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The Christian Science Monitor reports: Bolivia has given U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers three months to leave the country, claiming that agents were stirring up political strife in the deeply divided nation.
This fall, Ecuadoreans voted yes to a new constitution that calls for the closure by next year of one of the most important U.S. operations in the war against drugs.
And for the fourth year in a row, Venezuela was singled out by President Bush -- as was Bolivia for the first time -- for having "failed demonstrably" in anti-drug cooperation.
The U.S. has long had a presence in Latin America to stem the northward drug flow; Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the world's largest cocaine producers. The U.S. still boasts strong partnerships with many countries, such as Colombia and Mexico. But in others, particularly those led by leftists who have risen in collective condemnation of Washington, leaders are increasingly severing ties.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
“She said some words to my mother that I’ll never forget: ‘Don’t be scared, but they just said on TV that they’ve found a girl that fits Alejandra’s description. We still don’t know if it’s her. Don’t be frightened but call and ask,’” said Maria Luisa Garcia, who stayed outside to speak to their neighbor while her mother Norma went into their modest house in Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico.
“Suddenly I heard a loud thud,” said Maria Luisa.
“When I ran inside to see what it was, my mother was on the floor crying. I said to her, ‘What is it? What is it?’
“The cell phone was on the floor and she was yelling: ‘Not my daughter! Not my daughter!' ”
Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrade disappeared on Feb. 14, 2001, when she was leaving the maquiladora, or factory, where she worked in Ciudad Juarez, which sits on the United States/Mexico border with Texas.
The 17-year-old mother of two never reached home. Five days later, her body was found on waste ground wrapped in a blanket, displaying signs of physical and sexual abuse, according to Amnesty International. She had been held captive for several days before she was killed.
Lilia Alejandra is one of the 370 women who have disappeared in Mexico's Chihuahua state since 1993. Her story is the main focus of Bajo Juárez, a documentary film that was five years in the making and that opened here in Mexico this weekend.
Read on »
Chris Kraul and Patrick J. Mcdonnell report from São Paulo on the growing popularity of Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. "Buoyed by a robust economy and his ability to work with leaders across the ideological spectrum, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has emerged as the chief power broker and mediator in South America.
"Lula's rise has paralleled the decline of U.S. influence in its 'backyard,' analysts say, a result in part of Washington's plummeting global prestige and the Bush administration's unremitting focus on the Middle East.
"A moderate with an unassailable leftist background, Lula has become the point man for healing regional crises such as the current turmoil in Bolivia and the recent escalation of tensions among Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador."
Click here for more about Brazil.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, second from the right, with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Ecuador's Rafael Correa at the meeting in which they talked about regional integration in Manaus, Brazil. Credit: Antonio Lacerda / European Pressphoto Agency
 A former Orange County congressional candidate whose campaign mailed letters warning immigrants against voting was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on obstruction of justice charges, reports My-Thuan Tran.
Tan Nguyen, right, whose staff sent letters to 14,000 voters in central Orange County with Spanish surnames in October 2006, allegedly misled investigators who were looking into whether the letter violated federal election laws, federal officials said.
Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant, was running to unseat Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) in the November 2006 election. Three weeks before the election, his campaign sent a letter in Spanish that said, "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or if you are an immigrant, a vote in a federal election is a crime that can result in jail imprisonment or you will be deported for voting without the right to do so."
The letter also falsely said that the state had developed a tracking system that would allow new Latino voters' names to be handed over to anti-immigrant groups.
Read the rest of the report on the indictment of a former Orange County congressional candidate here.
Click here for more on immigration.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
After being lectured for 20 years about the superiority of the free market, officials in Latin America see no small irony in the effort to bail out the U.S. banking system, writes Chris Kraul from Ecuador.
Latin America has several reasons to worry about the U.S. economic meltdown. Ecuador, for instance, fears the possible loss of duty-free export markets for its coffee, fish and flowers.
People here are also worried the crisis will cut into the $2 billion in annual remittances sent home by Ecuadoreans living in the U.S., and wonder whether the nation's use of the dollar as the national currency, a move made in 2000 to curb inflation, still makes sense.
But there is an undercurrent of schadenfreude when it comes to America's pain. Commentator Boaventura de Sousa Santos scolded the United States for its "ironhanded evangelizing" that free markets, privatization and deregulation were innately more virtuous than "corrupt and efficient" state-run economies.
"Millions were thrown into unemployment, lost their land and labor rights and had to emigrate," the Portuguese-born Santos wrote in an article widely distributed over the Internet.
