Professional Documents
Culture Documents
compilation of published articles and commentary concerning defense and defense-related national security issues pertinent to the AOR, items related to the challenges associated with strategic communications/military public affairs, other missions, or general military affairs. This publication aims to supplement other USG compilations in assisting USSOUTHCOM and associated personnel to assess how the public, the Congress and the press see military and defense programs and other issues affecting our operations. It is an internal management tool intended to serve the informational needs of senior SOUTHCOM officials in maintaining situational awareness of public and media discussion of those issues and topics. The inclusion of these articles does not reflect official endorsement or verification of any opinions, ideas or alleged facts contained therein. Further reproduction or redistribution for private use or gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. Story numbers indicate order of appearance only.
JTF-Guantanamo
2. The Miami Herald May 24, 2012
3. Politico.com
Unitas (Pacific)
4. The (Jacksonville) FloridaTimes-Union/Mayport Mirror May 23, 2012 - 02:00pm
Andean Ridge
Intra-Regional
5. The Los Angeles Times May 23, 2012, 3:55 pm
Southern Cone
Brazil
6. Associated Press May 23, 2012
Features
8. Associated Press
Given the context, residents and experts say it is no surprise that drugs and drug money have become accepted. Here in Ahuas, people blame outsiders - the Colombians and Mexicans who arrived in larger numbers starting five years ago - but they also admit that more recently everyone in town spoke openly about when drug planes would arrive, as if they were legitimate charter flights. The flights translated into much-needed work for local residents, who helped unload the contraband for transport further north. But they have also started to alter ancient customs. For many, hard work like farming has started to look like a waste of time. "It's creating huge long-term problems," said Mr. Martnez, who works in Puerto Lempira, the capital of Gracias a Dios. "People aren't thinking - they're putting their hopes in drugs; oh, next week there will be another plane.' " Young people have also started developing a taste for the "narco life." Drug use was once unheard-of on the Mosquito Coast. Now it is surging. More disturbingly to some, in a country with the highest homicide rate in the world, teenagers are developing a taste for weapons. "They don't even have enemies, and they want to walk around the village with a gun," said Mylo Wood, a lawmaker visiting his constituents in Ahuas on a recent day. Many Hondurans acknowledge that their country cannot possibly tackle the drug problem alone. "It has to do with a logistical problem, with communications, with detection," said Julieta Castellanos, president of the Autonomous University of Honduras. "The other problem, which is fundamental, is that the police are penetrated by organized crime." She added: "The participation of the United States is important. There are sectors of the country that are even asking for more participation." At the site of the raid, in fact, there is still a desire for American help. Town officials and victims like Hilda Lezama, 52, who has bullet wounds in her legs from the raid, say they mainly want an apology and an acknowledgment that they were not traffickers, as some American and Honduran officials have suggested. The recent raid has also prompted many here to insist on a more balanced antidrug approach. "Helicopters and soldiers are not development," said Raymundo Eude, a leader of the Masta ethnic group, which is calling for the Americans to leave the area by May 30. "It doesn't help." Opinions vary on what else the United States government could do to squelch the drug trade and its negative consequences. Many support programs to beef up the court system. Some, like Mr. Martnez, are calling for better roads to support agriculture, whereas Mr. Eude expressed fear that roads would draw too many people to the area. He suggested that the Americans compensate indigenous groups for protecting the forests. American officials, meanwhile, say they are already providing "soft side" assistance. The Agency for International Development has spent nearly $1 million since 2008 to preserve the spiny lobster fishery, a main source of work on the Mosquito Coast. The State Department has also contributed computers to a youth center in Puerto Lempira, while American soldiers have provided free medical and dental care. But many say such programs are not enough. "The Americans are driving the drug business with their demand, while we are the ones who end up with the dead bodies," said Carlos H. Sandoval, a forestry engineer who travels throughout the Mosquito Coast. And yet, for now, the frustration here is aimed at the traffickers, too. After Ahuas residents burned down the houses, several of the tenants who had links to the drug trade fled. American officials say they expect that