Kanye West, who announced his intention to run for president on Saturday, said in a Forbesinterview Wednesday that he believes “Planned Parenthoods have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work” — adding to a long-standing claim anti-abortion activists have made that the women’s health organization perpetuates racist ideals because its founder Margaret Sanger was a proponent of eugenics.
Kanye West meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in 2018.
AFP via Getty Images
KEY FACTS
Planned Parenthood has long refuted the claims that it was founded on racist ideals and alluded to the allegation in a recent statement announcing its new CEO and president Alexis McGill Johnson, saying that it “has publicly committed to reckoning with its history, investing in work aimed at engaging communities of color, and improving Planned Parenthood’s health care delivery.”
Sanger recruited Black leaders to support the project and, in the letter, she said that white men should not run the clinics and that there would be more community involvement and support if the clinics were run by Black doctors because they could “get closer to their members and more or less lay their cards on the table which means their superstitions, ignorance, and doubts.”
“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members,” she wrote.
The first half of the sentence was referenced in a letter Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and 25 House Republicans sent in 2015 urging the National Portrait Gallery to remove a bust of Sanger to support their claim that she “famously espoused birth control as a method for controlling the population of minorities.”
Historians have argued that the line has been taken out of context and that she was referring to people’s suspicions, not Planned Parenthood’s goal.
key background
Anti-abortion activists also point to the fact that Stanger, who is seen as the founder of the birth control movement, spoke about birth control at a women’s branch of the Klu Klux Klan in 1926. Planned Parenthood has since denounced the meeting with the Klu Klux Klan, saying that it “strongly disagrees with Sanger’s decision to address an organization that spreads hatred.” They also argue that, while Sanger believed in the “broader issues of health and fitness that concerned the early 20th-century eugenics movement,” she believed that reproductive decisions should be made by individuals and that she “consistently and firmly repudiated any strictly racial application of eugenics principles.” She did believe in some of the eugenics principles “progressives” of the day favored that many would balk at today, including Planned Parenthood, which has said there are “major flaws in Sanger’s views” and called them “wrong.” “That Sanger was enamored and supported some eugenicists’ ideas is certainly true,” Susan Reverby, a health care historian and professor at Wellesley College, told NPR in a 2015 article about the allegations. But, she added, Sanger’s main argument was not eugenics — it was that “Sanger thought people should have the children they wanted.”
crucial quote
“The sentence may have been thoughtlessly composed, but it is perfectly clear that she was not endorsing genocide,” Ellen Chesler, author of Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, wrote in a 2011 Salon article.
tangent
West’s famous wife Kim Kardashian West, has been supportive of Planned Parenthood. In an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, she and her sisters Khloe and Kourtney went to a Planned Parenthood center to talk to women. “The perception of Planned Parenthood is that it’s like this abortion clinic,” Kardashian West said during the episode. “That’s nothing like what it’s like. Hearing that first-hand really made it real for me.” (West made his view of abortion clear in the four-hour Forbes interview saying, “I am pro-life because I’m following the word of the bible.”)
At the same time, she is spending money quickly to build up a large campaign operation. Her campaign said it spent $5.2 million in the first quarter, leaving it with $11.2 million in cash on hand.
Ms. Warren’s fund-raising at the beginning of her campaign did not impress. On Dec. 31, the day she announced her exploratory committee for president, she raised about $300,000 through the online donation-processing platform ActBlue, according to Federal Election Commission records. By contrast, Mr. O’Rourke raised $6.1 million in his first 24 hours in the race, and Mr. Sanders raised $5.9 million in his first day, according to their campaigns.
A New York Times article detailing Ms. Warren’s early fund-raising struggles, which was published online on the last day of the first quarter, helped create an outpouring for Ms. Warren, handing her one of her best fund-raising days of the quarter, according to a Democrat familiar with her fund-raising.
Supporters of Ms. Warren feared that she was being crowded out by Mr. Sanders on the party’s left flank, but the campaign’s surge in the final week has at least temporarily allayed some of the concern. During that time, Ms. Warren’s campaign team made several dramatic pitches to its donor base, sending emails that addressed the harshest criticisms of the campaign, such as one titled “Can She Really Win?” in which they laid out the campaign’s overarching strategy.
The emails, which track with private conversations among Ms. Warren’s senior advisers, suggest that the senator believes several things will help her break out of the Democratic pack, including an ability to do more political events because she is not devoting time to private fund-raisers, her well-praised policy rollouts and her campaign team’s focus on digital organizing.
“The relative numbers don’t matter to me,” said John Walsh, a former chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. “Who has the most money? No, that doesn’t matter. It’s, ‘Do you have enough money to run the campaign you said you’re going to run?’”
Candidates must report their fund-raising for the first quarter to the Federal Election Commission by April 15, but campaigns can announce numbers before that deadline.
Isela Costantini: La ex funcionaria hizo temblar a Macri con el caso Avianca y lo obligó a dar marcha atrás con la adjudicación de rutas aéreas a la compañía. La sombra de Dietrich y Macair. Y los informes que alertaron a la echada titular de Aerolíneas, que pasó del miedo a la intriga por las reglas del poder.
Avión presidencial: El nuevo lobby del enigmático Sr. Colunga.
