Mitt Romney’s single mention of Latin America Monday night, calling it a “huge opportunity" for the United States, generated immediate glee from Latin Americanists across Twitter – but the hemisphere got no nod from President Obama, and then both went silent on the topic.
Drug traffickers are applying a policy of terror against journalists who fail to follow their wishes, with threats and brutal killings silencing the press in many parts of Mexico.
In the past five years “the power of drug traffickers has reduced a large part of the nation’s journalism to silence,” said Raul Omar Martinez, president of the Buendia Foundation on journalism.
Last week, the dismembered bodies of three photographers and a news company employee were found, wrapped in plastic bags, in a canal in the metropolitan area of Veracruz, a port city on the Gulf of Mexico.
Several days earlier the Veracruz state correspondent of the national weekly news magazine Proceso was found strangled in her home. Read more »
The unchecked scourge of drug violence in Mexico and that country's campaign to hobble the cartels is expected to overshadow economic discussions when Mexican President Felipe Calderon visits the White House today.
Calderon will be meeting with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss economic policies, climate change and security issues facing the three North American nations, according to the White House.
U.S. officials have been pushing for Mexico to reform the state-owned oil monopoly, Pemex, to open the country’s oil sector to private investment and develop new oil and gas reserves.
But the war on drugs will likely take center stage. Read more »
Vice President Joe Biden heads to Latin America Sunday amid unprecedented pressure from political and business leaders to talk about something U.S. officials have no interest in debating: decriminalizing drugs.
Presidents of Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia and Mexico, all grappling with the extremely violent fallout of a failing drug war, have said in recent weeks they'd like to open up the discussion of legalizing drugs. Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Mexico already allow the use of small amounts of marijuana for personal consumption, while political leaders from Brazil and Colombia are discussing alternatives to locking up drug users. Read more »
Guatemalan President Otto Perez has invigorated the drug legalization debate in Central America, where leaders are under pressure to contain staggering crime rates and battle violent drug cartels.
In recent comments Perez said he would propose decriminalizing drugs during April’s Summit of the Americas in Colombia as a strategy to combat powerful traffickers that use Central America as a warehouse and transit point for South American cocaine heading to the United States.
New legislation is unlikely anytime soon — and the details, such as which illicit drugs he means, are still unclear — but Perez has caught the region’s attention and has provoked a divisive response from US officials. Read more »
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Mitt Romney’s single mention of Latin America Monday night, calling it a “huge opportunity" for the United States, generated immediate glee from Latin Americanists across Twitter – but the hemisphere got no nod from President Obama, and then both went silent on the topic.
Drug traffickers are applying a policy of terror against journalists who fail to follow their wishes, with threats and brutal killings silencing the press in many parts of Mexico.
Reporting from Washington—
Vice President Joe Biden heads to Latin America Sunday amid unprecedented pressure from political and business leaders to talk about something U.S. officials have no interest in debating: decriminalizing drugs.
Guatemalan President Otto Perez has invigorated the drug legalization debate in Central America, where leaders are under pressure to contain staggering crime rates and battle violent drug cartels.
