Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico, United States
Clinton Visits Mexico For Meeting With Calderón To Discuss Drug War
January 25, 2011 By Staff
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Today in Latin America
Top Story — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Mexico Monday for trip to reinforce ties and voice support for the country’s ongoing drug war.
Clinton called Mexican President Felipe Calderón “courageous” for his actions against cross-border criminal networks and vowed continued U.S. support through equipment and training for Mexican law enforcement as well as targeting the flow of arms and money into Mexico from the U.S.
“This is very hard, and what President Calderon has done is absolutely necessary,” Clinton said after meeting with Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa in the colonial-era mining city of Guanajuato, according to The Los Angeles Times. “There is no alternative.”
More than 34,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since Calderón began his offensive against the drug cartels in 2006. More than 15,000 people were killed in 2010 alone.
“Drug-traffickers are not going to give up without a terrible fight, and when they do barbaric things like behead people, it is meant to intimidate,” Clinton said, according to The New York Times. “It is meant to have the public say just leave them alone, but a president cannot do that.”
Clinton acknowledged the large demand in the U.S. for illegal drugs as well as the flow of U.S. weapons to Mexico, while two dozen protesters chanted “No more guns!” as Clinton arrived for her talks.
Besides the drug war, the State Department said the meetings focused on a range of issues, from immigration to economic strategy and the environment. Along with meeting Espinosa in Guanajuato, Clinton also spoke with Calderón in Mexico City.
Clinton’s one day visit to Mexico was her second to the country in less than a year and comes on the heels of the release of State Department cables by WikiLeaks that revealed U.S. doubts about Mexican intelligence gathering.
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Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- Gunmen killed seven people playing soccer in Ciudad Juarez Sunday. Two others were still hospitalized with wounds.
- Mexican mining company Penoles will not sell its majority-owned subsidiary Fresnillo, the world’s largest primary silver producer.
Caribbean
- A former CIA operative who is Fidel Castro’s nemesis lied about how he sneaked into the United States in 2005, a Cuban exile testified Monday, showing a photograph to corroborate his story.
- Communist Cuba’s recent easing of red tape for private enterprise is improving services for tourists in provincial towns on the Caribbean island, with hundreds of new restaurants and lodgings opening up.
- The number of people dying from cholera in Haiti has been on a downward trend or has stabilized in all ten of the country’s departments affected by the outbreak, the United Nations humanitarian office reported today.
Central America
- A Southern California martial arts instructor suspected of being involved in a 1982 massacre during a civil war in Guatemala was arrested in Canada and is awaiting extradition to the U.S., it was reported Monday.
- A woman charged with lining up business for an international prostitution ring in Panama and Costa Rica has pleaded guilty in federal court in Detroit.
- Panamanian police and military units confiscated 2,962 kilos (6,524 pounds) of cocaine in two separate operations over the weekend, authorities said on Monday.
Andes
- President Hugo Chávez is using Venezuela’s judiciary to persecute his political opponents, crack down on media critics and curtail the power of labour unions, a prominent human rights organization reported Monday.
- Six guerrillas and two soldiers died in fighting between military units and the FARC rebel group in Cauca, a province in southwestern Colombia, the army said Sunday.
- Colombia’s government has taken temporary control of the country’s 33 autonomous, state-funded regional entities that manage water resources and are accused of not doing more to prevent floods and other problems emanating from last year’s torrential rains.
- Peru has joined a growing number of South American countries in recognizing an independent Palestinian state.
- Ecuador signed new service contracts on Monday with five companies that operate small fields in the South American OPEC member, ending two years of talks with the country’s leftist government.
Southern Cone
- A woman in Argentina fell 23 stories and lived after she threw herself from the top of the Hotel Crown Plaza Panamericano in Buenos Aires and landed on a taxi.
- Chilean President Sebastian Pinera landed a helicopter on a highway in the country’s south over the weekend after running out of gas.
- The Brazilian economy increased their 2012 inflation forecast for the first time in 122 weeks, a weekly central bank survey reports.
- Thanks to higher commodity prices and the ripple effects from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s $600 billion bond-buying spree, Paraguay’s international reserves hit record highs late last year.
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[…] day trip, where she pledged continued U.S. assistance in the country’s ongoing drug war and a concerted effort on the part of U.S. authorities to stem the flow of weapons in […]
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