Los artistas K lloran miseria: Menos ingresos, falta de trabajo y represalias en la era post Cristina. Pablo Echarri denunció que lo sacaron de una tira por kirchnerista. Actores K en la era de Cambiemos. ¿Venganza o utilización política?
Las ocho mentiras de internet: Ponencia de Jorge Fontevecchia, fundador de NOTICIAS, sobre el panorama del periodismo en la web.
Además:
5 trampas del machismo: Históricamente las mujers han luchado por la igualdad de salarios. Dos especialistas analizan las diferencias que aún existen en el sistema económico.
El boom de la literatura argentina en Serbia: Las tiradas se agotan y los autores brillan en festivales. Samanta Schweblin, Ana María Shua y Guillermo Martínez son los favoritos.
Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice who studies race and electoral politics, said black skepticism in government stretches back decades, citing Booker T. Washington and his early 19th century argument for black self-help, rather than a focus on systemic discrimination. Black voters are often described as “moderates,” but Mr. Johnson said the voting choices are more nuanced than straightforward ideological choices.
Racism “contributes to black people’s lack of support for mass federal programs,” Mr. Johnson said. “There’s a sense that, if you prefer federal programs, that can be an admission that you can’t make it without white people or government.”
In “Medicare for all,” free college and other signature progressive proposals, like the cancellation of student loan debt or housing equality, candidates are asking black voters to trust that government can correct the same systemic inequalities that government helped create. But there is often no plan to undo the cynicism that decades of governmental failure have created among older black voters in particular.
“No matter who is in office, the government has not been our best friend,” said Samuel Crisp, 73. He is part of the Piedmont Progressive Farmers Group, which focuses on egg production, and attended the Warren campaign event in Virginia.
“They all have programs that work against us,” he added. “And they don’t seem to understand that.”
There is some precedent for selling older black voters on the promise for structural change. In 2004, the populist campaign of Senator John Edwards of North Carolina won the South Carolina Democratic primary contest. The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988 succeeded in bringing a message of systemic upheaval to black voters — winning 11 contests in 1988, including in Virginia and South Carolina. In an interview, Mr. Jackson urged the current crop of left-wing candidates like Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren to get better at working to relate to and understand black communities.
“I earned the trust of the people. I worked with them on the ground. I wasn’t just an election candidate. I served with them,” Mr. Jackson said. “I was at their restaurants. I played football. I stayed in their homes.”
Mr. Jackson acknowledged that forming those connections is a different challenge for white candidates, who could risk appearing “pretentious and not genuine,” but he said he believed there were authentic and effective approaches.
A masked Dr. Anthony Fauci joins President Trump as he delivers remarks about the coronavirus vaccine development Friday in the Rose Garden.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
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A masked Dr. Anthony Fauci joins President Trump as he delivers remarks about the coronavirus vaccine development Friday in the Rose Garden.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
President Trump on Friday unveiled more details of “Operation Warp Speed” – an effort to accelerate the development of a vaccine and medical treatments for the coronavirus by January.
“We’re looking to get it by the end of the year if we can, maybe before,” Trump said as top medical, military and Cabinet officials, many of them wearing face masks, joined him in the Rose Garden.
Trump compared the effort to the Manhattan Project – the World War II effort to build the first nuclear weapon.
“That means big and it means fast,” Trump said. “We have the military totally involved.”
Experts have noted that a timeline of even 12 to 18 months is optimistic. The first Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccine for the Ebola virus was not until December 2019 despite a peak in outbreaks between 2014 and 2016.
At present there are 14 promising vaccine candidates, Trump said, noting that it would be “risky” and “expensive,” but that the federal government plans to invest in manufacturing the top candidates even before they are approved to eliminate any delay once approval happens.
Trump confirmed the names of leaders of the project. As NPR reported Thursday, former GlaxoSmithKline executive Moncef Slaoui will be the chief adviser to the effort. Slaoui’s long career at the company included the chairmanship of GlaxoSmithKline’s global vaccines division. He also was on the board of Moderna, a company with a coronavirus vaccine candidate. Moderna announced Friday that Slaoui has resigned from the board.
Gen. Gustave Perna, commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, will be the chief operating officer of the program.
Trump said the United States would work with other countries — even China — on the project to develop, manufacture and distribute a vaccine quickly.
“They’re viewing us as the leader, and the relationship with other countries on solving this problem has been incredible,” he said.
“We’ll be very happy if they are able to do it,” Trump said, speaking generally about other countries working on vaccines for the virus. “We have no ego when it comes to this.”
The government will also ramp up production of vaccine supplies such as storage facilities, vials and syringes. Trump said the military would deploy “every truck, plane and soldier” to distribute the vaccine quickly once available.
Trump’s remarks in the Rose Garden were accompanied by loud honking from nearby protesting truckers. “That’s the sign of love, not the sign of your typical protest,” the president said.
The truckers have been protesting for nearly two weeks against what they say are low pay rates, neither against nor in support of Trump. The group has requested a meeting with the president, according to media reports.
“The president’s feelings towards the former senator are well known,” Mulvaney said, adding that firing someone over the request “is silly.”
