Guatemala: Gun attack against two journalists

Journalists murder under suspicious conditions

source: Prensa Libre

On Tuesday, March the 10th, two journalists were shot to death in Suchitepequez, Mazatenango. According to eye witnesses, three journalists, Jose Danilo Lopez from Prensa Libre, Federico Salazar and Marvin Tunchez from Radio Nuevo Mundo were walking in the park and all of a sudden, two suspects approached them in a blue motorcycle, and attacked them with shot guns. Lopez and Salazar died in the scene, while Tunchez was taken to a local hospital severely injured.

According to the first investigations, there's a version that a third person was involved and in charge of letting the attackers in motorcyle know when to make the attack. One of the suspects was captured by the police in a nearby area.

This case have had a lot of attention from the media because one of the journalists involved had been threatened since 2008  for making some notes on San Lorenzo Suchitepequez Mayor, Jose Linares Rojas and Juan Manuel Delgado, former Mazatenango's mayor. According to a written claim made by Danilo Lopez in July 9th, 2013, he was warned by the mayor that if he didn't quit publishing about him, he would face terrible consequences because he was dealing with someone "with power and money."

The reports written by Jose Danilo Lopez are about Q2.8 million missing from the municipality and that the mayor reported were invested in public constructions. Is not known yet if the attack had to do with some reports the journalists were about to publish about the same mayor or if they would have been working in involving a bigger net of corruption in that Department.

Guatemalan Press Association and other activists have been working on paceful marchs demanding respect for life, profession and freedom of speech.

Mexico: Capture of Omar Treviño

Last week, mexican police arrested the leader of the Zetas cartel in an early morning near the city of Monterrey.


Alejandro "Omar" Treviño Morales, who went by the name "Z-42," was seized in San Pedro Garza García – the wealthiest town in Latin America.
The media claim that it was a "clean capture" due to Treviño's peacefully giving himself up to the authorities.

Treviño Morales had a $5 million bounty placed on his head by the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), while the Mexican authorities offered a 30 million pesos reward for information leading to his arrest. In the US he was also wanted for drug trafficking.

He had taken the helm of the cartel – which controls much of the north east of Mexico, and thus a large part of the strategically-vital border with the US – in July 2013, when his brother, Miguel Treviño Morales, was captured.

The family – Miguel, Omar and their brother Jose – were pillars of the Zetas cartel, which was formed in 2010 as a breakaway faction of the Gulf cartel. 

México captura a Omar Trevino

Mexico's most wanted: Which drug lords have been captured under Enrique Peña Nieto?

Venezuela: US government announces new sanctions on Venezuela

Obama administration just threw an executive order announcing the targeting of seven Venezuelan officials, that the United States says, are involved in corruption in Venezuelan and violated human rights there. 

The President of the United Stated stated that the target of those individuals, and that the Treasury Department is authorized as well to  target other Venezuelan individuals. They claim that those peopole assets in the US will be frozen and prohibited form traveling to the country. Treasury will be able to add more people to their list. 

"We are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government's efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents. Venezuela's problems cannot be solved by criminalizing dissent," the White House said in a release. (cnbc.com)

Who are these officers?

Commander of the Strategic Defense Central Region Integral (REDI), Antonio Benavides Torres; the director of the political police SEBIN Gustavo González López; the president of the Corporación Venezolana de Guayana and former commander of the National Guard Noguera Just Pietri and prosecutor Katherine Haringhton. 

The complete list of sanctioned officers is complete with the director of the Bolivarian National Police Manuel Pérez Urdaneta, the commander of the 31 Armoured Brigade of the Army Manuel Bernal Martinez and the Inspector General of the Armed Forces Miguel Vivas Landino. 

Related posts and links: 

Obama declares "national emergency" 

Obama declara emergencia por amenaza de Venezuela a Estados Unidos

El Salvador: El Salvador announces a slow process and irregularities in vote counting

After having their elections past March 1st, El Salvador still has no answer about the final results. 

