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Latin America aid spike

By Chris Kraul
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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.

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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.)

-- Chris Kraul in Bogota

La Plaza
Chris Kraul

Chris Kraul covered South America for the Los Angeles Times from his base in Bogota, Colombia. He joined the paper in 1987 and was business editor of the San Diego edition until it closed in 1992. He then began covering the border and Mexican economies until his assignment to The Times’ Mexico City bureau in 2001. He reopened the paper’s Bogota bureau in 2006. He has also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a graduate of the University of South Florida and also has been a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union-Tribune and the San Diego Business Journal.

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