Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico
U.S. Authorities In Phoenix Break Up Gun Running Ring For Sinaloa Cartel
January 26, 2011 By Staff
The city of Phoenix, Arizona.
Today in Latin America
Top Story — U.S. police arrested 17 people and broke up a gun running network that planned to send more than 700 firearms to drug cartels in Mexico.
The arrests took place in and around the city of Phoenix and the suspects are accused conspiring to buy firearms, including AK-47 assault rifles, for Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.
Of the firearms recovered, a third were in Mexico and the rest mostly in Arizona. Those arrested in the raids include ring organizers and people recruited to buy guns on behalf of smugglers and a grand jury in Phoenix indicted 20 people, according to Dennis Burke, the United States attorney for Arizona.
The indictment was unsealed on Tuesday.
The indictments come a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Mexico on a one 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 Mexico.
Clinton also announced $500 million in additional aid to the Mexican government in 2011 for help in fighting organized crime.
Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch
- Twitter Becomes a Political Battleground in Argentina, reports Hugo Passarello Luna.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- The Mexican government vowed Tuesday not to back down in its fight against La Familia drug cartel, despite the gang’s proclamations that it has dissolved.
Caribbean
- The International Low Budget Film Festival that Cuba has hosted for the past eight years will have a very low budget this year, organizers said Tuesday.
- Two species of invasive frog which are hopping their way through Florida probably got to the state by hitching a ride on floating debris from Cuba, according to a study published on Wednesday.
- The governing party candidate in Haiti’s disputed presidential election, Jude Celestin, will withdraw from the second round, his supporters say
- A 3-year-old boy of Haitian descent was killed when a group of Dominican men burned down four family homes in revenge for an alleged assault, authorities said Tuesday.
- More than 3,900 Haitians have died of cholera since the outbreak began in mid-October, health officials said on Tuesday.
Central America
- The Missouri Supreme Court Tuesday overturned a lower court ruling that terminated the parental rights of a Guatemalan woman whose son, the woman says, was adopted without her consent while she was imprisoned following an immigration sting in 2007.
Andes
- A 13-year-old girl carrying seven kilos (15.4 pounds) of marijuana in a backpack was detained in the northeastern Colombian city of Bucaramanga and turned over to the child welfare department, police said Tuesday.
- The Venezuela-based kin of the late Carlos Andres Pérez rejected on Monday a suggestion that the body of the former Venezuelan president be placed in a crypt pending the outcome of the U.S. court battle pitting them against the deceased politico’s long-time mistress.
- An appeals court in Peru has rejected a prosecutor’s effort to revoke the parole of the American activist Lori Berenson, who was released in May after serving 15 years for aiding leftist rebels.
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez says he is no enemy of golf despite his concerns about elite golf courses on prime urban real estate in Caracas.
Southern Cone
- U.S. President Barack Obama will make his first official visit to Brazil in March to meet with the country’s new president Dilma Rousseff.
- More than 25,000 people have evacuated their homes in the Serrana region of the southeastern Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro due to heavy rain.
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Argentina and the Paris Club of nations are working on a deal for the country nation to repay more than $6 billion in defaulted debt to the creditor nations.
Image: Hanroanu @ Flickr.
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