“The fact that some 23- or 24-year-old person on the advance team went to that site and said, ‘Oh my goodness. There’s the John McCain. We all know how the president feels about the former senator. Maybe that’s not the best backdrop. Can somebody look into moving it?’ That’s not an unreasonable thing to ask,” Mulvaney said.
The Navy on Saturday confirmed receiving a request to “minimize visibility” of the USS John S. McCain, named for late senator’s grandfather.
Trump said he did not know of the request but that whoever did it was “well-meaning.”
Trump and the late senator clashed frequently, and the president has kept up his attacks after the Arizona Republican’s death.
El director de Marketing para Latinoamérica de Google, Miguel Alva, dijo hoy en Panamá que son los propios usuarios de los buscadores de contenido y de las redes sociales los que tienen que aprender a “discernir” entre noticias veraces y falsas.
“En lo que se ha esforzado Google desde el inicio es que Internet sea democrático, que pueda haber contenido de todo tipo”, ya sean portales de noticias o portales de humor, y “creemos que es el usuario el que tiene que discernir cuáles son esos sitios con mayor credibilidad”, indicó Alva.
La publicación de noticias falsas “es parte del dinamismo del mercado y hay que dejar que el usuario sea quien decida” y quien descarte el contenido, añadió Alva durante el evento Google Think 2016, que se inauguró hoy en la capital panameña.
Según el directivo, Google “nació hace 18 años como un espacio de apertura, de libertad de expresión” y con el objetivo de “organizar la información del mundo y hacerla universalmente accesible”.
La pasada campaña electoral estadounidense, que se saldó con el inesperado triunfo del republicano Donald Trump, estuvo marcada por la publicación de noticias falsas en redes sociales y buscadores.
De hecho, un investigación de Buzzfeed realizada con la herramienta analítica Buzzsumo encontró que las 20 noticias falsas más populares de los últimos tres meses obtuvieron más de un millón de interacciones más en Facebook que las principales historias de medios como The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal o CNN.
Un segmento de la opinión estadounidense culpa a Facebook de los resultados electorales porque, en su opinión, haber permitido la publicación de bulos informativos ha influido en los electores.
Abandoning the American-backed Kurdish allies, Pentagon officials have argued, will hamper future efforts by the United States to gain the trust of local fighters, from Afghanistan to Yemen to Somalia.
In addition, the Islamic State has not been full vanquished from the small territory it controls on the Syrian-Iraqi border. The Islamic State has held that territory for more than a year in the face of attacks by American-allied forces, and has used it as a launching pad to carry out attacks in Iraq and Syria.
But Mr. Trump promised during his presidential campaign to withdraw American troops from Syria, and has been looking for a way out since. He reluctantly agreed in April to give the Defense Department more time to finish the mission.
In recent days, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has given Mr. Trump just such a possible path: Mr. Erdogan has vowed to launch a new offensive against the Kurdish troops that the United States has equipped to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
As the debate over withdrawing from Syria was raging inside the White House over recent days, Mr. Trump argued that the risk of a Turkish incursion could be a threat to the United States forces in Syria, officials said, although Mr. Erdogan would likely face huge reprisals if Turkish troops killed or wounded any Americans.
On Monday, Mr. Erdogan said that he told Mr. Trump that Turkey would launch its offensive soon.
Turkey considers the American-backed Kurdish forces to be a terrorist group because of their connection to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a Kurdish insurgency in the region. The Syrian Kurds hope to create an autonomous region in northeast Syria, similar to the one in neighboring Iraq. They now control around 30 percent of Syria’s territory.
Pentagon officials have been pushing for a diplomatic solution to the issue.
The Islamic State, a militant group also known as ISIS, has lost an nearly all of its territory in Iraq and Syria, where the 2,000 American troops are mostly advising a militia made up of Kurdish and Arab soldiers.
White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller countered that the remarks reflected not discrimination, but rather dissent with their political views. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo
Pushback against President Donald Trump’s recent racist comments about four women of color in Congress is merely an effort by Democrats to “try to silence and punish and suppress” views opposite their own, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said Sunday.
“I think the term ‘racist’ has become a label too often deployed by the left [and] Democrats in this country simply to try to silence and punish and suppress people they disagree with — speech they don’t want to hear,” Miller told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “This president has been a president for all Americans.”
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Over the past week, Trump has lobbed increasingly inflammatory remarks at Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — saying the women of color should “go back” to their countries of origin and questioning their patriotism.
All of the women are American citizens and three of the four were born in the U.S.
Miller countered that the remarks reflect not discrimination but rather dissent with their political views.
“I fundamentally disagree with the view that if you criticize somebody and they happen to be a different color of skin, that happens to be a racial criticism,” Miller said.
The issue lies, Miller said, with Democratic lawmakers’ attitude toward Trump’s White House and its supporters.
“With the ‘send her back’ chant, the president was clear he disagreed with it,” Miller said, referring to a tweet from the president and a resulting cheer that broke out at a reelection campaign rally Wednesday in North Carolina.
“The core issue,” he added, “is that all the people in that audience and millions of patriotic Americans all across this country are tired of being beat up, condescended to, looked down upon, talked down to by members of Congress on the left in Washington, D.C., and their allies in many corners of the media.”
