Chinese Army participants in a marksmanship course pose with their Colombian instructors last August (source).

In its public statements about Colombia lately, the Obama administration has praised the South American country as a “security exporter.” As a June 2012 Defense Department release put it, “Colombia now serves as a regional training base to help other nations in their counterdrug efforts.”

Colombia is now not only the Western Hemisphere’s largest recipient of U.S. military and police assistance. Its security forces are also training, advising and otherwise assisting those of third countries. “Colombia, for example, offers capacity-building assistance in 16 countries inside and outside the region, including Africa,” according to an April 2012 Defense Department news release. Colombian Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón told the Miami Herald recently that his forces have trained more than 13,000 individuals from 40 countries since 2005.

This trend is accelerating. As part of an ongoing “High Level Strategic Security Dialogue,” in early 2012 the U.S. and Colombian governments developed an “Action Plan on Regional Security Cooperation,” through which they intend to coordinate aid to third countries. According to a joint press release:

“Both countries will develop complementary security assistance programs and operational efforts to support hemispheric and international partner nations afflicted by effects of transnational organized crime. Increased coordination of U.S. and Colombia defense and security support activities, which are aligned with efforts by both countries to strengthen civilian law enforcement capacity and capabilities, will support whole-of-government strategies and produce a greater effect throughout the hemisphere and West Africa.”

We don’t know the extent of these “defense and security support activities,” or what portion of them are funded by the United States (probably the majority). However, a combination of primary and secondary sources yields the following examples of what has been happening.

With funding from the State Department-managed Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), Colombia’s National Police participate in a Central America Regional Police Reform Project. “[T]he Colombian National Police provides training and assistance in such topics as community policing, police academy instructor training, and curriculum development in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama,” reads an April 2012 joint press release. “To complement this police training by Colombia, the United States trains prosecutors in these countries.”

“Colombia sends mobile training teams to El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica,” the commander of U.S. Army South, a component of U.S. Southern Command, noted in June 2012. Colombia trains police in Honduras and Guatemala, a senior U.S. defense official said in April 2012.

That month, members of the Colombian Navy’s new Coast Guard Mobile Training Group traveled to Honduras for its first foreign training mission, with 47 Honduran military students. In July 2012, this unit gave an 11-day course to 37 members of Panama’s National Police, National Border Service, and Institutional Protection Service. According to a July 2012 release from Colombia’s armed forces, the Navy Training Group planned to offer similar courses to the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and again Honduras during the second half of 2012.

In November 2012, 12 enlisted men from Panama’s security forces were receiving training alongside fifty counterparts from Colombia’s army in Tolemaida, Tolima, the Bogotá daily El Tiempo reported. The Panamanian government paid the training costs for some, while others received grants, El Tiempo indicated, without indicating these grants’ origin. “The militaries of Ecuador, Argentina, and Central American nations have requested spaces [in this course],” the director of the Colombian Army’s Non-Commissioned Officers School (Escuela Militar de Suboficiales), Col. Juan Felipe Yepes, said. “We’ve now had more than 100 [students] from other countries, and more requests keep coming.”

In May 2012, the Tolemaida army base graduated 22 members of Panama’s National Border Service who took part in “International 81-Millimeter Mortars Course No. 02.”

Colombia is also offering training to some neighbors in South America. In August 2012, Peru sent two naval officers to Coveñas, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, for an explosives technician course. “The Navy of Colombia has invited the Navy of Peru to send Navy personnel to participate in several courses, among them the Marines course, during the 2012 academic year,” reads a Peruvian government resolution [PDF]. That month, seven Colombian Special Forces and Army helicopter pilots paid a visit to Junín, Peru for a 15-day “exchange of experiences” with about 90 representatives of that country’s security forces. In October 2012, the commander of Peru’s army paid a visit to the Colombian Army’s Tolemaida base, where he “highlighted the training, capacities and skills that his men acquire” there, according to a Colombian Army release.

The U.S. government has encouraged Peru to work more closely with Colombia. “The United States stands ready to work with Peru on joint planning, on information sharing, trilateral cooperation with Colombia to address our shared security concerns,” said outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta during an October 2012 visit to Lima.

