Officials in Mexico City hope installing thousands of high-resolution cameras is an answer to street crime. The announcement this week of plans to plant 8,000 cameras around the city over the next three years came after a local university’s surveillance camera captured the images of two suspects in a bombing attempt downtown two weeks ago.
Nearly half of the cameras will be around public schools and parks, with most of the rest in high-crime areas. The cameras will be tied into control centers to help in case of natural disasters and other emergencies.
Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said street crime has fallen 40% in the tourist-heavy historic center since the city installed 100 cameras there six years ago.
One of the suspects in the recent bombing attempt died when the explosives blew up, apparently before he reached the apparent target, a ranking Mexico City police official who authorities said had run afoul of drug traffickers. A woman wounded in the blast, who was seen in the surveillance video walking closely with the main suspect, is under investigation.
Venezuela by all accounts looks the other way when it comes to the presence of Colombian rebels in its territory. Panama is quite another matter.
Last Friday, Panamanian police engaged in a gun battle in Jaque with several members of the 57th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, taking nine prisoners. Just what the rebels were doing in the town 30 miles west of the Colombian border isn't clear.
Initial reports said they were overseeing a drug shipment on the Pacific Coast, a common transit point for U.S.-bound cocaine. The FARC has been designated one of Colombia's biggest drug cartels.
Another theory was that they came to kill a group of Panamanian "irregulars" who had betrayed them. Yet a third was that their boat had simply run out of gas. In any case, the six have been taken to Panama City for questioning, where they will be identified, with U.S. help, to see if there are any outstanding drug or terrorism charges against them.
None of the six are talking, and local press reports said members of the Panamanian government had received death threats from the FARC demanding the prisoners be released by March 1. Three of the nine who were wounded in the gun battle are being treated in the capital's Santo Tomas Hospital.
Recent Mexican media reports say a crackdown on organized crime, which started in December, has shredded the shield of protection that corrupt local cops once provided to criminals.
The offensive — a highly coordinated effort that includes local and state police, federal agents and the military — has also gained the trust of many Baja California citizens, who are increasingly likely to report crimes.
The cartels feel trapped, according to Mexico City's El Universal newspaper, and some drug kingpins have left Baja California. Cartel leaders have also tried bribing the army generals spearheading the crackdown.
A recent spate of grisly killings illustrates organized crime's fear of public cooperation with police, experts and media reports say. Hoping to intimidate potential informants, the killers have tortured many victims and left some with signs hanging from their necks or taped to their bodies.
The narco-messages, as they are called, warn of death for informants. "This is how all finger-pointers will finish up," said one message hanging from a body this month, according to Tijuana's Frontera newspaper.
The Lima daily Peru 21 labeled it hara-kiri, a kind of economic suicide.
Protesters blocked tourist access to the "Imperial City'' of Cuzco on Thursday and Friday, stranding thousands of travelers. Train service to the nearby Inca citadel of Machu Picchu was interrupted. Most flights to Cuzco were canceled. Many foreign travelers feared missing international connections via Lima. Tourism is the lifeblood of the Andean town. Cuzco and Machu Picchu are Peru's major tourism draws.
The protests target recent laws that would permit new hotels, restaurants and other facilities near archaeological sites. The fact that the laws have been modified to give more say to regional authorities did not faze opponents.
President Alan Garcia blamed the whole matter on leftist agitators. Video images of an upset German visitor advising tourists to stay away from Peru made the TV rounds. Tourism officials voiced the hope the damage wouldn't be long-lasting.
Photos: Stranded backpackers hoof it out of rainy Cuzco; other visitors were stuck at the city's airport; Credit: Juan Pablo Tresierra/AFP/Getty Images
Is Brazil poised to play a sweeping financial role in post-Fidel Cuba?
That's the buzz in the Brazilian press following President Fidel Castro's resignation.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met last month with the ailing Castro in Havana in what some interpreted as a precursor to a big-bucks Brazilian presence on the island. The former factory hand and union leader is presiding over a robust economy and has the leftist cred to work with a new, and presumably more pragmatic, Cuban leadership. Lula has emerged as Latin America's preeminent moderate leftist leader; he's even popular with the Bush administration.
"The president [Lula] dreams that the island, close to the United States, will serve as an advanced platform for Brazilian-Cuban exports to the largest economy in the world,'' columnist Kennedy Alencar wrote in Folha de Sao Paulo. "In Brazil, Lula told aides that Brazilian businessmen should prepare for a race to Cuba.''
