By Marina E. Franco and Russell Contreras
Welcome to Axios Latino, a newsletter to tell you every week the stories that have a special impact on the Latino communities in the United States and in Latin America. If you are interested in subscribing and receiving the newsletter in your email (in English), you can do so by clicking here. Every week we will publish it in Spanish on Noticias Telemundo. [Sign up here to read the newsletter in Spanish]
1 Topic: Gun Violence Towards Latinos
Nearly 3,000 Hispanics have died
each year in the past decade from gun violence in the United States, according to an analysis by the Violence Policy Center that further indicates that they are twice as likely to be victims of gun homicide than non-white people. Hispanic.
Data from the Violence Policy Center with information from the FBI's "Supplementary Homicide Report" database. Will Chase / Axios Data
In numbers
: Almost 70,000 Latinos died from firearms between 1999 and 2019, 66% of them in homicides, according to the aforementioned analysis.
In 2019, there were 5 Latino gun homicide victims for every 100,000 people, compared to less than 3 per 100,000 who were non-Hispanic whites.
Latinos are also more likely to be killed by strangers than other population groups, according to the analysis.
Between the lines:
The increase in firearms incidents involving Latinos is due in part to more people in this community buying guns after manufacturers began campaigning for them, according to another report from the Violence Policy Center.
Some Latinos began buying guns as a way to protect themselves after the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019. 23 people were killed, 8 of them Mexican, and the attacker expressly said that his intention was to hurt Hispanic people.
The news boost
: This Wednesday, the day after the anniversary of that shooting, Mexico sued 11 US arms manufacturers.
The Mexican Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said when presenting the lawsuit that the companies contribute to the bloodshed in Mexico by having lax monitoring of the sales of their products.
The Mexican lawsuit also denounces that some weapons are being developed or promoted specifically for drug traffickers to buy, such as a special edition pistol with a design by the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.
One of those weapons was used to assassinate a Mexican journalist investigating cartels in Chihuahua.
The vast majority of weapons used by Mexican cartels are legally acquired in the US and then illegally transferred across the border.
2. Colombia begins to punish extrajudicial killings
A protest against Mario Montoya in 2018, when the general appeared before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) to investigate the "false positives." Joaquín Sarmiento / AFP via Getty Images
A commander of the Colombian Army
will be formally accused of homicide, the prosecutors of the South American country announced;
he is the highest ranking officer to face a possible conviction for extrajudicial killings committed in the framework of half a century of conflict against the guerrillas.
More details:
Retired General Mario Montoya, who was trained by US forces, is accused of supervising military personnel who kidnapped and killed 104 civilians (five of them minors) whom they later passed off as members of guerrillas .
Montoya is also already being investigated by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), a post-conflict transitional court of justice that allows those who admit their guilt in atrocities to have a sentence of shorter jail time.
The JEP also charged 26 low-ranking military personnel with murder charges this July in 227 cases of extrajudicial killings.
In context
: The JEP's early investigations indicate that at least 6,400 Colombians were killed and disguised as rebel fighters in what is known as the false positive scandal.
The investigation indicates that between 2002 and 2008 civilians were killed by soldiers or by allied paramilitary forces as part of a "large-scale" "criminal organization" within military units.
The homicides were recorded as "combat casualties" to fulfill a quota in the fight against the guerrillas.
Documents show that still in 2019 there were still rewards such as promotions or extra vacation days for those who met similar quotas.
3. A home run for the Latino contribution
The bilingual exhibit "¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues" is bilingual and will be at the Smithsonian Museum of American History through the summer of 2022. Russell Contreras / Axios
A new bilingual exhibit
highlights the key participation Latinos have had in the development and history of US baseball.
The general situation
: Currently more than 30% of major league players are of Latino origin, and the sport has become more diverse.
Pleibol!
In the neighborhoods and the big leagues, it
highlights how the past, present and future of sport has been and will be marked by Latinos and Latinas who fought for inclusion.
