Former Chief of Staff and cofounder of the Worker’s Party (PT) Jose Dirceu was found guilty of corruption on Tuesday by the Brazilian Supreme Court in a trial that began 2nd August and was dubbed “the trial of the century” by Brazilian media.

Dirceu and 36 others were accused of using public funds to bribe opposition politicians to vote in favour of PT legislation. The scandal, which came to light in 2005 and forced Dirceu to step down from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s cabinet, was dubbed the “mensalao,” or “big monthly bonus” scandal.

“The legislators were bought out to form the base of the new government”, said Joaquim Barbosa, one of the six Supreme Court judges that found Dirceu guilty.

Former PT leader Jose Genoino and PT treasurer Delubio Soares were also found guilty. The verdict carries a sentence of between two and twelve years in prison.

Dirceu fought as an urban guerrilla against the military dictatorship that governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985. He was arrested in 1968 and went into exile first in Mexico, and then Cuba. He clandestinely returned to Brazil after undergoing plastic surgery and cofounded the PT in 1980 with Lula da Silva.

He is credited with bringing the left-wing party more to the centre, a strategy that won Lula da Silva the presidency in 2002. Lula da Silva is not implicated in the case and continues to enjoy widespread popular support in Brazil.

Dirceu has said that the allegations were fabricated by right-wing media and politicians in order to bring down the government. On his blog, he wrote “I fought for democracy and I made it my reason for living. I will abide by [the Court’s] decision, but I won’t be silenced. I will continue fighting until I prove my innocence. I will not abandon the struggle. I will not be defeated”.

An appeals process is expected.

In Franz Kafka’s novel ‘The Trial’, the protagonist is arrested and put on trial by an unknown authority for a crime that is never revealed. US citizen Jason Puracal must have felt he was living in a Kafkaesque nightmare after spending the past two years in a Nicaraguan prison, not exactly sure what he had been convicted for. After a long fight, Puracal was eventually granted an appeal and on 12th September his sentence was overturned; two days later he was released from prison and returned to the United States.

Jason Puracal during trial (Photo courtesy of Tim Rogers)

“It’s hard for me to say what the reason was for my arrest and my illegal incarceration,” Puracal told me during a telephone interview. He has had the past two years to ponder this question every day but still he sounds helpless to come up with an answer. Much of the evidence against him relied on accusations against ten Nicaraguan nationals, with whom Puracal had little to no contact with. “I don’t know why I was linked to the other guys, I don’t know their reason for inventing such lies about me,” he stressed.

Puracal arrived in Nicaragua as part of the Peace Corps in 2004. He married a Nicaraguan citizen and their child was born in the country. But his nightmare began on the 11th November 2010, when policemen raided the offices of his real estate agency in San Juan del Sur, a company he owned with three other US citizens, and he was charged with international drug trafficking, money laundering, and organised crime. His trial would not begin for another nine months and in the meantime he was kept in “sub-human” conditions in a Nicaraguan prison. Eventually, when the trial started, it was closed to the media, his family, and the public, and on 29th of August he was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

However, Puracal’s family refused to give up the case. Frequent trips to Nicaragua were made and a considerable sum was spent on legal advice and pressure to right this wrong. Puracal’s case also captured the interest of human rights groups around the world. He was supported by a human rights lawyer who had worked with Vaclav Havel, Desmond Tutu, and Aung San Suu Kyi. He also found backing from The David House Agency, a Los Angeles-based international crisis agency, and the California Innocence Project that usually focuses on wrongful convictions within the state. US congressmen wrote to the Vice President of the United States and to Daniel Ortega, the President of Nicaragua.

A ‘Corrupt’ Judicial System?

Puracal’s case brings to light many of the deficiencies in Nicaragua’s judiciary. A survey last year, conducted by Latinobarómetro, found that only two-fifths of Nicaraguans are satisfied with their judicial system. It also found that more than half considered they would receive a favourable sentence if they bribed the judge, particularly in local courts, which are viewed as the one of the most likely public institutions to be corruption-prone.

Sunlight streams through a Nicaraguan jail window (Photo: Fernando Castellano)

Another report by Freedom House in the previous year found that only 18% of Nicaraguans polled thought that the functioning of the courts was “fair, impartial and uncorrupted”. This was well below the Latin America and the Caribbean’s regional average of 31%. A study by the same organisation in 2012 concluded: “the judiciary remains dominated by [political parties] FSLN and PLC appointees, and the Supreme Court is a largely politicised body controlled by Sandinista judges. The court system also suffers from corruption, long delays, a large backlog of cases, and a severe shortage of public defenders. Access to justice is especially deficient in rural areas and on the Caribbean coast”.

