El Salvador: A Faustian Pact

 

he Faustian Pact

EL SALVADOR

El Salvador began its trial against former President Mauricio Funes this week, with prosecutors alleging that the former leader had negotiated a truce with the country’s street gangs during his 2009 to 2014 presidential term, the Associated Press reported.

Authorities accused Funes of illicit association and failure to conduct his duties for the gang truce negotiated in 2012. But the former president denied that he associated with the criminal groups or gave its leaders any privileges.

He countered that the truce was made between rival gangs, not with the government.

Funes is currently living in Nicaragua and he is being tried in absentia. If found guilty, he could face up to 11 years in prison even though it is unlikely that he will ever serve time in El Salvador.

Meanwhile, Salvadoran authorities have similarly charged other officials.

Allegations of engaging with criminal gangs have also hit incumbent President Nayib Bukele.

In December 2021, the US Treasury accused Bukele of secretly negotiating a truce with gang leaders in exchange for political support. The imprisoned gang leaders allegedly received privileges in exchange for reducing their killings and giving support to Bukele’s party.

The truce fell apart in March 2022 when the gangs killed 62 people in a single day. Bukele responded by suspending some rights and waging war against the gangs, a battle that continues.

A Wild Election Comes April 30 In Paraguay

 

Change and Its Discontents

PARAGUAY

Presidents from the Colorado Party have ruled Paraguay for all but five years since the South American country adopted democracy in 1992. Now, however, as Paraguayan voters head to the polls to elect a new president on April 30, Colorado Party candidate and Finance Minister Santiago Peña might be in trouble.

Last year, as reported by the Associated Press, the US slapped sanctions on Paraguay’s former President Horacio Cartes Jara and current Vice President Hugo Velázquez Moreno due to corruption allegations and ties to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed, US-designated terrorist organization that operates primarily in the Middle East. Both men have rejected the American claims.

Around 70 percent of Paraguayans now say their country needs change, the Americas Society/Council of the Americas wrote. The opposition Concertación political coalition hopes their nominee, Efraín Alegre of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party “can ride voter frustration” to office. He is now running neck and neck with Peña.

Despite his center-left credentials, Alegre recently promised the country’s powerful agricultural industry that he would opt for an austerity budget that would favor cutting government spending over raising taxes on farmers. Adding that bribery and embezzlement were rife in the government under Peña and current President Mario Abdo Benítez, who can’t run for reelection due to term limits, he pledged reforms.

“It is very difficult for the private sector to feel comfortable paying more taxes if the public sector does not make an effort to properly use the available resources,” he told Reuters in an interview.

A string of high-profile killings has also fueled the sense that the government has lost the ability to impose the rule of law onto the people, according to Americas Quarterly. Last year, after the country’s top prosecutor closed a prison drug laboratory, he was murdered on his honeymoon. Paraguay is also a major conduit for cocaine bound for Europe, InSight Crime added.

Alegre has also questioned his country’s links with Taiwan. As one of a handful of nations that recognize Taiwan as the legitimate government of China, Paraguay can’t sell its beef and soy to China, the world’s biggest market. Taiwanese officials have expressed dismay over his comments, noted Focus Taiwan. Honduras, for example, recently switched sides in order to curry favor with officials in Beijing. Peña, meanwhile, has pledged to keep snubbing the powerful communist country.

Paraguay rarely sees a toss-up election, wrote Foreign Policy. It will this time.

A Corrupt Former President Returns to Peru

 

The End of the Road

PERU

Peru’s former President Alejandro Toledo surrendered to US authorities over the weekend and is expected to be extradited to Peru where he faces charges of corruption and money laundering, Agence France-Presse reported.

Toledo, who served as Peru’s president from 2001 to 2006, is wanted for alleged involvement in a wide-ranging scandal involving the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

Peruvian prosecutors have accused him of taking millions of dollars from Odebrecht in exchange for favorable treatment during the bidding process for public works contracts. Toledo denies wrongdoing and claims that the charges against him are politically motivated.

He has been living in the US for a number of years and has fought extradition to Peru for nearly four years through various legal maneuvers.

If he is found guilty, he could face up to 20 years in prison.

The “Car Wash” scandal rocked governments across Latin America, with Odebrecht acknowledging in 2016 that it paid around $800 million in bribes to win lucrative contracts across the region, according to the New York Times.

Dozens of Latin American politicians and business leaders have been jailed for their involvement in the scandal, and Toledo is the third former Peruvian president to be implicated, along with Ollanta Humala and Alan García – the latter committed suicide in 2019 as police were about to arrest him.

