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Blame the criminal gangs in power
I'm from Argentina and have just returned from Bolivia and Peru. Rory Carroll (Rampant violence is Latin America's 'worst epidemic', October 9) ignores the main culprits: not criminal gangs, but rightwing governments organised from Washington, which have ruled with impunity.
Argentina, like Chile and others, is still recovering from military dictators who disappeared 30,000 people and from the laws which gave them impunity. Most countries have suffered electoral fraud, and the current presidents of both Colombia and Mexico are accused of crimes against humanity. All have been prey to Washington's free-market policies, which caused rampant corruption.
Argentina's 2002 meltdown, which left 50% of its population in poverty, should have served as a warning against today's banking crisis.
In the past decade, massive social movements have elected popular governments to tackle this legacy of poverty, corruption and impunity. Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela are held back by racist elites which have governed by the gun for 500 years, in the last century with the complicity of the courts and the US embassies.
In Bolivia, I interviewed survivors of the recent massacre of small farmers shot and tortured by gangs and police working for Leopoldo Fernandez, the prefect of Pando. Eighteen bodies had been recovered and over 100 were still missing, among them pregnant women and children. Impunity was on everyone's lips: how to prevent judges from releasing Fernandez and the US from offering him asylum, despite overwhelming evidence against him?
Impunity has allowed the US to remove a democratically elected government in Haiti and to invade Iraq. It allows banks to steal and be rewarded with public funds. Impunity is what makes the biggest crimes pay.
Nina Lopez
Global Women's Strike
Letter from The Guardian
The Guardian, Friday October 10 2008Petreoleumworld 10/20/08
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