Suspected Colombian paramilitary leader Magaly Moreno captured in Venezuela

A woman described by Venezuelan authorities as an important leader of a Colombian paramilitary group has been captured, the justice minister said today.

Interpol had called for the arrest of Magaly Janeth Moreno Vega, who was wanted by Colombian officials on homicide charges, said Venezuelan Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami. He referred to the 39-year-old suspect as a paramilitary chief for the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.

Authorities said she was captured Thursday in Maracaibo, Venezuela. El Aissami said Moreno, nicknamed "The Pearl," deals with "extremely important information" for the paramilitary group.

El Aissami, who spoke on state television, accused Colombian President Alvaro Uribe of "institutional and moral decay" for his government's ties to paramilitary groups that "attack our people and threaten peace and order." 

Moreno previously worked as an investigator for Colombian prosecutors and was detained with her boss several years ago on accusations of aiding militias, according to news reports. Moreno was convicted on conspiracy charges tied to various crimes after she acknowledged working for paramilitary boss Jorge Ivan Laverde, who has said he participated in the killings of more than 2,000 people, the Associated Press reported.

Officials have said Moreno fled when prison officials granted her a temporary parole.

-- Efrain Hernandez Jr.

Police in Peru say gang members killed people to drain their fat for cosmetics

Gang members in Peru face charges of killing people and draining their fat for use in cosmetics, police said today.

Police showed journalists two bottles of fat that authorities said were recovered from two suspects and a photograph of a rotting head believed to be of a male victim. The suspects allegedly told police the fat was worth $60,000 per gallon.

Police Col. Jorge Mejia said three suspects who confessed to five killings told authorities the fat was sold in Lima, the capital. One suspect said the gang severed body parts and then suspended the torsos, collecting  fat in tubs placed underneath, Mejia said.

Police named the group the “Pishtacos” after a Peruvian myth dating to pre-Columbian times of men who killed to extract human fat, quartering their victims with machetes, the Associated Press reported. The gang, which has several suspected members who are not yet in custody, allegedly operated in the Huanuco province, police said.

Several medical experts said fat has cosmetic uses, but the idea of an international black market for human fat was hard to believe.

 “I can’t see why there would be a black market for fat,” said Dr. Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia medical school, according to AP. “It doesn’t make any sense at all because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing and ready to donate that I don’t see why there would ever be a black market for fat, of all tissues.”

-- Efrain Hernandez Jr.

Former guerrilla Cesare Battisti on hunger strike in Brazil

Former leftist guerrilla Cesare Battisti may be ready to die of hunger in a Brazilian prison rather than face multiple murder charges in Italy, his home country.

Battisti, who is wanted in Italy on four murder charges, reportedly went on a hunger strike and gave Brazilian Sen. Jose Nery a letter addressed to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva saying he favors death in Brazil.

“I am ready to die if I have to but never at the hands of my executioners,” Battisti's letter said, according to Reuters.

The 54-year-old Battisti denies responsibility for the deaths, which occurred in the 1970s when he belonged to a group called Armed Proletarians for Communism.

Battisti's judicial fate is in the hands of Brazil's Supreme Court, which is expected to make a decision on whether to extradite him.

Earlier this year Lula granted Battisti political refugee status, but Italy considers him a terrorist. He escaped from an Italian prison in 1981 and lived in France for years, then fled when his extradition was approved in 2006, Reuters reported. He was on the run when he was arrested in Brazil.

-- Efrain Hernandez Jr.

Mexico Decries Forbes' Powerful People

MEXICO CITY — Mexico decried Forbes magazine’s decision to name the country’s most-wanted drug lord to its “World’s Most Powerful People,” calling it an insult to the government’s bloody struggle against drug cartels.

 A spokesman for the Interior Department — which oversees domestic security — described the listing of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman as No. 41 of the 67 most powerful people as “a justification of crime.”

 “(This) is a mockery of the struggle the government is waging against organized crime,” Luis Estrada said. “This not only goes against the efforts of the Mexican government, but the international fight to eliminate mafias and organized crime.”

Preserving El Salvador's historic memory: Organizer explains big L.A. event

As Reed Johnson reports, over the next week, an ambitious multimedia happening at the Los Angeles Theatre Center downtown will try to salvage some of El Salvador's missing past. The project has the umbrella title "Preservación de la Memoria Histórica Salvadoreña" (Salvadoran Preservation of Historic Memory), and you can read the rest of the report here. Below you can see a Spanish-language interview with William Flores, who was one of the main organizers behind the event, in a video from DesdeAquiTV.com, which is an Internet TV channel based in LA.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Central America is most crime-ridden region in world, U.N. report finds

Central America has become the region with the highest levels of nonpolitical crime worldwide, with a murder rate of 33 per 100,000 inhabitants last year, three times the global average, according to a new report from the United Nations that also says crime threatens the region’s development.

