically different approaches toward isolated peoples. For Brazil, which has pursued the sort of engagement pioneered by late 19th-century missionaries, the Amazon has long been a frontier to be tamed. Officials built small frontier posts in the jungle, planted gardens and let tribes gather the harvest. Enticed into contact, the isolated people would trade ornaments and forest products for metal tools and objects, and be drawn gradually into the labor force.
But abrupt contact with outsiders spread devastating disease and created debilitating dependence. The Nambikwara, for example, were about 5,000 strong around 1900. By the late 1960s, only 550 remained. Anthropologists and Brazilian frontiersmen called sertanistas likened the policy to genocide. One of them, Sydney Possuelo, who went on to head the isolated tribes unit of Funai, the Brazilian agency on indigenous affairs, persuaded the government in the late 1980s to impose a policy of no contact to protect the isolated peoples.
Recently, however, Brazil has slashed funding for Funai. Angry Brazilian anthropologists, indigenous groups and sertanistas cite the Amazonian land rush as the reason. Once land is protected, it cannot be sold to private or public developers. Under President Dilma Rousseff’s leadership, approval of applications to set aside land for indigenous peoples — both isolated and not — has virtually ceased.
Peru, by contrast, has only recently admitted that its isolated peoples even exist. It traditionally looks to the Pacific rather than its rain forest hinterland. Nine out of 10 Peruvians live in the Andes or along the coastal plain, but most of the country’s land is within the Amazon basin. As recently as 2007, Alan García, then the president, dismissed “the figure of the uncontacted native jungle dweller” as a fiction created by zealous environmentalists.
Since then, as evidence of their existence has become impossible to dispute, the government has moved to set up five reserves, covering an area larger than Massachusetts, as safety zones for the tribes, with more planned. But even if a reserve is created and adequately policed, petroleum companies can explore for and extract oil if it is considered in the national interest. “The region has seen massive death of isolated peoples due to contact with oil prospectors,” said the Peruvian anthropologist Beatriz Huertas.
Both nations see the Amazon as a treasure house of oil, timber and gold. Two continentwide projects crossing Brazil and Peru — the $2.8 billion, 1,600-mile Interoceanic Highway and the Chinese-sponsored $10 billion, 3,300-mile Twin Ocean Railroad — will no doubt stimulate both economies, but at a steep cost. The railroad, which China’s premier, Li Keqiang, lobbied for during a May visit to South America, would plow through tropical savanna and thick forest, cutting across Peru’s remote Madre de Dios region, home to hundreds of indigenous communities.
Development can’t be halted, but it can be carried out more intelligently and humanely than what happened in the 19th century in the United States. We know what works. Small frontier posts on rivers can protect reserves from intruders. Immunized health care workers can provide emergency care and snuff out potential epidemics among isolated peoples who emerge for help. Illegal loggers and miners can be prosecuted. Road and railroad construction and oil prospecting can respect the borders of reserves and parks. None require a huge financial investment. They do require an inclusive political approach and an awareness of history.
Last month the Peruvian government announced that it would help a small group of Mashco Piro that has appeared more than 100 times in the past year on the banks of the Madre de Dios River, the same group responsible for the May death of a villager. Tribe members accepting food and clothing from tourists and missionaries are at serious risk of disease and death, and villagers fear more violence. Advocates of isolated peoples are watching closely to see if Peru can ensure the long-term health of the Mashco Piro while protecting their land from outsiders.
Half a millennium after Columbus arrived, we have an opportunity — really one last chance — to avoid repeating the catastrophes endured by so many native peoples in the Americas. This is no longer the 19th century: We have more than enough information. We understand pathogens and can immunize those who might contact isolated peoples. We can acknowledge that some people don’t want to join the global economy. And we can protect them until they are ready to enter the modern mainstream, while extracting the resources that we need. We don’t have to commit another genocide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/09/opini ... ef=opinion
Young Hands in Mexico Feed Growing U.S. Demand for Heroin
EL CALVARIO, Mexico — With her nimble hands, tiny feet and low center of gravity, Angelica Guerrero Ortega makes an excellent opium harvester.
Deployed along the Sierra Madre del Sur, where a record poppy crop covers the mountainsides in strokes of green, pink and purple, she navigates the inclines with the deftness of a ballerina.
Though shy, she perks up when describing her craft: the delicate slits to the bulb, the patient scraping of the gum, earning in one day more than her parents do in a week.
