Category Archives: Mexico

Mexico Dodges a Bullet

The news could have been a lot worse. A magnitude 7.4 earthquake (downgraded from a 7.9 from earlier today) struck a rural part of Mexico near the border between Oaxaca and Guerrero at around noon local time earlier today. The effects of the quake, one of the largest of 2012, were felt all the way [...]
Posted in Mexico | Leave a comment

misLEDEing

Hopefully  The Daily Show or Colbert Report will pick up on this one. I took a picture of this headline during Sunday afternoon cable news network programming: The price of gas is a major story here in the US, and drug related violence is a major story in Mexico, particularly among US media. My skepticism about [...]
Also posted in United States | Tagged | Leave a comment

Overstating Cartels’ Relevance to the American Electorate

The lead article in last week’s Proceso talks about the political importance of capturing El Chapo for both the Calderon and Obama administrations. The article is worth a read in its entirety, but the focus of this post is on a quote from the informed and esteemed analyst/lawyer/economist Edgardo Buscaglia: “For Obama, El Chapo is Osama [...]
Posted in Mexico | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

In Ciudad Mier, deploying troops is not enough

Back in November 2010, a small town on the US-Mexico border, Ciudad Mier, made headlines when most of the town’s residents left because of intense fighting between the Zetas and Gulf cartels. Both groups wanted the plaza, which is a strategic smuggling corridor for weapons, cash, and money between the United States and Mexico, and [...]
Also posted in Colombia | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Different Means, Same Ends

Oil production in Colombia is a popular topic these days. Domestic production levels are at an all time high, and Colombian state-owned oil behemoth Ecopetrol is considering selling 10 percent of its stake in the firm to the public. Dow Jones reports the deal will likely go down in 2012. Silla Vacia has an excellent [...]
Also posted in Colombia | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Reclaiming Brand Mexico

Roberto Newell Garcia of the Woodrow Wilson Center has published a great report titled “Restoring Mexico’s Reputation.” The basic premise of Newell’s argument is that Mexico is facing a number of problems, but that the one that gets far and away the most coverage – organized crime/drug-related violence – is not necessarily the most important. Citing [...]
Posted in Mexico | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Far-Reaching Demonstrations Against AZ Law

How divisive is Senate Bill 1070? There was a universal rejection of the law by the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), as well as protests on both sides of the border: But the protests have spread to countries where a large diaspora stands to be impacted by the law. On 14 May, hundreds of Ecuadorians  in [...]
Also posted in Bolivia, Ecuador, Latin America, United States | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Selective Impunity

El Chiguire Bipolar has a good take on the concept of selective impunity. In the Onion-like fashion for which the blog is known, it tells the story of Maria Angelica Guerrero, a two-time victim of lightning kidnappings and exasperation at the police’s ineffectiveness. Thinking creatively, she attempts to get her kidnapper to speak negatively about Hugo [...]
Posted in Mexico | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Merida 2.0: A New Phase in U.S.-Mexico Security Cooperation

Responding to a growing sense that an exclusive focus on a military-led fight against drug trafficking organizations is failing to curb violence on the other side of our southern border, the United States and Mexico formally announced a shift in their counternarcotics strategy that had been in the works since the fall of 2009. The “new stage” in bilateral cooperation will aim to strengthen civilian law enforcement institutions and rebuild communities crippled by poverty and crime.
Posted in Mexico | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The International Reach of Organized Crime

Earlier this year, LatAmThought wrote a commentary about the international reach or criminal organizations in the Americas. Last week, we published an article on the International Relations and Security Network about the indirect presence of Mexican Cartels in the Andes. The amount of drug seizures in Bolivia have increased in 2009. Additionally, raids on drug-processing labs [...]
Also posted in Bolivia, Colombia | Tagged , , | Leave a comment