MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Saturday he will propose a ‘Bracero’ style immigrant labor program to U.S. President Joe Biden during a video call between the two leaders planned for Monday.
The Bracero program allowed Mexicans to temporarily work in the United States to fill labor shortages during World War II and afterward. López Obrador said the U.S. economy needs Mexican workers because of “their strength, their youth.”
He suggested he wants permission for 600,000 to 800,000 Mexican and Central American immigrants to work legally in the United States every year.
“You (Americans) are going to need Mexican and Central American workers to produce, to grow,” López Obrador said of what he plans to tell Biden. “It is better that we start putting order on migratory flows.”
Biden has proposed legislation to give legal status and a path to citizenship to all of the estimated 11 million people in the country who don’t have it.
BBC- Parts of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are being illegally sold on Facebook, the BBC has discovered.
The protected areas include national forests and land reserved for indigenous peoples.
Some of the plots listed via Facebook’s classified ads service are as large as 1,000 football pitches.
Facebook said it was “ready to work with local authorities”, but indicated it would not take independent action of its own to halt the trade.
“Our commerce policies require buyers and sellers to comply with laws and regulations,” the Californian tech firm added.
The leader of one of the indigenous communities affected has urged the tech firm to do more.
And campaigners have claimed the country’s government is unwilling to halt the sales.
“The land invaders feel very empowered to the point that they are not ashamed of going on Facebook to make illegal land deals,” said Ivaneide Bandeira, head of environmental NGO Kanindé.
No certificates
Anyone can find the illegally invaded plots by typing the Portuguese equivalents for search terms like “forest”, “native jungle” and “timber” into Facebook Marketplace’s search tool, and picking one of the Amazonian states as the location.
Some of the listings feature satellite images and GPS co-ordinates.
Cattle are often put to graze on land that is meant to be protected
Many of the sellers openly admit they do not have a land title, the only document which proves ownership of land under Brazilian law.
The illegal activity is being fuelled by Brazil’s cattle ranching industry.
‘No risk’
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is at a 10-year high, and Facebook’s Marketplace has become a go-to site for sellers like Fabricio Guimarães, who was filmed by a hidden camera.
“There’s no risk of an inspection by state agents here,” he said as he walked through a patch of rainforest he had burnt to the ground.
Fabricio is using Facebook Marketplace to sell land he has grabbed from indigenous communities
With the land illegally cleared and ready for farming, he had tripled his initial asking price to $35,000 (£25,000).
Fabricio is not a farmer. He has steady middle-class job in a city, and views the rainforest as being an investment opportunity.
The BBC later contacted Fabricio for his response to its investigation but he declined to comment.
Going undercover
Many of the ads came from Rondônia, the most deforested state in Brazil’s rainforest region.
The BBC arranged meetings between four sellers from the state and an undercover operative posing as a lawyer claiming to represent wealthy investors.
One man, called Alvim Souza Alves, was trying to sell a plot inside the Uru Eu Wau Wau indigenous reserve for about £16,400 in local currency.
It is the home to a community of more than 200 Uru Eu Wau Wau people. And at least five further groups that have had no contact with the outside world also live there, according to the Brazilian government.
But at the meeting, Mr Alves claimed: “There are no Indians [sic] there. From where my land is, they are 50km [31 miles] away. I am not going to tell you that at one time or another they are not walking around.”
Bitaté Uru Eu Wau Wau is trying to protect his land from invaders
The BBC showed the Facebook ad to community leader Bitaté Uru Eu Wau Wau.
He said the lot was in an area used by his community to hunt, fish and collect fruits.
“This is a lack of respect,” he said.
“I don’t know these people. I think their objective is to deforest the indigenous land, to deforest what is standing. To deforest our lives, you could say.”
He said the authorities should intervene, and also urged Facebook – “the most accessed social media platform” – to take action of its own.
Changed status
Another factor driving the illegal land market is the expectation of amnesty.