Now, Toledo’s extradition is regarded as a win for anti-corruption efforts in Peru and proof that even high-ranking officials are not above the law.

Even so, it comes at a period of political unrest in the country, which has had seven presidents in the past seven years and has been roiled by protests since the impeachment of former President Pedro Castillo in December.

Chiquita’s Bagman: Key Intermediary Sentenced in Paramilitary Payments Case | National Security Archive

Chiquita’s Bagman: Key Intermediary Sentenced in Paramilitary Payments Case | National Security Archive

Colombia Has A Problem With Hippos!!!!!

 

Rise of the Hippos

COLOMBIA

A car crash in northwestern Colombia this month killed one of the descendants of the infamous “cocaine hippos” that were introduced to the Latin American country by the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, prompting calls for the government to take action against the invasive mammals, the Guardian reported.

The accident occurred in the municipality of Doradal on a highway connecting the cities of Bogotá and Medellin. Officials said the car’s driver was unharmed, but the hippo was declared dead soon after the crash.

It marks the first time authorities have logged a hippopotamus-caused road traffic accident since Escobar brought the animals to Colombia from Africa at the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s.

Initially, only four of the animals entered Colombia, but officials estimate that their numbers have risen to around 150. Since then, they have become a nuisance to locals and the country’s environment with hippo attacks increasing in recent years.

Residents in the northwestern Antioquia province lamented that the invasive animals are jeopardizing their livelihoods and endangering other animal species that inhabit Colombia’s major artery, the Magdalena River.

The growing population of hippos has posed a persistent challenge for Colombian governments over the years.

Studies predict that by 2034 the population could reach 1,400, posing a threat to the delicate ecosystem of the Magdalena River and potentially endangering human lives.

In an attempt to address the issue, local officials have suggested relocating 70 hippos to zoos and sanctuaries in Mexico and India. However, analysts expressed skepticism about the feasibility of the proposal.

A Great Lesson About Managing Covid-19 From A Brasilian Favela (Slum)

 

April 9, 2023

Ian Cheibub

“You know what’s better than a vaccine mandate?” my colleague Ezra Klein asked last year. “A society that doesn’t need one.”

Research during the Covid-19 pandemic suggested that countries that fared better tended to have high levels of social trust. Government and interpersonal trust were associated with more vaccinations and possibly fewer infections.

But how do you build trust in places with untrustworthy leadership? This is a question the science journalist Amy Maxmen explored on a recent reporting trip to Brazil. She makes the case that grass roots efforts in the country’s favelas built trust among citizens and helped protect them. For instance, Brazilians got vaccinated in high numbers despite having a president at the time, Jair Bolsonaro, who undermined Covid-19 vaccination campaigns.

— Alexandra Sifferlin

Brazil’s Favelas Offer Lessons in Building Trust

By Amy Maxmen

RIO DE JANEIRO — Thiago Nascimento expected no help from the government when the coronavirus arrived in his neighborhood. ‌‌He was worried because, as in other favelas — informal settlements throughout the city — people were made vulnerable by a lack of income, safe housing and clean, running water. ‌ A study later showed that people in favelas were twice as likely to die if they had Covid-19 than those in higher-income neighborhoods in the city.

Mr. Nascimento’s faith in government assistance went from bad to worse as the pandemic wore on. Amid a surge of cases in May 2021, the police conducted a drug raid in his favela, Jacarezinho, which caused 28 deaths, injured additional bystanders and terrified residents. When community members built a memorial to honor the dead, police demolished it with a crowbar and an armored vehicle. “This broke any trust,” he told me. ‌

Continue reading the main story

ADVERTISEMENT

Thiago Nascimento, the founder of LabJaca.

Experts often cite mistrust of the government as a key reason certain communities ‌have suffered disproportionately during deadly outbreaks, including Ebola and Covid-19. Mistrust is a serious problem in a pandemic if it prevents people from obeying health recommendations, seeking medical care and accepting vaccines.

‌In marginalized communities, ‌‌mistrust is often rooted in a history of discrimination, neglect or abuse at the hands of authorities. The onus to mend those relationships should therefore be on governments that have proved untrustworthy, and that requires political change. But the next pandemic — or another disaster — may strike sooner. In the meantime, health officials and researchers would be wise to learn how to assist the communities that are most in need. That starts with recognizing the grass roots power that has kept them resilient for so long.

