International Roundup

By Agencies
[email protected]

A group of armed sicarios killed Mexican lawyer and Indigenous rights activist Patricia Rivera Reyes, authorities announced Tuesday.

The prosecutors’ office in the northern border state of Baja California said three masked intruders burst into a home in the border city of Tijuana where a festivity was being held Saturday night.

The intruders robbed party-goers of their personal possessions. 

Rivera Reyes reportedly demanded her cell phone back, when one of the assailants shot her in the head.

Another man at the house was also shot in the head and taken to a local hospital.

Early this year, the government acknowledged that 97 community and rights activists have been killed during the current administration, which took office Dec. 1, 2018. Officials said 90 percent of those crimes have yet to result in convictions.

So far this year, eight journalists have been murdered in Mexico.

The Indigenous groups in northern Mexico are smaller and less well known than those in the south, and some of the groups live on both sides of the border, where they have suffered centuries of oppression and seizure of their traditional lands.

GUATEMALA

A Guatemalan judge considered key in fighting corruption announced her resignation on Monday and that she has decided to leave the Central American country.

Judge Erika Aifán has presided over corruption cases against businessmen, officials, judges and lawmakers, and she was recently overseeing an investigation about alleged irregularities during current President Alejandro Giammattei’s campaign. 

She has been pursued by her own colleagues and she faces at least 20 legal complaints for allegedly overstepping, something she denies.

“They left me no other option,” she said to The Associated Press on a phone conversation from Washington, where she fled.

Aifán is the latest case of other Guatemalan judges and prosecutors who have left the country in recent months after the government had started investigations or even looking to arrest those who oversee corruption cases.

Aifán said she had felt particular pressure from Guatemalan Attorney General Consuelo Porras, whose visa was canceled by the U.S. government because of corruption concerns.

“She has manipulated the Prosecutor’s office, prosecuting those of us who have worked to fight against impunity and corruption,” Aifán said.

One of Aifán’s most recent cases was an investigation about alleged illegal funding to Giammattei’s presidential campaign in 2019. 

The President has denied any wrongdoing.

The U.N. and the U.S. government had criticized and condemned in the past what they have considered “harassment” of the judge.

In July 2021, the U.S. government announced the suspension of its cooperation with Guatemala’s Attorney General’s Office in response to the firing of its then top anti-corruption prosecutor.

HONDURAS

A judge in Honduras has granted the extradition of former President Juan Orlando Hernández to the US.

Hernández, who governed Honduras from 2014 to January this year, was arrested last month in his home in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

He is accused of having been involved in a drug-trafficking ring which included his younger brother, Tony Hernández, who last year was sentenced in the US to life in prison, but he denies the charges against him.

His lawyer said the former president’s legal team would appeal against the judge’s decision.

If extradited, Hernández will face three charges:

Conspiracy to import a controlled substance into the US.

Using or carrying firearms including machine guns.

Conspiracy to use or carry firearms.

The charges were filed after Tony Hernández’s trial in New York.

During the trial, prosecutors alleged that the infamous Mexican drug lord Joaquín «El Chapo» Guzmán had personally handed Tony Hernández $1m.

According to the prosecutors, Guzmán told the younger Hernández to pass the money on to his brother Juan Orlando as a bribe.

The former president has always maintained that he did everything in his power to fight drug trafficking.

He maintains that the allegations against him are based on statements provided by convicted drug traffickers, whom he says are out for revenge.

Honduras has for years been a key transit country for drugs smuggled from South America to the United States, and more recently has also become a place where cocaine is produced.

NICARAGUA

Nicaraguan opposition leader Cristiana Chamorro has been given an eight-year sentence after being found guilty of money-laundering.

Chamorro says the charges were politically motivated and designed to stop her from running in November’s election, which saw President Daniel Ortega win a fifth term in office.

She was one of seven presidential hopefuls detained ahead of the poll.