That she is only 15 is not so important for the people of her tiny mountain hamlet. If she and her classmates miss school for the harvest, so be it. In a landscape of fallow opportunities, income outweighs education.
“It is the best option for us,” Angelica said, leaning against a wood-plank house in her village, where nearly all of the children work the fields. “Back down in the city, there is nothing for us, no opportunities.”
As heroin addiction soars in the United States, a boom is underway south of the border, reflecting the two nations’ troubled symbiosis. Officials from both countries say that Mexican opium production increased by an estimated 50 percent in 2014 alone, the result of a voracious American appetite, impoverished farmers in Mexico and entrepreneurial drug cartels that straddle the border.
Photo
Angelica Guerrero Ortega, 15, left, with her brother in the village of Calvario, is among the children who make excellent opium harvesters on mountainside fields.Credit Rodrigo Cruz for The New York Times
Abusers of prescription pharmaceuticals in America are looking for cheaper highs, as a crackdown on painkiller abuse has made the habit highly expensive. And the legalization of marijuana in some states has pushed down prices, leading many Mexican farmers to switch crops. Cartels, meanwhile, have adapted, edging into American markets once reserved for higher quality heroin from Southeast Asia while pressing out of urban centers into suburbs and rural communities.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/world ... 05309&_r=0
EL CALVARIO, Mexico — With her nimble hands, tiny feet and low center of gravity, Angelica Guerrero Ortega makes an excellent opium harvester.
Deployed along the Sierra Madre del Sur, where a record poppy crop covers the mountainsides in strokes of green, pink and purple, she navigates the inclines with the deftness of a ballerina.
Though shy, she perks up when describing her craft: the delicate slits to the bulb, the patient scraping of the gum, earning in one day more than her parents do in a week.
That she is only 15 is not so important for the people of her tiny mountain hamlet. If she and her classmates miss school for the harvest, so be it. In a landscape of fallow opportunities, income outweighs education.
“It is the best option for us,” Angelica said, leaning against a wood-plank house in her village, where nearly all of the children work the fields. “Back down in the city, there is nothing for us, no opportunities.”
As heroin addiction soars in the United States, a boom is underway south of the border, reflecting the two nations’ troubled symbiosis. Officials from both countries say that Mexican opium production increased by an estimated 50 percent in 2014 alone, the result of a voracious American appetite, impoverished farmers in Mexico and entrepreneurial drug cartels that straddle the border.
Photo
Angelica Guerrero Ortega, 15, left, with her brother in the village of Calvario, is among the children who make excellent opium harvesters on mountainside fields.Credit Rodrigo Cruz for The New York Times
Abusers of prescription pharmaceuticals in America are looking for cheaper highs, as a crackdown on painkiller abuse has made the habit highly expensive. And the legalization of marijuana in some states has pushed down prices, leading many Mexican farmers to switch crops. Cartels, meanwhile, have adapted, edging into American markets once reserved for higher quality heroin from Southeast Asia while pressing out of urban centers into suburbs and rural communities.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/world ... 05309&_r=0
Ruling in Mexico Sets Into Motion Legal Marijuana
The Mexican Supreme Court opened the door to legalizing marijuana on Wednesday, delivering a pointed challenge to the nation’s strict substance abuse laws and adding its weight to the growing debate in Latin America over the costs and consequences of the war against drugs.
The vote by the court’s criminal chamber declared that individuals should have the right to grow and distribute marijuana for their personal use. While the ruling does not strike down current drug laws, it lays the groundwork for a wave of legal actions that could ultimately rewrite them, proponents of legalization say.
The decision reflects a changing dynamic in Mexico, where for decades the American-backed antidrug campaign has produced much upheaval but few lasting victories. Today, the flow of drugs to the United States continues, along with the political corruption it fuels in Mexico. The country, dispirited by the ceaseless campaign against traffickers, remains engulfed in violence.
The marijuana case has ignited a debate about the effectiveness of imprisoning drug users in a country with some of the most conservative drug laws in Latin America. But across the region, a growing number of voices are questioning Washington’s strategy in the drug war. With little to show for tough-on-crime policies, the balance appears to be slowly shifting toward other approaches.
Uruguay enacted a law in 2013 to legalize marijuana, though the creation of a legal marijuana industry in the small country has unfolded slowly. Chile gathered its first harvest of medical marijuana this year. In Brazil, the Supreme Court recently debated the decriminalization of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs. And Bolivia allows traditional uses of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.