traffickers may steer clear of the town given the highly publicized raid, and local residents agree that, at the very least, business will become more discreet. Other towns have also challenged the status quo. Officials and residents of Brus Laguna, a town upriver from Ahuas, said a mob there threatened the mayor after the raid because they believed he was receiving money from the traffickers that he did not share with the community, forcing them to assume the risks but not the benefits. And all across the area, residents are anxious about the future, questioning whether it will be the authorities or the traffickers who ultimately hold sway. "The people here are thinking more about all of this right now," Mr. Ordoez said. "But they are also thinking about the fact that they need to eat." (Return)
JTF-Guantanamo
2. The Miami Herald May 24, 2012
3. Politico.com
Unitas (Pacific)
4. The (Jacksonville) FloridaTimes-Union/Mayport Mirror May 23, 2012 - 02:00pm
Underwood is representing the U.S. Navy during the 53rd iteration of UNITAS 2012 and is deployed to Central and South America and the Caribbean in support of Southern Seas 2012. U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command and U.S. 4th Fleet supports USSOUTHCOM joint and combined full-spectrum military operations by providing principally sea-based, forward presence to ensure freedom of maneuver in the maritime domain, to foster and sustain cooperative relationships with international partners and to fully exploit the sea as maneuver space in order to enhance regional security and promote peace, stability, and prosperity in the Caribbean, Central and South American regions. (Return)
Andean Ridge
Intra-Regional
5. The Los Angeles Times May 23, 2012, 3:55 pm
use of Venezuela for refuge, his predecessor Uribe had routinely accused Chavez of tolerating the rebels' presence in his territory, which Chavez denies. (Return)
Southern Cone
Brazil
6. Associated Press May 23, 2012
Thursday's incident comes after a series of spills offshore Brazil, including a leak in November at the Frade field operated by U.S. oil major Chevron Corp. A drilling accident caused an estimated 2,400 to 3,000 barrels of crude to seep into the Atlantic Ocean from cracks in the seabed. Production at the field was closed in March, when separate seeps were discovered in a nearby area. (Return)
Features
8. Associated Press May 23, 2012
law, the state of Rio will regularize about 10,000 properties this year and about 37,000 over the next four years. Another new mechanism was pioneered by the nonprofit Bento Rubiao Foundation, which is working with the city to map out and title 8,000 properties in Rocinha, including that of Braga. The foundation is preparing the title claims for approximately 30,000 families statewide, said the organization's executive coordinator, Ricardo Gouvea. The foundation recently won an unprecedented ruling that allows an entire community to get titled collectively. That case will help nearly 100 families receive their property papers all at once, and could be used to help other communities in the same way, Gouvea said. "Brazil has always made it hard for the poor and blacks to own property," Gouvea said. "This is an important symbol. To have a right to the city, you start with a title to your land." But as favelas are brought into the fabric of the formal city, slum dwellers are discovering some unwelcome changes to their communities. Vidigal, a slum on a hill straddling two of Rio's most expensive zip codes, was occupied by a permanent police force in November, increasing security. Some of its properties already have titles and hundreds of residents are waiting for their papers. But foreigners and investors attracted by the incomparable ocean views and by the privileged neighborhoods surrounding the shantytown have also started snapping up land in Vidigal. A boutique hotel with a rooftop pool, designed by a renowned Brazilian architect, is under construction in the community where six months ago drug dealers conducted business with heavy weaponry. Titling is happening very fast, without any education for poor residents or concern for preserving a community's positive characteristics, said Theresa Williamson, a city planner and founder of Catalytic Communities, an organization that works with favelas. "These aren't simply neighborhoods; they're communities, and need to be considered as such," she said, proposing creation of community trust funds to keep housing affordable for those already living in the slums. In Vidigal, rent has quadrupled over the past four years, and construction in the hyper-dense community is booming. Residents are torn between making money by selling to the highest bidder and staying amid the neighbors they have always known. Sabrina Rosa's daughter will be the fourth generation of her family to grow up in the community's steep, narrow alleyways. Rosa owns, with title and all, the apartment where she lives. She also owns an untitled apartment at the top, with windows looking out over a vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. If Rosa waits for the title, she'll be able to sell the place for more, much more than a neighbor might be able to afford. Though it seems the obvious choice, she's unsure. "Vidigal is the Santa Teresa of the future," Rosa said, comparing the favela to a quaint, touristy Rio neighborhood. "The question is: What are the residents going to get from that process, and what are they going to lose? It's a change, and we don't know all the consequences. We have to find a way for it to work for everyone." (Return) 9. Los Angeles Times May 24, 2012
