Perez promises to improve security during first six months

President-elect Otto Perez Molina insists that security will improve during his first six months in office. I sure hope so. However, El Nuevo Herald then goes on to report that 

Official data indicate that 18 people die violently each day in Guatemala and that the homicide rate per 100,000 population reaches 48, six times the world average.

Look, if you are telling the world that, on average, 18 people per day or 6,570 per year die violent deaths in Guatemala, Otto Perez is going to look like a god-send even if things get much worse six months into office.

Here are the murders that have been committed over the last decade as reported by the PNC in (La Prensa Grafica).

2011 estimate is based upon 4733 during first ten months and 946 for Nov-Dec.

If you are going to measure whether Perez lowers crime and or the country's murder rate, you need to try to find recent data.

I'm fine with statistics from 2010 since we have the full year available. However, that number is about 600 fewer murders than what you are using - 10%!

With six-plus weeks remaining this year, we have a pretty good idea where murders will end up, but 2010 is acceptable. However, why pick 6,500 murders from 2009?

Happy National Pupusa Day!

November 13th is National Pupusa Day. So enjoy some pupusas, preferably of the frijoles y queso variety, and some Pilseners. 

Lynchings up 500 pct in Guatemala since 2004!

According to reports in the Latin American Herald Tribune and Fox News Latino, lynchings in Guatemala have increased 500% since 2004. However, the reporting is not entirely accurate.  

The headlines should read attempted lynchings. According to the human rights office in Guatemala, there were a reported 25 attempted lynchings in 2004 and 147 attempted lynchings during the first ten months of 2011. That's the increase of 500% to which they are referring (~488% actually). {Update - And each attempted lynching might have involved several targets.)

If we are talking about the increase in successful lynchings, the numbers are actually worse. According to the numbers presented in Prensa Libre, deaths as a result of lynchings have increased from 4 in 2004 to 47 so far this year. 

Deaths as a result of lynchings, therefore, have increased nearly 1100% since 2004. And that's with two months remaining in the year. That's obviously a much worse percentage change. (There were another 911 seriously injured victims during the time period under study, but none of the articles break these down by year.)  

But then again, the increase from 2004 to 2011 is only one part of the story. If you look at the deaths as a result of lynchings by year, you find a jump from 2004 to 2005 and then again from 2008 to 2009. I would want to better understand why lynchings jumped during those years.

And here is what I think is an equally important story that should have been highlighted. Death by lynching is on pace to increase by at least 7% from 2010 to 2011. It's not as sexy as the 500% or 1100% changes, but it's what Guatemalans are living today compared to last year.

Local concerns in Guatemala

There's at least one more thing from last night's post on President-elect Otto Perez's inheritance that I forgot to mention. While there does appear to have been a reduction in the level of corruption and death squad activity coming out of the national government, at least the executive, local government is in many ways where there has been little progress if any.

In the last few years, organized crime and cartels have been influencing local campaigns and the activities of mayoral offices. Most of us following events in Guatemala from abroad do so by following the major Guatemalan and international news publications which are naturally based in the capital and focused on the activities of the congress and the presidency.

However, there is less reason to be optimistic about what is happening around the country's 333 municipalities.

President-elect Perez's Inheritance

Earlier in the week I gave my thoughts on some of the potential accomplishments that President Alvaro Colom will leave when he hands the reins of powers to President-elect Otto Perez Molina. See my posts here and here from earlier in the week. You also might want to check out Rachel Glickhouse and Carin Zissis’s Guatemala Election Update: The Roadahead for Pérez Molina from today where they say much the same, only more eloquently. 

I argued that there has been some progress in terms of reducing the murder rate. There are what appear to be two very competent people in Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz and Police Reform Commissioner Helen Mack. There has been some success in overcoming impunity with the successful prosecutions of individuals who perpetrated wartime atrocities and a recognition for past crimes committed in the name of the government.

The government has been less successful in prosecuting former officials for corruption and extrajudicial killings. On the positive side, those people seem no longer to be in government. Finally, CICIG has not been perfect but it does seem to have done a good job of removing some corrupt officials, helping to crack high profile cases, and begun training Guatemala's next generation of prosecutors and justice system employees. 

However, I said nothing about what President-elect Perez plans to do with his "inheritance." And that's where we should be worried.