Worse still, during an 11-year study of corruption in Nicaragua between 1998 and 2009 published by BMC Health Services Research, the researchers found that “users’ experience of corruption in the courts worsened over the study period”. Although it did find an exception in the capital, Managua, between 2006 and 2009.

However, Puracal’s case is exceptional as it shows vividly at every stage, from his arrest to release, a flagrant lack of due process, judicial competence, and a fundamental respect for Nicaraguan law. The police officers who arrested Puracal did so without a warrant and despite finding no evidence. Then he was refused bail and the prosecution postponed the trial numerous times without giving a reason. The judge that handed down the sentence was never entitled to sit in the position. “He was an illegal judge,” Puracal said. According to the Nicaraguan constitution, to serve as a district court judge, one must be an attorney, have practised for at least three years, and have served as a local judge for at least two years. The judge, Kriguer Alberto Narvaez, did not meet these requirements. “It was his first and last trial”, Puracal explained. “He fled to Spain afterwards”.

During the trial important defence witnesses were not allowed to speak, Puracal was denied confidential meetings with his attorney, the judge shifted the burden of proof to the accused, and a main piece of evidence for money laundering relied on a failure by the prosecutors to understand the workings of an escrow account. In prison he was held in “sub-human” conditions and denied an appeal for over a year. When it finally came, the decision exceeded the legal time-limit and once he was acquitted, he was not allowed to leave prison for two days.

The Problem

So what is the problem with the Nicaraguan judiciary, and is it an exception in Central America? Chilean consultant Miguel Peñailillo, who specialises in democratic governance, has been researching corruption in the country for many years and has identified key areas of weakness in the judicial system. In 2009 he conducted a study entitled ‘Diagnosis of Corruption in Nicaragua’.

A protest march in Nicaragua against corruption (Photo: Jorge Mejía Peralta)

According to Peñailillo, corruption in Nicaragua has a long history. The successive presidential regimes of Violeta Chamorro (1990-1997), Arnoldo Alemán (1997-2002) and Enrique Bolaños (2002-2007) have all been personally tainted by it. This corruption at the top has trickled down and corroded the standards of various institutions. “The study indicates that one of the worst social effects of corruption going unpunished is that it creates the perception that corruption is more lucrative than honesty,” Peñailillo says.

Another problem is nepotism. “Justice officials do not apply the legal instruments that exist for punishing corruption. Instead they protect members of their own parties who are accused of misdeeds”. Therefore those who are in charge of stamping out corruption are in fact doing the opposite and allowing it to thrive.

Corruption, politicalisation, and nepotism all work to create a deficient judicial system; one based upon power and connections instead of competency and honesty. The lack of prosecution for corruption also corrodes a consistency of professionalism, for whilst some parts of the judicial system remain proficient and incorrupt, it is contaminated by the parts that are not.

However, it appears that Nicaragua is not unique in Central America. Indeed, a World Bank report in 2011 (‘Crime and Violence in Central America: a Development Challenge’) found that poor judicial institutions were one of the biggest contributors to rising crime levels and the weakening of democracy in the entire region. In fact, Nicaragua can consider itself in a fortunate position as it remains relatively free of the levels of drug-related crime and high murder rates that are inflicted upon its neighbours. “There is a vicious circle in the region where the high crime rates are contributing to weakening the criminal justice system”, the report stated.

Anti-gringo Sentiment?

An elephant in the room that must also be explored is the fact that Puracal is a US citizen. Could this have had any impact on his case? A few years ago Nicaragua saw another trial, imprisonment, and then release of a US citizen. Eric Volz, who also lived in San Juan del Sur, was convicted to 30 years in prison for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend. The evidence against Volz was flimsy; he had several alibis that put him in a distant location at the time of the incident, which text-messaging data corroborated; however the trial judge refused to listen to the defence witnesses and his conviction was in largely due to the evidence given by a man who had been originally arrested for the crime and turned up drunk to the court. After one year in prison the sentence was overturned and Volz returned to the US to write a memoir and become the director of The David House Agency, which assisted in Puracal’s case.