El golpe de estado en Turquía, así como el asesinato de un millonario en la India que tenía una camiseta de oro, destacan en el resumen de noticias de este viernes.
En este resumen de noticias te presentamos las que mayor impacto tuvieron en Honduras y el planeta entero:
Golpe de estado: Ejército turco anuncia que tomó el poder
El ejército turco anunció este viernes que tomó el poder del país, en una acción que el primer ministro, Binali Yildirim, calificó como un “intento ilegal”. “El poder en el país ha sido tomado en su totalidad”, indica el comunicado leído en la cadena NTV. La página web del ejército estaba caída. El primer ministro denunció un “intento ilegal” de un grupo dentro del ejército y advirtió que “quienes formen parte de estos actos ilegales van a pagar el más alto precio”.
“El general Hulusi Akar, jefe del estado mayor del ejército, es rehén de los militares golpistas que intentan un levantamiento”, indicó a su vez la agencia progubernamental Anatolia.
Matan a millonario por robarle camisa de oro en la India
El millonario indio Datta Phuge, que se hizo famoso por una extravagante camisa de oro considerada la más cara del mundo, fue asesinado este viernes. El suceso se produjo en la ciudad occidental india de Pune en circunstancias que investiga la Policía. Ocurrió la pasada noche en un descampado a las fueras de la ciudad en el área de Dighi, dijo el inspector de la comisaría de esta zona, Navnath K. Ghogare.
El oficial indicó que un grupo de 12 atacantes acabó con la vida del empresario y posteriormente la Policía detuvo a cinco sospechosos, entre ellos algunos conocidos del hombre de negocios.
Asesinan a dos personas en restaurante de Choloma, Cortés
Dos personas fueron asesinadas en el interior de un negocio de comidas típicas en Choloma, Cortés, al norte de Honduras. Las víctimas fueron identificadas como Víctor Rosales y Luis del Cid Castillo.
El hecho violento ocurrió en el desvío a la Jutosa en el restaurante Las Recetas de Mis Viejos.
Suspenden segundo periodo de la UNAH
Autoridades de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras (Unah) cancelaron este viernes el segundo periodo académico para todas las carreras debido a la protesta con toma de instalaciones que ya lleva más de 40 días. Habrá un periodo intensivo que iniciará el 7 de septiembre y finalizará el 7 de diciembre, informó hoy la vicerrectora de asuntos académicos Rutilia Calderón.
Estudiantes y autoridades tendrán otro acercamiento el día martes 19 de julio y se espera que se ponga fin al conflicto por el bien de la comunidad estudiantil, dijo Ayax Irías, vicerrector de asuntos estudiantiles.
Capturan a policía atrincherado en su casa
Autoridades hondureñas capturaron este viernes a un subcomisario policial sospechoso de participar en bandas del crimen organizado, luego de que se atrincheró en su casa donde resistió a la detención y amenazó con suicidarse o atacar a sus captores, informó una fuente oficial. El oficial Juan Francisco Sosa, que apareció citado por el diario The New York Times por su posible implicación en el asesinato del zar antidrogas Arístides González, se atrincheró en su casa para evitar su detención pero finalmente fue capturado, dijo a la AFP Carlos Hernández, asesor la Comisión Especial para el Proceso de Depuración de la Policía Nacional.
Miembros de la Dirección Nacional de Lucha Contra el Narcotráfico (DNLCN) llegaron este viernes a la vivienda de Sosa en la colonia capitalina Santa María como parte de las operaciones iniciadas el jueves para incautar propiedades obtenidas con dinero del tráfico de drogas.
19 pandilleros salvadoreños han sido detenidos en Honduras
Diecinueve pandilleros procedentes de El Salvador fueron detenidos en los últimos 15 días por autoridades de Honduras, que desplegaron operativos contra la delincuencia en la frontera común, informaron este viernes fuentes militares. La Fuerza de Seguridad Interinstitucional Nacional (Fusina) dio una lista de 26 detenidos, en los que aparecen 19 miembros de la Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) y de la Pandilla 18 que fueron arrestados en las operaciones emprendidas por policías y militares en diferentes lugares de la frontera de Honduras con El Salvador.
Otros dos pandilleros fueron arrestados en Tegucigalpa y uno en San Pedro Sula (norte). Con las operaciones “estamos dando respuesta (…) a la comisión de delitos en una forma preventiva y también estamos desarticulando bandas que han querido llegar a esos sectores”, afirmó en rueda de prensa el comandante de Fusina, coronel David Arriaga.
In early June 2020, Mr. Carlson told his audience that the Black Lives Matter protests were “definitely not about Black lives” and to “remember that when they come for you.” The next evening, as Fox’s public relations team insisted Mr. Carlson’s comment was being mischaracterized, Mr. Carlson leaned in. “The mob came for us — irony of ironies,” he told Fox viewers. “They spent the last 24 hours trying to force the show off the air for good. They won’t succeed in that, thankfully. We work for one of the last brave companies in America, and they’re not intimidated.”
Off-camera, Mr. Carlson could be less defiant. In a conversation that spring with Eric Owens, one of his former employees at The Daily Caller, he worried that the controversy over his show had made it difficult for his children to get jobs and internships; he worried that his younger children wouldn’t get into college. “It’s not right for this to affect my family, and literally affect my children’s future,” Mr. Carlson said, according to Mr. Owens.