Lula's former powerful chief of staff, Jose Dirceu, who fell from grace in a payola scandal, is reported to be lining up Brazilian-Cuban economic contacts. Dirceu is an ex-militant with an intriguing history: He was jailed in 1968 in Brazil for political activism but was released as part of an exchange for Charles Burke Elbrick, the then-U.S. ambassador to Brazil, who had been kidnapped by a radical group. Dirceu went into exile in Cuba, where he made lots of friends, before returning to Brazil. The kidnap of the ambassador was the basis of the 1997 film Four Days in September (starring Alan Arkin as the abducted U.S. envoy), which received an Oscar nomination as best foreign-language film. Dirceu is now doing an apparently successful consulting gig, as he explains in this interview with the Brazilian magazine Piaui.
Pemex is Mexico's national oil company. American oil companies used to operate in Mexico until the 1930s, when Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized the oil fields and installations. (He's still revered as a national hero for doing so.)
Now Pemex is in decline. And conservative President Felipe Calderon wants to bring in foreign investment. But how to do so without alienating the powerful Mexican left and the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), for whom any "privatization" of Pemex would be tantamount to a declaration of war?
Why not name Lazaro's grandson -- also named Lazaro Cardenas, by the way -- to head Pemex. That's the rumor circulating around Mexico these days. The younger Lazaro is a PRD leader and former governor of the southern state of Michoacan. If Calderon actually does name him to head Pemex, in effect bringing the left into his government, it would be the equivalent of a political earthquake here.
Lots of retrospectives about Cuban President Fidel Castro are popping up in the Latin American media. The announcement this week of his resignation has prompted a wave of recollections and assessments of the iconic figure and his sometimes contradictory manifestations: the revolutionary-hero-turned-dictator, the pugnacious comandante who stood up to his superpower neighbor but constructed a police state at home, the visionary leader who provided universal healthcare and free education while imprisoning dissidents and suppressing free speech, the master planner who regularly blamed the now five-decade-long U.S. embargo for a chronically underperforming economy, the exporter of revolution who was left in the lurch when the Iron Curtain came down.
Castro was a central figure in the Cold War, an era when Latin America was a battleground of ideologies. One senses a whiff of nostalgia out there for those bad old days. The Argentine writer David Vinas writing in Clarin recalls a meeting that he and several other intellectuals (Mario Benedetti, Julio Cortazar) had with Castro in Old Havana. Conversation turned to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, an early Castro nemesis. Cuba, of course, figures in sundry conspiracy theories about Kennedy's slaying. It turns out Castro didn't buy Washington's official single-gunman theory. "There must have been at least two shooters,'' the ever analytical Castro told his guests, diagramming with his fingers a possible scenario. "It couldn't have been one man.''
Ever since, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has maintained that Colombia's claim to fishing grounds are invalid, and made statements implying that Nicaragua would not shy away from using its military to enforce its claim. He alluded to his alliance with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
"Whoever touches Nicaragua touches Venezuela, and whoever touches Venezuela touches Nicaragua," Ortega told reporters recently. On Thursday, Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Samuel Santos
The Colombian government has remained silent in the face of Ortega's darts. In an interview with the Colombian magazine Semana, former Foreign Minister Augusto Ramirez Ocampo said Ortega was deliberately trying to provoke Colombia to help his friend and patron Chavez by "internationalizing" Chavez's criticism of Colombia as a warlike nation, useful in his campaign to legitimize the leftist rebel group FARC.
In Peru, there is worry that the tourist rush to the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu could be derailed.
Activists in Peru have been threatening to block access to the historic site and the airport in nearby Cuzco as a protest against a new law that would allow increased development near Peru's archaeological zones. The rhetoric has gotten nasty and has been front-page news in Peru. Machu Picchu is the country's premier attraction, recently voted one of the world's seven wonders in a private contest. The cloud-shrouded Inca redoubt has become a massive cash cow, attracting visitors from across the globe. Many fear that tourists are trampling the place to death.
But whether the current controversy is really a case of development versus conservation is a matter of opinion. Protesters say they don't want the national patrimony sold out to foreign investors. But some see a political maneuver aimed at undercutting the centrist government in Lima, which has been at loggerheads with left-leaning regional authorities in Cuzco and elsewhere. Cabinet chief Jorge del Castillo blamed the problem on "a group of communists" and other militants. Authorities have bolstered police at Cuzco's airport and elsewhere in the region. Some travel agencies were said to be contemplating diverting visitors. But as of late Friday, it appeared that cooler heads might prevail and the region would not be paralyzed, reports Peru 21 newspaper.