Continue reading the main story

ADVERTISEMENT

Lessons lie in Brazil’s favelas because, in the face of decades of government neglect, many have created internal systems to support one another. When Covid-19 began to spread and people were out of work, community leaders like Mr. Nascimento raised money to provide ‌food and face masks for those in need. In Jacarezinho, Mr. Nascimento co-founded a collective called LabJaca to report Covid-19 data because ‌he and others suspected that official counts ‌had underestimated ‌case loads. Journalists and community leaders in other favelas were attempting something similar, and soon LabJaca was one of several groups feeding data into a dashboard tracking the disease across 450 favelas in Rio de Janeiro.

Members of LabJaca at the organization’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.

In the hilltop favela of Morro dos Prazeres, Janice Delfim, a community leader, printed out lesson plans for children when schools closed because their families didn’t have computers at home. And when the kids complained of hunger, she appealed to non‌governmental‌‌ ‌organizations for donations of food, face masks and hygiene products‌. In other favelas, community leaders installed faucets in heavily trafficked paths so that people without running water could wash their hands.

Continue reading the main story

ADVERTISEMENT

‌‌Brazil’s ‌president at the time, Jair Bolsonaro, ‌denied the gravity of Covid-19 as hospitals overflowed. He encouraged mass gatherings and unproven treatments. He disputed the worth of face masks and, later, of vaccines. But even when health authorities broadcast recommendations for people to wash their hands and stay home, Ms. Delfim said their words rang hollow ‌for those ‌living without running water or the ability to work from home. “Our reality is different,” she told me.

Fernando Bozza, a doctor and public health researcher at Fiocruz, a research institute in Rio de Janeiro, realized the need to work at a grass roots level as Covid-19 began to spread in favelas. ‌‌He and other Fiocruz scientists partnered with the non‌‌governmental organization‌‌ Redes da Maré, ‌‌which had long served Rio’s massive Maré favela and residents from the community.

A resident of Complexo da Maré receives care.

Through this coalition, scientists provided free Covid-19 tests. When someone tested positive, a member of the group would offer to deliver food, cleaning supplies and masks to the person’s home, as well as provide check-ins with a health worker over the phone. Residents in the coalition also relayed circulating rumors‌‌ for the scientists ‌‌to correct‌‌. And those who were influential in local WhatsApp groups‌‌ or on Instagram or TikTok created messages to combat the misinformation. “It was a continuous listening process with people from the community leading,” Dr. Bozza says.

Such coalitions emerged around the world. In California’s hard-hit Central Valley, local researchers cooperated with grass roots organizations serving farmworkers to roll out testing and care. In Goa, India, a network of community‌ correspondents‌ that had long been working in rural districts of the country partnered with Lieve Fransen, a doctor and advis‌‌er in global public health based in Belgium. Dr. Fransen held daily video calls with the correspondents about how to treat the severely sick when ‌clinics were overwhelmed or too far away. When Covid-19 vaccines rolled out, she says that uptake was high because of the trust that people had in these correspondents, which had been built over nearly 20 years.

Community-led initiatives should be evaluated with the same rigor as any intervention. In an unpublished report, Dr. Bozza and his colleagues found that weekly Covid-19 deaths dropped by 60 percent in Maré after eight months of their work with the coalition, compared to a 28 percent reduction over the same period‌ among a similar number of people living in similar favelas in Rio.

It’s more complicated to study the impact of community-led work on longer-term problems, like diabetes, poverty and low educational attainment. These issues render people vulnerable to pandemics, so they’re important to tackle. Jason Corburn, a public health researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who has been trying to improve such metrics ‌‌in nearby Richmond, warned that this work takes time. “Some of these problems are 20 or 80 years in the making, so we need to track them over time, incrementally‌,” he said.

‌Despite a recent push for more community-led efforts in public health, alliances built during the pandemic are dissolving as projects shut down with the decline of Covid cases. Such quick exits breed mistrust because people may feel used by researchers who seem only concerned with a fleeting cause, as opposed to their welfare.

Another problem that befalls public health initiatives meant to include communities is that they often devolve into tokenism as advice from residents is brushed aside. Researchers and health officials don’t easily hand over the reins, said Mr. Corburn. “Letting communities lead goes upstream against the tide of science, expertise and bureaucracy that has been embedded in our institutions for 250 years.”

Nonetheless, the communal spirit survives with or without outside support. ‌Today Mr. Nascimento is connected with community leaders across many favelas and they continue to coordinate efforts. Lately, they’ve tackled police violence and assisted residents rendered hungry or homeless by flooding.