In January 2013, the director of Ecuador’s military academy paid a visit to the Colombian Army’s Tolemaida base “to learn about the academic procedures the Colombian Military uses to educate and train its own soldiers.” In October 2012, the commanding officers of the Marine Corps of Ecuador visited Colombia’s Marine Training Base, where they viewed a demonstration of some of the training that the facility offers. The release from Colombia’s Navy did not indicate whether Ecuadorian personnel have received, or will receive, training at this base.

Training of forces from the Caribbean has included the Colombian Naval Academy’s December 2012 graduation of two cadets from the Dominican Republic.

Colombia’s training relationship with Mexico is quite extensive. It has included the instruction of “thousands of Mexican policemen,” as the Washington Post reported back in January 2011.

“Early one morning shortly before dawn, Colombian police commandos barked orders like drill sergeants at six Mexican policemen and two Mexican soldiers during a mock attack here outside Cajica, a town on a frigid mountain in central Colombia. The target in the training exercise: a heavily defended rebel camp.

It was the tail end of four months of training that included lessons on how to carry out operations in the jungle, jump from helicopters, defuse bombs and conduct raids on urban strongholds.”

“Colombian service members have trained more than two dozen Mexican helicopter pilots” as of April 2012, a U.S. Defense official said in a Pentagon news release.

Sixteen Mexican students — 15 federal police and one army soldier — participated in the grueling 19-week course given by the Colombian National Police’s (CNP) elite Jungla commando unit between July and December 2011. Also taking part in the course, at the Jungla base in Tolima department, were about 58 students from ten other Latin American countries: Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Paraguay. (Not all of them graduated.) “This Colombian initiative is supported by the U.S. Embassy through its Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS) and the DEA,” reads a U.S. embassy press release. “Since 2007, the NAS-financed CNP National Training Center in Pijaos has trained nearly 300 international students. NAS has allotted nearly 8 million dollars in the construction of the training center’s initial phase, inaugurated in 2008.”

Sources reveal several other multi-country training events. The Colombian Army’s Lancero Special Forces unit, similar to the U.S. Army’s Rangers, now offers an international course at the Tolemaida base. Colombia’s armed forces report that 581 trainees from 18 countries have taken the Lancero course including, in December 2012, 15 graduates from Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, and Peru.

The Colombian Armed Forces’ Superior War College hosted the April 2012 Inter-American Naval War Games, in which representatives from Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, the United States, Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic participated in threat simulations to coordinate joint action.

In June 2012, Colombia hosted Fuerzas Comando, an annual competition between Latin America’s Special Forces sponsored by U.S. Southern Command. Those competing at the Colombian National Training Center in Tolemaida included the Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States, and Uruguay.

Another multi-nation event took place in Cartagena in June-August 2012, where Colombia’s Navy trained officers from Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, and the United States. They received coast guard instruction, according to a Notimex article: “maritime interdiction procedures, maneuvers, exercises with interceptor craft, defense and survival techniques.” Since this course’s inauguration in 2012, Notimex notes, Colombia has given it to 114 students from 24 Western Hemisphere countries. A new session of this two-month Coast Guard course began in September 2012 with the participation of 14 trainees from Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, and Peru.

In October 2012, Colombia’s Army hosted a “First International Doctrine Symposium” in Bogotá, with the presence of representatives from Brazil, Chile, China, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Colombia is also training some personnel from outside Latin America. “People’s Republic of China Colonel Deng Yubo said that [Chinese personnel] have been in Tolemaida for a month receiving marksmanship training,” reported Colombia’s Colprensa wire service in August 2012. The ten-week course took place at the Colombian Army’s Lancero School.

Police from ten African countries were in Santa Marta, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, in January 2013 to take part in a Colombian National Police-hosted port and airport security seminar. According to an April 2012 Pentagon news release, “[T]he Defense Department is looking to Colombia and Brazil, both of which already have deep ties to Africa and now provide assistance there, to help U.S. Africa Command with peacekeeping and other efforts there.”

Even as they face their country’s own unresolved armed conflict and organized crime challenges, Colombia’s security forces will be increasing their training of other countries’ militaries and police. This will often happen with U.S. support. This was a chief topic when top officials from both countries met in Bogotá last November to continue the U.S.-Colombia “High Level Strategic Security Dialogue.” An unnamed Defense Department official said in October, “we’re building a detailed action plan where we and the Colombians will coordinate who does what … so we leverage … the resources and capabilities we have to effectively do capacity building and training and other things in Central America and in other places.”

