Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico
Violent Crime Kills More Mexican Youth Than Car Accidents, Report Says
September 13, 2011 By Staff
Today in Latin America
Top Story — A new report from the Mexican newspaper El Universal said that more young people die from violent homicide than car accidents in Mexico. The government statistics that El Universal reviewed show that violent deaths of people between 15 and 29 sky rocketed by about 150 percent between 2008 and 2009. The majority of the killings happened in the states of Chihuahua, Baja California, Guerrero, Sinaloa and the state of Mexico. El Universal also reported in June that some 23,000 young people were recruited into the ranks of Mexico’s drug cartels since President Felipe Calderón declared war on drug traffickers in 2006. Poor education and job prospects have resulted in young Mexicans moving into the poorly paid informal economy or into organized crime.
Read More From The Los Angeles Times.
Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch
- Ten years after Sept. 11, New Jersey’s Peruvian community remembers Kenneth Lira, an engineer who died in the attack on the World Trade Center towers. Nathan Vickers reports.
- Arturo López Levy looks at what Defense Minister Julio Casas’ death means for the future of Cuba’s armed forces.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- An alleged female leader of the Zetas drug cartel was arrested in a city in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León.
- The streets of Mexico City were filled with hundreds of media workers over the weekend demanding that officials clear up the recent killings of two female reporters.
- La Raza called off its boycott of Arizona, claiming served its purpose of stopping Arizona from passing additional law.
Caribbean
- A former Cuban intelligence official convicted of spying in the United States said Monday that he wants to return to the island once his sentence has been completed rather than serving a remaining three-year prohibition here.
- The New York Times reports on the new Memorial Museum of Dominican Resistance, which memorializes the bloody years the country experienced principally under the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship (1930 – 1961).
- Michel Martin of NPR’s Tell Me More discusses the allegations of widespread police abuse in Puerto Rico documented in a recent Justice Department report.
- Tropical Storm Maria is moving away from the Caribbean.
Central America
- Former Gen. Otto Pérez Molina won the opening round of Guatemala’s presidential election, but will face a run-off in November.
- An Australian man who was shot in the spine in Honduras underwent a third operation as he waits for his alleged attacker to face court.
- Costa Rica opened a new hydroelectric power plant Monday that will use the country’s tallest dam to supply clean electricity to around 12 percent of its population.
Andes
- Venezuela is taking steps to withdraw from the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, or ICSID, a unit of the World Bank in Washington in an effort to protect Venezuela’s international assets.
- Bolivian journalist Mónica Oblitas is receiving death threats after using a hidden camera to expose corruption in Bolivia’s Institute of Forensic Investigations, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
- Three men wanted in Colombia for drug trafficking, including Daniel “El Loco” Barrera, have been charged in Miami for smuggling cocaine into the United States.
- The family of Stephany Flores, the Peruvian woman allegedly murdered by Joran van der Sloot, have asked to delay the trial in order to send his indictment back to the prosecutor’s office.
Southern Cone
- Demonstrations held on September 11 to remember the 38th anniversary of Chile’s military coup led to a reported 280 arrests and 45 wounded as crowds of thousands clashed with police.
- Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2009, said during a TV interview that her cancer is now “resolved”.
- Chile and Brazil are moving to cut interest rates in the next several months to ease inflation.
Image: Pepe Rivera @ Flickr.
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