Gracias a todos for contributing to the interesting encuentrowe've got going here at La Plaza about whether Latinos will buck the punditry by backing Obama. La Plaza loves a lively verbal dust-up as much as the next blog. But let's hear some more specifics from you Obama supporters about why Latinos should back the man, not because of the ethnic composition of the audience for the Cristina or Laura TV shows, or because of what Hernan Cortes did to the Aztecs in 1521, but because of Obama's actual policies. And let's hear from a few more Clinton and McCain supporters too. Any "Latinos for Mike Huckabee" out there? Ron Paul?
Meanwhile, in the interests of public service, La Plaza directs your attention to the latest, um, Latino celebrity endorsement of Obama's candidacy, comparing the Illinois senator with former Mexican President Benito Juarez. A reliable source tells La Plaza that the video is the brainchild of a SoCal-based marketing agency owner.
European dismay over the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo has emerged in a new forum: on the catwalk during London Fashion Week.
Designer Vivienne Westwood dressed one of her underwear models in orange and black bra and panties, evocative of the prison jumpsuits and blackout hoods worn by men the Pentagon has deemed "enemy combatants." About 275 foreign terrorism suspects are jailed indefinitely in the prison network at the U.S. naval base in southern Cuba.
In a runway strut Thursday, a model flashed photographers with a pantied derriere printed with Westwood's opinion about the controversial war-crimes tribunal at Guantanamo: "Fair trial my arse."
The protest lingerie, which comes with handcuffs, retails for 35 pounds sterling, or about $70.
The good news for cash-strapped Petroleos de Venezuela, the state oil company, is that it has halted its slide in crude production for the time being.
The International Energy Agency's February market report says PDVSA's average daily production in January was about 2.4 million barrels, slightly better than the previous month.
Output has been trending down since an oil workers strike in 2002, when Venezuela's oil production was as high as 3.4 million barrels a day. The bad news is that PDVSA will be closing for at least a couple of months one of the heavy-oil pumping facilities in the so-called Orinoco Belt oil field in eastern Venezuela, a closure that could cost the company 6% of its current output.
Another question mark is the impact of PDVSA's decision to stop shipping all oil and derivatives to ExxonMobil in retaliation for the U.S. oil giant's successful court bid to freeze up to $12 billion in PDVSA's global assets. The two companies are enmeshed in a fight over compensation for an ExxonMobil field that Venezuela nationalized in June.
It is not immediately clear if and when PDVSA can find a market for the crude and other products it now will not be shipping to ExxonMobil. Meanwhile, the price of oil jumped to above $95 a barrel in Thursday trading as markets sorted out the impact of the ExxonMobil-PDVSA conflict as well as better-than-expected U.S. and Japanese economic data.
The episode is an embarrassment for Chavez, whose brother is Sabaneta's mayor, and highlights public rage over the ongoing shortages of milk, pasta, chicken, cooking oil, tuna and other basic foodstuffs.
Local authorities declined to estimate how many tons of goods were stolen but said some 200 uniformed police and military personnel were guarding local stores.
Mayor Chavez told the El Nacional newspaper, apparently with a straight face, that the United States and "its henchmen" were responsible for the looting.
Looters "broke in violently and demanded milk," town council chief Helena Angulo told Reuters. "They took everything."
She made no apparent reference to gringo malevolence. Economists blame scarcities on Chavez's price controls that have made staples uneconomical for farmers to produce.
That 2008 will be an interesting year in Venezuelan politics has already been established. Mayors and governors will be elected in the fall, providing a true test of the strength of opposition to President Hugo Chavez.
Last week, Chavez began his 10th year in office. His current term as president runs through early 2013.
Another interesting test is a soon-to-be-launched drive to collect signatures for a new Constitutional Assembly, an idea promoted by ex-defense minister and retired army Gen. Raul Baduel (pictured), once a Chavez confidant and now a bitter opponent.
It was Baduel who helped turn voters against Chavez's proposed constitutional amendment in December by characterizing its provision to allow Chavez unlimited reelections as a "coup d'etat." In an interview, Baduel told The Times that constitutional reform was needed to protect separation of powers.
While some in the opposition camp, including other ex-military leaders, applaud Baduel's intentions, they warn that a new constitutional assembly could be taken over by Chavez supporters. In a separate interview, Baduel told the Associated Press that he was being spied on by the Chavez government and his every movement monitored.
A report by the Washington-based group Human Rights Watch is highly critical of Mexico's National Human Rights Commission. The commission is a kind of ombudsman meant to give Mexicans a place to seek redress when their rights are violated by the state. As such, it is a linchpin of the country's transition.
But Human Rights Watch says the commission has dropped the ball: It issues many scathing reports (in the case of the notorious Ciudad Juarez killings of hundreds of women, for example) but rarely follows up with the kind of action that will force authorities to act. The commission often looks the other way when its recommendations are ignored, the report says.
