Mexican newspaper editor decapitated in warning to social media sites

In another blow to freedom of expression in Mexico, the decapitated body of a newspaper editor was found in the border city of Nuevo Laredo on Saturday, along with a message saying that she had been killed because of her use of social media sites to denounce crime. A sign, propped next to her body, gave the username she supposedly used online, and addressed website Nuevo Laredo en Vivo and “social networks,” saying “I’m here because of my reports, and yours … [and] for trusting in the Ministry of Defense and the marines.” It was signed with the letter Z, which stands for the Zetas drug gang, Mexico’s most violent criminal organization.

Nuevo Laredo en Vivo is a local site which includes phone numbers for giving tips to the authorities, and a neighborhood watch-style section about crime, where people can post information such as locations where drugs are sold, and where drug gang lookouts are stationed, and sightings of any suspicious activity, according to Borderland Beat.

The victim has been identified as Maria Elizabeth Macias Castro, editor of newspaper Primera Hora. Her death comes two weeks after the tortured bodies of two young people, a man and a woman, were found hanging from a bridge in the same city. A message hanging next to them said that they had “snitched” via another website, and said “this will happen to all Internet snitches.” It was also signed by the Zetas.

The Zetas appear to be trying to intimidate those who use social media sites to report on organized crime. Sites like Blog del Narco, which was named in the bridge message, have become an increasingly important source of information on organized crime, and some even feature videos put online by the criminal gangs themselves. A Saturday piece in the New York Times, written before the discovery of Macias’ corpse, highlighted the importance of social networking sites like Twitter for exchanging information on the increasingly violent drug conflict, when traditional media sources have often been intimidated or corrupted into silence. The newspaper notes the use of networks like Twitter to share warnings on criminal activity, reporting that, even before police or press had arrived at the scene, Twitter users were telling people to stay away from the location in Veracruz where cartel gunmen dumped 35 dead bodies on Tuesday. Dubbing the trend “the explosion of electronic crime-sharing,” the NYT contrasts this to the role of social networks in the Arab Spring, or in Chinese protests:

In those countries, social networks have been used to route around identifiable sources of repression and to unify groups dispersed over large areas. In Mexico, Twitter, Facebook and other tools are instead deployed for local survival.

The issue has received even more attention following the case, now dropped, against two Twitter users who were facing long jail terms on terrorism charges after spreading false reports about cartel activity on the site, which authorities said had caused panic that contributed to car accidents.

Although Macias’ murder appears to be linked to her use of online forums, her job as a journalist likely played a part in sealing her fate. The killing follows the murder of two female journalists in Mexico City less than a month previously, and the killing of a radio journalist in Sinaloa state days before that. All three deaths have been linked to organized crime. In Veracruz, Daniel Flores Guillén, a journalist with a local newspaper, has been missing since September 22.

News briefs

• Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding announced that he would step down in November, after four years in power. He will be succeeded by whoever his Labour Party selects as leader in its conference that month, prior to a general election in 2012. Golding’s reputation was tarnished by his government’s unwillingness to arrests crime baron “Dudus” Coke, whose extradition was requested by the U.S. in August 2009. InSight Crime sets out the details of Golding’s involvement with Coke, pointing out that a vast majority of the Jamaican public think Golding lied in an enquiry over the case, according to polls. Meanwhile the Jamaican Gleaner argued that the prime minister’s departure was a master stroke for the Labour Party, allowing it to rebuild its reputation ahead of next year’s election.

• In Bolivia, there were violent clashes as police broke up protests by indigenous groups who oppose the building of a road in a protected rainforest area. AFP news agency reports that tear gas was fired close to the village of Yucumo, in the north-east of the country some 150 miles from La Paz, and that protest marchers heading to the capital were stopped and were loaded onto buses by police, who said they would take them back to their home towns. The marchers had reportedly managed to take Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca hostage, forcing him to march with them, and broke through police lines. This is another sign of tensions between populist President Evo Morales, elected as the country’s first indigenous president, and the indigenous groups that had formed his support base, as Morales pushes through plans that many indigenous groups criticize as harming the environment.

• Conservative commentator Mary Anastasia O’Grady, of the Wall Street Journal, asks which way Peru’s new President Ollanta Humala is going to turn on the economy. Humala presented a much more leftist face when he ran for the presidency in 2006, before overhauling his image and moving towards the center for this year’s election. O’Grady questions how deep this conversion goes, criticizing Humala’s failure to give a strong denial when she asked him in a recent interview whether he would alter the constitution. As a candidate, he had proposed to change the constitution and increase state control over the economy, and at his inauguration, the new president promised to “honor the spirit” of the 1979 constitution, now defunct, which contained provisions for large-scale land reform. For O’Grady, the president now seems to be intentionally leaving a certain ambiguity around the subject of his economic plans. However, as she points out, Humala’s actions, in the form of appointments to crucial economic posts, indicate that he intends to govern as a Lula-style centrist on the economy, while carefully moderating his rhetoric to try not to antagonize his supporters on the left.