Read more about how the United States woes are also Latin America's problems.
Click here for more on business.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Stock traders negotiate at the Mercantile & Futures Exchange in Sao Paulo, Brazil, last week. Credit: Mauricio Lima / AFP / Getty Images
Remember how we reported earlier this year from Mexico on ALAS, a new charity initiative by Colombian superstar Shakira to aid Latin America's millions of poor, malnourished and undereducated children?
Well, she's at it again, this time in New York and accompanied by Spanish singer Alejandro Sanz.
But her companions weren't just other Spanish-speaking pop stars but rather the presidents of Mexico, Argentina, El Salvador, Panama and Paraguay. The singers asked the presidents to adopt an agreement on combating child poverty during the upcoming Iberoamerican Summit in late October. ''If we win your personal commitment today, we will have opened the future of Latin America,'' said Sanz, a Spaniard.
''I promised Shakira that in the next summit, which is in El Salvador, we will work on the topic,'' Salvadoran President Tony Saca told a crowd of 1,000 at Columbia University in New York, where the presidents are attending the United Nations General Assembly.
The five leaders spoke of child poverty in their countries and expressed interest in the project -- as well as admiration for the artists' work through ALAS.
Click here to read the full report from the Associated Press on yesterday's meeting in New York.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Image: A screen shot taken from a video earlier this year in Mexico, where Shakira hosted a throng of Spanish-speaking pop stars and millionaires from both sides of the border to promote the new initiative ALAS.
Luis Martínez went from being a successful Dallas businessman to a struggling alfalfa farmer in rural central Mexico because of a North Texas crackdown on illegal immigrants, reports the Dallas Morning News this morning.
Now, that crackdown is squeezing towns across Mexico as immigrant unemployment grows in the U.S. and money sent home declines at a record rate. "A growing number of deportations, along with rising unemployment, are forcing Mexicans to further tighten their belts as remittances sent home dropped by nearly 7 percent in July compared with a year earlier. That's the biggest one-month fall on record as measured by Mexico's central bank."
Read here on a report about Mexico's financial woes at the end of July.
To read more about Luis Martínez and the problems facing Mexicans at home and north of the border in the Dallas Morning News, click here.
Click here for more on immigration and here for more on Mexico.
-- Deborah Bonello
Although the overall U.S. abortion rate is at its lowest level since 1974, the drop has been far more dramatic for whites than for African Americans, who in 2004 had abortions at five times the rate of white women, according to a report released Monday.
The abortion rate for Latinas was about three times that of whites, reports Mary Engel.
The Guttmacher Institute, a New York research group that supports abortion rights but whose statistics are generally respected by anti-abortion groups, analyzed 30 years of data since the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
The analysis found that the differences partly reflected varying pregnancy and childbearing patterns.
-- Deborah Bonello
Acai (pronounced ah-sigh-EE), is the unassuming fruit of a jungle palm that has gone from Amazonian staple to global wonder-berry: a much-hyped ingredient in smoothies, sorbets, nutrition bars and countless trendy treats from L.A. to London to Tokyo, reports Patrick J. McDonnell from Belem, Brazil.
Acai's cachet derives not only from the berry's antioxidant traits and supposed Viagra-like powers of vitality, but also from its green pedigree: It has been acclaimed as a renewable resource that provides a sustainable livelihood for tens of thousands of subsistence harvesters without damaging the expanses of the Amazon. Because of acai, the jungle is more valuable standing than felled.
Click here for more on Brazil.
"And then I heard a thump. There was a patrol car parked in the street blocking the cars -- a transport patrol -- and I heard something hit the patrol car. I turned round to see and something rolled ... when it stopped I realized that it was a grenade."
Rafael Bucio, a 30-year-old car-parking attendant, was out with his wife and two small children in Morelia, Mexico, on Monday night enjoying Independence Day celebrations when two grenades went off.
Bucio's wife, Gloria Alvarez, 32, was holding their 3-month old son Uriel in her arms when the explosion happened. She died from her injuries in a public hospital. The baby somehow escaped unharmed.
Watch Bucio tell his story of that night in the video below. Ken Ellingwood reports that three arrests were made in connection with the two bombs that went off in Morelia on Monday night, killing seven people and injuring more than a hundred. But federal authorities now say they have determined the arrestees were not involved.
Unrest in Bolivia continues, and the death toll in last week's violence in a remote northern province rose to more than two dozen, Bolivia's government said Sunday as it held frantic talks with opponents to avert further bloodshed.