"The commission could have a much greater impact on human rights in Mexico," José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of HRW, said in a press release. "While it does a decent job documenting abuses and identifying problems, it doesn't take the crucial steps to bring about change."
Mexican President Felipe Calderon arrived in Sacramento today. Last week, The Times conducted an interview with Calderon in Mexico City, in his offices in the official residence, Los Pinos. In that interview, we asked him about the relatives he is said to have living in the United States.
Calderon referred to these relatives in remarks he made during the 2006 election campaign, and again at a 2007 summit with President Bush. He suggested the relatives were farmworkers, but his office declined to offer details. We sent a reporter to Calderon's home state, Michoacan, in March 2007 to see if we could find anything out about these U.S. relatives. We struck out.
What follows is a transcript (translated into English, with the Spanish following) of the part of the interview in which Calderon talks about his relatives living in the United States.
Question: You mentioned once that you had family in the United States, with different legal statuses. When you go to the United States, do you visit them? Do you communicate with them?
Calderon: The truth is no, generally I know about them through family stories. We miss them a lot. Over there in California, for example, I have a cousin, Lourdes Madrigal: she’s already, in addition to being married to an American, in a legal situation. I have cousins and relatives in various states of the United States. I don’t know what the migratory status of all of them is, but I do aspire that one day they can be reunified with their relatives. It seems to me very sad that they can’t see their parents. I would hope, I repeat, that Mexico generates [jobs] that would allow everyone to have a dignified job here, and that’s what I’m working for.
Question: There are many Mexicans in that position. It’s very dramatic, very sad, to meet someone who hasn’t seen their relatives in five or 10 years.
Calderon: In fact, some of them have parents, or a few of them do, who have died without their being able to see them again. In other cases, they have children [they haven’t been able to see]. In the end, these are situations that are very sad in a human sense; besides that, I know that they are people who are contributing to American society, who are good citizens, who behave well, who work.
The interview in Spanish:
Pregunta: Usted mencionó en algún momento que tenía familiares en Estados Unidos, en diferentes estados legales. Usted los visita cuando va a Estados Uniods? Tiene comunicación con ellos?
Calderon: La verdad no, generalmente sé de ellos por las historias de familiares. Los extrañamos mucho. Allá en California, por ejemplo, una prima que es Lourdes Madrigal: que ya es, además está casada con un americano, en fin, en una situación legal. Tengo primos y parientes en varios estados de la Unión Americana. No sé cual sea su situación migratoria de todos, pero sí aspiro a que un día se puedan reunificar con sus familias. Me parece muy triste que no puedan ver a sus padres. Yo quisiera, insisto, que México generara y permitiera que cada quien pudiera tener un trabajo digno aquí y para eso estoy trabajando.
Pregunta: Pues hay miles de mexicanos que están en esa posición, es algo muy dramático, muy triste, encontrarse con gente que no ha visto a sus familiares desde hace cinco, diez años.
Calderon: De hecho, algunos de ellos sus padres, o unos cuantos, han muerto sin que pudieran verlos nuevamente. En otros casos tienen hijos. En fin, son situaciones humanamente muy tristes: a parte, yo sé que son gente que están aportando a la sociedad norteamericana, que son buenos ciudadanos, que tienen un buen comportamiento, que trabajan.
Credit card delinquencies are surging in Mexico, another sign that the economy is feeling the pain of the U.S. slowdown.
Tardy balances accounted for 6.9% of outstanding credit card debt in December, according to the latest figures available from the Bank of Mexico. That's the highest level in six years. Past-due balances totaled just under $2 billion at the end of 2007, up a whopping 68% since December 2006.
Banks and other businesses that provide information to Mexico's Credit Bureau are reporting that 39% of their cardholders are at least 30 days late on their payments, according to a report in the national daily Reforma (subscription required).
It wasn't hard to see it coming. Mexico has experienced an explosion of consumer credit in recent years. Emboldened by the nation's strong recovery from its mid-'90s financial meltdown, banks and retailers have rushed to issue credit cards to practically anyone with a pulse.
Mexico has no laws capping rates and fees, so the business has been immensely profitable. Average card rates in Mexico top 30% annually; some charge annual rates in excess of 75%.
The binge helped fuel sales of cars, appliances and other goods. But millions of consumers are now in over their heads. We'll see if the banks are as eager to work out repayment plans as they were to issue the expensive plastic.
O say, could you see any Latinos on Super Sunday? Paul Gutierrez, a sports columnist for the Sacramento Bee newspaper, didn't. And that was the problem, Gutierrez writes, with Fox's six-minute pre-kickoff tribute to America and the Super Bowl.