It is Volz’s opinion that his conviction was inspired by “anti-gringo sentiment”. When the acquittal was announced, the Sandinista government’s Chief Prosecutor, Julio Centeno, called his release a “barbarity,” whilst Human Rights Ombudsman Omar Cabezas said that Volz must not be allowed to leave Nicaragua. According to his own memoirs, he had to avoid an angry lynch mob on the way to the airport to return to the US.

But Puracal is not so sure his case was motivated by such a sentiment. “It would be impossible for me to say that it was,” he said. Certainly his case did not entice as much public anger or government rhetoric as the Volz case. Indeed, the government has almost been conspicuous by its absence. He also took the time to thank the many Nicaraguans who supported him with words and deeds. “There were a lot of Nicaraguan communities, in San Juan Sur and in Rivas, and around the country, who sent letters and food items, and who said they were praying for me,” he told me.

Sentiments against 'yanquis' run throughout Latin America. (Photo: Bernardo Londoy)

However, Puracal became noticeably annoyed when I went on to ask him about the accusation of being given “preferential treatment”, such as being moved to a ‘presidential cell’ that was built for former president Arnoldo Alemán, because he was a US citizen. “I was moved from jail, to jail, to jail. I was put in lockdown for three months in La Modelo. There was no electricity and I was with the worst offenders,” he said. He suffered numerous health problems, all of which were ignored by prison guards; he was robbed, assaulted, and given inadequate food and water.

“They don’t allow foreigners to study, to work, so foreigners get treated a little bit different there,” Puracal went on to say. “There are a lot of other Americans in the system. I would meet them when the embassy would come and visit us and give us books to read”.

According to recent figures released by the US state department, 393 of the 725 US citizens imprisoned abroad are behind Latin American bars. No further information was released regarding numbers per country nor the specifics of the cases, so it is quite impossible to estimate how many people are residing in Nicaraguan prisons due to a wrongful conviction.

It is also a fact – which necessitates a comparable international outcry and journalistic study – that for every US citizen wrongfully imprisoned there is likely to be 100 Nicaraguans who have also faced a corrupt and deficient judicial system. Whilst these individual cases might not make international headlines nor lead to petitions being sent to the UN, each is just as important as Puracal’s fight against his wrongful conviction. Indeed, if the Nicaraguan justice system is to progress and improve, either from above through reform or from below through public pressure, then each and every case of wrongful imprisonment must be brought to national and international attention.

The Next Step

For a man who has gone through all of this, Puracal takes an accommodating view of Nicaragua. “I know the judicial system in Nicaragua is not perfect and the prison system, like any other prison system around the world, is dangerous,” he said. “I still believe in Nicaragua and its people. I fell in love with the country and it will always have a special place in my heart”.

It seems likely that in the coming years he will step foot on Nicaraguan soil once again. He concluded our chat by stating: “I hope that I can return to Nicaragua someday and set up an organisation similar to the Californian Innocence Project that helped my case, to help others that have also been wrongly convicted”.

If this does happen then it will certainly have a positive effect on the Nicaraguan justice system. One of the reasons why Puracal received his day in the appeal court was because of international and national pressure. In a country where the judiciary has become intertwined with politicians and political parties, constant pressure and exposure is needed to ensure wrongful convictions are overturned and judges are held accountable for their actions.

Former Brazilian senator and businessman Luiz Estevão has committed to returning US$234m, which he stole, back to the state.

The ex senator will deposit US$40m immediately into the national Treasury’s bank account, with 96 monthly payments to follow.

“It is the biggest payment for corruption in Brazil’s 500-year history, if not the world. This represents a paradigm shift,” stated the Prosecutor General, Helia Bettero.

It was considered one the biggest corruption cases for Brazil when the ex government official was found to be embezzling public money, destined for the construction of the Regional Tribunal of Labour of São Pablo, for his private construction company in the 1990s. In 2006, Estevão was finally convicted for 36 years in prison for crimes of corruption, embezzlement, fraud, use of false documents, and conspiracy.

Estevão’s case, who is 63 years and a member of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, goes back to when a company called Incal was awarded a contract to build the Regional Labour Tribunal in 1992.

A few years later, an audit revealed that the costs had been inflated and that the project was abandoned halfway through the contract. At the same time, 90% of the contract had been transferred to Grupo OK, a company owned by Estevão. After this discovery, Congress created a commission to investigate and in 2000 Estevão was the first in Brazil’s history to be expelled from the Senate. After the investigation, it was found that Estevão had taken US$85m, but with inflation, interest, and other costs, the amount now stands at US$234m.

