Latin America Digest: Today's one-line news briefs

Salvador, Brazil — Brazil’s President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday joined visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in calling on Israel to stop building new settlements in areas claimed by Palestinians.

Bogota, Colombia — Six people, including two children, were killed when suspected Colombian FARC guerrillas stopped and set fire to a bus traveling in the south of the country, a state governor said.

Guatemala City — Guatemalan officials announced the resumption of international adoptions after a nearly two-year suspension prompted by the discovery that some babies were being sold.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras — A Honduran television station that backs deposed President Manuel Zelaya accused the de facto government of interfering with its broadcast signal, replacing news programs with cowboy movies.

Mexico City — Rising oil prices and increased exports are slowly dragging Mexico’s economy out of a severe recession, but the nation’s financial system still faces fundamental challenges, national leaders and experts said.

-- Times wire reports

Mexico's reaction to economic crisis has been weak, says Nobel winner Stiglitz

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, thinks Mexico's reaction to the global economic crisis has been one of the worst anywhere. 

"Statistics showing growth have been very weak and pessimistic" for Mexico, Stiglitz said. "The combination of a very weak recovery in the United States and a fiscal policy that doesn't stimulate the Mexican economy is worrying." Stiglitz spoke to attendees of an event organized by Grupo Mexicana and Grupo Posadas, two major Mexican companies.

El Universal newspaper reported that Stiglitz said Mexico's position in the face of this crisis was "unusual."

"In contrast, countries such as Australia, which was the first country in the developed world to emerge from the recession," Stiglitz said, "applied strong measures through a packet of well-defined incentives."

Although Mexico is dependent on the U.S economy, that represents a risk, he warned.

"Many people hope that a recovery in the U.S will be the solution," he said. "But Mexico needs an alternative."

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

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.”

Literacy brings immigrants closer to full participation in life

Native Spanish speakers break the code of the written word with help from an L.A. adult-education center, writes Hector Tobar.

In her one-bedroom apartment in the Pico-Union district, garment worker Julia Rodriguez lives surrounded by young readers.

Her oldest child, 10-year-old Santos, is giving Harry Potter a try. Nine-year-old Wendy devours girl-detective stories. Even her youngest, 6-year-old Marlyn, zips through early reader books.

"Tim spins," Marlyn reads from her book. "Tim spins his hat."

Julia listens to her daughter and beams. Until recently, the 34-year-old mother of three couldn't read the simplest sentence in any language. Having been illiterate most of her life, she feels deep, bittersweet emotions watching her children master reading.

Earlier this year, in the classrooms of the nonprofit Centro Latino for Literacy, Julia finally started learning to read and write herself.

Read the rest of Tobar's column here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Image: Julia Rodriguez, 34, says her children, Santos, left, Marlyn and Wendy, inspired her to learn to read. "Before, there was no sun for me. Now I feel" more awake, Julia says. She recently bought her first book. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

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

Three lives and a literate city's shame

Julia Rodriguez, Juan Contreras and Mercedes Meza couldn't read or write. For years they got by with the help of friends and good memories for the sorts of sights that differentiated streets, reports Hector Tobar.

There is a neighborhood in L.A. where you can hear people converse in the language spoken by the Aztec emperors Montezuma and Cuauhtémoc.

Julia Rodriguez lives there -- in Pico-Union, just west of downtown. She spoke only Nahuatl when she arrived in Los Angeles 15 years ago.

In L.A., she quickly taught herself to speak Spanish. But when she was growing up in a small village in Mexico's Guerrero state, she never went to school. So she'd never been taught to read in any language.

"They never sent me," she told me. "That's how it is in the ranchos. People say, 'What's the use?' But the truth is, it really is important."

In Los Angeles, Julia found a job as a garment worker and eventually realized that bettering her future depended on learning to read and write. So did Juan Contreras, a cook at a downtown restaurant, who didn't go to school as a child because his peasant father "rented" him out as a farmhand starting when he was 10 years old.

Read on here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Majority of Mexicans think life would be better in the U.S., survey finds

Most Mexicans think their lives would be better in the United States, and one in three said they'd move to the U.S. if they could, according to the latest findings on Mexican attitudes from the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

Half of those who said they'd migrate north of the border said they would do so without permission, although recent data on immigration suggests that the flow of Mexicans north is slowing.

President Felipe Calderon's military-led campaign against the country's drug lords and organized-crime networks is "overwhelmingly endorsed" by the majority of Mexicans, although large majorities describe crime (81%) and illegal drugs (73%) as very big problems, according to the study.

Calderon's offensive against organized crime is now in its third year amid rising drug-related violence, but the Pew project reports that most Mexicans believe those anti-crime efforts are effective.

A hefty majority, 66%, say the army is making progress against the traffickers, while only 15% think it is losing ground. Calderon also is well regarded.

The popularity of the tough stance against drug gangs seems to be bolstering support for Calderon. Roughly two-thirds (68%) have a favorable opinion of the president, while only 29% express an unfavorable view.

You can read the report in its entirety on the project's website or download it.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 1,000 adults in Mexico between May 26 and June 2, 2009, for the Pew report.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Mexico City's central plaza, or Zocalo. Credit: Deborah Bonello / For The Times

Cartoonists take on illegal immigration

"The now-infamous Capitol shout-out from South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson was blogged, scribed, tubed and 'tooned to death, but precious little commentary actually dealt with illegal immigration, the spark that lit his short fuse. Steve Sack took a shot at needling irrational nationalists taking needless shots. John Branch signed off on a huge multibillion-dollar border checkpoint. And Matt Bors used borderline taste in his verbose abortion piece.(Guess that Bors dude is sick and un-American.)"

-- Joel Pett

Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. His cartoons also appear in USA Today.

See more here.

Cartoon: Steve Sack / Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho seeks protection from new threats

Journalist Lydia Cacho, who exposed a child pornography network in Cancun, Mexico, that involved business leaders, says she received new death threats last week, reports the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas blog.

"The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has granted cautionary protective measures for the journalist, her family, and staff of the Center for Attention to Women (CIAM, in Spanish) of Cancún," the AFP news agency reports.

"The IACHR also asked the Mexican government to take action to protect Cacho," EFE adds.

"Cacho has received several death threats on her blog and recently noted that several unknown people took photos of her home," says the magazine Proceso.

Cacho published a book in 2006 that alleged the existence of a child sex ring in the southern Mexican city of Cancun, after which she was illegally arrested and harassed by some of the powerful men she implicated in "Los Demonios del Eden" (see more details of the case here).

She shot into the spotlight when she challenged her aggressors by going public and filing a legal action against them -- although it was ultimately unsuccessful.

Since then, Cacho has become something of a symbol for the issues of freedom of expression in Mexico and the repression of journalists. Her last book, "Memories of a Disgrace (Memorias de una Infamia)," detailed the events that unfolded after the publication of "Los Demonios del Eden."

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City