President Perez has promised to bring mano dura with him into the presidency. Given the high level of support for mano dura in Guatemala today, Perez is probably going to have his way here. If he just intends to add more police and to deploy some kaibiles and other military to remote areas of the country, the effects probably won't be bad and might even do some good. However, if his idea of mano dura is to send troops into the cities, criminalize tattoos and looking like a gang member, lengthening prison terms for nonviolent and youthful offenders, etc. then I do worry what the future holds. These policies have not worked out so well in neighboring countries.

The question as to how he is going to pay for the new police and other policies is another matter. He wants to cut down on contraband. That's fine and might even help shrink the deficit. However, it's not going to replace fiscal reform. If he shows some progress in curtailing contraband, perhaps the elites will voluntarily agree to raise the amount that they pay in taxes? Yeah, I don't think so either.

As president, Perez does not have to keep Paz y Paz or Mack. Given that he doesn't believe that the military committed genocide in the early 1980s or military officers should be tried for civil war era crimes, it's easy to understand why he might want to get right of Paz y Paz and/or Mack. It's not even clear that either of them would want to be associated with the administration of the former general anyway. The question then becomes whether Perez replaces Paz y Paz with a serious, well-respected AG who only goes after today's crimes (not civil war era crimes) or does he appoint someone who isn't concerned with actually developing the rule of law in Guatemala. 

Perez, like some other Guatemalans, have been critical of CICIG and might want it to leave when its terms ends in 2013 or perhaps just have its mandate more focused. Either change probably would not help the people of Guatemala. I still don't know what to expect from a CICIG-Perez partnership. Wasn't CICIG sent to Guatemala to investigate someone like Perez? And Baldizon who is trying to position himself as the 2015 favorite? Would it help if CICIG came out and said that we have looked into allegations of serious wrongdoing by the President-elect and have found no evidence to substantiate the bringing of any charges against him? Then they could move on in peace.

Anyway, the point is that Perez has probably been dealt a better hand than Colom. It still might not be a winning hand and it’ll take some time to better understand how he intends to play his cards. I’m not optimistic. Like many, I wasn’t impressed by the two finalists and I wasn’t going to be optimistic about a presidency led by either man. I pray that I will be proven wrong, however. 

In other news, 

Mica Rosenberg and Mike McDonald also have a very good article on Special Report: New Guatemala leader faces questions about past and Ezra Fieser tries to figure out what the Roman Catholic Church expects from the new president in Church officials not sure what to expect from new Guatemalan president.

Murders continue downward trend in Guatemala

According to the Human Rights Ombudsman (PDH) in Guatemala, homicides decreased by 2.50% in the first nine months of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010. 

According to Carlos Mendoza's analysis of the first ten months of 2011, Guatemalan is on pace to experience its lowest murder rate since 2004.

Between January and the end of October, the PNC determined that 4,733 people were murdered. If November and December are just as murderous as the first ten months (an average of 473 each month), the country’s annual rate will settle in somewhere under 40 per 100,000. That rate would be the country's lowest since 2004's rate of 36 per 100,000. 

Guatemala's 4,733 January through October murders occurred in a population of over fourteen million. By comparison, El Salvador's population of approximately six million suffered through 3,627 murders during the same time period. If El Salvador experiences 764 murders in November and December (362 in Nov. and Dece), its rate would end up around 72.5 per 100,000.   

At some point, people are going to have to stop lying about the escalating murder rate in Guatemala update their data from 2009. The question is why is the murder rate going down, not why is it going up.

Spain will ask for extradition

Spanish Judge Eloy Velasco will ask the Spanish Government to formally request the extradition of 13 military officers alleged to have been involved in the murder of the UCA Jesuits in El Salvador.

In August, the Salvadoran Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) issued an opinion that the red alerts that had been issued for the former military officials required only that they be located. The alerts did not require El Salvador to arrest or to extradite them. 

As I wrote in September, 

While I can't say that I entirely bought the Supreme Court’s arguments, I figured that its ruling was only a beginning. People shouldn’t have gotten too worked up about the ruling and should instead let the legal process play out (that is, those who weren't actually pushing the case forward). Spanish authorities would in all likelihood alter their request in order to satisfy Salvadoran concerns. Once they had done that, the ball would be back in El Salvador's court. That sure seems to be where we are right now.

"Too worked up" probably wasn't the best choice of words. However, I just though that it was part of the process rather than the conclusion. It's now November and the Spanish judge and government seem to have addressed the concerns of the Salvadoran courts and its government. The ball is now back in El Salvador's possession.