Police Violence in Belize, More Soldiers in El Salvador

Jul 26, 2021

Dear Readers,

The murder of a minor shot in the back by the police caused outrage in Belize. Belizeans are protesting for police reform as an officer allegedly shot and killed a 14-year-old Black boy, Laddie Gillett, on a beach in Placencia two weeks ago. They also want the accused police officer to be charged with murder.

Meanwhile, in El Salvador, musicians and human rights activists spoke against Bukele administration's new plan of adding 20,000 more soldiers on El Salvador's streets within five years to combat delinquency. Some fear that Bukele's government is consolidating armed power all the while eroding the country's democratic institutions. Others are drawing explicit parallels between El Salvador and Nicaragua -- whose government just arrested the seventh presidential pre-candidate over the weekend.

A lot is going on -- thanks for following us to keep up with Central American news.

Salú,

Melissa

Online, Belizeans used the hashtag #JusticeforLaddie, who was allegedly fatally shot and killed by a police officer. Photo by The San Pedro Sun.

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Headlines

Migration

📰 DACA: A federal judge ruled that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) was unlawfully implemented and has halted the processing of recent applications. The decision has affected many prospective DACA recipients.

📰 Title 42: The Biden administration fears that lifting COVID-19 restrictions, known as Title 42, for undocumented migrants will increase migration to the U.S.

📰 Detention Centers: Texas is ramping up arrests of migrants under trespassing charges. // A federal report of a Mississippi detention center identified several inhospitable conditions for detained migrants.

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Belize

📰 Laddie's Law: Belizeans are protesting across the country in response to the murder of 14-year-old Laddie Gillett, who was shot by a police officer. Protestors are calling for the implementation of "Laddie's Law", which would address police engagement with minors. The police officer accused of shooting Gillett was arrested and charged for manslaughter, but was later released on bail. Witness and survivor Thomas Palacio recalls the shooting.

📰 Refugee Support: Two organizations of the United Nations and the Department of Youth Services signed a Memorandum of Understanding pledging to give support to refugee and Belizean youth. This support would include improving access to resources that will combat gender-based violence, sexual exploitation, and abuse.

📰 Embezzled COVID-19 Funds: The Belize Police Department is investigating the alleged embezzlement of $60,000 that was set aside for COVID-19 relief funding by employees of the Labour Department.

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Costa Rica

📰 Surfer Escapes Floods: Costa Rican Olympic surfer Carlos Muñoz managed to get out of Limón province with the help of firefighters while the area was flooded by storms in the Caribbean. Muñoz then flew from San José to compete in the first-ever surfing competition at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

📰 Pandemic Restrictions: The Costa Rican government maintained that it will keep flexible restrictions on the movement of vehicles while cases are reported to be trending downward and vaccination efforts continue to accelerate. Almost 40% of the country has been at least partially vaccinated.

📰 Exports Increase: Exports of Costa Rican goods increased by 26% compared to the same time last year. Exports of medical devices and pharmaceuticals grew while exports in livestock and fishing dropped. Services saw a sharp drop because of the lack of tourism due to the pandemic.

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El Salvador

📰 Territorial Control Plan: President Nayib Bukele recently launched Phase 4 of the Territorial Control Plan. The plan includes doubling military presence, from 20K to 40k soldiers, over five years. For now, more than 1,000 soldiers have been hired for communities with gang presence. Artists, human rights groups, and the FMLN have urged the government to put a stop to the proposed plans.

📰 Transparency: As a part of a money laundering probe during Funes' administration, El Salvador's Prosecutor's Office ordered the arrest of former President Salvador Sánchez Cerén and other nine top FMLN officials. Five have been detained. FLMN’s Secretary General condemned the arrests and accused the current administration of a dictatorship. Two days prior, former President Elías Antonio Saca, currently in jail, testified in the Legislative Assembly about his administrations' illegal bonuses.

📰 Bitcoin Protests: This past week, demonstrators held a protest outside the National Assembly in El Salvador demanding a repeal of the newest Bitcoin Law but President Bukele “can’t see anything stopping Bitcoin in El Salvador.” More than 75% of El Salvador is skeptical of Bitcoin according to survey.

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Guatemala

📰 Sandoval case: Guatemala's Attorney General, Consuelo Porras, dismissed anti-corruption prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval, who was the head of the high-profile and internationally-funded Special Prosecutor's Office Against Impunity (FECI). Sandoval fled the country and held a press conference revealing the reasons behind his removal. Thousands were outraged at Sandoval’s removal and took to the street to protest in front of the Public Ministry on Saturday July 24. Sandoval is still speaking out against corruption in Guatemala and how the Public Ministry and Consuelo Porras are involved. Many national and international organizations have shown their public rejection of Porras’s decision and stand in solidarity with Sandoval. The residents of the municipality of San Pedro Soloma, Huehuetenango, closed the main road in Wachuna and demand the resignation of Consuelo Porras and President Giammattei.