“I need to work and change my life. It’s inadmissible to have the accounts of my children and my business blocked. It’s drama for my whole family,” said Estevão to Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo.

The embezzlement case is another marker of Brazil’s string of breaking the cycle of corruption. Within the past year, president Dilma Rousseff, has asked seven of her ministers to resign based on accusations of shady dealings.

Twelve former Cuban officials, including some high-ranking government employees, have been jailed for corruption in their involvement with a nickel mining company.

According to the Communist Party newspaper Granma, the defendants committed their crimes under an expansion project at Moa nickel mine’s Pedro Soto Alba processing plant.

The prison terms range from four to 12 years.

The dozen defendants worked for the ministry of basic industry, state-run nickel producing company Cubaniquel, and Empresa Moa Nickel SA.

Alfredo Zayas, who led Cubaniquel and served as a deputy minister from 2004 to 2007, was given the longest sentence of 12 years. Former deputy minister Ricardo Gonzalez, who chaired the board of directors, was sentenced to ten years. Antonio Orizon de los Reyes, deputy minister from 1980 to 1999 and who was on the project’s committee, was given the next longest term of eight-years. The remaining defendants were jailed between four and seven years.

The convicted were found guilty by a court in Holguin of corruption during the awarding of contracts and implementation of the project to expand the Moa nickel and cobalt mine. Moa is jointly owned by Cuban and Canadian mining company Sherritt International Corp.

The court took into account “the gravity of these acts and their harmful consequences in one of the strategic activities for the nation’s economy and the conduct of the accused, characterized by the loss of ethical values and deception,” the bulletin read.

Nickel production is one of Cuba’s main sources of foreign income. In April a senior government official said the mineral accounted for 30 per cent of exports in 2011. According to the Canadian Press, with this figure nickel revenues would be put at US$1.8bn for the year based on overall export figures.

President Raúl Castro has repeatedly spoken out about corruption since his inauguration in 2008. He has said that corruption posses the most serious threat to his country’s socialist system.

The trial against former president Fernando De la Rúa and ex-members of his cabinet started today in Buenos Aires. De la Rúa has been accused of corruption, after allegedly bribing opposition senators to vote in favour of a labour reform in 2000, and could face up to six years in prison if found guilty.

The trial is considered a landmark, since it is the first time a former president has been brought to justice on charges of corruption. It is expected to last between six and eight months, according to Infobae.com.

The judges are expecting to hear testimonies from 339 witnesses. These include high-profile politicians like current president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was a senator at the time and voted against the bill, former president Carlos Menem, and De la Rúa’s former vice-president Carlos ‘Chacho’ Alvarez, who resigned in October 2000 as the bribe allegations became public.

As well as De la Rúa, other high-profile officials facing trial include his former labour minister Mario Alberto Flamarique, former head of intelligence Fernando de Santibañes, and former parliamentary secretary Mario Pontaquarto. Pontaquarto has confessed to carrying a briefcase with money for the bribes, and accused De la Rúa of authorising the payment of U$S 4.3m in bribes to opposition senators to vote in favour of the controversial bill. “If there’s no sentence for me, there’s no sentence for anyone. If there is no sentence, the trial will remain unpunished,” the repentant Pontaquarto told the press today.

The senators who allegedly received the bribe have also been charged with corruption.

The controversial labour reform bill, which sought to further liberalise the labour market, was put forward by De la Rúa’s government in 2000, a year and a half before his resignation. It was part of a number of policies requested by the IMF in order to provide financial backing to the government. The law was passed in May 2000 and abolished in 2004.

The trial against De la Rúa is the second against a former president, but the first one for corruption. Last year, former president Carlos Menem was found not guilty of arms smuggling.

On 11^th May, police shut down and inspected a school following a bomb threat. As a school with connections to the first division football club Independiente, it was widely suspected that football hooligans were behind the threat.

Violence in futbol, an issue needing to be solved (Photo: Parisa)

Just over one week later, another group of hooligans (barras bravas in Latin America) waited for Giovanni Moreno, a player for football team Racing Club, after a training session. Threatening to end his career if he did not leave the team, they pointed a gun at  his knee and warned: “Things will get worse for you if you don’t.”