For its "goose-bump-inducing" homage to pigskin and patriotism, the columnist noted, Fox Sports "recruited the likes of Jim Brown, Peyton Manning, Don Shula and LaDainian Tomlinson to read that most sacred of American documents, the Declaration of Independence." But it didn't invite any of the 44 million members of America's biggest "minority" group, Latinos.
Here's the money quote from Gutierrez's column: "At worst, Fox Sports assumed undesirable characteristics of its heavily right-leaning brother Fox News, whose -– ahem -– fair and balanced act never misses an opportunity to push that hot-button topic of immigration."
Did Fox goof by not including Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo or some other Latino among its readers? As we like to say around here, La Plaza reports. You decide.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon is in the United States this week stumping for fair treatment of immigrants living north of the border, regardless of their legal status.
Though it supports that effort, human rights group Amnesty International says Calderon should get his own house in order. The organization is calling on the Mexican leader "to support human rights at home with the same vigor that he shows in seeking greater protections for the rights of Mexican migrants to the United States."
In an open letter to Calderon, Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty Inernational USA, cites a long history of repression by the Mexican government, "including torture, arbitrary detention, excessive use of force and the denial of due process" against its own citizens.
The agency is particularly worried about the so-called Merida Initiative, a Bush administration proposal to send $1.4 billion in aid to Mexico and a half-dozen other Latin American nations to combat drug cartels.
A big chunk of those funds would go to Mexico's military, which Amnesty said has been implicated by Mexico's own National Commission on Human Rights in the "rape, torture and the killings of civilians" while conducting counter-narcotics activities.
Cox also called for a halt of abuses of Central American immigrants on Mexican soil. Many are assaulted and robbed on their way to the United States, often by corrupt Mexican authorities.
So how much do you pay a Mexican law enforcement official who risks his life taking on organized crime?
In Tijuana, Secretary of Public Security Alberto Capella Ibarra will soon get a big bump in monthly wages, from roughly $7,500 to $11,000. Police Director Julian Leyzaola’s monthly salary will jump from $4,500 to $9,000.
Capella has been a marked man since November, when two dozen gunmen shot up his house. He travels everywhere with 20 bodyguards. His wife and three children live somewhere outside Tijuana. And when things get really dangerous, Capella crosses the border to stay overnight in the San Diego area.
Leyzaola, rarely seen in public without an AR-15 rifle slung over his shoulder, is said to live at the tightly secured Mexican army base in the center of the city. The officials, both hired in December, are trying to clean up the notoriously corrupt police department while assisting state agents and federal troops in the war against the city’s drug cartels.
Unlike past top cops in Tijuana who ended up killed or indicted, Capella and Leyzaola are widely believed to be honest. And, according to the Tijuana newspaper Frontera, they now are also the highest-paid officials in the city.
Petroleos de Venezuela President Rafael Ramirez said ExxonMobil's move to freeze more than $12 billion in assets was "judicial terrorism" typical of multinational oil companies that until recent years were in the habit of trampling resource-producing nations' sovereignty. Terrorist or no, the action by the U.S. energy giant to recoup the cost of the Cerro Negro oil field, nationalized by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in June, rippled through the financial world Friday.
Prices of bonds of the Venezuelan oil company, known by its initials, PDVSA, continued to fall in Friday trading as analysts shone a light on PDVSA's stressed-out financial condition. Although most analysts saw no near-term threat of a default on PDVSA's $16 billion in debt, Goldman Sachs analyst Alberto Ramos told Bloomberg News that U.S., Dutch and British courts' action limiting PDVSA's ability to dispose of foreign assets endangered some bondholders.
The company has cash-flow problems that will be tested by upcoming bond payments, Bloomberg notes. At the same time that pressure is on for PDVSA to raise cash, the court action may make such sales problematic. At a press conference Friday, Ramirez (pictured) said the ExxonMobil court action was a bluff and denied that assets were frozen. PDVSA's most valuable property in the United States undoubtedly is the Citgo gasoline refining and distribution network. Last year, PDVSA sold its interest in one U.S. refinery and is thought to be peddling Citgo.
Unseasonal storms have been battering Bolivia, leaving thousands of people homeless and at least 49 dead. Mountain runoff has flooded the eastern lowlands, destroying dwellings, washing out roads and resulting in scenes of residents wading and paddling in what were once streets. Bolivian officials see a culprit: global warming, linked to greenhouse gases spewed by industrialized nations. Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca told reporters that First World "maltreatment of the Earth'' had sparked the crisis.
Global warming has become a kind of catch-all villain for many woes. From Bolivia's standpoint, rising ocean temperatures associated with warming air temperatures are accelerating evaporation into the atmosphere, resulting in ever more severe storms.