While Colombia has a lot of experience with the type of operations that police around Latin America must carry out today — organized crime investigations, drug interdiction, efforts to arrest kingpins — the expansion of its training raises concerns, especially when the U.S. government is paying the bill.

• What human rights messages are Colombian trainers conveying, both inside and outside the classroom? Colombia’s armed forces continue to confront allegations, including judicial cases, of thousands of abuses in the past 10-20 years. Some of the most prominent are a wave of extrajudicial executions during the mid-2000s and widespread collaboration with murderous paramilitary groups in the 1990s and early 2000s. Colombian military officials frequently express disdain for, or outright anger at, the country’s judicial system and non-governmental human rights defenders, and their institution recently pressed successfully to reduce civilian courts’ jurisdiction over them in human rights cases.

• Especially when the U.S. government is paying, what assurances do we have about the quality and rigor of the training and education being provided? Colombian officers have long experience in combat and fighting organized crime, but their ability as trainers and the quality of their instructor courses is unknown.

• When the U.S. government is paying, how can citizens and congressional oversight personnel get information about courses given, recipient countries and units, the identities of trainers, the number of trainees, and the overall cost? Training by U.S. officials generally shows up in the State Department’s annual Foreign Military Training Reports, but the work of U.S.-funded Colombian trainers rarely, if ever, appears in these reports. This raises a critical transparency issue.

• When the U.S. government is paying, and information about training events is unavailable or difficult to obtain, how can we verify that human rights conditions in foreign aid law are being respected? How can we be sure that the units and individuals giving and receiving the training are clear of credible allegations of past abuse?

(WOLA Intern Elizabeth Glusman contributed much research to this post.)

Adam looks at a rough patch in Colombia's peace talks, the aftermath of Brazil's tragic nightclub fire, and violence in Venezuela's prisons.

Subscribe to the "Just the Facts" podcast here and on iTunes. Thank you for listening.

Download

Negotiators from Colombia’s government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas held a third round of talks in Havana, Cuba on January 14-24. The next round is to begin on January 31.

The negotiators are discussing the first of five topics on the talks’ agenda: land and rural development policy. Topics to follow are the guerrillas’ future participation in politics; demobilization and post-conflict; drug policy; and victims’ rights.

We know very few details about what is actually being discussed in Havana. Both sides are respecting the negotiations’ secrecy, avoiding having their content aired before the media. Leaks have been extremely scarce. The dialogues’ disciplined conduct, along with a general atmosphere of seriousness and collegiality, increases confidence that these dialogues may succeed. It also reflects well on the role of diplomats from Norway and Cuba, the two “guarantor” countries the process.

The dialogues’ pace, however, has caused some concern. After the last round of talks ended, FARC negotiator “Jesús Santrich” said that the guerrillas were seeing “concrete results,” and that the talks were advancing at a rapid “mambo rhythm.” Chief government negotiator Humberto de la Calle acknowledged that there have been “convergences” on some issues, but that “notable differences” remain. Before the last round of talks began, de la Calle had told reporters, “We need a faster pace.” In late December, Interior Minister Fernando Carrillo said that the government expected to be done with the land issue, and to have moved on to the second negotiation topic, by Easter week (late March). De la Calle quickly contradicted him, clarifying that the Santos administration had not set an end date for the negotiating topic. For his part, President Juan Manuel Santos has said that he is unwilling to extend the FARC talks beyond November 2013. A mid-December Gallup poll found 71 percent of Colombians supporting the process, but only 43 percent believing that an accord will actually be reached. 54 percent were “pessimistic.”

January 20 saw the FARC end a two-month unilateral “holiday” cease-fire, with attacks on a pipeline in Putumayo and a police station in Norte de Santander, and the murder of an indigenous leader in Cauca. The FARC have not carried out a large scale offensive, despite Colombian National Police predictions that they were preparing a “terrorist wave” after January 20th. During the two months, the FARC mostly respected the truce. Colombia’s human rights ombudsman said that the FARC carried out 57 attacks during the two months. The Bogotá-based Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris think-tank counted 7 to 15 attacks, a nearly 90 percent reduction from the FARC’s usual pace. According to President Santos,

“The truth is that there was an important reduction in this organization’s number of actions, there was a very important reduction in the number of our soldiers and police killed or wounded. With that we can conclude that there was compliance [with the cease-fire]. But a relative compliance, because there were also actions.”