• The U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control issued a report on “Responding to Violence in Central America.” It highlights the fact that violence, as represented by murder rates per capita, is more intense in some Central American countries than it is in Mexico, though the region gets far less attention (and U.S. cash) than its northern neighbor. The report states that it will not recommend large amounts of new U.S. aid, instead calling on the countries of Central America to generate more of their own funding for security. This echoes Hillary Clinton’s comments at a Guatemala City conference in June, when she called on the rich and businesses in Central America to pay their fair share of taxes to bankroll the fight against crime in the region. Instead of fresh funds, the report focuses on partnerships with agencies in the isthmus, such as installing law enforcement bodies linked to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in all countries of the region, and increasing support for programs to protect witnesses, judges, and prosecutors, in order to strengthen justice systems.

• In Colombia, police seized a submarine belonging to the FARC guerrilla group, which was intended to be sold to drug traffickers, namely Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, according to reports. The vessel was found near the Pacific port of Buenaventura. Smuggling drugs in submarines, or semi-submersible vessels via the Pacific to Mexico or Central America is an increasingly popular method for Colombian traffickers, as the vessels are difficult for the authorities to spot.

• In some brighter news from Colombia, the LA Times has a feature on the increase in home ownership in the country, which it attributes to rising security.

• In Venezuela, Leopoldo Lopez officially launched his bid for the presidency, after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights overturned a ban on him running for public office. He hopes to be picked as the candidate of the opposition coalition MUD for the elections, to be held in October 2012.

• The New York Times reports on a protest by teachers in Acapulco, south Mexico, against extortion by criminal gangs. Exortion is becoming an increasingly contentious issue in Mexico, as gangs turn to the crime as an easy source of revenue in the face of crackdowns on drug trafficking.

• Also in Mexico, a new study by the government reveals that many police officers still earn less than $350 a month, with state officers in the troubled border state of Tamaulipas on the lowest salaries in the country. These low wages are thought to be a key factor in driving corruption.

• Bolivia’s former top anti-drug official, General Rene Sanabria, was sentenced to 15 years in jail by a Miami court, on charges of being involved in a cocaine trafficking ring.

• The Wall Street Journal reports that arrests of illegal migrants on the U.S.-Mexican border has declined by a third in two years, to reach its lowest level in 40 years. The newspaper comments; “the real immigration story these days is how many fewer illegal migrants are trying to get into the land of the free.”

Chavez: Cancer-Free?

President Hugo Chavez has returned to Venezuela after a fourth round of chemotherapy, which he celebrated as his last. Speaking at Simon Bolivar International airport outside of Caracas, the head of state claimed that his cancer has been beat.  "I feel like I've been born again," Chavez said.

But Chavez’s announcement was contradicted by former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of America States (OAS) Roger Noriega, according to El Nuevo Herald. Speaking at a forum on Venezuela held at the University of Miami, Noriega cited sources that “over the years have provided very reliable information,” and claimed that Chavez is in serious condition.  "These sources are saying that Chavez is in a serious condition and is not improving as his doctors had hoped," said Noriega. "This means we should start to think of and prepare for a world without Hugo Chavez."

The reliability of Noriega’s sources is not clear, however, as this is the second time the former ambassador has contradicted Chavez’s health claims. In July, he wrote a piece in the Herald alleging that Chavez had a 50% chance of surviving 18 months, saying he had “sources close to his medical team in Cuba.” 

News Briefs 

• In other Venezuela news, Chavez’s government has claimed responsibility for Iran’s recent release of the U.S. hiker "spies," Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal. According to Temir Porras, Venezuela’s Foreign Vice Minister for the Middle East, the release was made possible by the mediation of Hugo Chavez. "American hickers Josh #Fattal and Shane #Bauer were released by #Iran thanks to President #Hugo Chavez's mediation." Porras posted on his Twitter account yesterday. Despite corroboration of this claim by Iranian officials, so far the U.S. has not acknowledged that Venezuela had any role in the release.

• AP profiles the Cuban opposition, noting that it has lost stem in the face of several political and economic reforms announced by Raul Castro. One of the most visible opposition groups on the island, the Ladies in White, has lost its central issue after the government cleared the jails of political detainees and sent many of them into apparent exile in Spain.

• Mexico state governor Enrique Peña Nieto made waves this week when he officially announced his presidential bid, and claimed that the murder rate in his state had fallen by more than half under his watch. As the Economist's Americas View blog notes, however, this does not take into account the fact that the government changed the way it statistically records  homicides in 2007. As a result of the shift, the murder rate fell on its own by 67 percent from December 2006 to January 2007. Controlling for the methodological change reveals no significant drop in murders over Peña Nieto’s term.

• El Universal reports that the Mexican Interior Department has directed federal prosecutors to investigate the Monterrey gaming house in which 52 people were killed last month, charging the casino with running “illegal games.”

• Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla issued a fresh denouncement of Nicaragua’s “provocations” on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, AFP reports. The president called on the international community to intervene in the two countries’ year-long border dispute, saying "all we demand of this organization and the multilateral system is quick and timely attention to possible attacks.”

• The Economist has published its latest issue, featuring several interesting pieces on the region. Specifically, the magazine looks at creeping protectionism in South America’s two largest economies: Argentina and Brazil. It also reports on recent deaths from alcohol poisoning in Ecuador, the shifting face of the Venezuelan opposition and the role of the internet in Mexico’s “drug war.”