Bolivian President Evo Morales has called on developed nations to pay an ecological debt. The United States and other countries have rushed aid to flood-ravaged Bolivia. But the asserted role of global warming in this and other natural disasters seems likely to be debated for years.
The killing late last month in Venezuela of drug capo Wilber Varela, top boss of the Norte del Valle cocaine cartel of Colombia, continues to puzzle officials here. Varela was obsessive about his personal security, often traveling with a bodyguard of 20 or more people, including corrupt Venezuelan cops and soldiers. Yet his body was found Jan. 30 with that of just one bodyguard. Each of them had point-blank bullet wounds.
Some in the know say Varela (pictured) was last seen in the resort town of Merida in the company of two female friends. Others say he was in the company of two male associates who hurriedly left the crime scene, an Alpine-style resort, and who are at large.
Varela is thought to have moved from Colombia several years ago after an internal war broke out with Diego Montoya for control of the cartel. The ensuing conflict left hundreds of victims dead and a fragmented cartel. Part of the cartel sided with Montoya, part with Varela. He is alleged to have lived under the protection of Venezuelan authorities, who now reportedly ease the transit of one-quarter to one-third of all the cocaine made in Colombia. According to an article in last week's Semana magazine, Varela received protection from no less a figure than Hugo Carvajal, director of Venezuelan military intelligence, whom the publication described as "Chavez's Montesinos," an allusion to former Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos.
Brazil's economy is booming. Sales are spiking, folks are buying homes, the real is climbing inexorably against the embattled dollar, lately the global punching bag of currencies. Energy independence is within the country's reach, thanks to new oil and gas discoveries, plus brisk bio-fuel production. A reinforced social safety net has made headway against rural hunger. Some Brazilian expats in the United States are even said to be returning home to share in the newfound prosperity.
But not everyone's doing well. The chasm between haves and have-nots in Brazil remains vast. Police in Osasco, near Sao Paulo, are looking for a hungry thief: He breaks into houses, steals food, changes clothes and departs, reports O Globo. Crime remains a major preoccupation, especially in cities. Just before Carnaval, Folha reports, a mass resignation of officers stung the police department in Rio de Janeiro, where cops and drug traffickers battle for control in hillside neighborhoods. And unrest continues to shake Brazil's notorious jails and prisons. Some lawmakers are fed up with inmate riots. "Below-zero tolerance has been declared,'' said Gov. Andre Puccinelli, outraged after violence at the Campo Grande lockup in Mato Grosso do Sul state, reports Folha. "If someone causes trouble, it's the governor's order: Shoot your gun toward them!''
It's volcano season in the Andes. Of course, volcanoes are more epochal than seasonal, and don't comport to any quadrants of the calendar.
But it has been a jumpy few months on the South American edge of the Pacific Ring of Fire, where folks are all too aware of volcanoes' destructive force. Spectacular eruptions and shattered nerves have been the norm in the vicinity of several fuming behemoths.
In Ecuador, hundreds have been evacuated from the proximity of the Tungurahua volcano, about 85 miles south of Quito, the capital. Authorities have declared a red alert, reports El Universo. And on the other end of the continent, El Mercurio says Chilean villagers were on the run from the Llaima volcano, which has spewed out a river of lava more than a mile long, illuminating the night sky.
Photos: The Tungurahua volcano erupts (Dolores Ochoa/Associated Press); Ecuadorians wear masks to keep out the ash near Tungurahua volcano. (Pablo Cozzaglio/AFP/Getty Images)
Another Carnaval is in the books. Meantime, politicians, celebrities and others paid post-partying homage to the controversial godfather of the renowned Beija-Flor (Hummingbird) samba school, the incumbent champion of the annual samba parade, reports Folha. Judges named Beija-Flor the winner Wednesday for the second year running. It is an open secret that gambling kingpins known as bicheiros have long supported neighborhood samba schools, whose over-the-top pageants can cost millions of dollars to stage. Accusations even surfaced last year that Carnaval judges may have faced threats; an investigation was inconclusive.
Among the best-known of Rio's alleged gambling bosses is the legendary Aniz Abrahao David, patron of Beija-Flor. The club cut a samba CD celebrating his career. Fresh out of jail in a corruption case, Anizio, as he is known, received dignitaries and threw hundreds of Beija-Flor T-shirts into the bleachers at the sambodromo, Rio's samba stadium. "I'm very well,'' Anizio said, according to the Folha report. "I have a lot of strength.''
Venezuela's inflation rate hit its highest level in a decade last month, reaching an annualized rate of 24.1% , which also is the highest in South America.
The reason is classic economics: Demand is outstripping supply in a nation where consumers are flush with oil dollars. And price controls imposed as part of Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution inhibit production.