Sporadic clashes were reported Sunday on roads outside the city of Santa Cruz, center of opposition to President Evo Morales. Many Bolivians expressed fears that a tense situation could spin out of control if a deal was not reached, reports Patrick J. McDonnell from Santa Cruz.
Read on »
Chile has called for an emergency meeting of South American leaders after continued clashes in Bolivia that have left more than nine people dead and a dozen injured. This Associated Press report says that President Hugo Chavez, a staunch supporter of Bolivia's President Evo Morales, has already confirmed his attendance at the meeting, expected to take place on Monday.
Meanwhile, Patrick J. McDonnell filed this dispatch Saturday about the ongoing strife in the South American nation: "Bolivia declared martial law Friday in the isolated northern state of Pando, site of violent clashes a day earlier that left at least nine dead and dozens injured.
"The move was the government's most dramatic action yet against a wave of violence this week in provinces opposed to the leftist leadership of President Evo Morales. The violence had prompted widespread speculation that the government would declare a national state of siege."
Read the rest of his dispatch about the unrest in Bolivia here, and for more about the events leading up to the clashes in Bolivia, click here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that he was expelling the U.S. ambassador in the latest escalation of tensions between Washington and Latin American leftists, Patrick J. McDonnell and Chris Kraul report.
The move came a day after Bolivian President Evo Morales, a close Chavez ally, accused the U.S. envoy in his country of fostering divisions and ordered him to leave (see Thursday's La Plaza post).
On Thursday, chaos worsened in Bolivia as clashes between government sympathizers and opponents in a remote province left at least eight people dead and dozens injured. And Washington retaliated for the expulsion of Ambassador Philip S. Goldberg by telling Bolivia's ambassador, Gustavo Guzman, to leave.
In a speech laced with obscenities directed at the United States, Chavez told a cheering crowd that he acted in solidarity with Morales. Earlier, he said his country would come to Morales' aid if "Yankee stooges" tried to oust him.
Chavez and the Bush administration have been bitter rivals for years. Although this latest step signals a further deterioration, it is not clear how the expulsions will affect the region's political and economic stability.
Click here for more on Venezuela and here for more about Bolivia.
Photo: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez talks to supporters outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas. Credit AFP / Getty Images
Salvador Gomez Gochez was 25 when he first came to Los Angeles with $3 in his pocket and painful memories of his Salvadoran homeland torn apart by repression and war, reports Teresa Watanabe.
Working his way up from a parking lot attendant to a manager, he learned English, bought a home, volunteered for a Salvadoran community organization and became a U.S. citizen, grateful to the country he says saved his life.
But Gomez Gochez, now 54, also retained his Salvadoran citizenship. Now, as a dual citizen, he has made the dramatic decision to return to his impoverished hometown in El Salvador and run for mayor after nearly three decades away. His hope: to revive his town's agricultural base with his U.S. contacts and empower the villagers with U.S. practices of participatory democracy.
As international business, travel and communications explode, a growing number of nations are allowing dual citizenship, and more immigrants are claiming it. Some, like Gomez Gochez, aim to use their bilingual and bicultural experiences to infuse their homelands with U.S. values and strengthen bonds between both countries.
But the trend is also stirring some unease.
Read more about Americans with dual citizenship here.
Image: Mario Fuentes poses at outside of Trinity Episcopal Church that hosts his L.A.-based community organization. Fuentes, an immigrant from El Salvador, is a middle-class homeowner, fluent English speaker and labor and community organizer. Credit: Los Angeles Times
Russia has flown two long-range bombers to Venezuela, flexing its military muscle amid a dispute with the United States over the Georgia war, according to The Times' world briefing this morning.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the Tu-160 strategic bombers would help counter U.S. regional influences.
The planes were escorted by fighter jets from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russian Air Force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky told Interfax news agency.
Recent La Plaza posts reported Venezuela is to carry out a joint naval exercise with Russia later this year. This post was about the re-ignition of relations between Russia and its old communist ally Cuba.
Go here for more on Venezuela and here for more about Cuba.
-- Deborah Bonello
 Mexico is urging the United States to release the $400 million of first-year funding that it promised President Felipe Calderon to help him fight the country's powerful drug cartels and organized crime networks.
The money was pledged back in June by the U.S. Congress as part of a controversial bill called the Merida Initiative. But as the Associated Press and local media report, the financial aid has yet to be handed over. According to the Associated Press: Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa says the U.S. Congress is still analyzing supporting documents that were requested of Mexico.
But Espinosa says Mexico needs the aircraft, inspection equipment and other aid as soon as possible.