Ms. Delfim’s residents association has grown larger because more people want to help out. There’s no shortage of work to be done, and it comes with mental health benefits that emerged during the pandemic and live on. “We came together,” she said‌‌. “It was like collective therapy.”

Amy Maxmen is a science journalist and a press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

You Ask, Experts Answer

Dr. Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, responds to reader questions about trust and misinformation.

How do we correct for the mistrust and misinformation that circulated during this most recent pandemic? — Jennifer Wallace, Los Angeles

Rivers: I worry about this a lot. Misinformation is pervasive — and it’s not just around pandemics where falsehoods are flourishing, it’s also topics like childhood immunizations, international politics and election integrity. I don’t know how we find our way back, but I do wonder if public health is missing the mark by trying to beat back the torrent of misinformation. There is so much more we must do to strengthen crisis communications and ensure people have access to timely, high-quality information. I would rather see the public health community devote resources to improving that capability, rather than attempting to match manufacturers of misinformation move for move.

Like climate change, pandemic risk awareness and understanding, accompanied by a willingness to take meaningful action, are largely driven by education. But there is such disparity in education in the United States, which is exacerbated by the whims of political and religious extremism, that it seems an unrealistic hope that we can adequately prepare for future pandemics. Are there specific approaches that might address this conundrum? — Michael Schultz, Northern Michigan

I take heart in the solidarity and cohesiveness we saw in the early days of the pandemic. Although mitigation measures like mask use and social distancing became contentious as the pandemic ground on, most people were open to taking steps to keep themselves and their families safe. In June of 2020, for example, 80 percent of people said they wore masks in public some or all of the time. After vaccines became available, 80 percent of adults got vaccinated, including nearly 95 percent of older adults. That is an overwhelming response.

I don’t want to paper over the serious challenges that we face. Confidence in public health officials has eroded, and basic disease control measures have become politicized. Public health has a lot of work to do to rebuild trust. Still, I think it’s instructive that there was robust collective action at the outset. If public health officials communicate clearly, frequently and honestly, people will listen.

READ MORE

Court OKs Extradition Of Former Peruvian President To Peru

 POLITICS

Court OKs extradition of former Peruvian president from Bay Area

Bob Egelko

April 5, 2023Updated: April 5, 2023 3:57 p.m.

Gift this article

Comments

Alejandro Toledo Manrique, a former president of Peru, was arrested in San Mateo County on March 17, 2019. In February 2017, Peru’s government accused him of taking $20 million in bribes from a Brazilian construction company.

San Mateo County Sheriff's Office

A federal appeals court refused Wednesday to block the extradition of former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo Manrique from his home in the Bay Area to Peru, where he faces charges of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from a construction company.

Toledo, now in his late 70s, was born in Peru but has spent most of his life in the Bay Area. He arrived as a penniless student at age 19 and attended the University of San Francisco and Stanford University, where he earned a doctoral degree and later became a professor.

He returned to Peru in the mid-1990s, started a political organization and led the opposition to autocratic President Alberto Fujimori. He ran twice for president and was elected in 2001 after Fujimori resigned.

The first indigenous Peruvian to hold the office, Toledo led a government that favored business and free trade, boosting the nation’s economy and reducing poverty while clashing at times with labor unions. His term ended in 2006.

Toledo then returned to Northern California and became a teacher and researcher at Stanford, returning once to Peru for another presidential campaign that was unsuccessful. In February 2017, Peru’s government accused him of taking $20 million in bribes from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company that won a major highway contract during his administration, and laundering it through several companies and offshore accounts to avoid detection. He has denied the charges and said he never received any of the $20 million.

U.S. prosecutors ordered Toledo to be arrested in July 2019 and held without bail to await extradition. A federal judge in San Francisco granted bail three months later and placed him under house arrest at his home in Menlo Park. The U.S. State Department approved Peru’s extradition request last month.

In Wednesday’s ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said there was enough evidence of Toledo’s guilt to support the extradition order.

“Toledo has presented evidence that extradition to Peru could put his life at risk,” the three-judge panel acknowledged, citing “dire” conditions in the nation’s prisons, his age and health problems, and the possibility that he could be held as long as three years while awaiting formal charges. But the court said Peru had shown a legal basis for his extradition that Toledo has been unable to refute.

Two of his alleged accomplices have testified that Toledo arranged to have the construction company pay him “millions in bribes through various intermediary accounts,” the court said.

About Our Newsroom