Mr Alves revealed he was working with others to lobby politicians to help them legally own stolen land.
“I’ll tell you the truth: if this is not solved with [President] Bolsonaro there, it won’t be solved anymore,” he said of the current government.
A common strategy is to deforest the land and then plead with politicians to abolish its protected status, on the basis it no longer serves its original purpose.
The land grabbers can then officially buy the plots from the government, thereby legalising their claims.
Alvim Souza Alves told a BBC undercover agent that he was selling indigenous land but did not show a legal land title
Mr Alves took the BBC’s undercover reporter to meet a man he described as the leader of the Curupira Association. Brazil’s federal police have described the group as being an illegal land-grabbing operation focused on invading indigenous territory.
The two men told the reporter that high-profile politicians were helping them set up meetings with government agencies in the capital Brasília.
They said their main ally was congressman Colonel Chrisóstomo, a member of the Social Liberal Party, which Mr Bolsonaro used to be a member of until he founded his own party in 2019.
When contacted by the BBC, Colonel Chrisóstomo acknowledged having helped arrange meetings, but said he did not know the group was involved in land invasions.
“They didn’t tell me,” he said. “If they invaded [the land], they don’t have my support anymore.”
When asked if he regretted setting up the meetings, he said: “No.”
The BBC contacted Mr Alves for his response but he declined to comment.
The BBC also approached Brazil’s Minister of the Environment, Ricardo Salles.
He said: “President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has always made it clear that his is a zero-tolerance government for any crime, including environmental ones.”
The government has cut the inspections budget for Ibama, the federal agency that in charge of regulating deforestation, by 40%.
But Mr Salles said the coronavirus pandemic had hampered law enforcement in the Amazon, and that state governments also bore responsibility for the deforestation.
“This year the government has created operation Verde Brasil 2, which seeks to control illegal deforestation, illegal fires, and to join efforts between the federal government and the states,” he added.
However Raphael Bevilaquia, a federal prosecutor based in Rondônia, said the situation had worsened under the current government.
“The situation is really desperate,” he said. “The executive power is playing against us. It’s disheartening.”
For its part, Facebook claims trying to deduce which sales are illegal would be too complex a task for it to carry out itself, and should be left to the local judiciary and other authorities. And it does not appear to see the issue as being serious enough to warrant halting all Marketplace land sales across the Amazon.
Ivaneide Bandeira, who has been trying to combat deforestation in the state of Rondônia for 30 years, said she was losing hope.
“I think this is a very hard battle. It is really painful to see the forest being destroyed and shrinking more and more,” she said.
“Never, in any other moment in history, has it been so hard to keep the forest standing.”
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The processing of asylum seekers waiting to enter the United States expanded to a third border crossing Friday, even as nongovernmental organizations called for more effort to protect the thousands still in Mexican border cities.
A week after the U.S. government began processing those with active cases made to wait in Mexico during the Trump administration at a border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego, the process expanded this week to the Matamoros-Brownsville crossing and Friday to Ciudad Juarez-El Paso.
A camp of migrants on the banks of the Rio Grande in Matamoros was a particular priority for the Biden administration and Mexico. It holds about 750 people now, but the city is dangerous and camp residents were hard hit by frigid winter weather that affected Texas and northern Mexico this month.
On Friday, the second day of processing there, 100 asylum-seekers crossed from Matamoros. On Thursday, about two dozen were processed.
The acceleration came as Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard met virtually with his counterpart U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Mexico also announced late Friday that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and President Joe Biden would hold their first bilateral meeting Monday.
Mexico’s Foreign Affairs ministry said in a statement that among the topics to be discussed will be “the mechanisms for cooperation to address the structural causes of migration in northern Central America and southern Mexico.” They also plan to discuss strategies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and opportunities for economic recovery.
The organization Doctors Without Borders, which works along the migratory routes through Central America and Mexico, warned Friday that there are places where migrants remain at great risk.