• With domestic sentiment against the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti (known as MINUSTAH, its French acronym) on the rise, the Miami Herald reports that Haitian President Michel Martelly will make his first appearance at the U.N. General Assembly today. On Tuesday the country’s Seante voted to demand the withdrawal of peacekeeping forces over the next three years, and Martelly himself campaigned on the promise of removing MINUSTAH. As Reuters notes, the president has backed away from that stance upon reaching office, instead using the issue to call for the re-establishment of the military, which was disbanded in 1995. The tone of his statement today is expected to clear up this contradiction, solidifying his stance on the peacekeeping forces.

• AP reports that student demonstrations have resumed in Santiago, Chile, after the government failed once again to accept the protestors’ demands. The wire agency claims that tens of thousands of protestors hit the streets in downtown Santiago yesterday, but El Ciudadano has the figure at 150 to 180 thousand. After several hours, the demonstration was dispersed by tear gas and police in riot gear. MercoPress says that at least 50 students were arrested in the crackdown. Meanwhile, yesterday President Piñera repeated his claim that his government hopes to eliminate extreme poverty in Chile by 2014 during a speech given at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) in New York.

• Rene Sanabria, the former Bolivian narcotics police commander who was arrested in August 2010 for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into Miami, will be sentenced by a federal judge today. Sanabria has pleaded guilty to the charges, and has allegedly cooperated with U.S. drug enforcement officials to provide insight into organized criminal activity in the country. As such, his defense team is expected to call for leniency in today’s the hearing.  

• Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, has voted to create a Truth Commission, which would investigate human rights abuses committed under the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. As Reuters notes, the country has generally avoided official recognition of the abuses committed by the military regime, and no politicians have yet been sentenced for political crimes dating back to the period.

• Viva Rio, a Brazilian NGO which works to reduce urban violence in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, partnered with Military Police of Rio de Janeiro state this week to host a conference on public security. Known as the Strategic Meeting on Public Security and Drug Policies, the conference was attended by 30 police officials and organized crime experts from various countries. The end result of the conference is the “Rio de Janeiro Declaration,” which calls on law enforcement officials around the world to move past the punitive “war on drugs” paradigm in favor of one based on harm reduction and community policing. The English translation of the document is available here.

Brazil President Opens UN General Assembly

President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil gave the opening speech yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly, the first woman ever to do so. As expected, she argued that global financial institutions should be reformed in order to give “emerging” nations greater influence, outside the circle of G-7 countries.

To mark the occasion, McClatchy has some analysis on how the “technocrat” Rousseff has a markedly different leadership style from her “larger than life” predecessor Lula. The two are intent on expanding Brazil’s role in global politics, including the longtime goal of achieving a permanent seat for Brazil on the UN Security Council. In Lula’s case, at times this meant rubbing shoulders with governments hostile to U.S. policy, as occurred last year when he brokered a nuclear fuel swap deal between Iran and Turkey. So far into her term Rousseff has focused mainly on the domestic agenda, grappling with an ongoing corruption scandal which forced her chief of staff to resign. Still, she has already demonstrated that Brazil is prepared to continue pursuing a foreign policy agenda that may chafe against U.S. interests. Brazil has already stated that during UN discussions they will continue pushing for international recognition of Palestinian statehood, probably the most controversial issue facing this session of the UN.

Those interested can watch the UN General Assembly speeches stream live at Foreign Policy.

News Briefs

• The LA Times reports on how the fallout from casino massacre in Monterrey is turning into a political battle. Mayor Fernando Larrazabal of the PAN party has been under attack ever since a video surfaced in the days following the attack, showing his brother accepting money in another casino. Since then, the PAN has been divided between those arguing for Larrazabal to step down and those insisting that there is no hard evidence of wrongdoing. The PRI, meanwhile, are focusing on the scandal as a means to distract attention from the corruption allegations facing their own party.

• The Associated Press reports that a judge has rescheduled the hearing of a retired general arrested last June in Guatemala, accused of planning some 300 massacres during the country’s civil war. Hector Maria Lopez Fuentes served as Guatemala’s military chief of staff, the third highest ranking military official in the country, during the regime of de facto president Efrain Rios Montt, in office between 1982 to 1983. He is the first military official in Guatemala expected to stand trial for genocide. A judge in Guatemala City ruled Wednesday that Lopez, age 81, is too ill to attend the hearing, and rescheduled for October 3. As Central American Politics points out, this may well be a legitimate reason but “it is in no way going to reduce concerns that the court is simply acting to protect one of the men most responsible for designing and executing the government’s early 1980s scorched earth program.”

• The Miami Herald published a declassified letter from the U.S. State Department revealing, for the first time ever, the identities of seven alleged Cuban spies expelled from the U.S. in 2003. A total of 14 Cubans were expelled from the U.S. that year on charges of espionage. It was among the strongest actions taken by the U.S. against alleged Cuban spies since the arrest and conviction of Ana Montes, a former analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, in 2001.