But it’s less clear whether the attacks significantly affected Fox’s bottom line: To compensate for the lost advertising, Fox turned “Tucker Carlson Tonight” into a promotional engine for the network itself. It replaced the fleeing sponsors with a torrent of in-house promos, leveraging Mr. Carlson’s popularity to drive viewers to other, more advertiser-friendly offerings. By early 2019, roughly a fifth of all advertising “impressions” on the show were from in-house ads, according to data from the analytics company iSpot.tv. That summer, as Fox fended off criticism of Mr. Carlson’s “hoax” comments, the proportion climbed to more than a third. (A Fox spokeswoman said the actual proportions were lower, but declined to provide specific figures.) “Fox is basically an enormous loyalty brand,” said Jason Damata, the chief executive officer of Fabric Media, a media consultancy. “He’s the hook.”
Other advertising slots were taken by direct-to-consumer brands that either didn’t care about Mr. Carlson’s bad publicity or saw that they could use his intensity to sell their products. Beginning in January 2019, MyPillow, a Fox advertiser whose chief executive, Mike Lindell, is a major promoter of Mr. Trump’s stolen-election lie, began airing more than $1 million worth of ads on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” each month. Fox appeared to be using MyPillow to cushion Mr. Carlson: As other advertising dried up, the company’s ads spiked. (All told, through December 2021,Mr. Lindell had bought advertising that would have cost $91 million at publicized rates; discounts probably made that sum lower.)
Blue-chip advertisers would never return to the show in force. But thanks in part to the large audiences he could provide for those advertisers who remained, and the premium prices Fox could charge them, Mr. Carlson’s ad revenue began to recover. Every year since 2018, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has brought more annual ad revenue to Fox than any other show, according to estimates by iSpot. Last May, after promoting the white supremacist “replacement” theory, Mr. Carlson had half as many advertisers as in December 2018 but brought in almost twice as much money.
As “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became more toxic to advertisers, it also began featuring fewer guests who disagreed with the host, and more guests who simply echoed or amplified Mr. Carlson’s own message. It wasn’t just that liberals didn’t want to debate him, though some now refused to appear on the show, as Mr. Carlson complained during a Fox appearance last summer; Fox was learning that its audience didn’t necessarily like hearing from the other side. “From my discussions with Fox News bookers, my takeaway is that they’ve made the judgment that they just don’t do debate segments anymore,” said Richard Goodstein, a Democratic lobbyist and campaign adviser who appeared regularly on Mr. Carlson’s show until the summer of 2020. Across much of the Fox lineup, former employees said, producers were relying more and more on panels of pro-Trump conservatives competing to see who could denounce Democrats more fervently — a ratings gambit one former Fox employee called “rage inflation.” (One exception, perhaps, is “The Five,” a panel show featuring four conservative co-hosts and one rotating co-host from the left, which has beaten Mr. Carlson in total viewers in some recent months.)
And as advertisers fled, Mr. Carlson’s opening monologue grew. Where once he spoke for only a few minutes, sometimes in a neutral just-asking-questions mode, he now often opened the show with a lengthy stemwinder, addressing his audience as “you” and the objects of his fury as a shadowy “they.” Ratings data showed that the monologues were a hit with viewers, according to one former and one current Fox employee, and by 2020, Mr. Carlson regularly spoke directly to the camera for more than quarter of the hourlong show. Instead of less Tucker, the audience got more.
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Estos hombres, arrestados en la frontera venezolana con Colombia, ¿son paramilitares?
El presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, anunció el cierre de un nuevo punto de frontera con Colombia, esta vez entre el venezolano estado Zulia y el colombiano departamento de La Guajira, en el norte de ambos países.
Como en el cierre del puesto fronterizo entre San Antonio del Táchira y Cúcuta, el mandatario argumentó la necesidad de combatir al paramilitarismo colombiano.
Pero ¿quiénes son los supuestos paramilitares a los que el gobierno venezolano acusa de buena parte de los males que aquejan a su país?
Investigación de BBC Mundo.
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Image copyright AFP
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El gobierno venezolano dice que la frontera se mantendrá cerrada mientras el orden no se restablezca y Colombia tome medidas.
Germán*, un contrabandista colombo-venezolano, cruza la frontera a pie como quien está en su casa a pesar del cierre fronterizo impuesto por Nicolás Maduro hace 20 días.
En una lujosa oficina en uno de los municipios venezolanos donde se vive en estado de excepción desde hace dos semanas, Germán habla con BBC Mundo en condición de anonimato sobre la actividad ilegal que reina en esta zona montañosa compartida por dos países.
El contrabandista, que aunque creció en Venezuela tiene acento colombiano, posee una finca en plena frontera, por la que cruza sin apuro no solo ahora: lo ha hecho así durante los últimos años, en los que ha acumulado una fortuna gracias al contrabando de carne, azúcar y gasolina, productos que en Colombia se venden cientos de veces más caros que en Venezuela.
“Incluso con la frontera cerrada, hoy voy a pasar unos kilitos de carne porque la conseguí barata”, dice, para sorpresa de cualquiera que pase por el ahora militarizado río Táchira.