The show will be at the Smithsonian Museum of American History until next year.
4. Summary of Latin American news
Guido Bellido (left) and President Pedro Castillo at a ceremony on July 29, 2021.Ernesto Benavides / AFP via Getty Images
Peru's President Pedro Castillo
recently protested, but is already causing political uproar over his cabinet appointments.
Some congressmen have said that they will not give their vote of confidence so that the cabinet can operate, largely because the one who was appointed prime minister is Guido Bellido, a character under investigation for alleged apology of terrorism due to statements in which he suggests that the group Shining Path was made up of Peruvians who only made "mistakes."
Guatemala appointed
José Rafael Curruchiche this Wednesday as the new head of the special anti-impunity prosecutor's office, despite controversy because Curruchiche has been identified as protecting former president Jimmy Morales.
The new prosecutor is the third person in charge of the job in just two weeks.
The previous prosecutor, Juan Francisco Sandoval, was removed from office by the attorney general on July 23 after suggesting that his investigations targeted people close to the current president, Alejandro Giammattei.
The Brazilian electoral court
launched an investigation against the president, Jair Bolsonaro, for the "potentially criminal dissemination" of fraud claims made without evidence.
Bolsonaro assures that the electronic voting system that Brazil has used for decades will be manipulated and has even suggested that he would not allow next year's elections to happen unless paper ballots are used.
5. Ecuador faces a crisis due to illegal fishing in Galapagos
Every summer for the past three years, up to 300 Chinese-flagged fishing boats have reached nearby areas of the Galapagos.Yao Feng / VCG via Getty Images
Hundreds of fishing boats
are approaching the archipelago, which is a world heritage site and whose biodiversity inspired Darwin to formulate the theory of evolution.
Why it matters
: More than 20% of the marine species in the Galapagos reserve are found nowhere else in the world.
The illegal and unregulated fishing in that area is mainly for squid, which is an important source of food for animals that live only in the archipelago, and for commercial species such as tuna.
But local organizations and activists warn that many other species end up in fishing nets.
In recent years, Chinese-flagged vessels carrying endangered shark fins on board have been detained.
More details
: Most of the illegal fishing that is detected happens just outside the reserve, in international waters.
But many of the Galapagos species are migratory, such as sea turtles or hammerhead sharks, so they leave the reserve area and that is when the fishermen are waiting, according to activists.
The Ecuadorian navy monitors the area with US help, but many of the fishing boats evade detection by turning off automatic satellite tracking systems.
The general situation
: Chinese, Korean and sometimes Spanish vessels have been detained and even prosecuted in recent years for illegally fishing off the coasts of Peru, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay as well.
But
: unregulated fishing is not only committed by foreign vessels.
It is estimated that 20% of shark fin exports - whether from protected species or not - are made from Peruvian and Ecuadorian vessels.
6. A very different home library
Readings by phone: this is how the National Library of Peru allows access to books despite the pandemic
Dec. 28, 202002: 17
The National Library of Peru
is reaching readers directly in their homes with a program whereby they can listen to volunteers and librarians reading the works to them over the phone.
More details
: The program is called
Aló, BNP
and it started in June 2020 with just one librarian.
It became so popular that now there are dozens of volunteers to read to people over the phone, and there are even readers in Quechua.
It was initially intended for Peruvians of advanced ages, who communicated regularly to discuss the book after it was read to them.
But now there is also a way to register loved ones so that volunteers read to them on a special occasion, as a gift.
The library also has a system for lending electronic editions to those confined at home by the pandemic, and has home deliveries of books loaned in Lima.
Thanks for reading, until next week.
Do you want to see any of the previous editions?
- Recommended reading for this summer: new Latin American and Latino voices
- Olympic hopes despite obstacles
- Behind the multiple crises due to COVID-19 in Latin America
- A pain for the whole hemisphere
- The shedding of innocent blood
- A heat-battered border thirsts for protection
- What worries Hispanics most in the US