Anti-Militarism: News & Updates

Mireya Andrade was a student activist in a communist political party working alongside her boyfriend, Javier Castillo, who was a party member and local activist. Just days after winning local elections in Miranda, Cauca, Castillo disappeared during a 1987 military operation searching for rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Unión Patriótica, the organization Castillo worked for, was not affiliated with the guerilla group, but in the 1980s, at the height of the Colombian civil war, being a communist was reason enough for the army to detain him. The last time anyone saw Castillo was when soldiers stopped his car in the conflict-ridden department of Cauca. In the weeks that followed, Andrade received anonymous death threats for her activism work. Thirty years later, exactly what happened to Castillo remains a mystery.

Antonio de la Cruz, 47, was shot on Wednesday as he was leaving his house with his 23-year-old daughter, who was seriously injured, according to state prosecutors and the newspaper that employed him. This brings the number of journalists killed this year in the country, one of the world’s most dangerous for media workers, to 12. Attacks on the press have increased 85% in the three years since president Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power. Seven journalists were killed in the whole of 2021, compared with 12 so far this year.

Read this summary of Border Focus Month Infographics to get an overview on immigration, detention and border issues like ICE Detention, Detention of Unaccompanied Children, the 100-Mile Border Zone, The Digital Border Wall, Alternatives to Detention, ICE 287 (g) Agreements, Deportations and Forced Removals, and Root Causes of Migration!

Read this fact sheet from IRTF to learn about Temporary Protected Status (TPS), what countries are currently designated for TPS and what the challenges are!

People move for many reasons. In Latin America and the Caribbean, violence and deep poverty propel many people to migrate in search of safety and peace. In recent years, natural disasters fueled by climate change have intensified, displacing whole communities. Local organizations that provide humanitarian relief have faced tremendous obstacles to providing direct aid to migrants, including legal and health care assistance. During the pandemic, governments have imposed even greater restrictions on civil society organizations—sometimes using the political cover of the public health emergency to pass restrictive policies with long term implications.  In Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, U.S. policy has historically created or worsened systemic problems. Instead of supporting democracy and economic stability, the U.S. government has financed and trained military and security forces; played a role in fueling civil wars; legitimized governments taking power through coups and electoral fraud; and pursued unjust economic policies.  

Fifty suspected migrants were found dead and at least a dozen others were hospitalized after being found inside an abandoned tractor-trailer rig on Monday on a remote back road in south-west San Antonio, officials have said. The discovery in Texas may prove to be the deadliest tragedy among thousands of people who have died attempting to cross the US border from Mexico in recent decades. “This incident underscores the need to go after the multibillion-dollar criminal smuggling industry preying on migrants and leading to far too many innocent deaths,”

Another anniversary of the June 28, 2009 coup d’etat that changed Honduras forever is here. This year, on this date, the Honduras Solidarity Network of North America (HSN) not only reaffirms continuing solidarity with the Honduran social movements and opposition to the US policies in the region that continue destructive interventionism and interference, but we also join the commemorations of struggle and celebration by the Honduran people of their victory in electing a government born out of the blood, sweat, and tears of years of resistance. This victory opens up a bigger space for the people and their movements to continue fighting for the re-foundation of their country. Still, they face powerful enemies and obstacles in their path.  

Mass death has once again hit the U.S.-Mexico border. And once again, it didn’t have to happen. As the border zone enters the hottest weeks of the summer, the U.S. government must begin, right now, a fundamental re-examination of the policies—the decisions made, and not made—that are leading to the preventable deaths of hundreds of people. It’s hard to fathom the horror beheld by the San Antonio, Texas city worker who heard a cry for help coming from a trailer truck parked along a road on the city’s outskirts, on the evening of June 27. It’s even harder to fathom the suffering of the 62 migrants inside, including parents and children, locked in without ventilation or water.  

A Guatemalan court has tossed out an agreement that made it easier to prosecute bribery involving the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht — a ruling that favors a former cabinet official accused of corruption. The appeals court annulled an agreement under which Odebrecht had promised to give Guatemalan anti-corruption prosecutors information about bribes it had paid in Guatemala — one of many countries across the hemisphere where it systematically suborned public officials. Under pressure from prosecutors in the U.S., Brazil and elsewhere, the company has admitted paying bribes across Latin America to win government contracts. The company has cooperated with prosecutors in several countries to regain the right to do business. It allegedly paid $17.9 million in bribes to local officials, politicians and private citizens in Guatemala.

Human rights attorney Paula Avila-Guillen never thought she'd be fighting to decriminalize abortions in the U.S. until now, as nearly two dozen states move to ban the procedure following Roe v. Wade's official repeal Friday. A leader of Latin America's "green wave" movement for reproductive rights, earlier this year Avila-Guillen helped legalize abortions for women up to 24 weeks-pregnant in her native Colombia, which now joins Argentina and parts of Mexico in the short list of places in Latin America where terminating a pregnancy is no longer a crime. The Supreme Court removed the constitutional right to an abortion in a 5-4 vote — a move that essentially represents the culmination of a decadeslong push by conservatives, religious activists and advocates who oppose abortion.