The great majority of the 25,000 asylum seekers with active cases who were forced to wait out the process in Mexico under Trump’s so-called “Remain in Mexico” program, still have weeks or months of waiting ahead. The situation is further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has reduced capacity at shelters that provide a degree of safety for migrants.
Sergio Martínez, head of Doctors Without Borders in Mexico, called on both governments to remember that the migrants need protection while they wait, noting growing violence in border cities, including Piedras Negras and Nuevo Laredo.
“What we want to do from (Doctors Without Borders) is push the Mexican government to take the necessary steps to protect this population, who are its responsibility while they are in Mexican territory,” he said. The U.S. government must also collaborate since it created the situation, he added.
In September and October 2019, before the pandemic, the organization recorded that in cities like Nuevo Laredo three out of four migrants they registered said they had been kidnapped in the previous 10 days. Once the pandemic began they were not able to continue the level of monitoring, but believe the security risks have only grown as some local authorities have closed shelters citing public health concerns, leaving migrants without safe spaces.
Matamoros “is a drop in the bucket, the tip of the iceberg, and what really concerns us more are the other places on the border that don’t have even the protection of media attention” and where organized crime continues preying on migrants, he said.
The president of the Dominican Republic has announced plans to build a fence along its border with Haiti, which extends for about 380km (236 miles).
Luis Abinader said the barrier would help curb illegal immigration, drugs and the flow of stolen vehicles between the two countries, which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
Mr Abinader said work on the barrier would start later this year.
Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere.
Relations between the two neighbours have been historically difficult.
“In a period of two years, we want to put an end to the serious problems of illegal immigration, drug trafficking and the movement of stolen vehicles,” Mr Abinader said in an address to Congress.
Mr Abinader said the barrier in some “conflictive” sections would include a double-fence along with motion sensors, infrared systems and facial recognition cameras.
The Dominican Republic, which has a population of about 11 million, has already constructed some stretches of fencing along the border.
It is estimated that about 500,000 Haitian migrants are living in the country – many of them there illegally. In January, the government agreed to help Haiti provide identity papers to its citizens living in Dominican territory.
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — St. Kitts and Nevis, which aims to have 70 percent of its population vaccinated against COVID-19, is on track to achieve the milestone with more than 600 people vaccinated since February 22, when the vaccine rollout was launched at the New Town Community Centre in Basseterre.
“For the week so far, more than 600 people have gone to get their vaccination,” said Prime Minister Dr. the Hon Timothy Harris on February 27. “Over 600 persons, and ask yourself ‘600 have gone, why not me?’ What are you waiting for? I want to encourage you by and large to be part of the programme and go quickly. The life you save may very well be your own.”
Prime Minister Dr. the Hon Timothy Harris addressing walk participants and members of the public at the Ottley’s hardcourts.
Prime Minister Harris gave the information at the Ottley’s hardcourts at the end of the Prime Minister’s Monthly Health Walk, which had taken participants from Bellevue to Ottley’s in Constituency Number Seven. A special session was held to sensitise walk participants and members of the public on the importance of being vaccinated.
“The vaccine is good for you, and that is why the entire government ministers have gone to get the vaccine,” assured Dr. Harris. “That is why close to 30 medical doctors, some of them you know, have gone to take this vaccine. Do not be the one that is left out, for when you look at some who are going and some who are yet to go, you have to wonder if people are not noticing.”
Also addressing walk participants and telling them about the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine were Minister of Health, the Hon. Akilah Byron-Nisbett; Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Delores Stapleton-Harris; National HIV/AIDS Programme Coordinator and Health Educator, Dr. Mathias Afortu-Ofre, medical practitioners Dr. Dail Crawford, and Dr. Leroy Richardson; and District Medical Officer and Deputy Speaker, Dr. Bernicia Nisbett.
