| Colombia: "Disappearances happen when people think differently" “Very few people have been found, so the question’s always there: how do we talk about them? Is or was? Presence or absence?” It’s hard to understand what exactly it means to be disappeared. One day a daughter, father, or aunt is there, and the next they aren’t. Families are left to search endlessly for their loved ones, meeting immense resistance from the government, and all the while never knowing if their loved one is across town or across the country, dead or alive.
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Cuban Americans for Engagement Visit DC In mid-April, LAWGEF and the Washington Office on Latin America helped organize efforts for a group of Cuban Americans’ visit to Washington, DC to show policymakers that the Cuban American community is not monolithic. The group, Cuban Americans for Engagement (C.A.F.E) want engagement, not isolation with Cuba.
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The Birth of Mexico's Peace Movement From death, comes life. With the death of a son, a father gives life to a movement. In March 2011, 24-year-old Juan Francisco Sicilia was found brutally murdered outside of Cuernavaca, Mexico. Like the tens of thousands of families across Mexico who have lost their sons, daughters, fathers and mothers to violence, Juan’s father, Javier Sicilia, was devastated. With the loss of his son, this well-known poet lost his ability to write poetry as well.
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Thousands Rally for an End to Displacement in Colombia This April, LAWG worked with a large coalition of faith-based and human rights organizations to make the 7th Annual Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia a huge success. Every week in Colombia last year, more than 2,250 people were violently pushed off their lands and left homeless. With this in mind, we focused our efforts on spreading one simple message: everybody deserves a place to call home.
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U.S. Border Patrol Abuses in Spotlight Anastasio Hernández Rojas lay face down on the ground, defenseless and screaming for help, on the evening of May 28, 2010 in San Diego, CA. His feet were bound and his hands were cuffed behind his back as Border Patrol agents beat him ruthlessly. Eye-witnesses pleaded for the agents to stop the beating, but they continued. After an agent shot Anastasio with a taser five times, he stopped breathing, and later died. Border Patrol agents have killed seven residents of border communities in the past two years, including a 15-year-old boy. Despite public outcry, protests, and countless meetings with agency leadership, the Border Patrol has taken no known action against the agents involved.
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White House Ignores Labor Concerns in Colombia Meeting with Colombian President Santos following the Summit of the Americas, President Obama declared that the Colombian government had met the terms of the Labor Action Plan, allowing the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement to take effect May 15th. The Latin America Working Group joined U.S. and Colombian unions and nongovernmental groups in condemning this action, which makes a mockery of the commitment Mr. Obama made to ensure that all the elements of the Labor Action Plan would be fulfilled.
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Wake Up Call: Human Rights in Honduras Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and 93 other members of the Congress sent a letter on March 12th, 2012 to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing grave concern about human rights violations in Honduras, particularly the murder of 45 people associated with small farmer associations in Bajo Aguán.
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The Latin America Working Group has been advocating for nonviolent solutions that incorporate respect for human rights and the input of local communities as an alternative to our current U.S. policy towards the Americas. Over the past few months we’ve convinced the State Department to call on the Colombian government to reject a historic step backwards for justice and return human rights violations by the army to military, rather than civilian courts; organized a letter signed by 94 members of Congress calling on the Honduran government to investigate violence against campesinos in Bajo Aguán; and brought your voices into the debate: more than 40,000 of you signed a petition urging President Obama to stop arms trafficking to Mexico. Continue to support our efforts in changing Latin America policy by making a generous contribution today.
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