In the same month, Independiente’s vice-president Claudio Keblaitis and members of his family received death threats, while the death of Daniel Sosa, 21, grabbed the media’s attention. On Monday, the death of Gonzalo Saucedo, also 21, added to the exhaustive list of victims of football violence.

Argentina’s long-standing and highly complex problem of football violence is spiralling out of control, and has been thrown sharply into focus this year. Left unresolved for decades by the national government and the Argentine Football Association, (AFA) the issue has reached a tipping point.

Cantero and the Fight for Independiente

Nizzardo, head of NGO Salvemos al Futbol (Photo: Agus Carini)

The recent election of Javier Cantero as president of Independiente in December 2011 has brought the issue of football violence to the fore. After pledging to put a stop to the money and support given to the club’s particularly violent band of barras bravas by his predecessor,  Cantero’s personal campaign may have finally incited action against the problem.

“Cantero and what he is doing has created a lot of noise in the news, and we’re applauding him,” says Monica Nizzardo, from Salvemos Al Futbol (Let’s Save Football). Having founded the non-governmental organisation that has been working to tackle violence and corruption in Argentine football for the last six years, Nizzardo has been collaborating closely with Cantero for two years.

“We’re making a step forward with Cantero. In six years, there has only been one Cantero, and we need to move forward and continue with the struggle.”

Cantero met with members of the AFA and the national government last week to discuss solutions to the violence, but Nizzardo is doubtful of how willing the government are to tackle the issue.

“What I see is a farce. [The government and AFA] are trying to look like they’re doing something. They’ll say, we’ll do a meeting, but it’s a farce. Where’s the action?”

An Escalating Business of Violence, Money and Power

Far from a recent phenomenon, football violence goes hand-in-hand with the nation’s most beloved sport. With the first football-related death recorded in 1924, Argentina has almost witnessed a staggering 100 years of football hooliganism.

Emerging as a more organised brand of hooliganism in the 50s and 60s, each major and minor club in the country has a corresponding group of barras bravas, with some of the most violent hooligans affiliating with River Plate, Independiente, and Boca.

Originally, barras bravas provided guaranteed support for clubs at matches, as well as physical force on hand for club managers. Starting with certain privileges such as free transport to matches or an asado at a game, the power, influence and demands of the barras bravashave been growing at an alarming rate.

Fans in action at a football match (Photo: Nacho AKD)

“As they began to demand more and more privileges, they would see how using violence got them things,” notes Nizzardo. “They would see how people became cowards in front of them, and give them what they wanted.” 

Typically earning money through selling merchandise, tickets, refreshments, controlling car parking at higher profile matches, and often receiving a cut of a player’s transfer fee, hooliganism in Argentina is a lucrative business.

And it is business that is at the core of the issue. With many football clubs having two competing factions of barras bravas, the never-ending violence has become a battle for money and power.

“It’s not a fight of passion, or to fight for who is better in a rivalry,” says Nizzardo adamantly. “No, they are fighting for money. There are often two factions in the same barra. Obviously they are not fighting for their team. They are fighting for money and power, for the power that money gives them.”

A Tangled Web of Vested Interests

But while the phenomenon has been changing and the levels of violence increasing, the national government and the AFA have done nothing to solve the issue plaguing Argentine football.

For experts working on the issue, two hindering factors have become increasingly evident: impunity in the justice system and the longstanding and central issue of corruption – particularly the link between politics and football violence.

The stadium of Boca Juniors Club (Photo: Elemaki)

Gustavo Grabia, an expert on the subject and author of The 12: The True History of Boca Hooligans, has stated that “in Argentina, hooligans have worked for all the different political parties since they were created […] A lot of [barras bravas] supported the military government in the seventies, like “El Negro” Thompson in Quilmes, and then they became supporters of Alfonsín, Menem, Duhalde and now Kirchner.” With their different and often contrasting ideologies, it becomes clear that barras bravas work for money and impunity, regardless of the cause.

This unique link between politics and the barras bravas makes the issue of hooliganism in Argentina far more complex than football violence in other countries, particularly those in Europe.

European specialist Otto Adang summed up the complexity of Argentina’s own brand of football violence. In a talk given in 2009 he stated that “the European solution is useless in Argentina. European hooligans were misfits that got together in groups with no relationship with the government whatsoever. In Argentina, hooligans are part of the business: they take part in the buying and selling of footballers, manage things like merchandising […] and have astonishing political connections.”

