What links a prison murder, a New York drug trial and the Honduras president?

Jeff Ernst. The Guardian. November 1, 2019

Despite several attempts against his life – poisoned food, a smuggled grenade – drug trafficker Nery López appeared calm as he spoke to the warden inside a maximum-security prison in western Honduras.

He hardly seemed to notice when a guard wearing a ski mask entered the hallway, eyeing López as he reached for the keys on his belt.

Moments later, the masked guard stepped aside from a heavy sliding door as a group of men in T-shirts and shorts burst in, one of them firing a handgun at López.

A second man drew a long knife, hacking at the fallen trafficker before the gunman drew a second weapon and emptied another cartridge of bullets.

Within hours of the 26 October murder, footage of the brazen attack had leaked on to social media, sending a shockwave of fear through the nation.

The killing came just days after evidence seized from López helped a New York jury convict a former Honduran politician named Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández on four counts of drug trafficking and related weapons charges.

Tony Hernández is the brother of Honduras’s current president, Juan Orlando Hernández – and Lopez’s lawyer was quick to accuse the government of complicity in his client’s murder.

“Juan Orlando [Hernández] silenced him,” said López’s lawyer, Carlos Chajtur. “That door opened on purpose.”

The murder is the latest embarrassment for the US state department, which continues to ignore the haze of allegations around the Honduran government while pushing the country to cooperate in Donald Trump’s regional crackdown on migration.

A week before the trial began, the two countries announced an agreement, allowing the US to send asylum seekers from third countries to the violence-torn Central American nation while their claim is processed. Similar deals have been drawn up with Guatemala and El Salvador.

So, while US prosecutors in New York described a situation of “state-sponsored drug trafficking”, the state department has maintained a business-as-usual approach following Tony Hernández’s conviction.

A day after the verdict, the top US diplomat in Honduras was photographed smiling with President Hernández at a military parade.

The Honduran president also featured in the New York case, when prosecutors accused him of having received millions of dollars from drug traffickers, including a $1m bribe from Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Prosecutors accused Tony Hernández of conspiring to murder rival traffickers, including a massacre with a bazooka and machine guns that resulted in four deaths.

President Hernández, who was re-elected in a fraud-marred vote in 2017 after the supreme court lifted a single-term limit, has denied all accusations of links to drug trafficking and maintained his brother’s innocence. “What can you say about a conviction based on the testimonies of confessed murderers?” he said on Twitter after the verdict was announced.

Opposition leaders have called for President Hernández to resign, but fear, division and a dearth of leadership have prevented sporadic protests from coalescing into a mass movement.

At the time of his capture in June 2018, López was living under an assumed name, after faking his own death a few years earlier by paying bribes to obtain a falsified death certificate and a new identity.

An opposition supporter holds signs reading ‘Together we will make history. JOH out’ and ‘Narco-state out’ at a protest in Tegucigalpa Photograph: Orlando Sierra/AFP via Getty Images
He was considered one of the largest drug traffickers in Honduras, so anti-narcotics agents were intrigued to discover hundreds of pages of records itemizing his business welded in a secret compartment in a vehicle seized in the arrest.

One of those agents testified at the trial of Tony Hernández that he had immediately spotted the former legislator’s name in the ledgers, which also list payments to a person identified as “JOH” – the initials by which President Juan Orlando Hernández is commonly known.

The Honduran government announced it is investigating the murder of Lopéz and has suggested an alternative motive. Deputy security secretary Luis Suazo suggested on Twitter that other traffickers may have had López killed because he was prepared to testify that the ledgers used in the New York trial were fake.

Critics argue that López was murdered to avoid any possibility that he might someday testify in a US court – and to send a message to others who might do the same.

“The first message is for those who are linked to drug trafficking in Honduras to show them that they or their family members will be murdered if they continue providing evidence,” said Dr Joaquín Mejía, a human rights lawyer who has studied violence in Honduras.

At Least 9 Members of Mormon Family in Mexico Are Killed in Ambush

Azam Ahmed, Elisabeth Malkin and Daniel Victor. New York Times. November 5, 2019

MEXICO CITY — At least three women and six children in a prominent local Mormon family were killed on Monday when their vehicles were ambushed in northern Mexico by gunmen believed to be members of organized crime, family members said. The attack alarmed a nation already reeling from record violence this year.

