Lisa Haugaard

U.S. policy towards our Latin American neighbors is, as usual, in need of a few New Year's resolutions. Here goes:

1. Ban assault weapons. Three months before the murders of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, 110 victims of violence and advocates from Mexico traveled across the United States calling on us to take action to stop the violence that has claimed over 100,000 lives in Mexico during the last six years. They asked us to ban the assault weapons that arm Mexico's brutal cartels. Some70 percent of assault weapons and other firearms used by criminal gangs in Mexico come from the United States. The United States should reinstate and tighten the assault weapon ban and enforce the ban on the import of assault weapons into our country, which are then smuggled into Mexico. Do it for Newtown. Do it for Aurora. Do it for Mexico's mothers and fathers who have lost their children to senseless violence.

On December 11, the day after International Human Rights Day, the Colombian Congress approved a justice “reform” bill that will likely result in many gross human rights violations by members of the military being tried in military courts—and remaining in impunity.  The bill, along with a separate ruling by the Council of State, unravels the reforms put in place after the “false positives” scandal in which over 3,000 civilians were killed by soldiers.

We are often telling you about the dangers faced by Colombian human rights defenders—the email death threats and terrifying phone calls, the funeral wreaths labeled with their names sent to their homes, the trade unionist or land rights activist shot dead.

But there is also much to celebrate in the creativity, bravery and dedication of Colombia's human rights community.  And celebrate they did in September 2012, as Colombian civil society leaders and the international agencies coalition DIAL (Inter-Agency Dialogue on Colombia) launched Colombia's first national human rights prize.

On Saturday night, September 22th, 2012, after he attended a wedding, Antonio Trejo Cabrera was shot six times. He later died at a Tegucigalpa hospital.  He was the legal representative of the MARCA campesino movement, and in June he had won the historic though still contested judgment in favor of returning three plantations to campesinos in Bajo Aguán.

“Since they couldn't beat him on the courts, they killed him,” said Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesman for Bajo Aguan's peasant movements, cited in an Associated Press story.  Trejo "had denounced those responsible for his future death on many occasions."  Trejo also prepared legal challenges to a proposal by U.S. and Honduran companies to run privately-run charter cities that critics call unconstitutional, as they would skirt national labor and other laws.