Washington Watch - 18 March 2010
Cuba: On March 8 the US treasury department announced changes to allow general licenses to export personal internet communications services. The move will permit US technology companies to export services such as instant messaging, e-mail and web browsing to Cuba, Iran and Sudan. “Consistent with the administration's deep commitment to the universal rights of all the world's citizens, the issuance of these general licenses will make it easier for individuals in Iran, Sudan and Cuba to use the internet to communicate with each other and with the outside world," the deputy treasury secretary Neal Wolin stated. On 15 March Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, the director of the Cuban foreign ministry's office for North American affairs, accused the US government of trying to destabilize Cuba."The government of the United States has said clearly that its objective is to use these services as a tool of subversion and destabilization," she said in a written statement. Vidal Ferreiro noted that the new measures would apply to individuals only, not businesses or institutions, and would do nothing to loosen the grip of the US economic embargo. In December 2009, a US contractor, Alan P. Gross, was arrested in Havana for allegedly handing out communications equipment to dissidents. Cuba accused him of spying. He remains in jail in Havana.
El Salvador: On 16 March, the US and El Salvador signed a cooperation agreement giving El Salvador US$27m in economic aid. The funds will be administered by the US Agency for International Development (USAID. Thet money will be disbursed over two years and will be allocated to organizations specializing in training for women and young people in an attempt to ameliorate the effects of the world economic crisis on Salvadorian communities. Recipient programs will include the Urban and Rural Communities Solidarity project, the Temporary Program for the Support of Incomes (PATI) and several vocational training programs in 43 eligible municipalities.
Mexico: On 13 March three people with links to the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez were killed in an apparently coordinated attack. The US has now authorized families working in six of the nine US consulates in Mexico to leave the country. The three victims in Ciudad Juárez were killed as they left a party hosted by another consulate employee. The two couples attacked had young children with them in their cars. Two US citizens, Lesley A. Enriquez, who worked for the consulate (and was four months pregnant), and her husband Arthur Haycock Redelfs, were killed after they were followed as they drove away from the party. Their seven-month-old baby was uninjured in the attack. The other victim was Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, whose wife works for the consulate. Two of their children were wounded in the attack. The US and Mexican governments both condemned the murders. The US ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, reaffirmed the US commitment to working “shoulder-to-shoulder" with the Mexican government “to break the power of the drug-trafficking organizations that far too often target and kill innocent people." President Barack Obama said that he was “deeply saddened and outraged" by the murders.
Region: On 16 March, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) opened a new centre for the repatriation of immigrants at the Phoenix-Mesa airport in Arizona. The centre will process and house illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. According to the ICE, the creation of the new centre answers to Arizona's increasing needs. The state expects to repatriate 22,000 people this year, mainly to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The majority of these would have been arrested whilst trying to cross the US-Mexico border or during police raids on safe houses, though there is also a significant number who will be deported after serving time in the US for crimes committed there. While Arizona has a large illegal immigrant population, it also processes people being repatriated by other states, using Arizona's well-established system.