Members of the LeBarón family, American citizens who have lived in a fundamentalist Mormon community in the border region for decades, were traveling in three separate vehicles when the gunmen attacked, several family members said. They described a terrifying scene in which one child was gunned down while running away, while others were trapped inside a burning car.

Two of the children killed were less than a year old, the family members said. Kenny LeBarón, a cousin of the women driving the vehicles, said in a telephone interview that he feared the death toll could grow higher.

“When you know there are babies tied in a car seat that are burning because of some twisted evil that’s in this world,” Mr. LeBarón said, “it’s just hard to cope with that.”

Mexico has suffered a string of violent episodes in the last month, each as devastating and infuriating for citizens as the last.

Fourteen police officers were killed in the state of Michoacán in the middle of last month, in an ambush stemming from violent clashes in the state. Days later, cartel gunmen laid siege to the city of Culiacán in the state of Sinaloa, forcing the government to release one of the sons of the infamous drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, after having captured the son hours earlier.

In both cases, the stark challenges of public security were laid bare, raising questions about the government’s seriousness in combating the spiraling violence.

But Monday’s brutal killings seem to have hit a new low, with infants, children and their mothers murdered in broad daylight. It threatened to become a galvanizing moment for citizens fed up with the endless bloodshed and the government’s inability to do much about it.

Details of the attack remained murky early Tuesday, as state and local authorities struggled to determine the extent of the violence, and how exactly it unfolded.

It was unclear whether the attackers intentionally targeted the family, which has historically spoken out about the criminal groups that plague the northern border states of Sonora and Chihuahua, or whether it was a case of mistaken identity.

Claudia Pavlovich Arellano, the governor of the state of Sonora, said that she would do everything in her power to ensure that the “monsters” who carried out the attacks did not go unpunished. “As a mother, I feel anger, revulsion and a profound pain for the cowardly acts in the mountains between Sonora and Chihuahua,” she wrote on Twitter.

Julian LeBarón, a cousin of the three women who were driving the vehicles, said in a telephone interview from Bavispe, Mexico, that the women and their children had been traveling from the state of Sonora to the state of Chihuahua.

His cousin Rhonita was traveling to Phoenix to pick up her husband, who works in North Dakota and was returning to celebrate the couple’s wedding anniversary. Her car broke down, Mr. LeBarón said, and the gunmen “opened fire on Rhonita and torched her car.”

She was killed, along with an 11-year-old boy, a 9-year-old girl and twins who were less than a year old, he said.

About eight miles ahead, the two other cars were also attacked, killing the two other women, Mr. LeBarón said. A 4-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl were also killed, he said.

Family members said several children were rescued, some having hidden by the roadside to escape the attackers.

“Six little kids were killed, and seven made it out alive,” Mr. LeBarón said.

The women had married men from La Mora, which is in the municipality of Bavispe in Sonora. The surviving children were being taken by helicopter from Bavispe, the town closest to the La Mora community, to a hospital, he said.

He expressed bewilderment over what could have precipitated the attack. “They intentionally murdered those people,” Mr. LeBarón said. “We don’t know what their motives were.”

One of the women even got out of her car, Mr. LeBarón said, and put up her hands. “They shot her point blank in the chest,” he said.

Mr. LeBarón said the family had not received any threats, other than general warnings not to travel to Chihuahua, where they typically went to buy groceries and fuel.

As he watched the helicopter fly off with the injured children, Mr. LeBarón said that perhaps the killings would finally spur enough outrage to force change.

“We need the Mexican people to say at some point, we’ve had enough,” he said. “We need accountability; we don’t have that on any level.”

The massacre came a decade after two other members of the LeBarón family were kidnapped and murdered after they confronted the drug gangs that exercise de facto control over the empty endless spaces of the borderlands south of Arizona.

A family member and other Mormons settled a town in Mexico in the 1940s; many of its residents speak English and have dual citizenship.