According to Dr. Harris, the vaccine is being provided free of cost, while it is coming at a very high price. Organisation of the Eastern Caribbean States countries will receive 125,000 on February 28 from India, costing EC $700,000 bought through the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB). Prime Minister Harris, who is chairman of the ECCB Monetary Council, had stated earlier in the week that the Federation would receive 41,600 doses of the vaccines, which is in addition to 2,000 doses it had previously received.
“The world is changing rapidly, you now have to carry your negative test to most countries when you are travelling,” said Dr. Harris. “I believe the next step, once you want to travel; you are going to have to show that you have been vaccinated. Do not wait until you find yourself in an emergency to be looking to say you want to get vaccinated.”
Prime Minister Dr. Harris informed walk participants that a vaccination session was taking place that morning between 9:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., at the New Town Health Centre, where a number of security force officers, from the Prisons, Police, and Fire and Rescue Services were going to get their vaccine. He noted that the government wants the entire country to be vaccinated.
“You have in this constituency the opportunity to get vaccinated at the Molineux Health Centre, and at the Tabernacle Health Centre,” said Dr. Harris. “At least those are two places, but I am sure if you go to any health centre, you will not be turned back, and we want to increase.”
Dr. Harris inviting people to join him at the St. Kitts Nevis Anguilla National Bank 50th Anniversary church service. It will be held at the Rivers of Living Water Christian Centre in Lime Kiln, West Basseterre, on Sunday February 28 at 5:00 p.m.
“If you can make it, you are invited,” said Dr. Harris.” Please wear your mask. Until we reach what Dr. Crawford called, ‘herd immunity,’ that is having at least 70 percent of the people in the country vaccinated; you will still need to wear your mask.”
Dr. Harris advised people to continue to wear masks after they take vaccines, “because remember, until a certain number has done it, they will put all of us at risk. That is why you have to be encouraging your friends, your family members so that they will be part of the circle of people you know who are vaccinated. That is why the entire Cabinet has been vaccinated. When we are sitting down at the table, we know all of us have done what we can to protect ourselves.”
A subset of walk participants in Prime Minister’s Monthly Health Walk held on Saturday February 27, pose for a group picture with Dr. Harris at the Ottley’s hardcourts.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haitian authorities announced Friday that more than 400 inmates escaped and 25 people died in a prison breakout, making it the country’s largest and deadliest one in a decade, with the prison director and a powerful gang leader among those killed.
Some believe Thursday’s jailbreak at the Croix-des-Bouquets Civil Prison in northeast Port-au-Prince was to free gang leader Arnel Joseph, who had been Haiti’s most wanted fugitive until his 2019 arrest on charges including rape, kidnapping and murder.
Joseph was riding on a motorcycle through the Artibonite area in the town of L’Estère on Friday a day after his escape when he was spotted at a checkpoint, police spokesman Gary Desrosiers told The Associated Press. He said Joseph pulled out a gun and died in an exchange of gunfire with police.
Joseph ruled Village de Dieu, or Village of God, a shantytown in downtown Port-au-Prince, and other communities, including some in Artibonite, which is Haiti’s largest department.
Authorities have not yet provided much details on the breakout except to say that 60 inmates have been recaptured and the investigation is ongoing. State Secretary Frantz Exantus said authorities have created several commissions to investigate who organized the breakout and why. Among those killed was the prison director, identified as Paul Joseph Hector.
Residents who declined to be identified because they feared for their life told the AP that they saw gunmen shoot at prison guards on Thursday before inmates escaped from the Croix-des-Bouquets penitentiary.
The prison is known for a 2014 breakout in which more than 300 of the 899 inmates being held there at the time escaped. Some believed that attack was designed to free Clifford Brandt, the son of a prominent businessman, who had been imprisoned since 2012 for allegedly kidnapping the adult children of a rival businessman. Brandt was captured two days later near the Dominican Republic border.
After the 2014 breakout, officials said they were taking steps to up security at the prison that Canada built in 2012, including installing security cameras and placing ankle monitors on the most dangerous prisoners. It wasn’t immediately clear if any of those measures were taken. At the time of Thursday’s breakout, the prison held 1,542 inmates, nearly twice its capacity.