• The Havana Note, via the Christian Science Monitor, asks whether Cuban energy officials are prepared to deal with another possible oil spill disaster, three months before the U.S. is set to begin deep water drilling in Cuban waters. Five exploratory wells are set to begin drilling in areas that could prove particularly damaging if there is another BP-like disaster. The first well to become active this December is located right where the Gulf Stream leaves the Gulf of Mexico towards the Atlantic Coast, meaning an oil spill here would not just affect Cuba, but far up along the eastern coast of the U.S.

• The two detainees charged with “terrorism” in Mexico for sending out a series of alarmist tweets have been released, reports the LA Times. The two social media users were previously facing up to 30 years in prison, after they reportedly sent out a series of tweets alleging that gunmen were shooting up a primary school, causing panic in Veracruz. The Americas Society, writing before the two people were released, provides some background on social media use in Mexico and describes the new penal code modification which gives law enforcement the power to punish social media users who “provoke chaos or insecurity.”

• UPI reports on Peru’s efforts to update their naval and air technology, part of the national strategy to step up the fight against drug-trafficking guerrilla group the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path).The air force in particular has been lobbying for the purchase of new, better equipment since the Shining Path shot down an army helicopter on September 14, killing two military officials.

• At Global Post, John Otis has a report on violence related to Colombia’s upcoming municipal elections in October. More than two dozen candidates have been killed so far.

• BBC Mundo examines the challenges of instituting stricter gun control laws in Venezuela, the mandate of a presidential gun control commission created last May. There are between 10 million to 14 million weapons in Venezuela, many of them circulating in the black market, says the BBC.

• Colombian police have seized 301 properties with an estimated value of $250 million, thought to belong to Mexican drug capo Joaquin Guzman, alias “El Chapo.” It is not the first time that Colombian authorities have said they’ve detected links to the Sinaloa Cartel inside the country. In August, police arrested a woman accused of laundering money on behalf of the Mexican criminal organization.

• In an interview with CNN en Español, Bolivian President Evo Morales asks for “some international organism” to “certify or decertify the U.S. on the issue of drug trafficking.” It is the latest of several pointed statements uttered by Morales, since the U.S. again declared that Bolivia had “failed demonstrably” to meet international counterdrug obligations.

• The Telegraph has a brief note on how at least six Colombian informants died after British law enforcement agencies failed to sufficiently protect them from the drug cartels they were double-crossing. Between 2000 and 2004, an anti-drug operation based at the British Embassy tried to cultivate informants inside Colombian drug cartels, presumably the Norte del Valle Cartel, the most powerful organization at the time. The informants were pumped for information then insufficiently protected by their handlers, the Telegraph alleges. Another former head of the Norte del Valle Cartel is set to plea guilty to drug trafficking charges in the coming weeks.

Correa Strikes a Blow Against Press Freedom in Ecuador

In Ecuador, an appeals court upheld the sentence against the three owners and a former columnist of newspaper El Universo in a criminal libel case brought by President Rafael Correa. The defendents each face three years in prison and must pay $40 million in damages to the president over an opinion column, published in February, which called the president a dictator.

The editorial also questioned Correa’s version of the events of September 30, 2010, when there were disturbances which Correa claimed were part of an attempted coup against him. After making unpopular cuts to police benefits, the president made an impassioned speech at an occupied police barracks, calling on protesting officers to “Kill [me] if you are brave enough." He was taken to a hospital after being teargassed in the resulting disturbances, where he then claimed to be trapped by rebels trying to overthrow his government, and was rescued by army troops in an operation which left at least two dead.

The El Universo article denied the existence of any coup plot, and criticized Correa’s decision to tell soldiers to fire at will when “rescuing” the president from the hospital.

The author of the column, Emilio Palacio, fled to the U.S. in late August to avoid prison, while the newspaper is likely to go bankrupt in paying the fine. Following the ruling, Correa said that he may consider dropping the case if the newspaper issues an apology.

Analysts have commented that the trial was carried out much more quickly than such cases usually are, and that the court adjusted proceedings to suit the schedule of the president. Employees of El Universo protested outside their offices following the ruling.

Campaign organizations the Committe to Protect Journalists announced its disappointment over the ruling, calling it a blow to freedom of expression in Ecuador. In a report on the state of the press in that country, published earlier this month, it found that Correa had, in less than five years in power “turned Ecuador into one of the hemisphere’s most restrictive nations for the press.” According to the report,

The Correa administration has repeatedly forced individual broadcasters to air lengthy government rebuttals to critical news reports, thus supplanting independent viewpoints with its own.

BBC Mundo compares the sentencing in the El Universo case to other compensation payouts.

News Briefs

• In an interview with TV network CBS, Mexican President Felipe Calderon hinted at legalization as a possible solution for the problems caused by the illegal drug trade. The president said that, if the U.S. cannot reduce demand for drugs, "decision makers must look for other solutions, including market alternatives." Despite being a strong critic of the 2010 California referendum to decriminalize marijuana, saying it would undermine Mexico’s struggle against drugs, Calderon has previously made gestures in favor of the idea as a way to cut revenues going to Mexico’s cartels. In August 2010 he called for a debate on the issue of legalizing drug consumption in Mexico, saying that all sides of the argument should be considered.

