Latin America

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We charitably termed the Obama Administration’s first year of Latin America policy a “false start.”  After the year was kicked off with a promising beginning with a rousing speech at the Summit of the Americas, a promise to close Guantanamo, the lifting of the ban on travel to Cuba for Cuban Americans, and some principled words on human rights to Colombian President Uribe, we had some hope for a new, less ideological, more people-centered approach to the region. As the year progressed, those hopes were dashed. But now we dare to hope again.

In two interesting analyses of elections in Latin America, Professor Doug Hertzler, associate professor of anthropology at Eastern Mennonite University and Adam Isacson of the Center for International Policy remind us, and the U.S. government, to look closely at the reality in each country rather than viewing it in an ideological context.

Amanda Martin of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA provides this important update on the arduous search for justice in the cases of disappeared Guatemalans.

On December 3, 2009, a former military official and three former commissioners were sentenced to 53 years in prison for the forced disappearance and illegal detention of six people in El Jute, Guatemala in 1981. This marks the first time in Guatemalan history that a high-ranking military official has been sentenced for forced disappearance. In the sentence, the tribunal also ordered an investigation of former defense minister Angel Anibal Guevara, former head of Defense Security (EMD) Benedicto Lucas Garcia, and other officials and soldiers assigned to the same military base as the guilty parties in 1981.