Kenny LeBarón said much of the family now lives in North Dakota, working in the oil fields and running their own businesses, but they frequently travel to the border area for holidays, vacations and other special events.

“We’re a huge family, but we’re very close,” he said.

Multiple family members posted a video, said to have been taken after the attack, showing a charred vehicle riddled with bullet holes, with smoke still rising from it.

Family members took to social media to implore the governments of Mexico and the United States to do something about the intensifying violence in Mexico, in particular in the areas along the country’s northern border, where Mormons and Mennonites have lived for decades despite the threat from rampant organized crime.

Many took particular aim at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose government has struggled to articulate a coherent security strategy even as homicides mount and organized crime groups have carried out increasingly brazen attacks both against citizens and the state.

In the aftermath of Monday’s attack, the government deployed the newly formed National Guard as well as the military to the area to assist with the search for missing family members believed to have fled when they came under attack.

Peru judge orders 14 lawyers jailed amid Odebrecht probe

Al Jazeera. November 5, 2019

A judge in Peru has ordered 14 top lawyers to be jailed while they are being investigated for allegedly favouring construction giant Odebrecht in public-works contracts.

Judge Jorge Chavez said on Monday each lawyer will spend 18 months in preventive detention for participating in 42 arbitration processes that allowed the Brazilian conglomerate to earn at least $250m.

The lawyers rejected the accusations, and their defence teams appealed the ruling.

The order is the latest blow in the scandal involving Odebrecht which has admitted paying nearly $788m in bribes in 12 countries to win infrastructure projects in Latin America, including some $30m in Peru.

The scandal has also ensnared the past four Peruvian presidents who have either been jailed on corruption charges or are currently under investigation for fraud. In April, former President Alan Garcia died after shooting himself as police arrived at his house to arrest him.

Incumbent President Martin Vizcarra took power last year, promising to step up the fight against high-level corruption.

In October, Vizcarra dissolved the Congress, accusing the opposition-controlled legislature of blocking corruption investigations.

Odebrecht, the largest construction company in Latin America, was founded in 1944 in northeast Brazil.

Former chief executive officer Marcelo Odebrecht was arrested in 2015 and later sentenced to 19 years in jail for corruption. He has been under house arrest since 2017.

In 2016, Odebrecht agreed to the world's largest-ever corruption leniency fine with prosecutors in Brazil, the United States and Switzerland, paying at least $3.5bn.

Protests Stall Ecuador’s Plan to Entice Foreign Oil Investment

Stephan Kueffner and Peter Millard. Bloomberg. November 5, 2019

(Bloomberg) -- Ecuador’s plan to boost its economy by attracting foreign oil investment is falling victim to heavy resistance from indigenous groups newly empowered by the protests that rolled across the nation last month.

The 11-day uprising caused the government to rescind a fuel-price increase designed to meet austerity demands tied to a $4.2 billion International Monetary Fund loan. But perhaps more importantly, the protests helped spark a new push by indigenous groups against President Lenin Moreno’s plan to let foreign drillers invest billions to explore and develop deep in the Amazon region.

The oil industry’s outlook had been improving with Moreno ditching a decade of oil nationalism with business-friendly contracts. Ecuador also announced in October it was leaving the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in January because it didn’t want to meet the group’s output limits. Now, though, after the protests cost Ecuador’s oil operations $130 million in lost revenue and repairs, the plan to boost production ahead is threatened.

Instead of drilling more oil, “we are working on economic alternatives for the country, so it can leave behind this dependence on oil,” said Severino Sharupi, a leader of the Shuar Nation from the southeast Amazon, where Ecuador hopes to expand oil operations.

Meanwhile, with the government locked in talks with the representatives for the indigenous groups, an auction of oil blocks in northern Ecuador is on hold while Moreno’s plans to open up more of the Amazon to drilling over the next two years stand to be even more difficult.

The protests damaged 101 wells spread across 20 fields and forced all 24 rigs to halt work, according to state-owned producer Petroamazonas. It’s a level of devastation that may keep investors on the sidelines until the end of the current administration in 2021, said Fernando Santos, a former oil minister who is now an industry analyst.

