The Latin American Report # 219
Jorge Glas attempts suicide?
Rafael Correa's former vice president, who was extracted last Saturday from the Mexican embassy in Ecuador during a repudiated and rude intervention of the Ecuadorian police, was transferred to a hospital in Guayaquil this Monday after a presumed suicide attempt. "Presumed diagnosis of self-induced deep coma provoked by the ingestion of anxiolytic, antidepressant and sedative medication," a police report quoted by a local period would read, but the penitentiary authority is saying that "it was determined that [Glas] suffered a possible decompensation due to his refusal to consume the food provided by this State Service, during the last 24 hours." "It was what I feared. The scoundrels will jump for joy. Strength, Jorge!", said Correa in X, urging on the other hand to hold a demonstration at the Ecuadorian embassy in Brussels, where he is a refugee after being convicted for alleged acts of corruption that also involved Glas.
No matter how hard he tries, Daniel Noboa will not find a solid way to defend the assault on Mexican sovereignty that constituted the referred operation. The head of the Carondelet Palace claims that he was forced to take "exceptional decisions to protect national security, the rule of law and the dignity of a people that rejects any kind of impunity for criminals, delinquents or narco-terrorists". None of this enables him to violate the immunity of the Mexican diplomatic headquarters, whose members returned to their country yesterday, Sunday, after the rupture of relations decreed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Even if Mexico had acted wrongly in granting asylum to Glas—as Quito claims—, the ground that Noboa's police agents stepped on last Saturday was sacred.
SourceHuachicoleo: another Latin American epidemic
The explosion of an oil pipeline in Mexico about 5 years ago left the sad toll of about 140 citizens dead. The cause was the imprecise "milking" of gasoline through the rudimentary installation of a clandestine tap in the pipeline linking the port of Tuxpan—history: from where Fidel Castro left in 1956 to start the Cuban Revolution—with the city of Tula. The "system" of huachicoleo—as this illegal activity is known—collapsed and the fuel began to gush like a river, leading many people to thoughtlessly try to accumulate the liquid and then sell it. Nearly 70 died on the spot as the environment became saturated with hydrocarbons, with the fire "embracing" even some onlookers. The cartels and criminal groups dedicated to this activity usually charge a tax to any actor that pretends to profit from it within their strongholds, and in this sense, the "intruders" usually pay with their lives when they enter uninvited.
SourceThe point is that huachicoleo is too profitable as a business. The influential think tank Atlantic Council estimated that in an efficient operation, it is possible to extract—in less than ten minutes—the equivalent of $90,000 in gasoline. We are talking about a whole industry, in which the huachicolero charged in 2019 about 40 dollars, while the Mexican government estimated in 3,000 million dollars the losses caused by it. In Colombia, where authorities have been dealing for many years with this practice, mere oil theft is joined by illegal refining. About a year ago, security forces destroyed some fifty illegal tappings installed on the Trasandino pipeline in the department of Nariño. Here guerrilla and paramilitary groups come into play, using the extracted fuel—converted into a product known as "pategrillo"—to process coca leaf. The potential contamination of the water cycle is another concern that huachicoleo imposes.
In Tibú, an area of Colombia's Norte de Santander department where there is reportedly a strong presence of the National Liberation Army, in all of 2023, barrel theft was estimated to have amounted to 90,000 barrels. In July it was reported the seizure of some 330 million dollars in properties and bank accounts of organizations related to oil theft, which even managed to export 975,000 barrels between 2020 and 2021. Last February, in less than 2 kilometers the Carabineros Police destroyed 11 illegal refineries, all credited to the ELN. "These unauthorized facilities were dedicated to the processing of coca leaf and the illegal commercialization of hydrocarbons," said a senior police commander. In the second half of last March authorities seized the equivalent of 167,000 barrels of oil in several raids on illegal refineries in Tibú, in a major blow against the "industry". The stolen fuel is also mixed with gasoline or diesel to power machines used in illegal mining. "Circular economy".
Tropas de la Fuerza de Tarea Vulcano, la @FuerzaAereaCol @PoliciaColombia y el apoyo de la @FiscaliaCol, dejaron al descubierto un complejo empleado para procesar crudo hurtado, en total cinco refinerías ilegales con más de siete millones de crudo fueron ubicados.#PlanAyacucho pic.twitter.com/tnVw2aohVH
— Segunda División del Ejército Nacional (@Ejercito_Div2) March 19, 2024
Red Mexico
Last Friday, seven dismembered corpses were reportedly found in Mexico, all of them belonging to people allegedly linked in some way to unidentified criminal groups. Five victims were decapitated, in a gruesome method common to Mexican gangs. The bodies were found in an abandoned car on a highway outside the capital city of the state of Puebla, and in each one, the authorities "[found messages written] on paper (...) referring to the reason for the deprivation of life," albeit "unjustified, illicit, and criminal". The executed individuals were allegedly involved in drug dealing, transport robbery, and extortion, which would suggest that this resulted in the action of self-defense groups, although Mexican criminal organizations always tend to present themselves as the defenders of the population in the face of "invasion" and "criminal activity" by their rivals. Information war.
SourceBrazil vs. Musk: Still Round 1
Brazil Supreme Court justice orders investigation of Elon Musk over fake news and obstruction (from @AP) https://t.co/G74HHTbmUC
— Leo Correa (@Leo_Correa) April 8, 2024
And this is all for our report today. I have referenced the sources dynamically in the text, and remember you can learn how and where to follow the LATAM trail news by reading my work here. Have a nice day.
Access to potentially fatal doses of drugs should not be available to captives completely at the mercy of their captors, and ingestion of such doses of drugs is properly laid at the feet of those that presume to deny free people independent agency and thereby assume responsibility and liability for their health and safety.
Similarly, there is no reduction or limitation of liability of the captors if the captive suffers 'decompensation' (whatever that is) from lack of food. Again, the captor assumes all responsibility and liability for the health and safety of the captive when denying their free agency. Further, it is ridiculous that any adverse health effect can be laid at the feet of one day without food, other than slight hunger. I have gone 30 days without solid food without significant health impacts (negative health impacts. I did lose considerable weight), so it is preposterous that only one day without food would cause life threatening health impacts on anyone not already at death's door.
While theft of gasoline from pipelines is not all committed for this application, all of the illegal coca processing, the environmental damage, and the funding of political opposition, is due to prohibition. Such bandits could not compete economically with a professionally run coca refinery, and all of the downstream peripheral crimes, human trafficking, violence, and thefts to pay for black market drugs, would also be eliminated by professional, pharmaceutical production of cocaine. It is difficult to understand how people justify maintaining such a scourge when confronted with such probative evidence of such horrific harms as result from prohibition.
Not least is the oppressive imposition on human sovereignty the very presumption of power to mandate prohibition entails.
Thanks!
I agree with the analysis of Glas' situation. Regarding the issue of drugs and your bet to eliminate their prohibition, I continue to share that philosophical-political vision that puts the freedom of the individual first. However, I still have doubts about how such a market would be formed, and also about the resilience that the forces of evil might show in such a potential scenario. Thanks for this feedback.