Haiti’s largest prison breakout in recent history occurred after the devastating 2010 earthquake in which more than 4,200 inmates fled the notorious National Penitentiary in downtown Port-au-Prince.
President Jovenel Moïse tweeted on Friday that he condemned the most recent jailbreak and asked people to remain calm. He added that Haiti’s National Police “is instructed to take all measures to bring the situation under control.”
Meanwhile, Helen La Lime, Haiti’s special representative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, said in a statement that she was deeply concerned with the mutiny and prison escape.
“I encourage the police to speed up investigations on the circumstances surrounding this incident, redouble its efforts to re-apprehend the escapees, and strengthen security around prisons throughout the country,” she said. “This prison break further highlights the problem of prolonged preventive detention and prison overcrowding which remains matter of concern that must be urgently addressed by Haitian authorities.”
AP reporter Dánica Coto contributed from San Juan, Puerto Ri
CHARLESTOWN, Nevis — John Hanley, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism has appealed to the public to stop stealing stones from the heritage sites on Nevis.
Some of the walls at Fort Charles are falling down.
Hanley made the request during a recent visit to Fort Charles as the designated heritage site is undergoing upgrade work by the ministry’s Heritage Team, led by Sylvester Meade, Heritage Site Manager.
“Ideally, I would like us to have some expertise on the island to help us to rebuild the stone walls,” explained Hanley. “Speaking of the stone walls, I want to discourage persons from continuing the practice of stealing the heritage stones, the historical stones from the site. On some of our sites so many stones have been taken that the historic walls have been collapsing.
“The ministry has decided to fence some of these sites to add a measure of security,” he said. “If these sites are secured, we will be able to move forward and get relevant expertise. National and regional expertise will help us restore the walls, because restoring the walls is not simply about coming in and putting in Portland Cement in the walls. We have to restore it, so that it is historically correct using the lime and mortar that was used back in the day.”
Meantime, in relation to restoration work on the coastal side of Fort Charles, Hanley explained that it is being addressed in collaboration with the Ministry of Communication and Works.
“Anyone you who is familiar with the Fort Charles area knows that we have a severe coastal erosion problem,” he said. “At present, the cliffs have eroded until they are actually under the sea walls of the fort and some of them have collapsed into the sea.
“We have been working with the Ministry of Communications and Works and have plans afoot to do some reclamation and stabilization of the coast in this area,” said Hanley. “It will take a while, and it’s going to take a considerable amount of money. We have begun the process and have to discuss how to do this very important work,”
The Ministry of Tourism is in the process of upgrading the seven heritage sites. It is responsible for the upkeep of Cottle Church, Bath Hotel, New River Estate, Eden Brown, Fort Charles, Fothergills Heritage Village and Saddle Hill.
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — “In the past, Bayford’s Livestock Centre had lots of livestock and was used as a place to travel for picnics and field trips,” explained Director of Agriculture, Melvin James. “Over time it dwindled until it was almost closed.”
James explained plans that call for Bayford’s to be revived into Centre of Excellence by turning it into a breeding farm.
“We are promoting the idea that instead of farmers having to worry about raising young weaners, and babies, they can purchase them at Bayford’s,” he said. “We are thinking in terms of sheep, goats, pigs and cattle; especially beef cattle.”
James said that most of the cattle on St. Kitts came from milk stock, whereas the cattle in Nevis were from beef stock.
“Now the idea is for us to switch over, and both islands will use meat animals because we have stopped milking cattle for a while,” said James. “Part of the plan to revive Bayford’s includes rehabilitating the pastures.
“Many of them have shrubs and trees which have to be removed,” he said. “You re-establish the pastures, use improved grass, and host and stock a number of high performing sheep and also cattle so that farmers can come. If they want 10 young ones they can purchase them and rear them up to the point that they should be slaughtered.