The ongoing talks between the two sides need to be successful to avoid future disruptions, Santos said. But for the time being, “foreign investment is dead,” he said.

Ecuador’s oil production has remain relatively steady for the past decade amid a lack of investment in an industry dominated by the national oil company. The government cut its 2020 target to 530,000 barrels a day from 550,000 after the damage to production infrastructure during the October riots.

Rene Ortiz, a former OPEC secretary general who is now working as an industry analyst, believes there’s still a chance for a more positive result. To overcome opposition, authorities will need to share more of the spoils with indigenous groups that historically have been impoverished and dispossessed, he said.

In the past, he said, indigenous leaders received government posts and their communities gained soccer fields, clinics, or schools to win support for government policies. “What they want is to be consulted,” Ortiz said. He suggested the government consider legal changes to give a 1% royalty to indigenous communities from any new licenses.

The energy ministry, meanwhile, didn’t respond to multiple emails seeking comment on the protests or the next auction. Ecuador was just one of four Andean nations to suffer unrest in recent months in a development that will make investors more wary of plowing cash into oil projects that are vulnerable to protests and sabotage.

First-Round Success

Ecuador’s first round of oil bids was largely considered a success. Bogota-based Frontera Energy Corp. and Santiago-based GeoPark Ltd. are interested in a second bidding round for the Intracampos region, where demand was strong in March with seven of the eight blocks offered getting sold, the companies said in separate emails.

“Ecuador is an oil-producing country and has some of the best oil infrastructure in Latin America,” according to a statement by GeoPark sent by email. “Establishing a position in this oil system is central to our medium- and long-term strategy.”

Frontera said it is waiting for the government to provide a time line and conditions for the round to make a decision on whether it will participate.

Part of the reason Moreno swiftly walked back the fuel price increases was to diffuse any social tension ahead of the next round of oil bids, said Schreiner Parker, vice president for Latin America at consultant Rystad Energy.

“It plays into the wider story of having a social license to operate, which is something that oil companies didn’t talk about 15 years ago,” said Parker, who is based in Rio de Janeiro. As indigenous groups “begin to understand their power even more, they become an actor that has to be negotiated with going forward.”

Bolivian opposition leader calls for 'radical' strike action, blockades

Daniel Ramos. Reuters. November 4, 2019

SANTA CRUZ/LA PAZ (Reuters) - A civic leader urged Bolivians to “paralyze” government institutions and block the borders as protests sparked by the contentious election victory last month of President Evo Morales entered their third week on Monday.

The long-standing leftist leader is facing rising pressure from opposition groups pushing for him to step down or to force new elections. An international group is also doing an audit of the Oct. 20 vote.

Amid splits in the opposition, civic groups have come to the fore, with strikes and road blockades in cities tapping into anger over Morales’ near 14-year rule.

At a large rally on Monday night in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, a civic leader who has become a key figure in the opposition, urged supporters to peacefully jam government institutions, starting from midnight.

“We have decided to radicalize the indefinite national civic strike,” he told a gathering of tens of thousands, adding that he would march into La Paz on Tuesday with a resignation letter for Morales.

Camacho had previously set a 48-hour deadline for Morales to resign, which expired on Monday night.

Morales, who came to power in 2006 and has become an iconic figure in the landlocked South American nation, has defended his election win and has backed an international audit of the result to resolve the crisis.

Amid the political turmoil, a helicopter carrying Morales made an emergency landing on Monday due to a mechanical malfunction on takeoff from the town of Colquiri, south of La Paz, the air force said. No injuries were reported. Video of the incident spread on social media.

“We had an incident with the helicopter that will be duly investigated,” Morales said on Twitter hours later.

OAS AUDIT
Bolivia’s opposition, made up of election runner-up Carlos Mesa as well as increasingly prominent civic groups, has ramped up calls to remove Morales.

Mesa, who came second in the Oct. 20 election, slammed Morales’ candidacy as illegal and on Sunday proposed new elections. He has maintained allegations of electoral fraud.

Morales won the vote with a lead of just over 10 points, which gave him an outright win, but the victory was marred by a near 24-hour halt in the count, which, when resumed, showed a sharp and unexplained shift in favor of Morales.