Many leaders in Latin America have called for a shift in policy, including President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia. In May, his government ordered a halt to the aerial spraying of illegal coca fields, rejecting a major tool in the American-backed antidrug campaign because of concerns that the herbicide spray causes cancer.
Though Mr. Santos is one of Washington’s closest allies in the region, he has pointed out the incongruity of jailing poor farmers for growing marijuana while it is slowly being decriminalized in the United States.
“Every country in the world signed up to a treaty that prescribed a prohibitionist and criminalized approach to dealing with drugs that was one-sided,” said John Walsh, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. “That basic response doesn’t work anymore.”
Mexicans seeking a new strategy have also been struck by the situation. “We are killing ourselves to stop the production of something that is heading to the U.S., where it’s legal,” said Armando Santacruz, another plaintiff in the case.
Still, few think that legalizing marijuana will significantly reduce drug violence or weaken the gangs.
Although the rising production of higher-quality marijuana in the United States reduces demand for Mexican imports, experts say that Mexican gangs continue to account for an important percentage of the American supply.
As it stands, marijuana accounts for more than a fifth of revenues generated by cartels, around $1.5 billion a year, according to a 2010 report by the RAND Corporation.
The one thing that could significantly affect the cartels’ marijuana business is legislation in the United States. As marijuana growing for commercial purposes in America expands, demand for Mexican marijuana could eventually dry up.
Pro-marijuana activists have scored a remarkable string of election wins in recent years even though the drug remains illegal under federal law. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have passed laws permitting medical marijuana, and four states also allow recreational use by adults.
“In the long run, as the U.S. legalizes marijuana, Mexico is going to have a tough time competing with lawful American suppliers,” Mr. Walsh said. “That doesn’t mean they won’t have a business plan, it’s just that marijuana will be removed from it.”
Marijuana is just one of many sources of income for the cartels, which smuggle narcotics across the border to the United States and run kidnapping and extortion rings at home. The criminal infrastructure will persist whether or not marijuana use is legal.
The move by the Mexican Supreme Court's criminal chamber lays the groundwork for a wave of legal actions that could rewrite the nation's drug laws.
With little to show after years of tough-on-crime policies, countries in the Western Hemisphere have enacted laws allowing some marijuana use.
Uruguay, Chile and more than 20 states in the U.S. have passed laws allowing medical or recreational use.
The rate of marijuana use in Mexico is low and most Mexicans oppose legalization. The U.S. is the main market for marijuana grown there.
The trade is controlled by violent criminal gangs who also make money from other drugs, kidnapping and extortion.
Experts say legalizing marijuana would do little to diminish their power.
“The existing laws don’t reduce violence, either,” said Catalina Pérez Correa González, a law professor at CIDE, a university in Mexico City.
The legal ruling on Wednesday barely referred to the bloody backdrop of the drug war. Instead, Justice Arturo Zaldívar wrote an 88-page opinion based on principles of human rights, arguing that the state recognizes an individual’s autonomy to engage in recreational activities that do not harm others.
The number of marijuana users in Mexico is believed to be small. One 2011 drug-use survey estimated that 2 percent of Mexicans had smoked marijuana in the past year. Although that figure is probably low, it is less than the 7.5 percent of people in the United States who said in a 2013 survey that they had used marijuana in the previous month.
If Mexicans are allowed to grow and consume their own marijuana, casual users will not have to commit a crime to obtain it. Now, marijuana users are currently vulnerable to extortion by the police and are locked up by the thousands every year on charges of consumption and possession.
“There is an enormous institutional and social cost to enforcing the laws against marijuana,” said Ms. Pérez Correa, whose surveys of state and federal prisons suggest that 60 percent of the inmates sentenced for drug crimes were convicted in cases involving marijuana. “How many resources are being used up to reduce these low-impact crimes?”
The ruling on Wednesday was the culmination of an effort to change the law by four members of a prominent Mexican anticrime group, Mexico United Against Crime.
Mr. Torres Landa and Mr. Santacruz formed an alliance with two other people, called the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Consumption — the Spanish acronym is Smart. Their group applied for a license from Mexico’s drug regulatory agency to use marijuana, but, as expected, was turned down. Their appeal of that decision eventually reached the Supreme Court.