Just as football managers would use barras bravas for a display of support, politicians similarly employ the hooligans to raise a flag at matches, or to boost numbers at demonstrations, in exchange for money, power and total impunity.

“A book came out in the Feria del Libro that spoke about INDEC [the national statistics office, suspected of irregularities], by writer Gustavo Noriega,” Nizarro recounts, “and the barra of Chicago club went there to break up the presentation of the book because it spoke badly about this government worker, [Domestic Trade Minister Guillermo] Moreno. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing, a barra openly working for Moreno.”

Football violence has become a much bigger issue than violence and danger in stadiums. The head of River Plate was recently told by a barra brava from his own club: “I respond to Moreno.” With hooligans no longer answering to club managers, but to politicians, the issue is not just in the hands of club managers, even if they carry a huge portion of the blame up until now.

“The relation with politics is making this harder. The heads of the clubs say, ‘I’m reporting things but they are working for political parties. Who is going to protect me?’” says Nizarro

Nizarro states "the relation with politics is making this harder" (Photo: Agus Carini)

In the case of the Argentine justice system, experts have continually criticised its passive role in football violence. With most football-related incidents going unpunished, the sense of impunity is high, and families of victims of football violence are all too often left with no sense of justice.

For Grabia, the justice system is just as at fault as the deep level of corruption, and states “we have to say that judges do not take this issue very seriously.” He notes that, with no special court for football violence, cases are often sent to courts that also deal with rape, murder, theft, or abductions. Since football-related incidents are typically categorised as “injuries in fight,” they are often not considered important enough. Grabia claims that “all the [club managers] know that they have impunity, and so do police officers.”

A Complex Problem with an Obvious Solution

Margaret Thatcher once asked the English footballer Bert Millichip: “What are you doing to keep our society free from your hooligans?” to which he replied: “What are you doing to keep your hooligans out of our football?”

With the issue of politics at the crux of the situation, and with football violence currently in the spotlight, Argentina now faces the huge challenge of eradicating a damaging but integral part of football.

The concrete solution is glaringly obvious to those such as Nizzardo and Grabia who have dedicated themselves to the issue: to permanently break the link between the barras and politicians. With a handful of other basic strategies such as official sale of tickets and identification of those entering stadiums, levels of violence and impunity can also be brought down.

“The biggest thing we need is the political will to disarm the mafias that are attached to each club, which are funded by businessmen who want the clubs to become businesses,” says Nizzardo. “They in turn are financed by politicians because they are used as a workforce to help them. The government knows it needs a strategic and integral plan, not just attacking the heads of the football clubs, who do also have to take part of the responsibility.”

The government undoubtedly has the resources and the ability to investigate the issue. But the real question is whether politicians are seriously willing to stamp out this business of violence that has claimed 261 lives so far.

What do Argentines think should be done about football violence? Click here to find out.

The Coalition of Lawyers of Paraguay called a public hearing today to give details on indictments filed against seven Supreme Court judges and their potential impeachment.

ABC Color – a Paraguayan newspaper – reported today that the organisation called on all interested citizens who wanted to learn more about the charges against the judges, who fill the majority of the Supreme Court’s nine positions. About 200 people attended, including senators and deputies.

“It’s not that overnight we woke up and capriciously decided on a justice change. It’s not that we decided to attack them. There is more of a motive,” said coaltion member Kattya González, telling the audience the reasoning behind the initiative.

Corruption in the Paraguayan judicial system has been making headlines for some time.

Earlier this year, the Paraguayan Senate decided not to keep seven of nine Supreme Court judges for additional terms in their positions. According to InfoBAE, one of the seven dismissed judges, Víctor Núñez, said it was an institutional abuse, “a conspiracy which has been going on for some time.” The courts claimed the Senate did not have the right to dismiss the judges and refused to accept the decision.

Last week, the Chamber of Deputies decided to consider a request for impeachment. An application was presented to the Lower House, who will vote on it this Thursday. If the application – presented by the presidentially-allied Authentic Radical Liberal Party and supported by the lawyers’ coalition – passes the house, it will move to the Senate for a vote.

“The call for impeachment is a complete legal piece, well-crafted, in which the allegations are well-founded,” Deputy Hugo Capurro told reporters.

Paraguay’s civil Cabinet chief Miguel López Perito also said recent protests were the key to effecting change in the justice system, noting that they have pushed politicians to reduce corruption.