The 68-year-old is expected to be kept under house arrest.

Chamorro was seen by many in the opposition as their best hope of defeating Ortega in the election.

She comes from one of Nicaragua’s most influential families.

Her father was the editor of the newspaper La Prensa, which opposed the autocratic Somoza family that ruled Nicaragua for decades. 

He was assassinated in 1978.

Her mother, Violeta Chamorro, won the 1990 election to become the first female president in Latin America, putting an end to Daniel Ortega’s first 11 years as president.

Shortly after Cristiana Chamorro announced she would run for president, prosecutors accused her of «abusive management (and) ideological falsehood», during her time at the helm of a media foundation she had led until early 2021.

At her trial, which was held behind closed doors, Chamorro remained defiant. 

According to opposition news site 100% Noticias, she said that «they want to stain my name, but they will not succeed».

Chamorro’s brother, Pedro Joaquín, and two former employees of the foundation, as well as Chamorro’s driver, also received sentences ranging between seven and 13 years in prison.

Chamorro told the judge that «you’re accusing five honorable people».

MEXICO

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador inaugurated a new Mexico City airport on Monday, one of his four hallmark building projects.

The government pulled out all the fanfare it could muster, including releasing a documentary on the project showing an army general talking to a statue.

The terminal was built by the army, on an army airbase, and named after an army general.

But the new terminal will handle only about 16 flights per day, in part because it is so far from the city and rail links and expressways have yet to be completed. On Monday only about 2,000 passengers used the new terminal, a far cry from the 2.4 million the government hopes to attract by the end of the year.

Only one “international” flight will use the airport, a flight to Caracas, Venezuela, operated by a Venezuelan carrier that is under U.S. sanctions.

López Obrador conceded that new terminal is more popular among cargo flights than passenger jets.

“It is just a question of the airlines increasing their flights,” the president said. “In the case of cargo traffic there has been more progress, the (old) Mexico City airport is saturated in cargo, as well.”

The new Felipe Angeles Mexico City airport reflects the contrasts and contradictions of López Obrador’s administration.

There is government austerity — his main campaign promise is fully on display in the rather bare-bones terminal — as well as his customary outsized reliance on the Mexican army.

A documentary on the building of the terminal features an army general speaking to and saluting a huge statue of Gen. Felipe Angeles, who fought alongside Pancho Villa in Mexico’s 1910-1917 Revolution and was later executed.

But there are also widely ridiculed government claims about how long it will take passengers to get to the new terminal, located 27 miles (43 kilometers) from the city center, and repeated complaints by the president that there is a conspiracy in the press to besmirch his new airport.

The president sees the new airport as a symbol of his twilight battle against privilege, conservativism and ostentation, things he despises.

López Obrador found an easy target in the vastly expensive, architecturally daring project started by his predecessor to build a huge, flashy new airport in a swamp on the city’s eastern edge, much closer to the city’s center.

López Obrador decided to cancel that and build the new airport on firmer soil to the north. It is projected to cost $4 billion, which López Obrador claims represents a cost savings compared to the swampy site, which might have required billions in maintenance because of the waterlogged soil.

The new airport will run in tandem with Mexico City’s existing airport, whose two, saturated terminals had been scheduled for closure under the earlier plan.

It is one of four keystone projects he is racing to finish before his term ends in 2024 — the airport, an oil refinery, a tourist train in the Yucatan Peninsula and a train linking Gulf coast and Pacific seaports — reflecting his vision that his is not just a normal, six-year presidential term. Mexico does not allow reelection.

He sees himself as leading a historic, irreversible “transformation” of Mexico, and he has turned to building projects — and the army — to guard that legacy. The army will actually own and operate some of the projects after they’re finished.

But the rush to complete the projects has drawn criticism. The new airport was inaugurated before road and rail links were completed, and the government has announced it will force any carriers who want to schedule new flights to Mexico City to use the new airport, rather than the older, closer airport.