Yet the ruling on Wednesday applies only to their petition. For legal marijuana to become the law of the land, the justices in the court’s criminal chamber will have to rule the same way five times, or eight of the 11 members of the full court will have to vote in favor.
If the court decisions continue in that direction, they will be flying in the face of public opinion. Mexicans are so opposed to legalizing marijuana that a leading pollster told the Smart group not to bother with a survey, Mr. Santacruz recalled, or to limit it to young people.
But Adalí Cadena Rosas, 20, a pharmacy worker in Mexico City, bemoaned the decision on Wednesday. “I mean, we already have so many drug addicts,” she said. “This is only going to make things worse.”
On the other hand, Carlos Canchola, 87, a retiree, rejoiced when he learned of the ruling.
“This is great news,” he said. “People like me will be able to acquire it for rheumatism.”
President Enrique Peña Nieto said his government would respect the Supreme Court’s decision, but his government, legislators and security and health officials all oppose legalization, as does the Roman Catholic Church.
Mr. Santacruz is determined to change minds. Invoking the specter of Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpin, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, he likes to remind people: “Bad regulation is better than whatever regulation El Chapo and the narcos can provide.”
Reporting was contributed by Paulina Villegas, Simon Romero, Jack Healy and William Neuman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/world ... 87722&_r=0
The Mexican Supreme Court opened the door to legalizing marijuana on Wednesday, delivering a pointed challenge to the nation’s strict substance abuse laws and adding its weight to the growing debate in Latin America over the costs and consequences of the war against drugs.
The vote by the court’s criminal chamber declared that individuals should have the right to grow and distribute marijuana for their personal use. While the ruling does not strike down current drug laws, it lays the groundwork for a wave of legal actions that could ultimately rewrite them, proponents of legalization say.
The decision reflects a changing dynamic in Mexico, where for decades the American-backed antidrug campaign has produced much upheaval but few lasting victories. Today, the flow of drugs to the United States continues, along with the political corruption it fuels in Mexico. The country, dispirited by the ceaseless campaign against traffickers, remains engulfed in violence.
The marijuana case has ignited a debate about the effectiveness of imprisoning drug users in a country with some of the most conservative drug laws in Latin America. But across the region, a growing number of voices are questioning Washington’s strategy in the drug war. With little to show for tough-on-crime policies, the balance appears to be slowly shifting toward other approaches.
Uruguay enacted a law in 2013 to legalize marijuana, though the creation of a legal marijuana industry in the small country has unfolded slowly. Chile gathered its first harvest of medical marijuana this year. In Brazil, the Supreme Court recently debated the decriminalization of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs. And Bolivia allows traditional uses of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.
Many leaders in Latin America have called for a shift in policy, including President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia. In May, his government ordered a halt to the aerial spraying of illegal coca fields, rejecting a major tool in the American-backed antidrug campaign because of concerns that the herbicide spray causes cancer.
Though Mr. Santos is one of Washington’s closest allies in the region, he has pointed out the incongruity of jailing poor farmers for growing marijuana while it is slowly being decriminalized in the United States.
“Every country in the world signed up to a treaty that prescribed a prohibitionist and criminalized approach to dealing with drugs that was one-sided,” said John Walsh, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights group. “That basic response doesn’t work anymore.”
Mexicans seeking a new strategy have also been struck by the situation. “We are killing ourselves to stop the production of something that is heading to the U.S., where it’s legal,” said Armando Santacruz, another plaintiff in the case.
Still, few think that legalizing marijuana will significantly reduce drug violence or weaken the gangs.
Although the rising production of higher-quality marijuana in the United States reduces demand for Mexican imports, experts say that Mexican gangs continue to account for an important percentage of the American supply.
As it stands, marijuana accounts for more than a fifth of revenues generated by cartels, around $1.5 billion a year, according to a 2010 report by the RAND Corporation.
The one thing that could significantly affect the cartels’ marijuana business is legislation in the United States. As marijuana growing for commercial purposes in America expands, demand for Mexican marijuana could eventually dry up.
Pro-marijuana activists have scored a remarkable string of election wins in recent years even though the drug remains illegal under federal law. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have passed laws permitting medical marijuana, and four states also allow recreational use by adults.
“In the long run, as the U.S. legalizes marijuana, Mexico is going to have a tough time competing with lawful American suppliers,” Mr. Walsh said. “That doesn’t mean they won’t have a business plan, it’s just that marijuana will be removed from it.”