Inflating even faster are rents, which rose an average 25% between June and December, according to the Venezuelan Real Estate Chamber. The same law applies: Urban growth caused by rural migration and foreign residents is pushing demand for housing while rent control and the government's encouragement of squatters are discouraging builders from breaking ground on new projects.
The worst may not be over, according to a study by Jose Guerra, Orlando Ochoa and Oscar Garcia Mendoza. High inflation could continue for years to come, caused in part by high government spending.
Despite disappointing results in 2007, foreign investment in Colombian oil exploration is expected to continue climbing in 2008. Private investment is expected to reach $3.5 billion, while the state-controlled Ecopetrol will invest $3.8 billion in exploration, infrastructure and production.
Industry sources say a record 73 exploratory wells were drilled in the country in 2007, but there were no major finds. The most expensive one was the $135-million dry hole that Petrobras, Ecopetrol and Exxon drilled in deep water off Colombia's Caribbean coast.
With all that activity, Colombia's average daily production barely managed to keep pace with the previous year's, with a year-ending average of 544,000 barrels a day, up from 527,000 barrels in 2006.
Investment has increased in Colombia because of improved security and favorable terms being offered by the National Hydrocarbons Agency. But industry sources say the country is in dire need of a major find if the investment flow is to continue. Colombia will lose its self-sufficiency in energy in seven years unless such a discovery is made, Mining and Energy Minister Hernan Martinez told El Tiempo newspaper of Bogota.
Do violent video games beget violence? That question is at the core of a debate raging in Brazil.
Last month, a national ban went into effect on the sale of two popular games, "Counter-Strike" and "EverQuest." A judge labeled the games "harmful to consumers' health.'' Both games have large international followings. A group of players and allies took to the streets of Sao Paulo last weekend to denounce the prohibition as an attack on freedom of expression, reports O Globo.
An altered version of "Counter-Strike," a counter-terrorism game, in circulation in Brazil sets the battle in the rough favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where police and drug traffickers clash for control.
President Bush's proposed budget for fiscal 2009 contains $2.7 billion in overall aid to Latin America, a 25% increase compared with fiscal 2008. Adam Isacson, a researcher at the Center for International Policy think tank in Washington, says the bad news is that most of the increase comes in the form of military and police aid and "not economic development or institution-building aid."
Mexico, for example, would receive $328 million in military aid, or nearly 10 times what it's getting for fiscal '08. It's all part of Bush's so-called Merida Initiative, or "Plan Mexico," to help fight drug traffickers.
Central America potentially is another big winner. If Congress approves, the region would get $544 million in overall aid in fiscal '09, up from $355 million. The military part of that would be more than $86 million, or nearly six times what the region is getting the current fiscal year.
The administration's focus on combating Central American gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha is the big reason for the increase. (The Associated Press photo at left shows hooded Mexico City police arresting drug trafficking suspects on Jan. 20.)
Get ready for another heavy dose of Hugo Chavez in the media. The Venezuelan president is about to broker the release of three more hostages held for years in chains and cages by the Colombian rebel group known as the FARC. Last week, the rebels announced they would release former politicians Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Perez (pictured) and Orlando Beltran, all said to be in declining health. The rebels stipulated that the hostages would be given up only to Chavez emissaries at some undisclosed location inside Colombia. Those were the conditions of the release Jan. 10 of Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez, which, along with the reunion of Rojas and her 3-year-old son, Emmanuel, caught the world's attention.
Beltran's wife, Deyanira Ortiz, arrived in Caracas on Monday to be on hand when her husband is finally liberated, nearly seven years after he was taken prisoner as he drove on a country road south of Neiva. "She is so happy her children will finally have their father back at home," said a friend, Sonia Daza, by telephone Monday.
Polanco's case is even more tragic. She and her two sons were kidnapped in 2001 when a FARC commando unit stormed their apartment tower in Neiva. The boys were released three years later after their father, Jaime Losada, a former governor of Huila state, paid a ransom. Polanco remained a prisoner, however, because the sitting legislator had value as political barter. Then in December 2005, Losada was killed at a roadblock by suspected rebels.
Whatever international goodwill Chavez generated by mediating the release of Rojas and Gonzalez evaporated two days later when he told Venezuela's National Assembly that the FARC should not be labeled terrorists, as Colombia and the United States insist. Colombians were outraged and many governments around the world rejected such a notion. Whatever political point Chavez makes with the upcoming hostage release is sure to generate interest, if not approbation.
Political conventional wisdom maintains that Sen. Barack Obama is going to have trouble winning "Latino" votes because of historical tensions between African Americans and Spanish-speaking Americans.