The government did not join in the FARC’s cease-fire. During the two months, Colombia’s armed forces bombed FARC encampments in Nariño and Antioquia, killing dozens of guerrilla fighters. The government continues to reject repeated FARC requests for a bilateral cease-fire. “We want peace, but not at any cost,” said chief government negotiator de la Calle. “Not at the cost of, as a result of the conversations, the guerrillas strengthening themselves to continue the war.”

The current negotiation topic, land and rural development, is difficult and complicated, underlying much of the conflict with a 49-year-old guerrilla group whose base is almost entirely rural. In five recent communiqués (1) (2) (3) (4) (5), the guerrillas laid out ten proposals for land and rural development that, for the most part, cannot be described as radical — in fact, observers note, many of the proposals dovetail with the Santos government’s own positions. While both sides seem to share a concern for Colombia’s remarkably high land concentration (1.15 percent of landholders own 52 percent of agricultural land), they disagree about what to do about it. The FARC would prefer to take unproductive land from cattle ranchers, who own approximately 40 million hectares in Colombia (the country’s total surface area is 113 million hectares; a hectare is 2.5 acres). “From this big balloon of land, at least 20 million hectares could be taken,” chief FARC negotiator Iván Marquez said. The government would prefer to distribute unused land in state hands, or land seized from narcotraffickers, and minimize confrontation with the country’s politically powerful cattle ranchers.

The country’s cattle-rancher federation, FEDEGAN, senses that it has the most to lose from any land redistribution, and has been one of the most vociferous critics of the peace talks so far. FEDEGAN made a point of boycotting a December forum, cosponsored by UNDP and Colombia’s National University, designed to channel civil-society proposals for the negotiators to consider. More than 1,300 participants in that forum produced 546 proposals.

If the talks complete the five points on the agenda, there is a sixth and final issue: how to cement the final accord into Colombian law. The government says it favors a public referendum to approve what was agreed at the negotiating table. The FARC, however, have been calling for a “constituent assembly,” in which representatives, chosen by voters, rewrite Colombia’s constitution. The government rejects this. It is unclear why the FARC is pushing for this, given the strong showing that Colombia’s right wing has enjoyed in recent elections: the likelihood of a conservative majority rewriting the country’s constitution would be high.

No negotiations are currently occurring with Colombia’s other 49-year-old guerrilla group, the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN). In early December, though, maximum ELN leader Nicolás Rodríguez acknowledged that the group has engaged in contacts with the Santos government. On January 18, after kidnapping five mining workers in Bolívar, the ELN released a video in which Rodríguez asked, “Why aren’t we at the table? That is a question for President Santos.”

Foreign governments’ statements about the talks have been uniformly supportive. “We support the effort. We are impressed by the way that President Santos and his team have organized the conversations,” said U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough. “We, the United States, are not a part of Colombia’s peace process, although we support President Santos’ efforts because we believe that it is extremely important that the Colombian people can finally live in peace and security,” said U.S. State Department spokesman Mike Hammer. "We support the efforts of President Santos in Colombia and the peace process. We have great confidence in President Santos and we are ready, with other countries in the international community, to help the Colombian government to implement it," said Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson. “I’m sure that my government and many of its leaders support the current process,” said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a January 12 visit to Bogotá. “We fully support this process, and should Colombia consider it useful, we are willing to contribute,” said Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said that the FARC talks are “one of the happiest pieces of news in recent decades for our Americas.” In mid-January, representatives of the two “accompanying” countries in the process, Venezuela and Cuba, met with and received an update from both negotiating teams.

