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Article Artículo

Honduras

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

There Has Never Been a Better Time to be Forced into Exile for Being Gay in Honduras

That seems to be the take-away in the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) front-page story on asylum claims from Honduras, which alternatively ran with the headlines “If You’re Seeking Asylum, It Helps to be Gay” and “The Battle for Gay Asylum: Why Sexual Minorities Have an Inside Track to a U.S. Green Card.” In his news story for WSJ on Honduras, Joel Millman tells a familiar story in which some members of a persecuted minority, namely LGBT Hondurans, can find some relief from their situation thanks to the U.S.’s liberal values and “a growing willingness by Americans to embrace alternative lifestyles,” though they must leave their countries of origin in order to benefit from enlightened asylum laws.

While much of the piece is offensive and inaccurate (Nathaniel Frank has great take-down in Slate that is worth reading), the main problem is that it ignores the most significant event in recent Honduran history: a successful military coup in 2009 that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and triggered a wave of human rights violations and widespread political repression. Attacks on LGBT Honduras increased greatly after the U.S.-supported coup – organizations in Honduras count at least 25 murders of LGBT individuals between 1990 and 2005, but more than 116 murders since 2008 – and so while it might be true that many Hondurans have benefited from successful asylum applications and are now living in the United States, this is clearly not the full story.

The U.S.-backed coup in 2009 sparked a wave of violence against activists, the political opposition, and members of the LGBT community, with as many as 5,000 reports of human rights violations last year in the northern region alone. LGBT activists point out connections between violence perpetrated against them for their identity and for their involvement in resistance to the dictatorship and its successor regime. Indeed, while targeted hate crimes are often not overtly related to targets’ political involvement, LGBT activists note that it’s important to recognize the embedded nature of coup-opposition activism in many LGBT advocates’ work. Members of the LGBT community, including activists, are obvious targets for right-wing violence.

CEPR, Eileen O'Grady and Stephan Lefebvre / June 20, 2014

Article Artículo

Colombia

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

Colombia Peace Talks Survive Elections, May Have Lasting Implications for Regional Integration and US-Led “War on Drugs”

Ending a very close race, incumbent Juan Manuel Santos won a decisive five-point victory Sunday in Colombia’s second round of presidential elections, beating challenger Óscar Iván Zuluaga, who had won the first round in an upset. The campaign centered on one issue: the future of the Santos-led peace process under way in Havana between the Colombian government and the rebel group FARC that may have the potential to end a half century of civil war.

Zuluaga, who had been hand-chosen by Santos’ predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, and ran in opposition to the peace talks (though he had softened his position after the first round), quickly conceded defeat this Sunday. Uribe, however, wasted no time in claiming that the elections had been marred by “massive fraud,” a charge quickly rejected by international electoral observers. 

Santos’ victory has certainly dealt a major blow to ‘Uribismo,’ as the rightwing movement around Uribe is known. Colombians largely seem to support the peace process as well as efforts to improve relations with neighboring countries Venezuela and Ecuador, and it looks as though few were convinced by Uribe’s wild charges during the campaign that the peace process would open the path to “Castrochavismo,” allowing the “FARC to run this country from Havana.” Uribe has long loomed over Colombian politics, but Zuluaga’s defeat signals that his influence may be waning, even on the political right. Meanwhile, Santos’ support of the peace talks won him the backing of some of Colombia’s most prominent business people, in addition to endorsements from indigenous groups and left-wing coalitions.  

Uribe might have thought twice about investing so much political capital in opposing the negotiations. While it is true that the peace talks had the support of Venezuela and Cuba, they also had the support of virtually every other country in the region, as well as the United Nations, in addition to broad domestic support. More to the point, the peace talks have the support of the United States. Just a month ago, on May 18th, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reaffirmed U.S. support for the peace process, which, given that they were the main election issue, arguably amounted to an endorsement of Santos.

CEPR and Peter Hayakawa / June 19, 2014

Article Artículo

Workers

When Will It Pay to Take Family and Medical Leave?

What does the United States have in common with the countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Samoa, and Papua New Guinea? Not much, other than being the only six countries in the world that do not mandate paid maternity leave. In fact, the Unites States does not provide for paid leave to employees who become sick with a serious illness either, nor to parents to care for a sick child or adult children tending to an ailing parent.

CEPR and Helene Jorgensen / June 19, 2014