“Farmers should move away from keeping animals for more than eight- to 10-years because they are aesthetically pleasing,” explained James. “We want to encourage a business concept in our farmers. A pig should be slaughtered within eight months.”
James noted that as the Ministry suggests new concepts to farmers. Farmers will realise that Bayford’s will play a pivotal role in reducing their stress in caring for young animals. Hopefully reviving Bayford’s will make it more profitable for them to be in business.
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — Black History Month is celebrated in February as a time to reflect upon the struggles of enslaved Africans and those who have benefited greatly from their exploitation.
Speaking at the Black History Month Panel Discussion hosted by St. Kitts and Nevis’ Reparations Committee on February 22, Dr. Ahmed Reid, Associate Professor of Caribbean History at the City University of New York, said that today. Britain continues to benefit from slavery.
Dr. Reid referenced a tweet sent out by Her Majesty’s Treasury on February 9, 2018, which revealed that “In February 2015, the British Government completed repaying a £20 million loan that it borrowed to compensate enslavers so that they would agree to the emancipation of the enslaved people in 1834.”
“Positioned as ‘Did you know,’ the tweet claimed that in 1833, Britain used 20 million pounds, 40 percent of its national debt to buy freedom for all slaves in the empire,” said Dr. Reid.
Dr. Reid continued quoting Her Majesty’s Treasury saying that, “The amount of money borrowed for the Slavery-Abolition Act was so large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015, which means that living British citizens helped pay to end the slave trade.
“Apart from its self-congratulatory tone, the tweet is troubling and distasteful on many levels,” said Dr. Reid. “First, there is a shocking revelation that taxpayers in Britain, including hundreds of thousands of Caribbean nationals, whose ancestors were enslaved by the British and whose labour helped to build Britain, helped to pay the interest payments on the loan that paid the socially and politically connected enslavers.
“”The tweet shows the intergenerational link with slavery saying,” he said. “This tweet is evidence of an incontrovertible truth that the descendants of enslavers continue to benefit today from slavery.
“According to a report in the British newspaper, ‘The Guardian,’ most of the bonds are owned by small investors. Of 11,200 holders, 7,700 invested, all less than 1,000 nominal and 92 percent of holders owned less than £10,000 each.”
“Britain and those who invested in slave-abolition bonds continue to benefit today,” concluded Dr. Reid.
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — St. Kitts Water Services Department (WSD) is installing new distribution pipes throughout Sandy Point as part and parcel of upgrading the island’s water distribution system.
“The St. Kitts Water Services Department undertook this project in tandem with the Island Main Road Rehabilitation Project,” explained WSD Assistant Water Engineer Charles Parris. “It was the opportune time to engage in this pipe laying project as a number of lines were corroded.
“It involves laying about 10,000-feet of six-inch ductile iron water distribution lines,” said Parris. “They will service the entire town of Sandy Point. Thus far, we have completed about 3,500-feet of pipe. The project is about 30 percent complete.
“The project is expected to be completed in about six- to eight-weeks, which will take us down to the middle to the end of April.
“In that six- to eight-weeks, we will included factors we cannot control, such as rain, other utilities, and other things that may throw off our timing,” said Parris. “These things were considered in that timeline, however, our intention is to get it done as quickly as possible, so that we do not continue to inconvenience road users and the public here in Sandy Point,
“On a daily basis, the water supply will be interrupted to facilitate this work,” said Parris. “The lines were laid before, unfortunately, a number of valves we need in the system aren’t there, so we cannot isolate them as we would like to.
“We will be installing a number of valves that will allow us to isolate areas without inconveniencing the entire Sandy Point area,” he said. “What we are doing now is interrupting the supply from the tank.
“In an effort to execute the work as fast as possible to get out of this situation, we have a dedicated team which works extremely well, extremely fast and throughout the week and on weekends.”
Parris congratulated staff members working on the project for carrying out their tasks exceptionally well.