Espinosa told reporters on Tuesday that "we are insisting that we need the equipment," and "we hope it will come very soon."
The aid package includes equipment and training to help Mexico combat powerful drug cartels operating in the country.
Calderon has unleashed the nation's army against the "narcos" and the last year has seen drug-related violence within the country escalate. The discovery of headless bodies and written warnings from drug cartels operating across the country have become increasingly common.
Unofficial tallies by Mexican news outlets put the death toll from drug violence this year at more than 2,700. By some counts, it has already exceeded the total for 2007, which set a record, reported Ken Ellingwood last month.
Earlier this year, two experts discussed the pros and cons of the Merida Initiative. Critics of the aid package say it focuses on armed forces, which has a history of human rights abuses, and a weak and corrupt legal system.
Read more about the Merida Initiative here.
For full coverage of Mexico's drug wars, go to our Mexico Under Siege page.
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: A forensic expert lifts a human head from the scene where two decapitated heads were found in the city of Ciudad Juarez, in northern Mexico, on June 2. Credit: David Cruz / Associated Press
The bullet-riddled, decomposing body of 14-year-old Fernando Marti was discovered in the trunk of a stolen Chevy in early August. The boy -- the son of the owner of a chain of sports shops in Mexico -- had been kidnapped in June. Despite the fact that his parents reportedly paid a hefty ransom for his safe return, the teenager became another victim of the increasing number of fatal kidnappings sweeping the nation.
Three men -- two of them policeman -- were arrested in August on suspicion of involvement with Fernando's kidnapping. Now more arrests have been made in connection with the boy's case, which shocked and outraged the nation. "Mexico City police said they have detained five suspects in the kidnapping and killing of a 14-year-old boy, a crime that prompted protests across the nation.
"Officials said kidnappers dressed as police and set up a fake checkpoint on a busy street to snare victim Fernando Marti, revealing the complexity and sophistication of Mexico's organized crime gangs.
"City prosecutor Miguel Mancera said the suspected ringleader, Sergio Ortiz, posed as a well-heeled society type to move among the wealthy and collect information on potential victims. Mancera said Ortiz was a former agent of a now-disbanded city detective force," according to Times wire reports this morning.
According to a statement from Mexico City's attorney general, one of those in detention is Marco Antonio Moreno Jiménez, who was one of the three original arrests made in August. The four other people are new suspects in the case.
Mexico is currently in the grip of a crime wave that prompted people of all classes and ages to hit the streets in protest in cities across the country on August 30th demanding action from the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon (see video below). The combination of high levels of kidnapping and increasingly gruesome violence meted out by the country's violent drug cartels has people living in fear.
The U.S. Congress approved a cash injection of $400 million in June -- in a bill called the Merida Initiative -- to help Calderon in his fight against the country's organized crime networks and drug cartels. We're yet to see any results.
You can read more about the kidnap and murder of Fernando Marti here.
This report from Ken Ellingwood details Mexico's kidnapping wave and how it is affecting people of all classes.
Click here for more about Mexico, and here for more about the Merida Initiative.
For our special report on Mexico Under Siege, click here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
A San Diego police officer has been arraigned in federal court on charges of passing information about drug investigations to drug traffickers, reports Tony Perry.
Juan Hurtado Tapia, 38, was arrested Tuesday by agents of the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration and remains in the federal prison in downtown San Diego pending a bail hearing.
While corruption of law enforcement by drug gangs is common in Tijuana, Tapia's arrest represents a rare allegation of corruption against a San Diego officer. Tapia has been a member of the San Diego Police Department for seven years and was most recently a patrol officer assigned to the area that includes the border.
Wiretaps revealed that Tapia was using his authority as a police officer to conduct background checks on drug traffickers and drug investigations and then passing the information to people involved in drug crimes along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the U.S. attorney's office.
Tapia was charged Wednesday with obstructing an official proceeding, computer fraud and making a false statement to law enforcement officials. He was immediately suspended without pay from the San Diego department.
For more on the drug trade across Latin American, click here.
Go here for more on Mexico and here for more on our special report on Mexico's drug war, Mexico Under Siege.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: The new United States-Mexico border fence, seen through the old border fence from Tijuana. Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.
The drug violence that continues to sweep across Mexico isn't only damaging citizen confidence in the country's government and public security. It also is taking a toll on Mexico's economy, according to Treasury Secretary Agustin Carstens.
The Mexican government estimates that the violence has slowed economic growth by more than 1%.