“Mira: acá todo está infectado por donde lo mires, empezando por las autoridades del Estado venezolano; acá todo tiene su precio“, asegura, citando a manera de ejemplo los supuestos sobornos que él como contrabandista debe pagar a la Guardia Nacional Bolivariana o al ejército venezolano.
También, asegura, les paga vacunas y vigilancia a las bandas armadas que ejercen control sobre esta zona Andina de la frontera y son consideradas un reducto del paramilitarismo colombiano.
Los paramilitares por los que Maduro cerró la frontera.
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Muchos compartieron las fotos de niños cruzando la frontera con la pregunta “¿estos son los paramilitares de los que habla Maduro?”
Polémico cierre
El presidente venezolano justificó la medida con la necesidad de combatir los grupos paramilitares colombianos que según él generan la delincuencia y la crisis económica que se viven actualmente en toda Venezuela.
Según el gobierno venezolano, al menos 100 personas fueron arrestadas por supuestos vínculos con grupos paramilitares y miles de toneladas de productos –así como armamento– han sido incautados.
El cierre fronterizo es la nueva fase de una polémica política denominada Operación de Liberación del Pueblo (OLP), que busca “liberar a Venezuela del paramilitarismo”, en palabras de Maduro, y con la que se han allanado decenas de barrios populares que están controlados por bandas armadas.
Al menos un centenar de presuntos delincuentes han muerto en los operativos policiales, según cifras oficiales.
La arrolladora llegada de la OLP a los barrios de invasión fronterizos –donde derrumbaron casas que estaban marcada con una ‘D’– generó una ola de migraciones de colombianos en Venezuela hacia el país que los vio nacer: casi 1.400 colombianos han sido deportados y más de 18.000 personas cruzaron por su propia voluntad, según la ONU.
“Me trataron como paramilitar, como criminal, solo porque soy colombiana”, le dijo a BBC Mundo Yolanda*, una madre de tres niños que fue deportada pero había vuelto ilegalmente a Venezuela a recoger sus pertenencias.
Su denuncia se agrega a muchas otras que alegan la violación por parte de autoridades venezolanas de los derechos humanos de personas humildes que hace años vivían en estas zonas; y, lejos de ser paramilitares, dicen ser desplazados de la violencia que flagela a Colombia hace más de medio siglo.
El gobierno venezolano sostiene que estos barrios de invasión eran bases de paramilitares que sometían a la gente al trabajo criminal.
“Yo, como mucha gente de acá, no te voy a negar que alguna vez compré algo en Venezuela y lo vendí en Colombia, pero lo hice porque es una forma de sobrevivir acá”, dijo Yolanda, quien niega ser paramilitar, pero se siente perseguida como si fuera el más poderoso de ellos.
Para este reportaje BBC Mundo solicitó entrevistas con el ministro venezolano del Interior, Gustavo González, y con el gobernador del Táchira, el oficialista José Gregorio Vielma Mora, pero no obtuvo respuesta.
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El proceso de desmovilización de los paramilitares en Colombia en 2003 ha sido fuertemente cuestionado, en parte porque hoy existen grupos armados incluso más violentos que los que había antes.
Paramilitarismo en Colombia
Los grupos civiles y armados que se organizaron en Colombia en los años 80 para combatir a la guerrilla –en alianza con el narcotráfico y algunas unidades militares– fueron denominados paramilitares en ese país.
En 2003, durante el primer gobierno de Álvaro Uribe Vélez, se inició un proceso de negociación que dio como resultado un masivo proceso de desmovilización, en el que miles de combatientes abandonaron las armas.
Sin embargo, en los último años, cientos de estos desmovilizados volvieron a organizar bandas criminales –como los Urabeños y Los Rastrojos– que operan en gran medida en la frontera y se lucran del narcotráfico, del contrabando de productos que vienen de Venezuela y la extorsión de habitantes y comerciantes.
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Varios funcionarios del gobierno de Uribe están investigados por vínculos con paramilitares, pero muchos dudan, salvo el gobierno venezolano, que el expresidente esté detrás de la crisis que vive Venezuela.
“Si antes de la desmovilización la situación de la frontera era grave, ahora es mucho peor, porque estas bandas delincuenciales ya no tienen una estructura jerárquica que los controle u organice sino que todo es un desorden, una anarquía”, le dijo a BBC Mundo en condición de anonimato un funcionario de la fiscalía colombiana que ejerció en Cúcuta como fiscal de paramilitares desmovilizados.
Jorge Restrepo, director del independiente Centro de Recursos para el Análisis de Conflictos en Bogotá, dice que este “neoparamilitarismo” tiene dos facetas.
“Hay un paramilitarismo de vigilancia armada que no es ofensivo, ni antiestatal ni antiinsurgente, sino que corresponde a una seguridad privatizada, muy común en la gran mayoría del campo colombiano”, dice el investigador.
“Otro paramilitarismo es el funcional al crimen organizado, de carácter ofensivo y violento, más notorio y muy cercano al poder en aquellas zonas donde se arraigó el paramilitarismo de las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) entre 1997 y 2003: en la costa Caribe, el norte del Valle del Cauca y el Catatumbo y Cúcuta”.