Looking toward later in 2013, the fourth topic on the negotiating agenda, drug policy, could pose challenges for Washington. President Santos has been more critical of the current, U.S.-backed anti-drug approach. For its part, the FARC wants sweeping changes in drug policy; within its ten rural development proposals is a call for the coca leaf to be declared legal for “medical, therapeutic, or cultural purposes. The sides may agree on something — such as limits on forced eradication or aerial herbicide fumigation — that will require some real flexibility from the United States.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), the Obama administration’s nominee to be the next Secretary of State, had his confirmation hearing yesterday in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. U.S. policy toward Latin America came up several times.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) — who, if Kerry is approved, will be the new Foreign Relations Committee chair — asked Sen. Kerry about U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere. Menendez mentioned several things that make him hopeful for better relations with Latin America, including a potential transition in Venezuela, a strengthening relationship with Mexico’s new president, negotiations in Colombia with the FARC. He asked for Kerry’s thoughts on the region.

Kerry responded: “it is an opportunity that is staring at us. Hope we can build upon what secretary Clinton and President Obama have already done to augment our efforts in the region, you can add the Merida initiative to that list … the Central American Security Initiative, assistance to Guatemala and Honduras, the energy initiative with Brazil … and increasing economic integration in the region. But as we know there have been outlier states that have not been as cooperative, depending on what happens in Venezuela there could really be an opportunity for a transition there … also hope we could make progress with Bolivia and Ecuador. One of the great stories of Latin America is Colombia … President Uribe stepped up in a critical moment and began the process of rescuing that nation, President Santos is now doing an amazing job, we strengthened the relationship by passing the economic trade agreement. We have to build on that. And that is an example for the rest of Latin America of what awaits them… [Also] hope to bridge the gap with some of the other countries.”

Sen. Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) asked about the strengthening of the relationship between Mexico, Central America and the United States, due to “common security goals.” One element of this relationship is judicial reform, but the Senator noted that the federal government and several Mexican states have still lagged behind on this issue – i.e. making the judicial systems in those countries less “inquisitorial.” How, he askd can the United States better work with allies in Mexico to improve the judicial system?

Kerry responded that there are ongoing efforts with respect to the judicial system, with a lot of focus on guns and counternarcotics. He continued “I want to keep the existing efforts going, which could be subject to sequestration. … Mexico has been under siege, everybody know that. It has been very difficult. Lot of courage exhibited by military folk and police and I think there is an effort to move it somewhat away from military and into justice system, which is why we will have to double the efforts here and fund the personnel and program itself.”

Sen. Udall followed up that the new Mexican security strategy is to achieve a “Mexico in Peace,” and said he hoped that the government won’t abandon the fight against crime. How, he asked, can you assure that mutual areas of interest get the attention they deserve, especially cooperation along the border?

“President [Enrique] Peña Nieto is indeed trying to move this in a different direction. This has been a highly militarized and very violent initiative over the last years… one thing I learned [as a prosecutor] is that there is no one approach [to the fight against drugs], you’ve got to be doing everything that you’ve got to do, and that means domestically in the United States you’ve got to do education, and you’ve got to do treatment … we have a revolving circle of demand … we need a more comprehensive and less accusatory approach … I’ve always felt that this label the ‘war on drugs’ is kind of artificial because war implies it’s all-out … we have always failed to do our part when it comes to education and treatment and abstinence.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California): “Under Secretary Clinton’s leadership the State Department has fought to protect the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, to end the use of rape as a weapon of war in the Congo, to promote women’s economic empowerment in places like Asia, Africa and Latin America, and to ensure that women play a meaningful role as new governments take shape in the Middle East and North Africa. If confirmed, will you ensure that the position of global ambassador at large is retained and that the office is effectively resourced? ”

Kerry: “Yes. … Secretary Clinton has put an emphasis on human trafficking in the State Department, and I intend to continue that. … What you’re talking about with respect to women and girls, in South Africa, in Guatemala, in other parts of the world, women have stepped up as peace makers, women have made the difference in many of these instances as to the security of those communities, the attitude of the state, its willingness to reach out and be inclusive.”

Also mentioning Latin America, but not eliciting a response, were Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), who when criticizing U.S. foreign policy asked why did the administration condemn what happened in Honduras [the 2009 coup] while helping to steal an election in Nicaragua; and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) who said he is worried about rising Chinese and Iranian influence in the Western Hemisphere (especially Iranian sponsored Spanish-language broadcasts).