• In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said that his country could only help with Europe’s debt crisis once the region had taken action to resolve its own problems. "Europe has to save itself because it has the tools to resolve the sovereign debt problem of Greece and other countries and the problem of bank weakness," said the minister.

• In more news from Mexico, 35 dead bodies bearing signs of torture were dumped on a main thoroughfare in the southern Gulf city of Veracruz on Tuesday. They were accompanied by a message signed in the name of Gente Nueva, a faction linked to the Sinaloa Cartel. Local authorities said that the victims may include some of the 32 inmates who escaped from a prison in Veracruz state the previous day, 14 of whom were recaptured, while some reports said that the dead were members of the Zetas gang.

• Meanwhile Mexican authorities reported the arrest of Saul Soliz Soliz, alias “El Lince,” who they say is one of the main leaders of the Knights Templar (Caballeros Templarios) drug gang. The organization emerged earlier in the year as a splinter group of the infamous Familia Michoacana, following a split between two rival leaders, and has become one of the main targets of the government in recent months. Both factions claim to follow a religious ideology, which features moral precepts and images borrowed from Christianity. According to reports, Soliz stood as a federal congress candidate for Michoacan in 2009.

• Venezuelan politician Leopoldo Lopez, who hopes to be the opposition’s pick to run for president against incumbent Hugo Chavez in the October 2012 elections, said that the country’s authorities must respect a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that overturned a ban against him. He had been blocked from standing for public office over corruption allegations, which he claims are groundless. Chavez criticized the ruling, calling the court a tool of the bourgeoisie, while government officials asserted the right of Venezuela’s Supreme Court to override decisions by the international body, calling it an issue of sovereignty. A Time magazine blog points out that some 80 percent of those banned from public office in Venezuela in recent years have been opposition figures.

• The Miami Herald reports on Cuba’s shut down of the operations of two Canadian companies as part of an investigation into corruption involving government ministers. Tokmakjian Group and the Tri-Star Caribbean both dealt with the Cuban government, selling goods including vehicles. One business source told Reuters that “all the foreign business enterprises in the country are on edge.”

• The Associated Press reports that former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as “Baby Doc” is living a life of luxury following his return to the country he ruled until 1986, being “squired about the capital, attending jazz concerts and dinners.” Moves to bring Duvalier to trial for the thousands of killings and abuses carried out during his 15 years in power are currently stalled, due to newly elected President Michael Martelly’s difficulties in installing his cabinet.

• A new report from Amnesty International details sexual abuse of woman and girls carried out by “all the warring parties” to Colombia’s conflict, and criticizes the government’s failure to take action against, or properly document, these crimes. The campaign group reports on sexual assaults being used as a weapon of war by the armed forces, paramilitaries, and guerrilla groups.

• The man who has long been favorite for the Mexican presidency, Enrique Peña Nieto, officially declared his candidacy for the July 2012 elections. The former governor of Mexico State represents the PRI party, which held power for seven decades until 2000 and looks likely to remove the rival PAN party, which has been in office since then, from power next year. The PRI’s position is helped by Mexico’s current economic problems and the growing dissatisfaction with President Felipe Calderon’s strategy towards organized crime.

• In Brazil, the Wall Street Journal reports on efforts in a town 60 miles north of Rio de Janeiro to boost its economy and encourage local spending by issuing its own currency, which earns discounts for users in local stores. This follows a similar scheme in the City of God favela in Rio, made famous by the film of the same name, which this month launched a local currency backed by a community bank. The district was one of the first to be occupied by elite “Police Pacification Units” (UPPs) in Rio’s drive to take slum districts back from the drug traffickers and militias who have long controlled them.

Mexico Still in the Dark About 'Fast and Furious'

Months after the controversial “Operation Fast and Furious” was brought to a halt, the fallout from the operation continues to represent a hurdle in Mexico-U.S. relations. On September 12, President Obama repeated himself yet again on the subject, assuring a group of Spanish-speaking journalists at the White House that he had no prior knowledge of the program, which allowed thousands of guns to “walk” illegally across the border.

What’s more, Mexican officials are still searching for information about the operation from their U.S. counterparts, but are finding few answers. As Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales told the L.A. Times, U.S. officials have not provided her office with a comprehensive report on “Fast and Furious”, and have yet to apologize. Like many Mexicans, Morales first heard of the failed operation through news accounts.  "At no time did we know or were we made aware that there might have been arms trafficking permitted," Morales said in a recent interview with the paper. "In no way would we have allowed it, because it is an attack on the safety of Mexicans."

In fact, evidence suggests that the U.S. Department of Justice actively worked to hide details of the program from Mexican officials. In March 2010, after several guns in the program had already been lost, officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) held an "emergency briefing" to weigh whether or not to close the program. Instead, they opted to continue it, keeping the Mexican government uninformed.

While the ATF is currently facing a congressional investigation that has expanded to include White House staffers, the actual effect of the failed operation is relatively unknown. In the Times article, congressman Humberto Benitez Trevino cited “Mexican security authorities” as saying that the number of Mexicans killed by “Fast and Furious” guns was at around 150, but this has not been confirmed.

