Injustice For All: Crime and Impunity in Latin America
UnpublishedSeptember/October
1996
Volume:
30
Number:
2
Article
Liz Dore & John Weeks
Imperialism," as defined by the analytical Marxist and "Iradical tradition, is the pro- cess and consequences of the rivalry among capitalist states.' Com- petition to dominate markets, pro- tect investments, and secure geopo- litical position drives capitalist states to divide the rest of the world into spheres of influence.
Robert Weiner
At 49 years of age, Arturo Ulloa stands about three-and-a-half feet tall. Crutches enable him to drag a twisted body along the corridors of Barrancabermeja's prison, his residence these last three years.
Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro
Official violence continues unabated in many of Latin America's new democracies. While under military rule, the targets were political dissidents, today's victims are the continent's "undesirables"-the poor, the homeless, minority groups, homosexuals, landless peasants.
This past April, a former police officer was convicted in Rio de Janeiro for the 1993 shooting of one of seven street children gunned down in front of the Candeldria church. The ex-officer, Marcus Borges Emanuel, admitted that police officers killed street kids in order to earn extra money from local shop- keepers.
Paul Chevigny
Throughout the Americas, the official rhetoric of the "war on crime" sounds the same. By calling for the law to get out of the way to let the police do their job, it invites the use of deadly force as an instrument of "first resort.
The Immigration Debate David Stoll has done us all a ser- vice by suggesting in his letter to the editor that we be more explicit and critical about our assumptions and agendas regarding immigration [March/April, 1996]. Many progressives share Stoll's concern about the worsening condi- tions of U.
Impunity Continues In Haiti PORT-Au-PRINCE, AUGUST 7, 1996 On July 24, a Haitian jury acquitted two alleged gunmen in the 1993 mur- der of former Justice Minister Guy Malary. The verdict caused an uproar in Haiti.
Mark Ungar
In response to rising poverty and growing crime, the Venezuelan government has been busily shoving its "undesirables" behind prison walls. Massive overcrowding has been the flash point for unprecedented levels of prison violence.
Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas by Paul Chevigny, The New Press, 1995, 273 pp., $25 (cloth).
PL
Sao Paulo Forum VI in San Salvador In this era of neoliberalism, the mainstream press tends to ridicule and misrepresent attempts by the left to rethink its objectives and methods. The New York Times did no less in its July 29 story, headlined "A Chastened Latin Left Puts Its Hope In Ballots," in reference to the recent meeting of the Sdo Paulo Forum.
Mark Caster
Arnoldo Alemin, presidential candidate of the revived Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC), arouses strong emo- tions among his opponents. Former President Daniel Ortega, addressing a crowd of 40,000 people on July 19, 1996, the seventeenth anniver- sary of the Nicaraguan revolution, warned of what would happen if Alemdn won Nicaragua's October 20, 1996 national election.
Mark Ungar
Far beyond the Venezuelan government's reach is a massive, not-so-underground prison economy based on a lucrative trade in cocaine, heroin, mari- juana and other drugs.' In smaller prisons, this trade is worth between $353,000 and $470,865 a year.
Rachel Neild
On February 17, 1996, the ninth class of police cadets graduated from the National Police Training Center just outside Port-au-Prince, bringing the first phase of a U.S.
Robert Weiner
It is late in the afternoon, and the municipal building of Sabana de Torres, a small, dusty town in Colombia's Magdalena Medio region is now deserted. Although he normally prefers to get home before dark-Magdalena Medio is a known hot spot in Colombia's perennial struggle among the army, paramilitary forces and the guerrillas -Anibal Guerrero has agreed to keep talking.