Marijuana is just one of many sources of income for the cartels, which smuggle narcotics across the border to the United States and run kidnapping and extortion rings at home. The criminal infrastructure will persist whether or not marijuana use is legal.
The move by the Mexican Supreme Court's criminal chamber lays the groundwork for a wave of legal actions that could rewrite the nation's drug laws.
With little to show after years of tough-on-crime policies, countries in the Western Hemisphere have enacted laws allowing some marijuana use.
Uruguay, Chile and more than 20 states in the U.S. have passed laws allowing medical or recreational use.
The rate of marijuana use in Mexico is low and most Mexicans oppose legalization. The U.S. is the main market for marijuana grown there.
The trade is controlled by violent criminal gangs who also make money from other drugs, kidnapping and extortion.
Experts say legalizing marijuana would do little to diminish their power.
“The existing laws don’t reduce violence, either,” said Catalina Pérez Correa González, a law professor at CIDE, a university in Mexico City.
The legal ruling on Wednesday barely referred to the bloody backdrop of the drug war. Instead, Justice Arturo Zaldívar wrote an 88-page opinion based on principles of human rights, arguing that the state recognizes an individual’s autonomy to engage in recreational activities that do not harm others.
The number of marijuana users in Mexico is believed to be small. One 2011 drug-use survey estimated that 2 percent of Mexicans had smoked marijuana in the past year. Although that figure is probably low, it is less than the 7.5 percent of people in the United States who said in a 2013 survey that they had used marijuana in the previous month.
If Mexicans are allowed to grow and consume their own marijuana, casual users will not have to commit a crime to obtain it. Now, marijuana users are currently vulnerable to extortion by the police and are locked up by the thousands every year on charges of consumption and possession.
“There is an enormous institutional and social cost to enforcing the laws against marijuana,” said Ms. Pérez Correa, whose surveys of state and federal prisons suggest that 60 percent of the inmates sentenced for drug crimes were convicted in cases involving marijuana. “How many resources are being used up to reduce these low-impact crimes?”
The ruling on Wednesday was the culmination of an effort to change the law by four members of a prominent Mexican anticrime group, Mexico United Against Crime.
Mr. Torres Landa and Mr. Santacruz formed an alliance with two other people, called the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Consumption — the Spanish acronym is Smart. Their group applied for a license from Mexico’s drug regulatory agency to use marijuana, but, as expected, was turned down. Their appeal of that decision eventually reached the Supreme Court.
Yet the ruling on Wednesday applies only to their petition. For legal marijuana to become the law of the land, the justices in the court’s criminal chamber will have to rule the same way five times, or eight of the 11 members of the full court will have to vote in favor.
If the court decisions continue in that direction, they will be flying in the face of public opinion. Mexicans are so opposed to legalizing marijuana that a leading pollster told the Smart group not to bother with a survey, Mr. Santacruz recalled, or to limit it to young people.
But Adalí Cadena Rosas, 20, a pharmacy worker in Mexico City, bemoaned the decision on Wednesday. “I mean, we already have so many drug addicts,” she said. “This is only going to make things worse.”
On the other hand, Carlos Canchola, 87, a retiree, rejoiced when he learned of the ruling.
“This is great news,” he said. “People like me will be able to acquire it for rheumatism.”
President Enrique Peña Nieto said his government would respect the Supreme Court’s decision, but his government, legislators and security and health officials all oppose legalization, as does the Roman Catholic Church.
Mr. Santacruz is determined to change minds. Invoking the specter of Mexico’s most notorious drug kingpin, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, he likes to remind people: “Bad regulation is better than whatever regulation El Chapo and the narcos can provide.”
Reporting was contributed by Paulina Villegas, Simon Romero, Jack Healy and William Neuman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/world ... 87722&_r=0
South America’s Culture of Graft
BUENOS AIRES — South America is a vast continent of light, yet it has a dark soul. Nestled in its political class, like a snake from the rain forest, corruption poisons the core of government.
Badly needed resources are siphoned from public purposes to run the machinery of political parties. Pervasive and systemic, corruption is sanctioned by a culture of impunity from the top.
Until recently, this shield from prying eyes has been particularly strong in the economic powerhouses of Brazil and Argentina — though that may be changing. Lately, especially in Brazil, high public officials accused of corruption have been paraded almost daily through the media and the courts.