The area around Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, has benefited from huge government and business investments such as the expansion of the port of Suape, a new shipyard and an oil refinery project. Government aid has also helped struggling families improve their lives, which has lessened the need to move elsewhere. In Boa Viagem, a new middle-class neighborhood south of downtown Recife, the signs of change include apartment complexes and chic restaurants that have sprung up in recent years. "The region is now much more than just big industrial projects," said Juliana Queiroga, regional coordinator at Endeavor Nordeste, a new northeastern branch of a Sao Paulo-based nongovernmental organization that promotes entrepreneurship. "It's a new gastronomic center, a tech center, and there's lots of innovation and international money coming in." In the last 12 years, unemployment in the Recife metropolitan area dropped from about 14% to 6.2%, and the population of the city grew 8% to more than 1.5 million during roughly the same period. The city has been a beneficiary of the growth that has powered the country's economy for a decade and pushed migration into parts of the country that had languished for a century. When Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva became president in 2003, he instituted a set of social programs that predominantly benefited the impoverished northeastern states, which had lost much of their economic relevance of the 19th century, when slave plantations were central to the country's growth. As a youth, Lula made the weeks-long journey on the back of a truck from the woods of Pernambuco to Sao Paulo, where he eventually found a job as a metalworker. The billions of dollars in government investments and projects have made the northeast home to nine states and 50 million people the fastest-growing population center in Brazil's economic success story, which recently helped the country overtake Britain to become the world's sixth-largest economy. The northeast has grown four times as fast as the richer states of Sao Paulo and Rio, said Marcelo Neri, a Brazilian demographics specialist. The distribution of wealth has improved across classes, and millions of people have moved from poverty into the middle class, he said. "This is the first decade in recorded history that net migration from the country to the big cities has basically stopped," Neri said. "It's remarkable. This is still a very unequal country, but we are one of a very few countries these days that can say that inequality is falling." Some Brazilians are moving around the countryside to take advantage of an agricultural industry that is profiting from selling soybeans and other commodities to China. The related jobs range from business experts familiar with specialized agribusiness techniques to laborers who hack away brush before seeds are planted. Some Brazilians are moving to newly revitalized urban centers such as Recife or Fortaleza to work in construction, infrastructure or oil refining. And some are leaving the crime-ridden slums of Rio for jobs in their families' home regions. The balance has shifted so far that many who traditionally would have taken high-paying professional jobs in the southeast are heading to places like Recife instead. Sergio Silvino, a native of Sao Paulo who moved to Recife in 2010, was happily surprised to find a job as an engineer on a huge construction site. "I didn't think there were any opportunities up here. But then I got wind that there were job openings, and I ended up with a position that paid much better than I could have gotten in Rio," Silvino said. "Now I see people here from all over the country, and it's very tough to find anyone without a job." Since President Dilma Rousseff, Lula's handpicked successor, took over in January 2011, growth has continued apace, surprising many of those who grew up in the area or arrived more recently. "If you would have asked me at the beginning of my college term, I would have said I wanted to leave Pernambuco," said Jorge Diogo Souza Costa, a business student who moved to Recife from a small town in the interior of the state so he could attend a decent high school. "But now I want to stay. We have the refineries, the port projects, shipbuilding and the pharmaceutical and tech industries now. It's just obvious that our time has come." Bevins is a special correspondent. (Return)
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