El Salvador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) announced the normalization of the vote counting process. Julio Olivo, the President of the TSE,  called on voters to remain calm as the final vote count could take up to seven days. As they reported that the preliminary count was suspended due to a system failure in the digital electoral database and that the votes would be counted manually. 

Opinion polls in the lead-up to the vote suggested that the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which currently controls 31 seats, had an 11-point advantage over its right-wing political rival the ARENA party. 

According to preliminary reports the FMLN has won 86 of the 262 mayorships of El Salvador in the March 1 elections, including the capital San Salvador.

Eventhough there are man groups and organizations showing their disconfort about the situation, Olivo said in an interview that no political party is going to tell them how to work.

"I'm telling you, you are not going to settle me down and I make you responsible for my personal intgrity" Olivo said. 

The Elections: 

At the beggining of the month,  Salvadoran citizens voted for:

 84 seats in Congress

 262 mayors

 3,000 municipal council members (aprox)

 20 representatives for the Central American Parliament

Related news:

Dirigntes denuncian irregulariddades en conteo

TSE valora abrir urnas tras inconsistencias

Piden ingreso sin restricciones a la prensa para el escrutinio final

FMNL favored in El Salvador's Municipal and Legislative Races

Nicaragua: It's a family matter

Photo Credit: Google/ticotimes

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, is violating the constitution by giving an official charge to his wife and kids.

During a visit to Costa Rica, this past January, Ortega named his wife Rosario Murillo "foreign minister", his daughters as special advisers and his son went holding a ministerial post.

This is just a clear example of how nepotism works during Ortega's Sandinista government. Since he was elected for the second time in 2007, Ortega has named his wife several times with different charges, as spokeswomen and chief of Communication and Citizenship Council ,  which allowes her to control several media outlets.

Also, in Nicaragua's news paper there are several poitings against Ortega's way of leading his governent.

Past January, La Prensa published that Ortega had named a Puerto Rican as a an Advisor.

Colombia: Colombia will extradit FARC leader , while investigating possible violation of ceasefire

The Colombian government authorized the extradition to The United States of the guerrilla leader of the FARC, Eduardo Cabrera alias El Cura requierd by a court of the district of New York for the crimes of drug trafficking.

El Cura was a mid-level commander of the Southern Block of the guerrilla group FARC, according to the authorities.

The charges brought against him are “conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and to manufacture and distribute cocaine with the knowledge and intent that the substance would be imported to the United States.” (colombia reports.co)
The insurgent was arrested in November 2013 in the southern department of Caquetá , in a joint operation of the Office, Army and Police. Cabrera is accused of being the link of the Southern Block of the FARC drug trafficking, and US officials blame the shipping of more than 500 thousand kilograms of cocaine to the US market .

Related Posts:

Colombia autorizó la extradición a EEUU de un líder de las FARC acusado de narcotráfico

Cuba: Ex President Fidel Castro Reunites with "The Five"

The ex president of Cuba Fidel Castro met last Saturday with the Five Cuban agents who were imprisoned in the US for espionage, as related by the revolutionary leader in an article published Monday in the official media of the island.

"I  received them on Saturday 28 February, 73 days after they stepped on Cuban territory," writes Fidel Castro at the beginning of his article, which states him as "happy" for this meeting, which lasted five hours, and held at the home of president.

The "Five Heroes Antiterroristas" as it is known in Cuba Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Rene Gonzalez and Fernando Gonzalez were arrested in 1998 in the US when the Federal Bureau of Investigation dismantled the network of Cuban espionage "Wasp" , acting in southern Florida, and were sentenced in 2001 to imprisonment.

In his article, Fidel Castro ex spies stresses that "never did any harm to the United States." "They tried to forestall and prevent terrorist acts against our people organized by US intelligence agencies that the whole world is well aware," the Cuban leader.