On the index of shame maintained by the Berlin-based corruption monitoring group Transparency International, Argentina places with worse than averagely corrupt states like Niger and Djibouti. Brazil scores better, alongside Italy and Greece, while Venezuela ranks among the worst, close to Somalia and North Korea.
Brazil’s place as the third most honest nation in South America, after Chile and Uruguay, is small comfort for its embattled president, Dilma Rousseff. With growing evidence of her government’s egregious graft, she is clinging to political survival by her fingernails.
“What we’re seeing is not the failure of democracy in Brazil, it’s democracy at work,” said Matias Spektor, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. Professor Spektor is writing a book on the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, often known simply as Lula, Ms. Rousseff’s mentor and predecessor. His reputation was already shredded by the Godzilla-size vote-buying scheme uncovered during his presidency.
Unlike Argentina, where the judicial branch is slow to the point of ossification, the judicial officials probing corruption in Brazil are vigorous and fearless. These young specialists in financial crimes, with doctorates from Harvard and the London School of Economics, have called their probe “Operation Carwash,” after a surveillance operation on the owner of a gas station exposed the money-laundering business. At the heart of this scheme were contracts involving Petrobras, Brazil’s part-public oil giant, the largest company in Latin America, in which about $3 billion was paid in bribes and kickbacks.
When dozens of senior politicians were implicated in the Petrobras scandal in March, hundreds of thousands of angry Brazilians took to the streets in protest. Despite Ms. Rousseff’s being cleared by a parliamentary inquiry, many find it hard to believe she was unaware of the vast scam: She was on the Petrobras board of directors for seven years until 2010.
The “Carwash” investigation followed from the “Mensalão” scandal during Mr. da Silva’s presidency. His former cabinet chief José Dirceu received a prison sentence of nearly eight years for his part in the complex bribery network that paid legislators about $12,000 a month to vote with the government (mensalão means “big monthly payment” in Portuguese). Mr. da Silva has denied any involvement in the scheme.
“Brazil’s political system is polarized, we have 30 parties in Congress, so whoever governs needs to put together a coalition,” said Professor Spektor. “But how do you glue together those small parties on the right and the left? There’s no ideological coherence. So the glue to keep them together is money.”
In Argentina, corruption is not only more deeply ingrained but is also more difficult to prosecute. Unlike Brazil, where scores of corrupt officials are behind bars, hardly anyone goes to jail here.
“If you are unlucky enough to be caught, you might have to trundle through the courts for 10 years,” said Hugo Alconada Mon, an investigative journalist, “but the case will eventually be thrown out and you’ll get to keep the money.” According to one study, only 3 percent of 750 major corruption cases, involving some $13 billion, have ever resulted in convictions.
“The difference with Argentina is that in Brazil the judges are truly independent,” said Luis Moreno Ocampo, an Argentine lawyer who made his name in 1985 as a young prosecutor in Argentina’s historic “Trial of the Juntas” against the leaders of the country’s bloody 1976-83 military dictatorship.
In the 1990s, Mr. Moreno Ocampo set up a practice that served pro bono in lawsuits involving political corruption, but he was swimming against the tide. On one occasion, when the press asked the president at the time, Carlos Menem, about a Ferrari sports car he had accepted from an Italian businessman, Mr. Menem protested, “It’s mine, mine, mine.”
“The attempt to continue the trial against the juntas with trials against corruption only made Menem react by putting in judges who responded to his orders,” said Mr. Moreno Ocampo. Thwarted in the fight against corruption in Argentina, he left to become the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The system remained in place during the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whose term ended this month. Her presidency, too, was far from immune to controversy, ranging from her vice president’s being charged with corruption in connection with the government’s takeover of a currency printing facility to speculation about her own business affairs.
The industrial scale of corruption in South America is not simply the result of politicians taking bribes for personal gain; rather, it has often been a principal means of financing for the continent’s largest political parties — Ms. Rousseff’s Workers’ Party in Brazil, and the splintered but still powerful Peronist movement in Argentina. A system so entrenched in the continent’s political cultures is, naturally, very difficult to dismantle.
“Argentina needs to pursue corruption with the same determination with which it put its human rights crimes on trial,” said Robert Cox, a British journalist who reported on the military dictatorship.
