Here in Mexico, we keep our eye on the frequent press-freedom reports that come out, given the high levels of violence against journalists in the country and the culture of impunity that abounds.
Tuesday's release by the Committee to Protect Journalists, sadly, held no surprises.
When Gregory Nava's "El Norte" opened in U.S. theaters 25 years ago, immigration was less of a political hot-button issue than it is today, Reed Johnson reports.
Back then, the mass exodus of refugees from Central American countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala was driven as much by civil war as by economics. California's Proposition 187 in 1994 and the pro-immigration marches of May 2006 still were years away.
But in recent months, until the global economic swoon took center stage, immigration became one of the most pressing and polarizing issues on the national agenda. That gives a renewed potency to Nava's $750,000 independent movie about a Guatemalan brother and sister's harrowing odyssey to the United States -- including a memorably grueling crawl through a rat-infested tunnel -- and their struggles in adapting to their new life in Los Angeles.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Zaide Silvia Gutierrez in a scene from "El Norte." Credit: Cinecom International Films
More affordable computers and an expanding broadband network are two of the factors helping to push Internet use in Latin America, according to a survey conducted by Pyramid Research for Google.
The Miami Herald reports that the recent expansion of Internet users in Latin America has been dramatic.
In 2007, for example, Colombia added 5.4 million Internet users, or about 12% of its population of 45 million -- an 80% increase in the number of Colombia's Internet users that year.
Brazil added 7.4 million Internet users in 2007 (17% growth), Mexico more than 2.2 million (an 11% increase) and Venezuela 1.58 million (38% growth).
Read the full report through the link above.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
World Briefing this morning reports that the remains of 15 people were found in a burned-out bus on a rural road in eastern Guatemala.
It was not clear how the fire started, but firefighters found gasoline containers at the scene and said there was no evidence that any passengers had tried to escape.
Additional reporting by the BBC says that the bodies on the bus were so badly burned, their gender could not initially be established. The victims are thought to be from Nicaragua.
Holdups of buses by criminal gangs are common in Guatemala, a transit point for traffickers moving South American cocaine northward.
Click here for more on Nicaragua and here for more about Guatemala.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
John Kiriakou, now in the private sector, served as a CIA counter-terrorism official from 1998 to 2004. Today, he writes in Los Angeles Times Opinion about how he thinks Iran is making major diplomatic inroads into Latin America, right under Washington's nose.
It's amazing, really. Iran, after all, is regarded by most of the world as an outlaw country. Sanctions are in place on much of its military-industrial complex, and international loan guarantees are virtually impossible to come by. The Iranian economy is in tatters. Even while $100-plus oil was enriching most producers in the region, Iran's low-tech, outdated industry was barely profiting. In fact, 6% of the country's gasoline is imported.
Nevertheless, over the last year, Iran has worked diligently to expand relations with a host of Latin American countries, most of which have populist leaders who harbor a strong distrust of the United States and are looking for a powerful friend to help them rebuff Washington's influence.
Read the rest of "Iran's Latin America push" here.
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
The intricate tattoos on the faces, chests, arms and legs of members of the notorious Mara Salvatrucha gangs of Los Angeles and Central America are on display this month in downtown Mexico City.
The striking, close-up portraits of male gang members and the tattoos that tell the tales of their lives are part of an exhibition in the Center of Contemporary Mexican Culture (Centro Cultural del México Contemporáneo) by Spanish photographer Isabel Muñoz. Muñoz took the photographs by spending time in the prisons in El Salvador that are now home to many of the gang members.
One half of the exhibition takes an aesthetic approach to its subject, with many of the photos snapped against a white background to bring out the images of spiderwebs, women and gravestones that pattern the skin of Muñoz's subjects. But the beauty really is only skin deep, when we consider what we know about the Mara Salvatrucha gangs.
The Maras are reportedly responsible for a large percentage of homicides, robberies, kidnapping, drugs and arms trafficking across Central America and Southern Mexico. Here in Mexico, rights groups say that undocumented migrants passing through the country to the United States are being increasingly victimized by these criminal networks, with kidnappings on the rise.
The Mara Salvatrucha gangs formed on the streets of Los Angeles but huge swaths of their members have been deported back after serving time in the U.S to countries in Central America. You can read a 1994 report from Tracy Wilkinson on the gangs in El Salvador here.
Deporting them home has merely sent their criminal tendencies south and, far from eradicating the groups, has helped expand them into international networks. Data from the police in El Salvador attributes more than 30 percent of murders committed in that country to these gangs -- that’s more than 850 murders annually, according to information at the Mexico City exhibition.
"There are no exact numbers on how many young people are involved with the Maras in Central America," reads the text on one of the walls at the exhibition. But security agencies in the region. "Interpol, the FBI and the federal police talk of around 70,000 youngsters being enrolled in these groups in Central America, with a large part of them in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
"However, there is evidence that that number has grown in the last few years with the expansion of the phenomenon to other regions and that their mode of operation had become more complex and virulent."
Those photographs don't look so pretty now, right?
--Deborah Bonello
Images: Both of these images are taken from the exhibition "Las Maras" by Spanish photographer Isabel Muñoz currently showing in Mexico City's Centro Cultural del México Contemporáneo. Courtesy of Centro Cultural del México Contemporáneo.
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
As his popularity has surged and his nation's booming economy has lifted thousands from poverty, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has largely refrained from the angry criticism of the United States that can be heard nearly any day from other South American leaders.
Not this time, reports Joshua Partlow for the Washington Post.
Last week, Lula told the U.N. General Assembly that the "boundless greed" of a few should not be shouldered by all, and on Monday, he said emerging economies had done their best to have "good fiscal policy" and "can't be turned into victims of the casino erected by the American economy."
"This crisis belongs to the American bankers, to the European bankers. It doesn't belong to the Brazilian bankers," Lula said Monday. "It's not fair for Latin American, African and Asian countries to pay for the irresponsibility of sectors of the American financial system."
Earlier this week, Chris Kraul reported from Ecuador on why Latin America should worry about the economic crisis in the United States.
Read the rest of the report from the Washington Post here.
-- 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
Guatemala is to send an additional 1,300 soldiers to its border with Mexico in an effort to slow the illicit flow of people, drugs and contraband across the frontier that it shares with its northern neighbor, according to the Associated Press this morning.
The Guatemalan authorities also plan to send more police and immigration personnel to administer the 935-kilometer-long (580-mile) border.
President Alvaro Colom of Guatemala made the announcement Saturday night during a session called "Government With the People," says the report.
Guatemala's border with Mexico is the principal point of passage through which migrants from that country make their way north to the United States.
Times staff writer Héctor Tobar visited the frontier this year and wrote:
Staff and equipment shortages are endemic to every law enforcement and military agency operating in the region, officials say. An overstretched army brigade of about 700 soldiers covers an area the size of Belgium. Guatemala's air force owns just two helicopters and no tactical radar capable of seeing low-flying aircraft.
To read the rest of the AP report on renewed efforts by the Guatemalan authorities to police its border with Mexico, click here.
Click here for more on Mexico, here for more on Guatemala and here for more about immigration.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: A Guatemalan soldier patrols a nature preserve in the Peten, Guatemala, a region said to be crisscrossed with drug traffickers' illegal landing strips. Of one criminal band in the area, an official says, "There's no way to oppose them. The only way you can come in here is with heavy weapons." Credit: Héctor Tobar / Los Angeles Times
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