News Briefs

• The AP reports on the death of Mexican Congressman Moises Villanueva, whose body was discovered in a river in the town of Huamuxtitlan on Saturday. Members of Villanueva’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) are calling on the government to investigate Socorro Sofio Ramirez Hernandez, rural development secretary for Guerrero state, in the murder. According to El Universal, the federal Attorney General’s office has committed itself to investigating the murder, but there is no word on whether Ramirez will be a suspect in the case.

• At a dinner held in his honor by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, Mexican President used one of the most colorful metaphors yet to describe the drug trade’s impact on bilateral relations with the U.S: “We are next to the largest illegal drug market in the world...We are living in the same building, and our neighbor is the largest consumer of drugs in the world and everyone wants to sell him drugs through our door and our window.”

• The Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute Elections Guide has highlighted last week’s major 2012 election developments, including that embers of the National Action Party (PAN) have agreed to a debate in the near future.

• A Guatemalan judge is currently weighing whether to try retired Gen. Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes for genocide, in connection with several of the massacres of the country’s 36-year civil war. Lopez was arrested in June on charges that he planned and ordered about 300 massacres when he served as chief of staff of the Guatemalan military between 1982 and 1983. The AP says the judge is expected to issue a decision tomorrow on whether the case will proceed to trial.

• Last Friday a Honduran military and police patrol was ambushed in the Bajo Aguan region, sparking rumors of a nascent insurgency in the country. On Saturday the head of the country’s armed forces, General René Osorio, officially attributed the attack to guerrillas. As Honduras Culture and Politics point out however, the region is known as a hotspot for paramilitary activity, making it difficult to say with certainty that “guerrillas” were behind the incident.

• The Miami Herald has published an uncharacteristically positive portrayal of a Venezuelan social program: Chavez’s “one laptop per child” program. Since the program began in 2009, more than 750,000 children have received basic laptops, known as Canaimas. By 2012 the country hopes to issue and plans to issue 3 million of the computers, which would put the country at the forefront of the international movement for computer literacy.

• Speaking from the University of Havana, Cuba, Bolivian President Evo Morales called on the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to “decertify” the United States’ counternarcotics efforts. While the move would be entirely symbolic, it is a clear jab at the U.S.’s 2008 decision to list Bolivia as a country that had “failed demonstrably” at reducing illicit coca supply.

• An oddly public spat is brewing in the administration of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. After Vice President Angelino Garzon openly criticized a proposed shift in the way the country defines poverty -- which would place the poverty line at 190,000 Colombian pesos ($103) per month -- Santos publicly warned him not to criticize the government. El Espectador reports that Garzon struck back at the president yesterday, saying that he would continue to speak his mind as a way of exercising a basic human right.

• Caracol Radio reports that former Colombian presidential candidate Antanas Mockus has been cleared by the National Electoral Council (CNE) to run for mayor of Bogota, despite attempts by critics to paint him as having dual political affiliation. Mockus left the country’s Green Party earlier this summer after the party’s candidate in the Bogota race, Enrique Peñalosa, accepted an endorsement from ex-president Alvaro Uribe. Mockus is now running as a member of the Alianza Social Independiente.

• The New York Times profiles the tremendous growth in oil production in the Americas in recent years, which has turned the Western Hemisphere into the “emerging prize of global energy.”

Worse than WikiLeaks? Secret Database of Colombia Intelligence Agency Made Public

Colombian newsweekly Semana has reviewed the partial contents of the database maintained by troubled intelligence agency the DAS, and published an overview of thousands of top-secret intelligence reports. Colombia Reports has a good summary of Semana's findings in English, which do not appear to say much of interest in relation to U.S. policy. It does say a great deal about how dysfunctional the controversial intelligence agency has become. Since former President Alvaro Uribe announced the DAS's impending dissolution in 2009, many officials began selling intelligence to the highest bidders. According to Semana, this includes Colombia's most-wanted drug lord, Daniel Barrera, alias "El Loco," and a "government which in recent years has maintained a tense relationship with Colombia," apparently a veiled reference to either Ecuador or Venezuela. According to the intelligence documents, two of Barrera' partners bribed the DAS in exchange for wiping their criminal record clean, for about one million pesos (about $500) each.

This latest account of DAS misdeeds is only one more reason to speed up the organization's dissolution. President Juan Manuel Santos has said he wants the DAS fully dismantled by November, which, according to Semana, may have given rogue agents more motivation to sell their intelligence to figures in Colombia's underworld. The DAS is best known for its role played in a wiretapping scandal, in which dozens of Uribe's political opponents (including journalists, human rights activists and Supreme Court judges) were spied on. Last week, former DAS head Jorge Noguera was sentenced to 25 years in prison for paramilitary links.

In other news:

• Saturday, Mexican officials found slain congressman Moises Villanueva in the southern state of Guerrero, after he was reported missing on September 4. The body of his driver was also found at the scene. It was almost certainly an execution-style killing, not a botched kidnapping. The two men were still wearing the clothes they had on when they disappeared, and died after being shot in the head. The AFP reports that Villanueva is the first Mexican congressman who was murdered in more than two years.