Argentina’s new president, Mauricio Macri, has vowed to stamp out corruption. It is not clear yet, however, whether he can mobilize the resolve and deliver on that promise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/opini ... d=71987722
BUENOS AIRES — South America is a vast continent of light, yet it has a dark soul. Nestled in its political class, like a snake from the rain forest, corruption poisons the core of government.
Badly needed resources are siphoned from public purposes to run the machinery of political parties. Pervasive and systemic, corruption is sanctioned by a culture of impunity from the top.
Until recently, this shield from prying eyes has been particularly strong in the economic powerhouses of Brazil and Argentina — though that may be changing. Lately, especially in Brazil, high public officials accused of corruption have been paraded almost daily through the media and the courts.
On the index of shame maintained by the Berlin-based corruption monitoring group Transparency International, Argentina places with worse than averagely corrupt states like Niger and Djibouti. Brazil scores better, alongside Italy and Greece, while Venezuela ranks among the worst, close to Somalia and North Korea.
Brazil’s place as the third most honest nation in South America, after Chile and Uruguay, is small comfort for its embattled president, Dilma Rousseff. With growing evidence of her government’s egregious graft, she is clinging to political survival by her fingernails.
“What we’re seeing is not the failure of democracy in Brazil, it’s democracy at work,” said Matias Spektor, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. Professor Spektor is writing a book on the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, often known simply as Lula, Ms. Rousseff’s mentor and predecessor. His reputation was already shredded by the Godzilla-size vote-buying scheme uncovered during his presidency.
Unlike Argentina, where the judicial branch is slow to the point of ossification, the judicial officials probing corruption in Brazil are vigorous and fearless. These young specialists in financial crimes, with doctorates from Harvard and the London School of Economics, have called their probe “Operation Carwash,” after a surveillance operation on the owner of a gas station exposed the money-laundering business. At the heart of this scheme were contracts involving Petrobras, Brazil’s part-public oil giant, the largest company in Latin America, in which about $3 billion was paid in bribes and kickbacks.
When dozens of senior politicians were implicated in the Petrobras scandal in March, hundreds of thousands of angry Brazilians took to the streets in protest. Despite Ms. Rousseff’s being cleared by a parliamentary inquiry, many find it hard to believe she was unaware of the vast scam: She was on the Petrobras board of directors for seven years until 2010.
The “Carwash” investigation followed from the “Mensalão” scandal during Mr. da Silva’s presidency. His former cabinet chief José Dirceu received a prison sentence of nearly eight years for his part in the complex bribery network that paid legislators about $12,000 a month to vote with the government (mensalão means “big monthly payment” in Portuguese). Mr. da Silva has denied any involvement in the scheme.
“Brazil’s political system is polarized, we have 30 parties in Congress, so whoever governs needs to put together a coalition,” said Professor Spektor. “But how do you glue together those small parties on the right and the left? There’s no ideological coherence. So the glue to keep them together is money.”
In Argentina, corruption is not only more deeply ingrained but is also more difficult to prosecute. Unlike Brazil, where scores of corrupt officials are behind bars, hardly anyone goes to jail here.
“If you are unlucky enough to be caught, you might have to trundle through the courts for 10 years,” said Hugo Alconada Mon, an investigative journalist, “but the case will eventually be thrown out and you’ll get to keep the money.” According to one study, only 3 percent of 750 major corruption cases, involving some $13 billion, have ever resulted in convictions.
“The difference with Argentina is that in Brazil the judges are truly independent,” said Luis Moreno Ocampo, an Argentine lawyer who made his name in 1985 as a young prosecutor in Argentina’s historic “Trial of the Juntas” against the leaders of the country’s bloody 1976-83 military dictatorship.
In the 1990s, Mr. Moreno Ocampo set up a practice that served pro bono in lawsuits involving political corruption, but he was swimming against the tide. On one occasion, when the press asked the president at the time, Carlos Menem, about a Ferrari sports car he had accepted from an Italian businessman, Mr. Menem protested, “It’s mine, mine, mine.”
“The attempt to continue the trial against the juntas with trials against corruption only made Menem react by putting in judges who responded to his orders,” said Mr. Moreno Ocampo. Thwarted in the fight against corruption in Argentina, he left to become the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The system remained in place during the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, whose term ended this month. Her presidency, too, was far from immune to controversy, ranging from her vice president’s being charged with corruption in connection with the government’s takeover of a currency printing facility to speculation about her own business affairs.
