Dear Friends,
Here is your monthly update on Latin America, U.S. policy, and work for peace and justice.
 Energy is building for the cross-country Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, led by poet Javier Sicilia and the Mexican peace movement. The Caravan crosses from Tijuana into San Diego on Sunday, August 12, and will traverse more than 5,600 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, through the Southeast, to Chicago and New York, and culminating in Washington, DC on September 12. Read more.
 In November, 2012, the Fellowship of Reconciliation will host Mexican peace movement leader Olga Reyes, who has seen six members of her family killed in the last two and a half years. Olga brings a powerful testimony of the human costs of the drug war, militarism and gun trafficking, and of the growing movement to forge a different path in Mexico. We invite you to propose a visit by Olga to your area and to organize events for the visit. Read more.
 By Gina Spigarelli
On July 11, the indigenous Nasa of Cauca in southwestern Colombia began confronting armed groups face to face and peacefully asking them to leave Nasa territories. They removed police trenches from the urban center and disassembled homemade FARC missiles found on their lands. Four hundred Nasa members occupied and observed army soldiers on a sacred indigenous site. The government was scheduled to sit down with Nasa indigenous leaders in the last week of July. The whole nation watched to see what would become of their meeting. Read more.
 By John Lindsay-Poland
We need to have a real story to tell about the former School of the Americas, said Ambassador Swanee Hunt at a meeting on June 28 of the school's federal advisory committee in Fort Benning, Georgia, which was discussing a possible documentary. "It can't just be, 'We don't teach torture anymore.'" The meeting had fascinating dynamics between military officers, academics, diplomats, and activists present. FOR called for evaluation of the school's impacts on respect for human rights by Latin American officers who attend it. Read more.
 Eduar Lancheros, a leader in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, was the one who first asked FOR to accompany the community with a regular presence. “We want you to be a witness to who we are,” he said. "As long as pain turns into hope, there will always be community. And what is hope? Hope is when we no longer hate the murderer," he said on another occasion. He died on June 27. Here we translate the eulogy from the Inter-ecclesiastic Justice and Peace Commission. Read more.
 More than a dozen human rights organizations are calling on the State Department to disclose which military and police units receive U.S. aid in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia, but Washington so far has declined to release the information. The groups highlighted new provisions for transparency in a human rights law, known as the Leahy Amendment, in a letter to Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson. Read more.
Ninety-seven organizations, churches and academics from Europe and the United States, including Nobel Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, signed a letter to Colombian Defense Minister Juan Pinzón in June, expressing their deep concerns about the human rights of Colombian youth who not only are recruited by illegal armed groups but also victims of illegal and irregular recruitment practices carried out by the Colombian military. Read more. |