• The Economist examines Colombia's desperate need to improve its infrastructure. Travel between the major cities - Bogota to Medellin, Medellin to Cali - are drives that can take between eight hours (on a good day) to fourteen (during the rainy season), making it prohibitively expensive to move basic goods. President Juan Manuel Santos' government has allocated $2.2 billion for infrastructure during his term, for the construction of dozens of new and improved roads, bridges and tunnels.

• The LA Times has a general overview of killings in Colombia by groups the government has dubbed "bandas criminales," or BACRIMS, the criminal successors to right-wing paramilitary organization the AUC. The article highlights political killings by the group: the murders of land activists, trade unionists, and small-town political candidates. Partly by dubbing the groups "BACRIMS," the government has tried to separate the current generation of criminal gangs from the paramilitaries, arguing that the only interest of the BACRIMS is the business of drug trafficking. But these political killings place the BACRIMS more firmly in the AUC's tradition. The October municipal elections will be key to judging the true influence of Colombia's BACRIMS: will they be capable of flooding municipal councils, mayor and governor offices across the country with hand-picked candidates, as the AUC was able to do?

• In Brazil, police say they have arrested two suspects accused of killing two land activists in the Amazon earlier this year. The May 24 murder of married couple Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria Do Espirito Santo Da Silva, is among at least six killings involving land activists in the region so far this year. Most of the murders have been concentrated in the Brazilian state of Para, which registered 18 killings last year involving community organizers.

• The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled Friday that Venezuelan opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez may run for Congress, prompting criticism from President Hugo Chavez the following day. Lopez, a former district mayor of Caracas, was barred from holding political office in 2005 due to alleged corruption charges. Lopez, who has not been formally charged with any crime, has long argued for his innocence. The Inter-American Court's ruling brings him one step closer to officially declaring his candidacy for president in Venezuela. The question now is whether Venezuela's electoral board will accept the ruling and allow Lopez to run. The decision may also have implications for Venezuela's other politicians currently blacklisted from holding office, who may choose to follow suit. With Chavez heading back to Cuba for a fourth round of chemotherapy, the current opposition front-runner is Henrique Capriles, who may face a tough competitor in the still-popular Lopez if he is allowed to register in the primaries.

• The Miami Herald has a profile of Colombia's ex-head-of-state, Alvaro Uribe, who was quite possibly one of the country's most effective presidents ever, in terms of improving security, and also one of the most polarizing. Since leaving office in 2010, Uribe has remained outspoken, especially when it comes to defending the legacy of his "Democratic Security Policy," even as some of his closest associates have gone to jail. Uribe's unwillingness to bite his tongue has led to a few public spats with current president Juan Manuel Santos, who has broken away from some of Uribe's more far-right policies, most notably when it came to repairing relations with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
• Reporters Without Borders has a note on the September 14 murder of Peruvian radio journalist Jose Oquendo Reyes, the third journalist murdered in Peru so far this year and the second killed in a week. Reyes was reportedly investigating corruption scandals in his home state, the southern region of Ica.
• Charter flights have resumed between Havana, Cuba, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, under the new liberalized Cuba travel police approved by the Obama administration. Another moment of optimism for Cuba-U.S. relations, which went back to their usual hostile tone last week after the failed (or rather, total lack of) negotiations for the release of an imprisoned U.S. contractor.
• The Brookings Insistute has some valuable thoughts on the results of Guatemala's September 11 elections. "That someone like Perez-Molina has come to be seen as the most sensible and predictable, even responsible, political option in Guatemala is disturbing," the think-tank says, adding that it is unlikely that any administration will be capable of fixing the country's deep-rooted institutional problems. In a nutshell, the results of the second presidential run-off will be "mostly irrelevant:" things are unlikely to improve in Guatemala, so the only hope is that Perez-Molina doesn't make things worse, the analysis concludes.

Connie Mack wants Merida Initiative scrapped for counterinsurgency strategy towards Mexico

Outspoken Republican Representative Connie Mack, head of the House’s Western Hemispheric Subcommittee, has called for the U.S. to adopt a “counterinsurgency strategy” in Mexico, declaring that, “while Mexico doesn’t want to admit this; there is an insurgency taking place in Mexico along the U.S. border.”

In a subcommittee hearing on the Merida Initiative, a U.S. aid program focused on Mexican security, Mack said that the program had failed to make an impact on the “well funded criminal insurgency raging along our southern border,” which “some call the greatest national security threat faced by the United States.”

Citing delays in delivering funds, and the dire state of Mexico’s security, Mack vividly described the U.S. response as “showing up to a burning house, late, with a half assembled hose.”

Mack’s argument that the Merida funding has not halted drug violence in Mexico is hard to deny, but it is not clear that his proposed measures would manage to do so. He proposes that the U.S. work with Mexico “to secure one key population center at a time,” and bring all government agencies together to “aggressively target” the cartels. The Florida representative also repeated his call for the U.S. to double the number of border agents, and said that there should be “lawfulness” training in Mexican schools, presumably as part of a Mexican government counter-move to win "hearts and minds" and support for the war on drugs.

