The week in Latin America: Don’t cross this union boss
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Here are stories that made top headlines this week in Latin America, and highlights from our coverage of the region by Times reporters and your blogger here at La Plaza:
Poverty grows in Mexico
Mexico’s government and political class struggled to come to terms with new figures that showed poverty is steadily on the rise in Mexico, swelling to nearly half the national population. Of those 52 million Mexicans now identified as poor, more than 11 million live in extreme poverty, the independent findings said. ‘This government like no other has sought to give opportunity to the poor,’ President Felipe Calderon responded.
Boom times in Argentina?
Argentina’s economy, meanwhile, is booming and expected to grow by 8% this year, reports special correspondent Chris Kraul from Buenos Aires. Exports, construction, and auto manufacturing are on a roll. But trouble spots abound, including a rising inflation rate and capital flight of billions of dollars. ‘No one questions that the economy is running well,’ one analyst said, ‘but it’s running on steroids.’
This is Elba Esther’s world
The poor quality of public education in Mexico is considered a key factor in explaining migration to the United Stats and the lure of organized crime for many young Mexicans. For many people, the failure of the schools has a person’s name: Elba Esther Gordillo, the flamboyant chief of Mexico’s behemoth teachers union. A profile of the hugely powerful Gordillo by Times correspondent Tracy Wilkinson -- for which ‘La Maestra’ declined to be interviewed -- lays bare how entrenched power hierarchies in Mexico reinforce crushing class barriers for millions.
A 6,000-year sentence in Guatemala
Four former Guatamalan soldiers were handed a stunning sentence of more than 6,000 years each for involvement in a notorious massacre during Guatemala’s long civil war. Although the maximum time anyone can actually spend behind bars in Guatemala is 50 years, the sentences sent a strong message to the international human rights community on the pursuit of justice for wartime atrocities in the small Central American nation. The 1982 Dos Erres massacre that led to Tuesday’s sentencing involved the systematic rape and brutal beating deaths of 201 civilians. The former soldiers maintain their innocence.