Anti-Militarism: News & Updates

Guatemala was once listed among the most violent countries on earth. Today, after years of declining crime rates, violence is once again on the rise in 2022. Of the more than 2,000 people killed since January, the majority were the result of gun violence. The United States’ obsession with guns and its unwillingness to implement reasonable restrictions to accessing them has directly contributed to increased violence and crime in Central America, especially in Guatemala. Easy access to weapons allows criminal groups to illegally export U.S. weapons across the U.S.-Mexico border and bring them into other countries. 

A former high-ranking government official in Guatemala has pleaded guilty in Miami federal court to conspiring to commit money laundering while paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to Guatemalan politicians through the U.S. banking system. Acisclo Valladares Urruela, the former economics minister in Guatemala, admitted that he transferred $350,000 in bribery payments to the unidentified Guatemalan politicians through two companies with bank accounts in Miami, according to a factual statement filed with his plea agreement. Valladares also acknowledged that he received $140,000 for moving the dirty money into those accounts, the statement says. Valladares paid the illegal bribes on behalf of a telecommunications company known as Tigo, for which he worked as a corporate officer. As a result of the payoffs, Guatemalan politicians passed a law that paved the way for the telecommunications company to obtain a series of lucrative government contracts in Guatemala, according to court records. The corrupt dealings allowed Valladares to benefit personally and politically, U.S. authorities said.

Ice’s database lists about 25,000 detainees nationwide, but does not maintain reliable inmate demographics. Non-profits such as Freedom for Immigrants (FFI) and Black Alliance for Just Immigration estimate that roughly 20% of Black immigrants are waiting for deportation. Advocacy organizations like FFI also say that this demographic experiences higher rates of deportation; sexual, physical, medical, and psychological abuses in detention; and solitary confinement. In the last month alone, FFI has received more than 2,100 complaints nationwide. The most common abuse-related ones are anti-Black discriminatory actions, ranging from forced strip-searches and unprovoked pepper-spraying to prolonged solitary confinement and critical medical treatment negligence.

According to a Pew Research Center article, the latest statistics we have indicate there are about 10 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Of those two thirds, or six and a half million, have been in the United States for over 10 years. A group of House Democrats just introduced a bill, entitled the Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929, that would allow such undocumented immigrants to apply for immigration papers after seven years in the country. The bill incorporates a rolling component so that future legislation would not be required to update what is called this “registry date.” It is estimated about eight million immigrants could benefit by the bill’s passage. What has not been adequately highlighted so far, however, is how the American immigration system and America as a country would also benefit from the passage of this legislation.

On Wednesday, July 20, the U.S. State Department released an update of the so-called “Engel List”. The document is a list of “individuals who have knowingly engaged in acts that threaten democratic processes or institutions, engaged in significant corruption, or obstructed investigations of such acts of corruption in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.” The list sanctions corrupt individuals who undermine democracy or obstruct corruption investigations. It also sanctions those allegedly involved in the following offenses: corruption related to government contracts, bribery and extortion, and the facilitation or transfer of the proceeds of corruption, including through money laundering.

El Salvador's government has extended a controversial state of emergency by another month for a fourth time. Human rights groups say the measures, which allow police to arrest suspects without warrants, have led to arbitrary detentions. But the government argues they have made the country safer. The special measures were declared in March to combat rampant gang violence. Since then, 46,000 people have been arrested on suspicion of belonging to gangs in the country of 6.5m people.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) released its 2021 Annual Report, a reference instrument to foster institutional transparency. The Report addresses the situation of human rights and presents relevant progress made in the Americas, along with pending challenges. Each one of the Report's six chapters mentions specific institutional achievements. The IACHR granted 73 new precautionary measures, extended a further 33, and requested five temporary measures from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The Commission further issued four resolutions to follow up on precautionary measures, given persistent risk factors or the emergence of implementation challenges. A total of 40 precautionary measures were lifted, in the belief that the risk factors that justified their existence had disappeared. During 2021, all requests for precautionary measures received by 2019 that were pending a final decision were reviewed. 

A petition for a criminal probe against the Dutch state-run development bank FMO has been filed in the Netherlands for alleged complicity in bloodshed in Honduras. FMO, the acronym for the Netherlands Development Finance Company, had been involved in financing the controversial Agua Zarca dam project in northwest Honduras from 2014 to 2017. The project, slated for construction in Indigenous Lenca territory, drew international scrutiny after several murders surrounding the project, including the 2016 assassination of world-renowned Indigenous water defender Berta Cáceres. Cáceres had led the resistance to the dam, which many Indigenous people said would displace them from the Gualcarque river, regarded as sacred. She was later killed by a hit squad whose members had connections to both the Honduran military as well as DESA, the dam-building company receiving loan money from FMO. “For the Lenca people this new legal action is the opportunity to reveal the criminal activity inherent to the financing of the Agua Zarca,” Berta's daughter Bertha Zúñiga Cáceres told Al Jazeera. It is also a way, she said, “to know that my mother wasn’t mistaken in establishing that these businesses and these banks are criminals”.