Increased safety concerns have meant that companies and businesses spend 5% to 10% more on security services. This has hurt domestic competition and sales, according to Carstens, as well as having a negative affect on national development generally.
Last week was another bloody one for Mexico -- on Thursday, 12 headless bodies turned up in the normally quiet southern state of the Yucatan. Five bodies -- four of them decapitated -- were found earlier in the week in Tijuana. All the deaths are thought to have been drug-war related.
The ongoing drug wars and rising levels of crime and kidnappings in Mexico prompted thousands across the country to march over the weekend, expressing their anger and demanding action.
Carstens also announced that the security budget for 2009 will increase substantially, speaking to the newspaper Reforma.
Click here for more on the drug trade across Latin America.
For our special report on Mexico's drug problems, go to our Mexico Under Siege page.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Mexican authorities have arrested eight men after discovering a sophisticated tunnel, believed to be designed to ferry drugs, that nearly reached into U.S. territory, writes the L.A. Times' Richard Marosi.
Baja California state preventive police said Tuesday that they were acting on a tip when they raided a Mexicali home Monday afternoon and found some of the suspects hard at work in the passage, which was longer than a football field.
The tunnel's destination appeared to be a residential neighborhood across the border in Calexico. The tunnel appeared to be well financed and expertly constructed.
It had a rail-and-cart system, ventilation, lighting and an electric lift to transport items up and down the shaft, authorities said.
"What they had constructed was very sophisticated," said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose agents inspected the tunnel.
Read more about the tunnel under the U.S border fence here.
For more on drugs across Latin America, click here, and for our special report on Mexico Under Siege, click here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: The border wall between Tijuana and San Diego
Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.
Ken Ellingwood reports from Mexico City on the increasing numbers of kidnappings gripping the country - from their variety to their victims. Kidnappers target middle and working-class families as well as rich business people and some, he reports, have been kidnapped for ransoms as low as US $1,000 or US $2,000.
The national concern over the current kidnap rates in Mexico prompted marches across the country over the weekend. In Mexico City, the protest on Avenue Reforma Saturday saw thousands of upper and middle-class people as well as working class Mexicans take to the streets.
The faces of the dead were all around and friends and families carried placards of loved ones who have been kidnapped over the years. Click here for our video report on the march.
Read more about Mexico's kidnapping problems here and click here for more on Mexico in general.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: A protester holds a picture of a girl called Monica Alejandrina, who was kidnapped in 2004, during Saturday's march in Mexico. Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times.
Facing wide public indignation over Mexico's crime epidemic, President Felipe Calderon on Thursday proposed new steps to fight kidnapping and other violent offenses, writes Ken Ellingwood of the Los Angeles Times from Mexico City.
He called for anti-abduction squads, special high-security prisons with separate areas for kidnappers, closer tracking of cellphones and more aid for local authorities to combat what he described as the "cancer of criminality" that has developed in Mexico.
Calderon summoned governors and police officials from across Mexico to chart a way out of a crisis that has dominated the news and put the nation's leaders on the defensive.
The crime issue has dominated the Mexican agenda since the killing this month of a 14-year-old kidnapping victim, Fernando Marti. The kidnapping, which appeared to involve at least two Mexico City police officers, tapped deep resentment over impunity and corruption.
Read the rest of Ellingwood's report on anti-crime measures in Mexico here.
Click here for more on the drug trade.
For our special report on Mexico's drug violence problems, go to our Mexico Under Siege page.
For more on Mexico in general, click here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
It's been six weeks since Tomas Sanchez Orzuna -- who was allegedly in the United States illegally -- died in Border Patrol custody, but the questions of why and how remain unanswered, writes H.G Reza: Authorities say Sanchez fought with agents as they tried to arrest him July 8 in downtown San Clemente. He died within half an hour of being taken to the Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 in San Diego County.
His sister, Rosario Sanchez Orzuna, said she has been unable to get any information about the incident from U.S. government officials, who have not returned her telephone calls. She said that when she saw her brother's body, there were bruises on his face.
Read the rest of Reza's report on Tomas Sanchez Orzuna here.
For more on immigration, click here.
Find more on Mexico here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Part of the border fence between San Diego and Tijuana is punctuated with white crosses in memory of those who have died trying to enter the United States illegally.
Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times
The number of civilians killed by Colombian armed forces has soared, activist groups allege, with many of the abuses committed by army units that had been vetted by the State Department. There were 329 so-called extra-judicial killings by the Colombian military and police last year, a coalition of Colombian rights groups asserts in a report, a 48% increase from the 223 reported in 2006, reports the L.A. Times' Chris Kraul.