ABC Color reported today that the senior official stressed citizen mobilisation as the key to politicians move to renovate the justice system.

“It could be the change in the Court – why not,” he said at a news conference. “That will depend strictly on the possibilities that could open in the Parliament.”

Vice-president Amado Boudou has hopped into the fire once again, after the Anti-Corruption Office denounced him for allegedly falsifying an affidavit that excluded his car from his divorce proceedings.

Local media were all ablaze with reports that the second in command said he lied about the date he purchased a car. By doing so, it would have been declared his “own good” rather than shared property, thus excluding it from his assets during his divorce from Daniela Andriuolo.

If Boudou is found guilty by Federal Judge Julián Ercolini, the crime is punishable with from 15 days to two years imprisonment, plus perpetual disqualification to hold public office.

The presentation was made by Mario Mazzitelli, Secretary General of the Authentic Socialist Party (PSA). El Día reports that Mazzitelli based the claim on the data already verified in another open criminal investigation against former economy minister, stating that Boudou said he bought a 1992 Honda Civic CRX del Sol, on 1st July 1992.

“On 1st July, 1992 the car was not even in Argentina,” Mazzitelli said, according to El Día.

Boudou is already up to his eyeballs in corruption allegations. Boudou has been accused of using his political influence to help an ailing company, one with which he may have had personal ties. Last week, Prosecutor Jorge Di Tello also ordered the opening of an investigation into alleged illegal enrichment by the vice-president.

During Mass in the Bicentennial Park in Silao, Pope Benedict XVI issued a statement condemning the drug trafficking and corruption that continues to ravish Mexico.

Speaking to a crowd of an estimated half a million who gathered for the last day of his Mexican tour, the 84-year-old Pope appealed to the country to put aside the “hatred and revenge” which have claimed more than 50,000 lives in the past five years.

He urged them to look to their faith, praying that Mexicans would be given the strength “to boldly promote peace, harmony, justice and solidarity.”

President Felipe Calderón, along with the three major presidential candidates in the run for elections in July, were present at the collective prayer.

The archbishop of León, José Guadalupe Martín Rábago, set the tone of the day, stressing the evils afflicting the country, especially the violence and death “that have resulted in a sentiment of pain, hopelessness and grief.”

Rábago denounced what he referred to as the “perverse roots” of Mexico’s problems, namely poverty, lack of opportunity, corruption, impunity, injustice and cultural change.

The archbishop appealed to the Pope to impart a message of peace and love to the Mexicans at a time when we are living through “a crisis of morality.”

During his homily, Benedict drew a comparison between the violent situation in Mexico and the rest of Latin America with the afflictions of the Jewish people in the Old Testament.

“The history of Israel tells of great deeds and battles. But at the time of confronting their more authentic existence, their more decisive fate and salvation, rather than relying on their own strengths, they put their faith in God, who can give them a new heart, in place of the callous and the conceited.

Benedict stressed that while there is sufficient “power in the army” to subdue the other by force or violence, a greater power exists by winning over their hearts.”

The Pope came into close contact with victims of the escalating violence last night, at the initiative of Felipe Calderón, when he met with families of victims of organised crime.

Benedict travels to Cuba today to meet with Raúl Castro to visit Havana and Santiago.

In 2002, Marita Verón disappeared. She was 23-years old at the time, and it is strongly suspected that she was abducted by women traffickers, and subsequently forced into prostitution. Her mother, Susana Trimarco, has been instrumental in raising awareness of the case, as well as the issue of trafficking of women.

Almost ten years later, the trial is underway in Tucumán. The case has brought the issue of female trafficking back into the public sphere, and has shed light on some of the realities of the problem highlighting corruption among the police force, politicians and within the judicial system.

How aware are Argentines of female trafficking and the networks that operate within the country? To what extent do they think that the police are complicit in the issue? What do they think needs to be done to stop female trafficking? The Argentina Independent hit the streets of Buenos Aires to find out.

Photos by Allison Kate Cherkis

Cecilia Maitland, 25, Environmental Engineer, Belgrano

I think there is a network that is a lot bigger than people suspect, and that they are doing a lot more than people know about. In other countries in Latin America, it’s clearer that these problems exist, so they give them more importance, but here it’s not as obvious. My opinion is that it’s all connected with drugs and the mafia, but it’s not something I have a lot of contact with – we don’t see a lot about it in newspapers, I don’t see it as something that they give a lot of importance to. To change things, we need to educate women more on the matter, it’s basic: education and for there to be more publicity, bigger campaigns, because I think there’s a problem of ignorance, that the people simply don’t know a lot about it. We should also be made aware of certain situations to avoid as women.