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) made a comment on Cuba that did not get a response from Kerry: “I’ve felt differently than perhaps some of my colleagues on this panel and thought that the best way to foster change and progress toward democracy is to allow free travel of Americans, to let them go as they wish. I don’t think that that is a weakness or any capitulation at all. I think it shows strength. In fact I’ve always thought that if we want a real get tough policy with the Castro Brothers, we should force them to deal with Spring Break once or twice. … This president has taken measures to allow more Americans to travel freely: relatives, travel for religious or cultural education purposes and I think that’s a good thing. I hope that you’ll find ways to continue that and continue more innovative approaches to deal with change there.”

Sen. Flake’s comment, however, angered Sen. Menendez, who replied, “To suggest that spring break is a form of — a form of torture to the Castro regime — unfortunately, they are experts about torture, as is evidenced by the increasing brutal crackdown on peaceful democracy advocates on the island just in the last year, over 6,600 peaceful democracy advocates detained or arrested. Just this past Sunday, the Ladies in White, a group of women who dress in white and march every Sunday with a gladiolus to church, tried to come together to go to church this past Sunday. And the result of that, these are individuals who are the relatives of former or current political prisoners in Castro’s jails … is that more than 35 of the Women in White were intercepted, beaten with belts, threatened [with] death by agents aiming guns at them and temporarily arrested.”

(This post was researched by CIP Associate Sarah Kinosian and WOLA Intern Elizabeth Glusman.)

Adam looks at the CELAC-Europe summit in Chile, uncertainty about Hugo Chávez's health in Venezuela, and the Colombia government-FARC peace talks.

Subscribe to the "Just the Facts" podcast here and on iTunes. Thank you for listening.

Download

• Since 2005, 168 explosive devices have gone off in Santiago, Chile. There have never been any arrests.

• Cuban dissidents say there are now 90 political prisoners on the island, a number that has doubled in the past nine months.

• Ecuador has spent US$6 billion on its armed forces since 2007, tripling the defense budget between that year and 2012.

• El Salvador spends 10.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product on security, three times what Costa Rica spends, according to a government study.

• Honduras suffered 7,172 homicides in 2012, up from 7,104 in 2011 and 6,239 in 2010. Last year’s homicide rate of 85.5 per 100,000 people was down slightly from 2011 (86.5) because the population increased more quickly than homicides increased.

• Guatemala’s police placed a US$14.2 million order for new uniforms, shoes, boots, sweaters, belts, smoke grenades and munitions.

• During the November 20 - January 20 unilateral cease-fire declared by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, the group’s violent actions were reduced by 87 percent, according to Bogotá’s Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris think tank.

• Landmines laid by guerrillas and other illegal armed groups killed 13 children, and wounded 52 more, in Colombia last year.

• Bolivia’s government says it will spend US$35-40 million on anti-drug activities this year.

• Peru’s government says it will manually eradicate 22,000 hectares of coca in 2013, up from 14,171 hectares last year. In 2011, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime found 64,400 hectares of coca in Peru.

• 54,000 Mexicans signed a petition asking President Obama to take several administrative measures that would limit cross-border gun trafficking into Mexico. None of the suggested measures appeared in the White House’s January 16 proposal.

• One out of every 300 guns circulating in Mexico “is legal and complies with all requirements,” according to Mexico’s Defense Secretariat.

• Of 726 men and 95 women surveyed in Mexico’s federal prison system, 60 percent were serving sentences for drug crimes.

• Standing in for the far more voluble President Hugo Chávez, who continues to convalesce in Cuba, Venezuelan Vice-President Nicolás Maduro gave a ten-minute state-of-the-nation speech on January 15.

• The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) delivered a petition, developed in cooperation with more than a dozen human rights and anti-gun violence groups, to Vice-President Biden’s gun control task force. It was signed by 55,000 people from the United States and Mexico. A copy was also delivered to the American Embassy in Mexico City. The petition called for executive actions to curtail the rampant smuggling into Mexico of weapons purchased in the United States. Speaking to reporters at a separate event in Washington, ambassador Eduardo Medina Mora said, “The Second Amendment … is not, was never and should not be designed to arm foreign criminal groups.” President Obama’s Wednesday announcement of 23 actions he plans to take to address gun violence did not include any of the actions requested in the petition.

• On Christmas Eve, Mexico City’s government launched a cash-for-weapons exchange program, “Por Tu Familia Desarme Voluntario” or “For your family: Voluntary disarmament.” Officials in charge of the program decided to extend the exchange past December 31 after 900 weapons were exchanged for cash, toys and tablet computers. Mexico’s Defense Department recognizes that only one of every 300 weapons circulating in the country is legal.

