Why don’t we cover Latin America?
Here’s a shocking news story you probably haven’t heard about: American soldiers and contractors based in Colombia are alleged to have sexually assaulted dozens of young girls between 2003 and 2007, with some of the attacks being taped and sold as pornography.
These accusations were included in an 800-page report released in February by the Colombian government and the rebel group FARC, detailing their 50-year-long conflict, which they are negotiating to end. The allegations appear to have been first reported in English by Colombia Reports, a news outlet based in Medellin in late March.
According to Colombia Reports, Renan Vega of the National Pedagogic University in Bogota, one of the historians who researched the document, said “there exists abundant information about the sexual violence, in absolute impunity thanks to the bilateral agreements and the diplomatic immunity of United States officials.”
Colombia Reports continues: “The historian cited one 2004 case in the central Colombian town of Melgar where 53 underage girls were sexually abused by nearby stationed military contractors ‘who moreover filmed [the abuse] and sold the films as pornographic material.’ According to Colombia’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo, the victims of the sexual abuse practices were forced to flee the region after their families received death threats.”
According to Chris Allbritton, a reporter at The Daily Beast who began covering the story in April, one of the reasons it has taken so long for this story to get its legs is because although the report has been around since February, the accusations against U.S. staff didn’t get attention until the week leading up to Easter, when Colombia largely shuts down for the religious holiday, which hampered U.S. reporter inquiries.
Allbritton also noted what every Hispanic in the United States has bemoaned time again: “The U.S. English-language media has traditionally had a kind of blind spot when it comes to Latin America. I don’t actually know why, I’ve always found it rather curious, but for whatever reason they’re just not that interested unless they’re regional papers, like maybe The Miami Herald or the L.A. Times, who serve a large Spanish-speaking population.”
It’s true. Though Latin America’s countries are economic partners, as well as the ancestral home of the largest minority in this country, the region usually gets short shrift from U.S. news media.
President Obama attended the seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama City last week during which governmental transparency, the expansion of broadband Internet infrastructure and goals for climate-resilient energy development were on the agenda.
But if you looked for coverage of the summit, the event that made headlines was Obama’s handshake with Cuba’s Raul Castro. Important, yes, but not the only thing that mattered. We must insist on continuing coverage of this story from our media. In a globalized society, Latin America cannot continue to be a blind spot for Americans. Our interests in the region demand more attention.