Legal Complaint Against Dole

This legal complaint was filed by the Conrad & Scherer law firm on April 28, 2009 in California state court in Los Angeles against the Dole Corporation. The suit alleges that the company made illegal payments to right-wing paramilitary groups to intimidate workers from joining unions. The plaintiffs are 51 men allegedly murder by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) for union organizing or attempting to prevent Dole from taking their land. The complaint contains description of the circumstances under which each of the plaintiffs was murdered

Latin America: Terrorism Issues

[Excerpt] For most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, threats emanating from terrorism are low. Terrorism in the region is largely perpetrated by groups in Colombia and by the remnants of radical leftist Andean groups. According to the Department of State, most governments in the region have good records of cooperation with the United States on anti-terrorism issues, although progress in the region on improving counterterrorism capabilities is limited by several factors, including corruption, weak governmental institutions, weak or non-existent legislation, and reluctance to allocate sufficient resources. Both Cuba and Venezuela are on the State Department’s list of countries determined to be not cooperating fully with U.S. antiterrorism efforts, and Cuba has remained on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1982. U.S. officials and some Members of Congress have expressed concern over the past several years about Venezuela’s relations with Iran, with concerns centered on efforts by Iran to circumvent U.N. and U.S. sanctions and on Iran’s ties to Hezbollah, alleged to be linked to two bombings in Argentina in the 1990s. There is disagreement, however, over the extent and significance of Iran’s activities in Latin America. The State Department maintains that there are no known operational cells of either Al Qaeda or Hezbollah-related groups in the hemisphere, although it notes that ideological sympathizers continue to provide financial and moral support to these and other terrorist groups in the Middle East and South Asia

An (unintentional) façade of democratic debate

A review of the Colombian peace process. The article considers the actual extent of debate in a series of meetings and conferences in the UK that were held to analyse the peace process. The argument is put forward that the illegality, and thereby absence, of FARC at these meetings has contributed towards a distortion of events and arguments. Furthermore, it has left the current Colombian administration appearing as a far more inclusive and democratic institution than might be the case. The article welcomes the the interaction of the Colombian government in these UK meetings but suggests that measures are taken: i) to prevent the marginalization of FARC from democratic debate; ii) to limit the potential to breach Human Rights by the Colombian state; and iii) to define the difference between political violence and violent criminality

Hidden Markov models for the activity profile of terrorist groups

The main focus of this work is on developing models for the activity profile of a terrorist group, detecting sudden spurts and downfalls in this profile, and, in general, tracking it over a period of time. Toward this goal, a $d$-state hidden Markov model (HMM) that captures the latent states underlying the dynamics of the group and thus its activity profile is developed. The simplest setting of $d=2$ corresponds to the case where the dynamics are coarsely quantized as Active and Inactive, respectively. A state estimation strategy that exploits the underlying HMM structure is then developed for spurt detection and tracking. This strategy is shown to track even nonpersistent changes that last only for a short duration at the cost of learning the underlying model. Case studies with real terrorism data from open-source databases are provided to illustrate the performance of the proposed methodology.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AOAS682 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

The agrarian question and violence in Colombia: conflict and development

This article examines connections between Colombia’s internal armed conflict and agrarian questions. It pays attention to the country’s specific historical trajectory of agrarian change, the violent expression of social tensions that this elicited, and the particular ways in which these dynamics were influenced by a changing global context.This analysis of the intimate ties between violent conflict and agrarian questions in Colombia, both in terms of their historical development and their contemporary manifestations, challenges popular notions of the relationship between armed conflict and development. In particular, the article contributes to a critique of the conventional version of the conflict–development nexus by illustrating ways in which the experience of capitalist development in Colombia has been violent and produced poverty

A GEOGRAPHY OF ILLICIT CROPS (COCA LEAF) AND ARMED CONFLICT IN COLOMBIA

Colombia is currently the world´s largest producer of coca leaf and the principal producer of opium poppies in the Americas; the plants are the basic raw materials used to produce cocaine and heroin. This document will analyse the current relationship between these crops and illegal armed groups in Colombia, using the hypothesis that the geographical intensification of the conflict is the principal cause of expanding illicit crop production. This relationship was analysed using a theoretic model, in which an interaction between illegal armed activity and strategic territorial control lead to cocaine production. Spatial analysis techniques were then applied, especially spatial association indicators; and a clear spatial dynamic was observed, related to the two aspects mentioned above. Non parametric exercises were also carried out using matching estimators, to determine the effect illegal armed groups have on coca crops, and also to analyse the efficiency of aerial eradication policies. The results suggest that a large percentage of coca production in Colombia is due to the effects of illegal armed activity. We therefore conclude that the expansion of illegal crop growing is a consequence of the expanding conflict. In contrast, coca crops can only be used to explain a small part of the armed conflict in Colombia. In addition, we found that crop eradication via aerial spraying has not been an efficient tool in the fight against coca production in the country.Illicit crops

The Gains From Trade: South American Economic Integration and the Resolution of Conflict

It has long been argued that expanding commercial relations between countries acts as an incentive for countries to avoid hostilities up to and including armed conflict. The case of Venezuela and Colombia may provide an example of how economic integration can establish important incentives to conflict resolution