🗞 IN.VISIBLES WEEKLY: National Guard, Total Peace and Blind Justice
Hello!
What has your week been like? Events in Latin America over the last seven days are likely to have major repercussions for some of the communities most affected by violence.
In Mexico, soon-to-be ex-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is pushing for a new reform to bring the controversial National Guard under the control of the army - all amid a wave of homicides in the state of Sinaloa. In Colombia, a new bout of violence appears to have marked the end of peace talks with the National Liberation Army, another crisis in the elusive "Total Peace" strategy. And in Ecuador, Daniel Noboa proposed a new constitutional change to reopen the door to international military aid as a new strategy to address his own security crisis.
This week, we also published an interview with Camila Grigera Naón, one of the journalists behind an investigation into the way the justice system in Argentina deals with cases of women involved in drug micro-trafficking.
Thanks for reading and see you next week!
Josefina Salomon
Editorial Director, In.Visibles
7 DAYS, 5 STORIES
🇨🇴✍The End? Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced on Wednesday the suspension of peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) after an attack in which two soldiers were killed and more than 20 people were wounded in the department of Arauca, AP reported. Although not the first, this is the deepest crisis in the talks between the government and the country's main armed group - part of the Total Peace policy of negotiating with all rival armed groups at the same time. Among the recriminations on both sides is that the ELN continued to kidnap and extort civilians in territories they control while the executive began parallel negotiations with a guerrilla front that had broken away from the central command. The ELN currently has some 6,000 fighters in Colombia and Venezuela and finances itself through the sale of illicit drugs and illegal gold mining, thanks to its significant territorial control. The big question is what will happen to Petro's peace process, which has generated far more scepticism than support.
🇲🇽🪖National Guard. Mexico's Chamber of Deputies on Friday approved the reform pushed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to move the National Guard into the army's sphere of control, EFE reported. The National Guard, which has more than 120,000 members, was created in 2019 to replace the federal police. The proposal, which has to be debated at the lower house before moving to the Senate for final approval, has been highly contested. Analysts told In.Visibles that the National Guard has suffered from the same problems as the forces it replaced, including violence and corruption. "There have been many abuses, massacres, executions, extrajudicial killings, extortion. With the National Guard they have not managed to change the typical habits of these types of operators and now, with more tools, they have only managed to multiply the violence. Now people have to take care of the narco and the extortion of the National Guard," said Carlos Zazueta. Less than two weeks before the change of government, the security situation in Mexico is as worrying than ever, particularly in the state of Sinaloa, where two factions of the notorious cartel have been waging a bloody battle for power since the arrest of one of its co-founders, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada. Authorities have reported 50 deaths in two weeks - as many as in the previous five weeks, reported El País.
🇪🇨📖 Military aid, please. This is what the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, asked for this week, 15 years after the United States withdrew from the military base it had in the city of Manta. The president presented a bill to allow the re-establishment of foreign military bases to confront the criminal organisations that use the country to transport drugs to the United States and Europe, leaving a trail of violence in their wake. It is the first step in a process that should include a new referendum. This is not the first time Noboa has changed the constitution. In April, a referendum was held with 11 questions, several focused on security issues, including allowing soldiers to perform tasks usually reserved for civilian forces.
🇭🇹🗳️Getting Worse. This is how a UN expert described the situation in Haiti at the end of a visit to the country on Friday. He said the lack of resources allocated to the international security mission is having a direct impact on the population, which remains at the mercy of violent gangs that control more and more territory. "Gangs are increasingly trafficking young people, forcibly recruiting them and often using them to carry out attacks on public and police institutions. Young people are losing hope for a better future," he explained in a statement. Meanwhile, a provisional electoral council was inaugurated, a key step on the road to elections that are expected to take place in 2026. Haiti last held elections in 2016, when Jovenel Moïse was elected. He was assassinated in 2021.
🇭🇳⚫ ️Leader Assassinated. Honduran environmental defender and community leader Juan López was shot dead on Saturday night as he was driving home. López was part of the Committee for the Defence of the Common and Public Goods of Tocoa, an organisation that for years has been fighting against a series of mining projects that affect the environment and protected areas. The community has been subjected to smear campaigns by people linked to the mining company Los Pinares, which is in charge of the projects in the area. Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries for people defending the environment. Eighty percent of the murders of environmental activists in 2023 took place in Latin America, 18 of them in Honduras, according to Global Witness.
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Some of the other top reads of the week
🌱Reimagining the war on drugs amidst rising coca cultivation in Central America (Adam Isacson, WOLA)
🇸🇻A suspicious policeman and a man-vegan named Alejandro Muyshondt (Héctor Silva Ávalos, Prensa Comunitaria)
🇸🇻Bukele & Cía., El Salvador's new landowning family (Jaime Quintanilla, Divergentes)
🇨🇴An invisible and violent trade: the cooks of the cocal (Valentina Parada Lugo, El País)
🇲🇽Ayotzinapa: It has been a decade since 43 students disappeared in Mexico. Their parents are still fighting for answers (María Verza, AP)
🇲🇽This is the map of the "war" in Sinaloa (Espejo Magazine)