According to this report, the continuing allegations against the Colombian military have led Congress to criticize U.S. military aid under Plan Colombia and have been an obstacle to approval of a binational free trade agreement.
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on State Department and foreign operations and author of the 1996 law that makes foreign military aid conditional on human rights compliance, expressed dismay.
"While the secretary of State certifies sufficient progress on human rights in Colombia, multiple sources report that unlawful killings by the Colombian army are continuing despite efforts by the minister of defense to stop it," he said in an e-mailed statement. "After providing billions of dollars in training and equipment to the Colombian army, we should expect better, including vigorous investigations and prosecutions of these crimes."
The United States Congress just approved a similar injection of funding into Mexico under a bill called the Merida Initiative, under which $400 million will go toward helping President Felipe Calderon fight powerful drug cartels and organized crime networks. You can read Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont defending that bill here.
Read the whole dispatch on unlawful killings by the Colombian military here.
For more on Colombia, click here.
And click here for more on the Merida Initiative.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Forensic anthropologist Maira Martinez works in a shallow grave near Santa Marta, Colombia. Martinez is a member of a dozen exhumation teams that have fanned out across Colombia to dig up remains of thousands of victims of a decades-long conflict. Credit: Chris Kraul / Los Angeles Times
The governor of violence-torn Chihuahua state on Monday urged President Felipe Calderon to revamp his anti-crime strategy after a weekend shooting there killed 13 people, including a baby, reports the L.A. Times' Ken Ellingwood.
Gunmen opened fire Saturday on a family gathering in the northern border state, which has become Mexico's most violent spot amid bloody feuding between drug gangs and a government crackdown on them.
Following the attack, Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza called on federal authorities to improve intelligence gathering, clean up corrupt police forces and review a government offensive that has deployed more than 3,000 troops and federal agents in Chihuahua.
Read on »
The BBC is reporting this morning that the number of new homes and apartments being built in the United States sank to a 17-year low during July, spelling trouble for Latin American migrants living and working in the United States for whom the construction industry is a major source of employment. Economists have been studying forward-looking information for signs that the U.S. housing slump was past its worst.
However, the Commerce Department data made for grim reading, with the number of construction permits issued - seen as a reliable sign of future activity - down 17.7% on an annual basis.
And the number of new homes being constructed last month was down by 39.2% compared with July 2007.
As the Pew Hispanic Center's labor report showed in June, the unemployment rate for Hispanics in the U.S. rose to 6.5% in the first quarter of 2008 mainly due to the slump in the construction industry.
For more on immigration, click here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Rocky Delgadillo, the Los Angeles city attorney, oversees the enforcement of 57 gang injunctions, including ones against the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. In Opinion today, he talks about how combating Los Angeles gangs is not a local challenge, but an international one. "The two fastest-growing and most powerful gangs in the world are homegrown products of Los Angeles. The Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, and the 18th Street gang, known in Central America as Mara 18, sprang up in Pico-Union and the densely populated neighborhoods around MacArthur Park. But unlike many local street gangs, these two were entrepreneurial: They recruited Central American immigrants across the city and then expanded farther -- throughout Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Conservative estimates put MS-13's ranks at 20,000 and 18th Street's at 30,000 worldwide.
"Stopping street gangs is no longer a local matter -- a point driven home to me during a symposium in El Salvador. During the conference, two points of consensus emerged. First, MS-13 and 18th Street have become an international concern -- indeed, even Interpol is now involved in the fight. Second, past strategies to handle these gangs have failed."
Read the full Opinion piece here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Gunshot victims of drug violence in Mexico are being treated in the United States at tax payers' expense, according to this report from the L.A. Times' Miguel Bustillo.
Using the wounding of deputy police chief Lorenzo de la Torre Torres as an example, Bustillo writes: "The only hospital within a 280-mile radius to offer state-of-the-art trauma care, Thomason has become an unwilling treatment center of choice for law enforcement officials and others in the vicinity wounded in Mexico's drug turf battles. The violence has killed more than 2,000 people this year, and more than double that number in the 20 months since President Felipe Calderon began deploying 40,000 troops across the country to crack down on narcotics trafficking."
Meanwhile, in Mexico City, Ken Ellingwood reports that anti-crime activists in Mexico say they have audio proof that the former attorney general of coastal Tabasco state was in league with drug traffickers while in office.
For more on our Mexico Under Siege series, click here.
Click here for more on the drug trade and here for Mexico.