The industrial scale of corruption in South America is not simply the result of politicians taking bribes for personal gain; rather, it has often been a principal means of financing for the continent’s largest political parties — Ms. Rousseff’s Workers’ Party in Brazil, and the splintered but still powerful Peronist movement in Argentina. A system so entrenched in the continent’s political cultures is, naturally, very difficult to dismantle.
“Argentina needs to pursue corruption with the same determination with which it put its human rights crimes on trial,” said Robert Cox, a British journalist who reported on the military dictatorship.
Argentina’s new president, Mauricio Macri, has vowed to stamp out corruption. It is not clear yet, however, whether he can mobilize the resolve and deliver on that promise.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/opini ... d=71987722
Mexico Stubbornly Resists Accountability
When he campaigned for the presidency of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto used the title of his book, “Mexico, the Great Hope,” to explain the record he hoped to achieve and the nation he hoped to build. More than three years into his presidency, it seems more likely that he will be remembered not as the transformational leader Mexicans thought they had elected, but as a politician who skirted accountability at every turn.
On Mr. Peña Nieto’s watch, the Mexican government has swiftly and systematically whitewashed ugly truths and played down scandals.
After Mexican journalists revealed that a government contractor had made a lavish home available to Mr. Peña Nieto and his wife, the president appointed a friend to investigate the matter. Not surprisingly, the inquiry found no evidence of wrongdoing by the president. The journalists, despite meticulous, unimpeachable reporting, lost their jobs.
When the country’s most powerful drug kingpin, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, escaped from prison in July, Mexicans were rightly skeptical about the official account, not least because it was Mr. Guzmán’s second escape. The government claimed that Mr. Guzmán had slipped out through a tunnel he and his accomplices dug unbeknown to prison officials, dismissing the possibility that he had help from the inside. While some officials were arrested as a result of the prison break, the government has yet to fully explain the lapse.
More troubling is the government’s botched effort at investigating the September 2014 disappearance of 43 college students, who appear to have been massacred in the rural state of Guerrero. The government claimed the students were executed and incinerated by members of a drug gang. A preliminary report issued by a group of international experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in September, citing satellite images, said it was implausible that the bodies had been incinerated.
Adding to public skepticism, the government has turned down repeated requests to allow the international team to interview military personnel stationed near the site of the disappearance.
It is not too late for the government to acknowledge that its investigation was bungled and to give the international investigators unfettered access to government personnel. That may be too little to salvage Mr. Peña Nieto’s reputation. But it’s the least he can do for the victims of one of Mexico’s worst human rights atrocities in recent history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opini ... 87722&_r=0
When he campaigned for the presidency of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto used the title of his book, “Mexico, the Great Hope,” to explain the record he hoped to achieve and the nation he hoped to build. More than three years into his presidency, it seems more likely that he will be remembered not as the transformational leader Mexicans thought they had elected, but as a politician who skirted accountability at every turn.
On Mr. Peña Nieto’s watch, the Mexican government has swiftly and systematically whitewashed ugly truths and played down scandals.
After Mexican journalists revealed that a government contractor had made a lavish home available to Mr. Peña Nieto and his wife, the president appointed a friend to investigate the matter. Not surprisingly, the inquiry found no evidence of wrongdoing by the president. The journalists, despite meticulous, unimpeachable reporting, lost their jobs.
When the country’s most powerful drug kingpin, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, escaped from prison in July, Mexicans were rightly skeptical about the official account, not least because it was Mr. Guzmán’s second escape. The government claimed that Mr. Guzmán had slipped out through a tunnel he and his accomplices dug unbeknown to prison officials, dismissing the possibility that he had help from the inside. While some officials were arrested as a result of the prison break, the government has yet to fully explain the lapse.
More troubling is the government’s botched effort at investigating the September 2014 disappearance of 43 college students, who appear to have been massacred in the rural state of Guerrero. The government claimed the students were executed and incinerated by members of a drug gang. A preliminary report issued by a group of international experts from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in September, citing satellite images, said it was implausible that the bodies had been incinerated.
Adding to public skepticism, the government has turned down repeated requests to allow the international team to interview military personnel stationed near the site of the disappearance.
It is not too late for the government to acknowledge that its investigation was bungled and to give the international investigators unfettered access to government personnel. That may be too little to salvage Mr. Peña Nieto’s reputation. But it’s the least he can do for the victims of one of Mexico’s worst human rights atrocities in recent history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opini ... 87722&_r=0