That sparked fierce protests, with demonstrators clashing with police, teargas on the streets and roadblocks and strikes in many cities, with a few deaths in the clashes.

Formal election monitor, the Organization of American States (OAS), is now doing a count audit, expected to be completed before the middle of the month. It had raised concerns after the count was halted.

On Twitter on Monday, the body invited the public to send election information for its analysis.

Morales, once a coca farmer union leader who often goes just as “Evo”, has defended his win and pointed to years of relative stability and growth under his rule. He has tied his chances to the “binding” OAS audit.

The Senate leader, Adriana Salvatierra, said Morales was calling for peace and the government would not bow to the ultimatum from Camacho’s group. “We will not fall under pressure, but we will wait for the end of the audit,” he said.

Morales, nearing 14 years in power, had already sparked ire amongst some Bolivians before the election, when he decided to run for a fourth term in defiance of term limits and a referendum in 2016 that voted against him doing so.

Bolivia's Morales warns of violence as opponents plan his removal

AFP. November 4, 2019

Bolivia's government has accused its rivals of plotting deadly violence against it after an opposition figure vowed to overthrow leftist President Evo Morales and called for the military's support.

Deadly unrest has gripped the South American country since Morales was named winner of the October 20 election, giving him a fourth term.

His opponents have branded the result a fraud and Carlos Mesa, who ran against Morales in the recent polls, has called for a new vote to be held.

"We believe... that the best solution to this crisis in the current circumstances is a new election, administered by an impartial new (electoral body) and with rigorous observation of the international community," Mesa said on Sunday.

Late on Saturday, a conservative opposition leader in the eastern Santa Cruz region threatened to drive Morales out.

"He has 48 hours to step down, because at 7pm (23:00 GMT) on Monday, we are going to take decisive action right here and we are going to make sure that he goes," Luis Fernando Camacho told a gathering of supporters.

He called on the military to "be on the side of the people".

Morales responded by accusing his opponents of seeking bloodshed.

"They want people to be killed by the police and the military," he said in a televised interview.

Interior Minister Carlos Romero alleged a "coup strategy" was under way.

He told reporters the government had intelligence "indicating that a violent confrontation is being prepared" for Monday night near the presidential palace in La Paz.

"Whoever asks for military intervention is asking for blood and is asking for death," Romero said.

History of coups
Camacho did not specify what kind of action he had in mind. His supporters have previously taken over public buildings.

The military has so far stayed neutral in the electoral dispute but calling on it to intervene is a delicate move in Bolivia.

The country saw numerous military uprisings and dictatorships before civilian rule was established in 1982.

Morales is looking to remain in power until 2025 with a fourth term.

His election win was ratified by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal - but only after an abrupt and unexplained shift in the vote count in his favour.

The Organization of American States is carrying out an audit of the vote but the opposition has rejected that as a distraction to help Morales hold on to power.

Bolivia's constitution limits a president to two successive terms. But the constitutional court authorised Morales to stand for a fourth mandate.

The court, like the election tribunal, is made up of members appointed by Morales's Movement for Socialism.

The interior minister last week said two demonstrators had been killed in clashes. State authorities say 140 people have been hurt in the unrest.

Unrest has also erupted in recent weeks in other Latin American countries, including neighbouring Chile and Ecuador where protesters are angry at rising inequality.

Colombia: Residents mourn indigenous leaders killed in Cauca

Hanna Wallis. Al Jazeera. November 4, 2019

Tacueyo, Cauca, Colombia - More than 1,000 people gathered in Tacueyo, Cauca, a town in southwest Colombia, on Saturday to mourn the death of indigenous governor Cristina Bautista, who was killed last week along with four volunteer community guards in a massacre that has become a searing emblem of the state's unrelenting violence.

The number of indigenous people killed in the area has risen sharply as armed groups seek to seize control of the power vacuum left by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) after they demobilised as part of the 2016 peace deal.

The resulting power struggle has left the indigenous movement in Cauca, which defends land sovereignty, in the middle of violent efforts by armed groups to gain territorial control. The violence has been heightened further by the region's drug trade.