📰 #EstánDespedidos: COVID-19 cases are still rising while only 1.6% of the Guatemalan population has been fully vaccinated. Medical staff have shown their public indignation towards Health Minister Amelia Flores, President Alejandro Giammattei, and Attorney General Consuelo Porras and calling for their dismissal.

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Honduras

📰 Garífuna Community: Protests took place in Tegucigalpa demanding the search and investigation of the forcibly disappeared Garífuna defenders. The Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (Ofraneh) asked for a special prosecutor to investigate the disappearances.

📰COVID: Honduras received the donation of 1.5 million vaccines from the United States. // Hospitals in Honduras have begun to collapse once more and many critical patients are having to wait in triage centers, health authorities reported. One third of all triage centers have been closed despite rising numbers of COVID-19 patients.

📰 Elections: National Party congress representatives modified a proposal made by the National Electoral Council (CNE), so that only their National Party representative in the CNE could give results on election day and threatened to jail to other councilors (of opposition parties) who give preliminary results. The CNE is also experiencing budget issues that may delay the elections.

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Nicaragua

📰 Political repression: The government arrested the seventh pre-candidate for the presidential elections to be held in November. // Opposition presidential candidate, María Asunción Moreno, has decided to leave the country "in the face of harassment, persecution and the threat of my imprisonment by the Ortega Murillo dictatorship". International media continues to be blocked entry to the country.

📰 Doctors: The Nicaraguan government plans to outlaw dozens of NGOs and expropriate all their assets. Most of them are medical institutions and have been targeted for criticizing the government's management of the pandemic. Also, Nicaraguan health authorities summoned two doctors who were warned that they would be violating the controversial Special Law on Cybercrimes.

📰 Russia: President Ortega officially counts on Russia as an ally, he said during the anniversary of the Sandinista revolution on July 19. He later also rejected any opportunity of dialogue with the United States, accusing them of meddling in Nicaragua's politics.

📰 COVID-19: Both the Ministry of Health and the independent Citizen Observatory agree that there has been an increase in cases and deaths from COVID-19 in the country.

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Panama

📰 Floods: Due to heavy and consistent rain since Friday, flooding in the area of Bocas Del Toro reached a red alert on July 25. Other regions such as Chiriquí, Veraguas, Herrera, Los Santos, Colón, Coclé and the Ngäbe Buglé district under a yellow alert.

📰 COVID-19: As of July 25, Panama reported 409,995 recovered COVID-19 patients, 866 new positive cases bring the statistics to a cumulative total of 429,949 active cases.

📰 Economy: Panamanian products are making an advance in the European Union, the United States, Canada and China. The products with the best performance compared to 2020 are papaya with a growth of 66%, squash with a growth of 127% and watermelon with a growth of 25%.

Young Central American Scientists

Honduran science student, Ana Ruth Benitez, graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently studying water purification systems.

Good Reads

📌 Analyst Oscar René Vargas argues that Nicaragua is entering the game of a "tripolar world order" led by the U.S., Russia and China, by aligning itself with Putin. (Articulo 66)

📌El Salvador is rapidly approaching the authoritarianism that Nicaragua is experiencing, human rights defender warns. (El Diario de Hoy)

📌 The Los Ángeles Times discusses the history of the Mexican National Guard and its ties to the U.S. policies and immigration enforcement.

📌 Human rights activist Verónica Reyna writes that President Bukele's militarization of El Salvador consolidates his power over the country instead of genuinely improving security, all the while going against El Salvador's Peace Accords of non-militarization. (El Faro)

Food for Thought

"Nayib Bukele has taken more steps to consolidate himself in power than to fight gangs. For an institutionality as weak as the Salvadoran one, it is easier to create an alliance with those who do have control of the territory, in this case the gangs, through the violence they exercise, than to enter into a low-intensity war as the Sanchez Ceren government did when it was accused of several extrajudicial executions by the police. In this scenario, gangs are more likely to evolve into structures at the service of the state than to disappear, as has happened - each with its own nuances - in Honduras and Guatemala." Verónica Reyna

Fly So Far

The documentary film “Fly So Far” covers the women who endured jail due to El Salvador's abortion ban.

Sports in History

Lloyd LaBeach was the first Panamanian who won the podium twice and received the medal of bronze in the XIV Olympic Games in London in 1948.

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