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
In a rare show of unity between the 10 states on the Mexico-United States border, all of them yesterday signed the Tire Initiative Letter of Understanding, which includes
"tire pile prevention measures" and tries to eliminate the public
health risks, according to Greenspace, the Los Angeles Times environmental news blog. "Often disease-carrying pests such as rodents inhabit these tire
piles. After a rainfall, mosquitoes may breed in the stagnant water
collected inside tires and carry deadly diseases such as encephalitis,
West Nile virus, dengue fever and malaria.
"Scrap-tire fires are difficult to extinguish and can burn for weeks
or months releasing thick, black smoke that can contaminate the soil
with oily residue, generate significant liquid waste and contaminate
ground and surface water.
"So far 4 million scrap tires have been removed from the U.S.-Mexico
border to decrease the risk of fires and disease that they pose to
border residents, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."
Click here to read the full post on Greenspace.
The growing Latino population in the United States and attempts by both John McCain and Barack Obama to reach them promises big-bucks for Spanish-language media, according to Bloomberg News this morning. Spanish-language broadcasters in the U.S. project their political advertising sales will soar this year as the presidential candidates woo Latinos in states that have a chance to tip the election.
"We are significant players in the battleground states," said Philip Wilkinson, chief operating officer of Entravision Communications Corp., owner of 51 Spanish-language television stations. "Presidential campaign advertising should come at the end of August, and then I think it's going to come fast and furious."
Latinos make up 12% to 37% of the electorate in Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada, four of the six states that President Bush carried by five points or less in 2004, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington research group.
A poll last month showed that 66% of registered Latinos support Obama, and both he and John McCain have created Spanish-language TV spots to woo voters.
Photo: L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa gives a "fist bump" to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama during the national convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) at the Washington, D.C., Hilton on July 8. Credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Drug and gang-related violence continued in Mexico this week. In the northern border town of Juarez, gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center on Wednesday night.
They shot and killed eight patients and injured six others, the BBC reports this morning. The hooded gunmen, all wearing body armor, burst into the drug-and-alcohol rehabilitation center, dragged the patients to the patio and shot them.
About 40 people have been killed in drug cartel-related violence in the city this week.
In July, Tracy Wilkinson reported from Juarez on how drug-related killings have taken thousands of lives. Ciudad Juarez has become a singular symbol of Mexico's drug war, a concentration of everything that can go wrong. About 3,000 troops of the Mexican army arrived here after President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out offensive against drug traffickers, yet the killings have soared.
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 A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles (pictured) should stand trial for an alleged immigration violation in the United States, writes Carol J. Williams.
The decision is likely to inflame Cuba and Venezuela, which want to prosecute him for terrorism in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was expected to take the pressure off the Bush administration to respond to Venezuela's demands that Posada, who lives in Miami, be extradited to face trial for the bombing. The plane, en route from Venezuela to Havana, exploded in flight shortly after making a stop in Barbados. All 73 people aboard were killed.
At the time, Posada lived in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, and held joint Cuban and Venezuelan citizenship. Venezuela was a U.S. ally.
Click here to read more about Luis Posada Carriles.
For more on Cuba, click here.
Anti-crime activists in Mexico say they have audio proof that the former attorney general of coastal Tabasco state was in league with drug traffickers while in office.
An audio recording aired this week purportedly contains a telephone conversation between the former state prosecutor, Gustavo Rosario Torres, and a deputy as they discussed an expected payment from an apparent cocaine deal.
The recording was played during a news conference by activist Jose Antonio Ortega Sanchez, who heads a Mexico City-based group called the Citizens Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice. It is one of two audio recordings that Ortega’s group and a second organization say are evidence of corruption by Rosario, who served as Tabasco’s prosecutor before he resigned last month.
One of the recordings purportedly captures a conversation between Rosario and the deputy state attorney general, Alex Alvarez, in which the two men discuss an awaited delivery of cash.
The scratchy-sounding audio files have been posted, with added transcription in the original Spanish, on the website of a Mexican online magazine called Reporte Indigo.
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 The BBC reports:
White people of European descent will no longer make up a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042 -- eight years sooner than previous estimates.
The big change is among Hispanics and Asians whose share of the population is set to double to 30% and 9%.
The population is also aging: by 2050 one in five residents will be aged 65 or over, up from one in nine today.
The U.S. Census Bureau's latest projections are based on birth, death and current immigration rates.
The projections show that the US population is expected to rise from 305 million people to 439 million by 2050, but it will be a population that looks quite different both in age, race and ethnicity.