The UN has documented 52 murders of indigenous people in the northern part of Cauca this year alone.

Last week's killings come as the country faces a national epidemic of social leader assassinations. According to data from the Bogota-based conflict research organisation, INDEPAZ, between the beginning of 2016 and May this year, more than 700 leaders - 150 of whom were from Cauca - have been killed.

"They kill us if we keep quiet, and they kill us when we speak out," Bautista said in a speech during the funeral of two other indigenous people in August.

Bautista was an internationally recognised leader, who had represented indigenous women at the UN.

Why Cauca?
All of the victims of last Tuesday's attack belonged to a powerful indigenous movement in the state, which has long fought for land and autonomy rights.

Paramilitary groups have made dozens of death threats to indigenous leaders. Some of the most aggressively targeted people in Cauca are those who participate in the "Indigenous Guardians", or "Kiwe Thegnas" - land defenders, as they are called in the native Nasayuwe language. The Guardians are an unarmed community defence force that protects indigenous territory.

On the day of last week's attack, the Guardians were patrolling near Tacueyo when they discovered two vehicles carrying people who had been kidnapped.

Nora Elena Taquinas, another governor of Tacueyo who survived the attack, told local media that one of the indigenous authorities parked his car across the road to block the passage of the vehicle and rescue of the victims. He called for backup, she said. Upon arrival to the area, indigenous authorities, including Taquinas and Bautista, temporarily released the people tied up in the back seat, but realised that the perpetrators were heavily armed and had grenades. Gunfire sprayed down from the hills surrounding them, killing Bautista and four Guardians. At the site of the attack, the truck that had carried the governors has been incinerated to a charred skeleton.

Immediately following the incident, the national head of the Indigenous Guardians, Lucho Acosta, circulated an audio recording on WhatsApp.

"We will not get scared… in these moments, we stay in resistance, full of pain for the death of our friends, but we won't give in," he said.

No group has claimed responsibility, but state authorities blame a dissident faction of the FARC rebel group that calls itself Dagoberto Ramos for the attack.

President Ivan Duque made an emergency trip to the Cauca on Wednesday, and ordered 2,400 soldiers to be deployed in the region to strengthen security.

"I hope to make some important announcements about operational capacity in the region and the capacity we will have to face these threats," Duque reportedly said on the visit.

But indigenous authorities strongly oppose the militarisation of their territories.

"Every armed group, whether legal or illegal, has only brought us more war," said Giovanni Yule, a human rights leader from the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca.

"That has never made us safer," he told Al Jazeera. The Indigenous Guardians do not carry weapons out of a categorical rejection of armed violence.

'Genocide'
Instead, the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) has appealed to the Colombian government to follow through on implementing the 2016 peace accords, which put forth plans for illicit crop substitution and aimed to draw rebel members into civilian life.

Some experts attribute the explosion of armed groups to the government's failures in carrying out the agreement.

At a news conference last Wednesday, the day after the attack in Tacueyo, Aida Quilcue, the director of human rights at ONIC said Duque's right-wing government had done nothing to mitigate the indigenous "genocide" happening in Colombia. ONIC has documented about 120 indigenous assassinations in the country this year - one every 72 hours.

ONIC leaders have also appealed for international intervention to quell the bloodshed, citing lack of government support. They have urged the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples to visit Cauca and verify the conditions of "genocide".

UNHCR on Friday urged the authorities to "establish a prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigation" of the killings.

"We also urge the authorities to break the cycle of impunity relating to threats, harassment and killings targeting indigenous peoples," Marta Hurtado, a spokeswoman for UNHCR, said in a statement. "We urge the government to respond to this dramatic situation in a comprehensive and consultative manner, and not simply through increased military presence."

At a local level, the Indigenous Guardians in Cauca have refused to give up their autonomous processes to challenge the violence. In a muddy field outside of the stadium where Bautista's body was displayed on Saturday, dozens of Guardians reinforced their commitment to protect the community.

"Are we going to let them terrorise us for fear of death?" a coordinator of the guard shouted.

"No!" the row of Guardians replied.

They remembered Bautista's famous words: "I am convinced there are more of us who want peace than war."