The U.N. said:

Some 79,000 people have been murdered in the region over the past six years, but despite these heightened levels of violence, solving the problem of insecurity is possible within the framework of democracy, according to the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) Report on Human Development in Central America 2009-2010.

The full report is available here in Spanish.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Film based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez book prompts protest in Mexico [Updated]

If you look at the culture pages in Mexico’s newspapers these days, there is little question about what’s the talk of the town in literary circles — old men having sex with young girls, writes Andres Oppenheimer.

He's referring to a debate currently raging here in Mexico about whether a planned movie based on Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez's book "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" would glorify the sexual exploitation of children.

As the Huffington Post reports, the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office on Oct. 5.

The complaint does not specifically name Garcia Marquez, but instead "whoever is responsible for acts that could be constituted as the crime of condoning child prostitution."

Coalition Director Teresa Ulloa told the Associated Press that a movie adaptation of the Colombian author's novel would promote pedophilia and be accessible to a wider audience.

Read the full column from Oppenheimer here and go here for more from the Huffington Post.

[Updated at 11:57 a.m.: An earlier version of this post said the Regional Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean had filed a criminal complaint with Mexico's attorney general's office today. It was filed Oct. 5.]

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Dole withdraws lawsuit against Swedish filmmaker

The Associated Press reports that Dole Food Co. is withdrawing a defamation lawsuit against a Swedish filmmaker after complaints in Sweden that it was trying to limit free speech.

Dole had sued filmmaker Fredrik Gertten for showing the documentary "Bananas!" despite a court ruling that the case on which the film was based had been part of a massive extortion plot against the company.

The documentary shows the alleged plight of Nicaraguan workers who say they were made sterile by a pesticide used at Dole banana plantations during the 1970s.

Dole's lawsuit sparked protests in Sweden, where critics said the food company was trying to interfere with freedom of speech.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Joint U.S.-Mexican police patrols among proposed fixes for the border

Mexican and U.S. police patrolling the border together?  

That radical idea is one of the recommendations made by a blue-ribbon panel of scholars, diplomats and other experts that spent most of the year searching for “a new vision” in dealing with cross-border issues as diverse as migration, security and water.  

“It’s time to do something different, even if it is provocative and controversial,” said Andres Rozental, a former deputy foreign minister of Mexico and co-chair of the so-called Binational Task Force on the United States-Mexico Border.

The task force was put together by the Los Angeles-based Pacific Council for International Policy and the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. It presented its findings at a conference in a Mexico City hotel Tuesday night.  

Recommendations included an urgent, comprehensive reform of immigration laws in the U.S.; creation of a binational border-development administration; establishment by Mexico of a federal police force for the border; and the easing of monopolies in Mexico to spur competition and private investment.    

But the point that really got the room buzzing was a recommendation to “cross-deputize” Mexican and U.S. border police for joint operations.  

Rozental and fellow co-chair Robert C. Bonner, former Drug Enforcement Administration chief, were quick to explain that did not mean Mexican police would be enforcing U.S. laws, or vice versa. They would patrol together and share information, Bonner said -- seemingly simple tasks that both sides have traditionally resisted.  

The task force suggested that changes in both nations’ capitals may have opened an opportunity. The Mexican government, it said, has “moved beyond a reflexive preoccupation with sovereignty” that thwarted cooperation on law enforcement, while a new administration in Washington has bluntly acknowledged its shared responsibility for the trafficking of drugs and weapons.  

“Both governments seem ready to replace nationalist finger-pointing with a 21st century approach to border management that benefits both sides,” the group’s report concluded.  

You can read more about the task force and its report here, or in Spanish here.

-- Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City

Tougher rules on policing illegal immigrants

Luz Maria Diaz knew what happened to illegal immigrants at the Wake County jail. But her teenage daughters didn't.

So when the girls were arrested after fighting on their high school campus in September, they freely admitted that they were born in Mexico. Detention officers at the jail checked their immigration status and promptly handed them over to federal authorities.

Now Diana, 16, and her sister, Yolanda, 18, are battling to stay in the country.

"I never thought this could happen ... for a simple fight," their mother said. "I was in shock."

Read more of this report from Anna Gorman here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City.

Photo: Luz Maria Diaz, 35, worries about what will happen to daughters Yolanda, 18, left, and Diana, 16, right. The two were arrested after a fight on their school campus, then processed for possible deportation under a program known as 287(g). The program has drawn criticism after reported civil-rights violations, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has called for an end to it. In July, the Obama administration announced that participating agencies must focus their efforts primarily on serious and violent criminals. Credit: Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times