• An Ecuadorian general said he has seen an increase in FARC arms-trafficking activity near the Colombian border since the process started. FARC negotiator Rodrigo Granda denied it, saying the FARC are instead arming themselves with “much patience and many arguments” for the talks, and blaming “the extreme right in the continent taking shots at the peace process.”

• Canada changed its Automatic Firearms Country Control List to allow the export of weapons and devices that are prohibited in Canada — such as fully automatic firearms — to Colombia. The change came after a recommendation by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird. Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed objections based on concerns about armed conflict and human rights in Colombia.

• Colombia’s Air Force increased its order to Airbus Military, a European military and defense manufacturer, from five C295 transport planes to six. Colombia has already received four of the planes and now awaits the arrival of two more. The first four cost 100 million euros (US$133 million).

(Written with assistance from WOLA Intern Elizabeth Glusman)

For 26 years, U.S. Southern Command has had a Special Forces component, Special Operations Command South (SOCSOUTH), headed by a general and based in Florida. It coordinates the activities of Special Operations Forces (elite “warrior-diplomats” like Army Rangers and Green Berets, or Navy SEALs and Special Boat Units) in Southcom’s area of operations, which includes all of Latin America except Mexico, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico.

Mexico falls under the purview of the U.S. Northern Command (Northcom, founded in 2002), which did not have a formal Special Forces component — until now, apparently. Special Operations Command North was stood up on December 31, and its principal focus for now is to deepen training of elite military units in Mexico.

We know this not from Northcom’s website, which doesn’t even mention the existence of Special Operations Command North, but from a story reported yesterday by the Associated Press.

Based at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, Special Operations Command-North will build on a commando program that has brought Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officials to study U.S. counterterrorist operations, to show them how special operations troops built an interagency network to target al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and his followers.

The special operations team within Northcom will be turned into a new headquarters, led by a general instead of a colonel. It was established in a Dec. 31 memo signed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. That move gives the group more autonomy and the number of people could eventually quintuple from 30 to 150, meaning the headquarters could expand its training missions with the Mexicans, even though no new money is being assigned to the mission.

This news brings up three points (not including persistent concerns about the human rights record of SOCNORTH’s Mexican military partners):

1. It signals a closer relationship with Mexico’s Defense Department (SEDENA) under the new leadership that came in with President Enrique Peña Nieto. SEDENA incorporates Mexico’s Army and Air Force, which during the presidency of Felipe Calderón were noticeably less enthusiastic than Mexico’s Navy (SEMAR) about cooperating with U.S. military counterparts. “Historically, suspicion of the United States has been a prime driver of a military bureaucratic culture that has kept SEDENA closed to us,” noted a leaked 2010 State Department cable. It is notable that U.S. Defense Secretary Panetta signed the order establishing SOCNORTH only a month after Peña Nieto assumed office, along with a new SEDENA secretary, Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos.

2. It appears that one of SOCNORTH’s first tasks is helping the Peña Nieto government to stand up a new intelligence unit within the Interior Ministry. “The special operations program has already helped Mexican officials set up their own intelligence center in Mexico City to target criminal networks, patterned after similar centers in war zones built to target al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq,” the AP story reports. That unit, the National Intelligence Center or CNI, will “concentrate in one entity, like the fusion centers or offices that we have in the United States, all intelligence information that is gathered by the Army, the Navy, CISEN [the existing civilian intelligence agency], the PGR [attorney-general’s office] and all other federal and even state agencies involved in the fight against narcotrafficking,” a U.S. consultant source told Mexico’s Proceso magazine.

3. This is an emblematic indication that the Obama administration’s “light footprint” strategy is moving ahead. The administration is unlikely to commit to any large, costly new “Mérida Initiative”-style programs in Mexico. Budget realities alone determine that. But as we noted last week, as Special Forces units leave Afghanistan ahead of the 2014 drawdown, there will be many more of them available for training and other missions in Latin America. The pace of Special Forces deployments — low-profile, under the radar, mostly for training, but also serving other purposes, like intelligence-gathering — is very likely beginning to pick up throughout the hemisphere. As that happens, the establishment of SOCNORTH to guide work with Mexico is an important milestone.