It seems unlikely that increasing the military component of U.S. aid, or indeed sending U.S. troops into Mexico, would make a decisive difference in the country’s struggle against organized crime. The Merida Initiative, which has delivered some $1.5 billion to Mexican counter-drugs efforts since 2008, has generally been criticized for being overly focused on the military response to the cartels, prioritizing aid to law enforcement bodies over strengthening institutions like the justice system, or implementing anti-corruption measures. Likewise the Calderon government’s aggressive deployment of the army to secure those parts of the country worst hit by organized crime is generally perceived as having failed to reduce violence in those areas.

The State Department rejected Mack’s comments, saying that it “would strongly disagree with any attempt to label the Merida Initiative as any kind of failure.” Spokesman Mark Toner stated that the initiative had achieved better coordination between the two countries in terms of intelligence-sharing and training.

Mack argues that the Mexican drug cartels qualify as insurgent organizations because they aim to undermine the government and to gain popular support. This goes against the position of the Mexican government, which responded angrily when Hillary Clinton described the drug cartels in the same terms last year, causing President Obama to issue a swift counter to her statements.

However, the argument that Mexico is facing an insurgency is given weight by some of the actions of its criminal groups, such as the recent murder of 52 people in an arson attack on a Monterrey casino. This week, independence celebrations planned for Thursday night in the small town of Querendaro in the western state of Michoacan had to be cancelled after a group of gunmen armed with high-caliber weapons took over the main square. The ability of drug trafficking organizations to cause this scale of disruption with such blatant actions counts in favor of the idea that the criminal groups constitute an insurgency with the power to challenge the Mexican government.

See video of the hearing.

News Briefs

• In more news on U.S. drug policy, the White House added El Salvador and Belize to its list of major drug producing and transit countries. This means that every country in Central America is now included on the list, underlining the increasing importance of the region for the drug trade. Bolivia and Venezuela were again classed as countries which failed to adhere to international anti-narcotics agreements. Bloggings by Boz comments that the inclusion of Bolivia on this list is not clearly justified, in the absence of evidence that the Bolivia government is tolerating organized crime, or facing more of a problem than Colombia or Peru -- U.S. allies who are not classed in the same terms.

• Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff suffered another loss from her cabinet as a fifth official in three months, Tourism Minister Pedro Novais, resigned Wednesday amid allegations that he had misused public funds. He is the fourth whose resignation is linked to corruption allegations. The stream of departures does not appear to have weakened Rousseff, however, but rather to have bolstered her image as a president who will not tolerate corruption, according to the Financial Times’ Beyond Brics blog.

• The New York Times reports on conflict between landless farmworkers and palm oil plantation owners in Honduras. The Bajo Aguan valley, in the north of the country, has been the site of at least 15 murders in recent weeks, some of which took place when locals clashed with plantation security guards. The Times relates the turmoil to the violence and social divides laid bare by the 2009 coup against Manuel Zelaya. At least 1,400 families have been left out of the latest attempt by the government to broker a solution, according to the newspaper.

• A piece on the Economist’s website discusses growing concern in Panama over President Ricardo Martinelli’s “power grab,” with some fearing that the pro-market president could follow the trend of Latin American leaders and try to change the constitution to allow himself run for office again after his five-year term ends in 2014.

• On Cuba, the New York Time reports that former Governor Bill Richardson, who returned from Cuba empty-handed after attempting to negotiate the release of jailed U.S. contractor Alan Gross, had been authorized to offer concessions to Cuba in exchange for Gross’ freedom. Richardson was reportedly able to offer to begin the process to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terror, and to allow one member of the “Cuban Five,” a group jailed for 13 years in the U.S. after being convicted of spying, to return home when his sentence is completed in October, instead of serving probation in the U.S.

• Following the WSJ’s recent report on the “dark side” of Brazil’s economy, as noted in Tuesday’s post, Foreign Policy has a gritty photo essay on Rio’s favelas, accompanied by reporting on the rising epidemic of crack cocaine use, which it says has has been driven in part by the country’s economic development in recent years.

• Meanwhile, the Miami Herald reports that more than 20 Cuban dissidents were jailed while trying to stage a protest march across the island. Human rights defenders told the newspaper that there had been 200 such arbitrary detentions this month, likely the highest total since Raul Castro came to power in 2006. Those arrested in the latest round included Angel Moya, a prominent dissident who served eight years in jail before being released this year. The latest detention is his second in a week, after he was arrested Friday, September 9, and held over the weekend.

• The Washington Post reports on how Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has provided an inadvertent boon for the oil industry in neighboring Colombia, purging thousands of people who work in the Venezuelan industry in the years since 2002. Many of these have moved to Colombia, where vigorously pro-market leadership under the last two presidents, and the improving security situation, have helped the oil sector to grow fast.

• Human Rights Watch included Mexican journalist Luis Horacio Najera and Venezuelan Carlos Correa among the 48 recipients of their 2011 Hellman/Hammett prize, which supports writers who are committed to freedom of expression in the face of persecution. Najera works for Reforma newspaper in the border city of Juarez, the location worst-hit by the country’s drug violence, while Correa has reportedly suffered a smear campaign carried out by Venezuelan state television.