Ines Hernandez, 60, Teacher, Quilmes

Part of my family lives in Tucumán, where Marita Verón comes from. Her mother is working to fight against this issue. But I don’t think she has done a lot for raising awareness in the whole country, and neither has the government. The government should be doing absolutely everything that they can, in any way possible, to raise awareness of the issue, as well as to find Marita. She is either alive or dead. Unfortunately I don’t think she’s alive, but it’s not impossible. In Argentina, girls want to be rich, or to have everything, very quickly. I think girls have lost that sense of sacrifice doing things as they should be done, legally and by working at them. They are then misled; they [the traffickers] tell them that they’re going to Buenos Aires, to work. It’s very common in the north of Argentina, in Tucuman, Salta, Jujuy, Catamarca, that these people tell them that they’ll be staying with a rich family in Buenos Aires, and work as a nanny. They promise them a good job, but it’s a lie. They take them and put them in brothels. There are some unbelievable stories that I’ve heard of. This is a country where the citizens are never protected. There is certainly a connection with drugs. The people that take the girls are paid with drugs. I’m absolutely sure.

Federico Foieri, 35, Physicist, Almagro

I know about it from what I hear on the TV. I know that it exists, and that there is a lot of complicity with the police and the authorities. In my opinion, they receive money to not check certain things, or to look the other way, pay less attention. I don’t know exactly how they do it. I think they just receive money to stay quiet. I’m not so sure about the judicial system’s role, I think more than anything it’s the police, but then again I’m not a specialist in the judicial system. I think most of the time it works well. I think the thing is in lots of places in the provinces, many girls prostitute themselves, and the most important thing to remember is that something’s failing, it may the judicial system, but it seems to us that it’s the police.

Lucia Raffen Templi, 19, Student, San Martin

I think there’s a link between the police and trafficking of women. There’s a load of things that they let pass and don’t do anything about, or they pretend not to have seen. I know that there’s a lot of things going on, a lot of networks that trafficking of women, but it’s not something that people think about a lot here. There are so many cases that don’t get talked about, and people only really think about what’s reported in the news, and they don’t report everything – good or bad news. It’s not something that comes up constantly. I don’t think people are aware of the networks either; I’m not. It’s something that I try to keep very up to date with. I think we as women live in a gender dictatorship, we go out with fear about what could happen to us every day, which doesn’t happen to men. I mean, they may fear getting robbed or whatever, but we go out with the fear that we just might not come back; it’s a constant threat.

Santiago Lopez, 26, Student, Belgrano

They should be doing more to stop this, informing people more, controlling the borders more vigilantly, increasing the punishments for those caught, make them life sentences. There are networks everywhere, I’ve heard it’s especially bad in Missiones and that part, but it’s everywhere, also here in Buenos Aires. The question of prostitution here is contradictory, because people fight against it, but more and more people also pay to see prostitutes. The more people are paying for it as a service, the more they’re enforcing the way these people are treated. I think there’s a lot of corruption among the police, without a doubt. They have a lot to do with this, to me it seems they play a fundamental role. If the police weren’t at the centre of these business dealings, it wouldn’t be how it is at the moment. Police should be doing the job that they’re supposed to do, and should not be complicit in this business.

Oscar Flores, 55, Chef, Retiro

I watch the news, so I’m conscious of the Marita Veron case. I see that the mother is still fighting for her daughter, fighting to find her. I think the case has definitely done a lot to raise awareness about women trafficking here in Argentina. Because it hurts the Argentina that we believe ourselves to live in, it shows that there is corruption. This type of thing doesn’t have to happen, and it hurts more that it involves young women and girls. There should be real examples to show that there is a real and correct judicial system. This case should be used to clarify that, to help stop this happening. I don’t know anything about the actual networks that operate, but I think that a lot of the traffickers are very involved with drugs. Day by day, this aspect must be eliminated before the situation can get better, there are kids who are killing themselves by using drugs. With respect to prostitution, it has always, always existed, it’s another issue. But I think generally the government are doing enough in the fight against trafficking of women, they are concerned with it.