According to the census bureau's statistics, people who regard themselves as Hispanic, African-American, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will become the majority by 2042.
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Ernesto Pichardo, co-founder of the first incorporated Santeria church in the United States, has filed a lawsuit stemming from a police raid during a worship ritual in 2007.
Pichardo, 53, is a small man with a weather-worn face and a comb-over, a chain smoker and a trash-talker, argumentative, opinionated and occasionally profane, writes Richard Fausset.
He is a proud member of the Cuban American bourgeoisie and a Republican. Yet his streetwise English carries a hint of Abbie Hoffman, with sentences that often end with a sardonic "man." "Jesus Suarez, a Santeria priest, had slit the throat of one goat that June afternoon. He had three more goats, two sheep and 44 chickens to go."
"But before he could finish the ritual sacrifice, Coral Gables police swarmed the house where he and some 20 other followers of the Afro-Cuban religion had gathered to worship."
"...Soon thereafter, word of the raid made its way to the great defender of Santeria in the United States. That would be Ernesto Pichardo -- high priest, physical extension of the fire spirit Shango and co-founder of the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, the first incorporated Santeria church in the nation."
Read more on Pichardo and Santeria here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: “It’s almost offensive, the mentality of the Coral Gables mayor,” Ernesto Pichardo says. “To him, it seems that it’s OK to practice these backwards African things in some other city, just not [his].” Credit: David Adame / For The Times
In Mexico's drug war, Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito racked up crime-fighting credentials worthy of the Dark Knight, making record seizures of drugs and weapons and forcing out top Baja California law enforcement officials he accused of corruption and of having links to organized crime, writes the L.A. Times' Richard Marosi. "But in a surprise move Thursday, the general was relieved of his command, abruptly ending his controversial 20-month stint as the leader of President Felipe Calderon's army-led battle against organized crime in the northern states of Baja California and Sonora."
"Aponte won broad public support for aggressive tactics against drug gangs whose turf wars have left hundreds dead here, but he generated controversy by denouncing scores of police officers, prosecutors and officials by name in blistering letters published in newspapers across the state."
Meanwhile, Richard A. Serrano reports on how high-powered automatic weapons and ammunition are flowing virtually unchecked from U.S. border states into Mexico, fueling a war among drug traffickers, the army and police that has left thousands dead. "The munitions are hidden under trucks and stashed in the trunks of cars, or concealed under the clothing of people who brazenly walk across the international bridges. They are showing up in seizures and in the aftermath of shootouts between the cartels and police in Mexico."
"More than 90% of guns seized at the border or after raids and shootings in Mexico have been traced to the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Last year, 2,455 weapons traces requested by Mexico showed that guns had been purchased in the United States, according to the ATF. Texas, Arizona and California accounted for 1,805 of those traced weapons."
Click here to read more on Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito and here for more U.S arms heading south of the border into Mexico.
For more on the drug trade in general, click here.
Photo: General Sergio Aponte Polito, (center) commander of the military forces of Baja California and Baja California Governor José Guadalupe Osuna Millán (in suit left to Aponte) pass in reviue of the assembled federal troops, police and military in Tijuana, Mexico's City Hall April 29, 2008. Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Amid broad outrage over the slaying of a 14-year-old kidnapping victim, Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday urged Congress to toughen punishments for abductors to include life in prison, reports the L.A. Times' Ken Ellingwood.
The proposal would make kidnapping in some cases subject to the harshest criminal sentence in Mexico, which formally abolished its long-dormant death penalty three years ago. Kidnappers currently face as many as 60 years in prison, or 70 years when they kill the victim. Murderers face a maximum of 60 years.
Calderon, a conservative who has made the fight against organized crime a centerpiece of his administration, proposed toughening sentences for kidnappers more than a year ago. The measure has gone nowhere.
Emilio Gamboa, a congressional leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, the former ruling party, called this week for reinstating the death sentence in kidnapping cases. A poll published Thursday in the Reforma newspaper found that 71% of respondents in liberal Mexico City favored executing kidnappers; 72% said they did not trust the police.
The development coincided with the execution of Jose Medellin in Texas on Tuesday for the rape and murder of two teenage girls in 1993. As we reported Thursday, the execution brought little public outrage in Mexico. In fact, according to this Associated Press report in the Dallas Morning News, some Mexicans felt if their own government applied the same fate for its hard criminals, it would bring down levels of violent crime in the country. "There is no reason for outrage. The man was a rapist," said lawyer Gustavo Sanchez, 40, as he g
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