“For the first time in more than 25 years, an American Soldier has graduated from the Guatemalan special operations Kaibil School, in Poptún, Guatemala,” announces a December news release from U.S. Special Operations Command South.

“The Kaibil School is considered one of the most prestigious, vigorous, arduous military courses in Central America,” the release continues. “Their motto: ‘If I advance, follow me. If I stop, urge me on. If I retreat, kill me.’”

Guatemala’s elite Kaibil Special Forces unit is famous for more than just rigorous training and a medieval motto. Here are some facts that don’t appear in the SOCSOUTH release.

• “[Kaibil] training included killing animals and then eating them raw and drinking their blood in order to demonstrate courage. The extreme cruelty of these training methods, according to testimony available to the CEH, was then put into practice in a range of operations carried out by these troops, confirming one point of their decalogue: ‘The Kaibil is a killing machine.’” - Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification report
• “The Kaibiles are largely responsible for introducing the ghastly drug-war practices of severing rivals’ heads, including the 10 found outside Mexico City just last weekend, dismembering their bodies or slowly suffocating them to death. That’s little surprise, given how brutal Kaibil training has been since the unit was founded in the 1970s: members are forced to kill animals, even bite the heads off chickens to prove their ferocity, and perform field surgery on themselves, such as bullet extraction. They were the principal instruments of the Guatemalan military government’s “scorched earth” campaign of the 1980s against leftist guerrillas and communities suspected of backing them. That makes it all the more troubling, as Mexico’s drug cartels push into Central America, that not just former but current Kaibiles are defecting to more lucrative service under the Zetas.” - “Guatemala’s Kaibiles: A Notorious Commando Unit Wrapped Up in Central America’s Drug War,” Tim Padgett, Time, July 14, 2011.
• “The Kaibiles entered the town of Dos Erres on the morning of December 6, 1982, and separated the men from women and children. They started torturing the men and raping the women and by the afternoon they had killed almost the entire community, including the children. Nearly the entire town was murdered, their bodies thrown into a well and left in nearby fields. Of those [250] killed, 113 were under the age of 14.” - Kate Doyle, Jesse Franzblau and Emily Willard, “Ex-Kaibil Officer Connected to Dos Erres Massacre Arrested in Alberta, Canada,” National Security Archive, January 20, 2011.
• “In May 1978, the Kaibiles opened fire on an unarmed crowd of over 700 Kekchi Indians in the central square of Panzos, Alta Verapaz, who were protesting land exploitation by land investors. As many as 150 people were killed including women and children, none of whom were armed.” - “Guatemala: All the truth, justice for all,” Amnesty International, May 13, 1998
• “On September 24 [1979], five hundred soldiers descended on Chajul. … While kaibiles (an ‘elite’ unit of the Guatemalan military) poured gasoline over the prisoners, the officer threatened the audience that this would happen to them if they aided the guerrillas. After setting fire to the prisoners and shouting ‘Long live the fatherland! Long live Guatemala! Long live our president! Long live the army!’ the armed forces withdrew, leaving the villagers to put out the fires and bury the dead.” - Grant Hermans Cornwell, Eve Walsh Stoddard, Global Multiculturalism: Comparative Perspectives on Ethnicity, Race, and Nation (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001).

The U.S. military is unlikely to avoid contact with every foreign unit with a notorious human rights past. But the Guatemalan Army Kaibiles have an especially troubled reputation, and they have made no effort to reckon with, to atone for, or even really to acknowledge their past deeds. The closest the unit has come to accountability was the landmark 2011 conviction of four ex-Kaibiles for their involvement in the 1982 Dos Erres massacre.

Staff Sgt. Joel Rodriguez, the U.S. soldier who completed the Kaibil training, “did not want to say too much in order to protect the integrity of the course.” Given the Kaibiles’ history, though, it’s reasonable to question what Sgt. Rodriguez learned in Poptún, and why he was sent there in the first place. And also, to question why the U.S. armed forces would report on the event without even acknowledging the cloud that hangs over the Kaibiles. That cloud is too dark to pretend that it doesn’t exist.

(Thanks to WOLA Intern Elizabeth Glusman for her research assistance.)