But that conventional wisdom doesn't seem so wise after last weekend's endorsement of Obama's candidacy by Los Angeles-based La Opinión, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the United States. In its editorial endorsement, the paper praised Obama's Democratic opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, as "capable, competent, disciplined and hard-working." But it opined that Obama "is the right leader for the time."
The issue of Obama's ability to attract Latino voters gets thoughtfully scrutinized in this Time magazine piece by Gregory Rodriguez and in this NPR "All Things Considered" commentary by journalist-blogger Daniel Hernandez. La Opinión, by the way, also endorsed Republican John McCain, particularly citing the Arizona senator's support for immigration reform -- a stance that has earned McCain the wrath of many fellow Republicans, some of whom recently expressed their displeasure in these posts to La Plaza.
Even Carnaval-besotted Brazilians savor this post-Super Bowl prospect: Brazilian model Gisele Bundchen scampering nude through the streets of New York.
The Brazilian press reports that Bundchen, romantically linked to New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, vowed to trot in the buff through the Big Apple if Brady's Patriots fell to the upstart New York Giants -- which they did Sunday. The entire episode is apparently based on a satirical item that ran on a CBS Sports website. No matter. The notion seemed plausible enough in Brazil, especially in Carnaval season.
"If the Patriots lose, I'll run nude through Manhattan,'' Folha quotes Bundchen as saying. The Victoria's Secret model, ex gal-pal of actor Leonardo DiCaprio and surfer Kelly Slater, called Brady "not too shabby ... pretty cute'' in an interview quoted by People magazine. Brazilians eagerly await the fulfillment of her Super Bowl guarantee.
U.S. citizens apparently did their homework in preparation for stricter identification requirements at border crossings from Mexico. Long lines and confusion were expected on the first day of the new rules Thursday, but the flows of pedestrian and vehicular traffic were unchanged, according to federal authorities and media reports.
While U.S. politicians talk about building walls along the border and telling undocumented immigrants to "go home," a mass protest Thursday in downtown Mexico City pointed to one of the main causes of illegal immigration: the erosion of Mexico's rural farm economy in recent decades.
Thousands of Mexican small farmers swept into the capital this week, driving tractors and hauling cows (see video). They were protesting the lifting of trade restrictions on agricultural commodities like corn, rice and oats. The farmers say lifting these restrictions will put them out of work because they won't be able to compete with powerful U.S. agribusinesses, and they're pressuring Mexico's government to renegotiate portions of the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Canada.
As this Times story reported, NAFTA has been at best a mixed blessing for Mexico's workers. "In the treaty's first decade, more than 1 million [Mexicans] have gained jobs manufacturing goods for export to the United States and Canada ," the Times reported.
"But even more, 1.3 million, have been pushed off unprofitable farms by cheap American grain imports. And NAFTA has yet to improve overall wages, reduce the number of people living in poverty or close the gap between the rich and poor."
Since NAFTA went into effect in January 1994, the story continued, "millions of farmers stuck with corn and sank deeper into poverty." Ever since the government redistribution of land following the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20, small farming has had a large symbolic, as well as economic, significance in Mexico, as the protesters expressed Thursday with the chant, "Sin maiz, no hay pais!" -- without corn, there is no country!
The infamous scorer of the "hand of God'' goal that broke the hearts of English soccer fans more than two decades ago has finally said he's sorry. "If I could go back and change history I would,'' Diego Maradona told the British tabloid the Sun. His mea culpa got front-page play.
The retired football genius had never before apologized for the hand-goal that helped Argentina oust the English squad from the 1986 World Cup in Mexico City. (Click here and here to see the goal.) Instead, Maradona always insisted that "the hand of God'' had intervened on Argentina's behalf, a claim that further infuriated the English faithful. Eventual World Cup champ Argentina went on to win the match 2-1, the second score coming on a spectacular (and clean) goal by Maradona, still regarded as a classic. (See that goal here.) Maradona became a despised figure in Britain. Years later, he more or less admitted the infraction.
But there may be calculation afoot in No. 10's drive for redemption. Maradona told the Sun he was contemplating a move to Britain and a potential coaching slot. He bombed as a coach in Argentina. But he remains an idol in his homeland, despite much-publicized problems with drugs, alcohol and obesity.
Argentine fans weren't pleased with their man's apology, reports Clarin.
Chris Kraul
Buenos Aires:
Patrick McDonnell
Caribbean:
Carol Williams
Mexico City:
Hector Tobar
Deborah Bonello
Marla Dickerson
Ken Ellingwood
Reed Johnson
San Diego:
Richard Marosi
Washington:
Nicole Gaouette