“En todos los anteriores la frontera no existe“, concluye Restrepo. “Son proyectos que utilizan la frontera”.
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El Centro de Recursos para el Análisis de Conflictos de Bogotá registró las acciones violentas de grupos ilegales en la frontera durante los últimos cinco años: la mayoría fueron de las guerrillas y el 76% de los ataques de grupos posdesmovilización paramilitar (GPDP) fueron en Cúcuta.
El paramilitarismo en Venezuela
Mientras el paramilitarismo en Colombia ha sido documentado y estudiado por todo tipo de organizaciones, en Venezuela la información se reduce a la versión oficial.
El oficialismo culpa al paramilitarismo de la crisis económica y de inseguridad que padece Venezuela en los dos años que coinciden con el gobierno de Maduro, pero hay varios casos puntuales que el gobierno usa como “prueba de la incursión paramilitar”.
El más representativo es el caso del joven diputado chavista Robert Serra, quien murió a puñaladas en su casa en Caracas en octubre de 2014.
El presunto autor material del homicidio, Leiver Padilla, alias ‘El Colombia’, fue extraditado desde su país y se declaró en medios colombianos “víctima de un chivo expiatorio del gobierno venezolano”.
Por su parte, el presunto autor intelectual del crimen de Serra, un concejal de Cúcuta llamado Julio Vélez, fue arrestado en Venezuela después de dos años prófugo de la justicia colombiana, según anunció Maduro.
El Ministerio Público, sin embargo, no lo ha imputado por homicidio; según medios locales citando fuentes de la fiscalía, porque no tiene pruebas para dicho señalamiento.
Medios venezolanos de oposición reportaron que el móvil del asesinato de Serra fue, según fuentes policiales, un altercado entre él y su jefe de escoltas, que supuestamente decidió robarlo y matarlo.
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El joven diputado chavista Robert Serra murió en un ataque paramilitar, según el gobierno venezolano.
Otro caso que tuvo repercusión mediática fue el de Liana Hergueta, una mujer de 53 años que apareció hace un mes descuartizada en un carro en Caracas.
El homicidio se añade a otros casos de descuartizamiento de cuerpos que fueron noticia recientemente.
Dos jóvenes venezolanos, José Pérez Venta y Carlos Trejo, son acusados por la justicia del homicidio de Hergueta.
Y el oficialismo los acusa de ser paramilitares y activistas de la oposición venezolana, después de que Maduro divulgó fotos de ellos con líderes opositores y videos en los que llamaban a derrocar al mandatario.
La oposición y la prensa opositora, sin embargo, denunciaron que eran infiltrados del gobierno en partidos opositores.
En los últimos meses el gobierno también ha acusado a los revendedores de productos básicos –conocidos como “bachaqueros”– y a los líderes de bandas criminales –o “Pranes”– de tener vínculos con paramilitares.
Personas que cumplen esos perfiles negaron ser colombianos, paramilitares o, incluso, opositores en varias conversaciones con BBC Mundo.
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Miles de colombianos se han ido de Venezuela en estas dos semanas después de que el gobierno allanó sus barrios porque eran “bases paramilitares”.
“Lo mismo que crimen organizado”
Saúl Ortega es un diputado oficialista que preside una comisión parlamentaria sobre política exterior y una subcomisión de temas fronterizos.
En un receso de la cuarta campaña parlamentaria que hace, el diputado explicó a BBC Mundo que para él el cierre de la frontera se tornó necesario después de años de “negligencia” del gobierno colombiano ante la emergencia de paramilitares en la región.
“Estos paramilitares son pequeños grupos con armas y prácticas de guerra, que operan desde la frontera y entran al resto del país para delinquir”, le dijo a BBC Mundo.
“Acá no los hemos visto haciendo política, aunque sí trabajando para políticos. Pero fundamentalmente se dedican a delinquir. Es crimen organizado trasnacional”.
“¿Pero crimen organizado y paramilitares son lo mismo?”, le preguntó BBC Mundo.
“Sí, son lo mismo”, respondió Ortega.
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El paramilitarismo en Colombia surgió como una forma de cofrontar a la guerrilla, pero muchos dudan que los paramilitares que menciona Maduro tengan esos mismos objetivos políticos.
Asimetría, impunidad y corrupción
El exgobernador del Táchira y opositor César Pérez Vivas coincide con Ortega en que Venezuela ha sido víctima de la violencia colombiana durante años, pero asegura que la profundización del problema en los últimos años se debe a las “malas políticas” del gobierno bolivariano.
Una, dice, son los controles de cambio y precios, que para él generan una distorsión cambiaria que fomenta el contrabando; la otra razón es una supuesta “orden de Hugo Chávez de permitirles actuar con salvoconducto a grupos ilegales en Venezuela”.
Por un lado, estudios académicos e imágenes satelitales divulgadas por el gobierno colombiano han documentado que en Venezuela se refugian frentes del Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) y de las Fuerzas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), las dos guerrillas más importantes de Colombia que comparten ideología con el gobierno bolivariano.
Por otro lado, el gobierno venezolano apoyó la creación de colectivos armados “para la defensa de la revolución” que operan como policías paralelas en algunas urbanizaciones; “son los paramilitares del chavismo”, dice Pérez Vivas.
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El fallecido Hugo Chávez denunció desde 2004 la presencia de paramilitares en Venezuela, pero según varias denuncias permitió que guerrilleros y colectivos armados se asentaran en el país.
“Ese nivel de impunidad les dio mal ejemplo a todas las fuerzas armadas, que empezaron a colaborar con las bandas criminales que controlan la frontera”, dice el exgobernador.
“Aquí lo que tenemos no es paramilitarismo, sino bandas delincuenciales de colombianos y venezolanos que se aprovechan de la asimetría económica y han creado mafias para el tráfico de drogas y bienes”.
“El mismo fenómeno se ve en la frontera con Brasil y en las costas, donde no hay Uribe, ni paramilitares, ni historia violenta de un país”, dice Pérez Vivas.
Por eso el exgobernador, así como otros dirigentes opositores, no ve el cierre de la frontera como una medida que busca solucionar el problema de fondo: “Esto es un show para generar un enemigo común cuando estamos en campaña electoral en Venezuela y el gobierno sabe que puede perder”, opina.
Extorsión y desplazamiento
Francisca* es una de las miles de personas en la frontera que se plantea irse de su país por adopción y regresar a su país natal: está empacando su casa en dos maletas para cruzar el río Táchira y volver a Colombia.
De 55 años, dice que lleva toda su vida huyendo de la extorsión de los grupos criminales que han dominado estas tierras desde que tiene uso de razón.
“Primero fueron los guerrilleros, después los ‘paracos’, después los ‘guerrillos’ otra vez y ahora son los Guardias Nacionales”, dice, en medio del llanto, sentada en una mecedora de plástico al frente de una de las casas que esperan ser demolidas.
“Yo lo único que he querido siempre es que me dejen en paz; he pagado por eso con mi trabajo”.
“Y mira: ahora me vuelven a sacar de donde estaba”, dice, riendo, entre lágrimas.
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Esta casa en el barrio de invasión fronterizo se hizo famosa después de que fue demolida. El gobierno venezolano dijo que era un prostíbulo.
*Los nombres con asterisco son ficticios para proteger la identidad de la fuente.
A nearly 250-year-old mission that has was the inspiration for some early movie projects has been extensively damaged in an early morning fire on Saturday.
The Mission San Gabriel, which was founded in 1771 and contained artifacts dating to that era, caught fire for unknown reasons. Its roof was demolished and interior damage was seen in photos No injuries were reported.
Built with stone, brick and mortar, it’s considered one of the best preserved Missions in California. However, its founder, Franciscan priest Junipero Serra, has come under criticism for his mistreatment of Native Americans. Statues of him were among those toppled during recent protests for social justice.
The mission was the scene of many documentary films over the years and appeared in several early silent films.
French authorities launched a red alert – the highest state of alert – in the Paris region and 19 other districts and said temperatures were expected to reach 42C-43C in parts of the country.
French media said Wednesday night was “probably” the hottest ever recorded in France.
Belgium’s Royal Meteorological Institute issued “code red” warnings across most of the country – urging people to take extra precautions during “extremely high temperatures”.
Media captionMore weather records were expected to be broken. BBC Weather’s Simon King reports
What has been the impact?
In France, officials warned people to avoid travelling to work from home if possible. Some nurseries have been closed.
The chief architect responsible for restoring Notre-Dame warned that the extreme heat could lead to the cathedral’s roof collapsing if the joints and masonry holding up the roof dried out.
French reports suggested five deaths may have resulted from the high temperatures.
Comparisons were drawn to a heatwave in August 2003 which contributed to almost 15,000 deaths in the country.
In parts of north Germany, rivers and lakes have dried up – with warnings that fish and mussels could be “severely threatened”.
In the Netherlands, hundreds of pigs died earlier this week after a ventilator at a farm failed.
On Wednesday, a Eurostar train from Belgium to London broke down, trapping passengers.
Media captionEurostar passengers felt the heat in Belgium on Wednesday
Hasn’t the summer already been hot?
Yes, an intense heatwave swept through areas of Europe last month, making it the hottest June on record.
While extreme weather events like heatwaves occur naturally, “research shows that with climate change they are likely to become more common, perhaps occurring as regularly as every other year”, the UK’s Met Office says.
Dr Peter Stott from the Met Office told BBC 5Live the latest heatwave is the result of both “weather and climate acting in concert.
“What we have at the moment is this very warm stream of air, coming up from northern Africa, bringing with it unusually warm weather,” he said. “But without climate change we wouldn’t have hit the peaks that we’re hitting right now.”
Media captionBBC colleagues from hot countries give their tips for staying cool
The Met Office conducted a study last year that found that the UK was now 30 times more likely to experience heatwaves compared to the year 1750, because of “the higher concentration of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere”.
Records going back to the late 19th Century show that the average temperature of the Earth’s surface has increased by about one degree since industrialisation.
A climatology institute in Potsdam, Germany, said Europe’s five hottest summers since 1500 were all recorded in the 21st Century.
Scientists have expressed concern that rapid warming linked to use of fossil fuels has serious implications for the stability of the planet’s climate.
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