Former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon (Left) With Supporters.

Today in Latin America

Top Story — Mexican federal prosecutors formally charged Wednesday the former mayor of Tijuana with illegal possession of a large cache of firearms and ammunition and brought him back to Baja California state from Mexico City.

Jorge Hank Rhon, one of Mexico’s richest men and a major player in the country’s opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), was arrested on Saturday when soldiers raided his expansive Tijuana estate, which includes a casino, a huge private zoo and a soccer stadium. The army said it found 88 firearms and nearly 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration provided intelligence to Mexican authorities, but an unnamed source did not elaborate on the nature of the information.

After the raid Hank was transferred to the El Hongo State Penitentiary east of Tijuana, with members of his security team. The former politician, who owns the Agua Caliente dog-racing track and casino, was then flown to Mexico City for questioning before arriving today at the border city of Tecate after federal prosecutors charged him with possession of prohibited weapons.

It is now up to a federal judge to decide if there is enough evidence to send Hank and his security team to trial.

Hank is one of the most enigmatic and controversial figures in Mexican politics. The son of a former PRI governor of the central state of Mexico, he is allegedly involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping and the murder of a Tijuana journalist.

In Tijuana, thousands of people took to the streets to demand the former mayor’s release. Hank has a large number of supporters who claim that he has sought to help the poor and rumors have also been swirling that he is considering running for another political position in Baja California, perhaps governor.

“We are at ease because he’s here now,” said Manuel Lomeli Bolaños, after Hank was returned to state. “We are confident that he’ll be freed in less than one week if things turn out as we expect.”

Supporter’s of Hank and PRI members are claiming foul play from President Felipe Calderón’s government, with the country heading into its presidential campaign season and the unusual circumstances – no search warrant – surrounding the raid. Mexico’s federal security spokesman, Alejandro Poire, denied Monday that the arrest was a political hit on the PRI by Calderón’s National Action Party.

“Those things are part of the past and what’s happening in Mexico today is a big push for the rule of law, which had long been missing,” Poiré said, according to The Associated Press.

Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, also doubts the arrest had to do with politics in the lead up top the elections, as the government would have sought a more prominent opposition figure

“I suspect that Calderón wants to show that his government won’t stand for impunity from public officials and former public officials,” Selee said to The Associated Press. “Hank is a relatively easy target compared to other politicians since he’s now out of government and is seen as something of a maverick even within his own party.”

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Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch

• New York politicians and immigration activists rallied on the steps of New York City Hall to try and save the Immigrant Opportunities Initiative. Staff Writer Mari Hayman reported from the scene.
• Contributing photographer John Sevigny left Mexico after a terrifying night of gunfire and grenades in Saltillo. Read his personal account here.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday passed a resolution that opposes the federal government’s Secure Communities program.
• The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case against a California law that allows undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition.
• Mexican federal prosecutors arrested a man who had plastic surgery and assumed a female identity to avoid capture for defrauding a government health agency on a sound system contract.
• Mexican authorities seized two homemade tank-like vehicles earlier this week in the northern state of Tamaulipas that allegedly were made for the Zetas Cartel.

Caribbean

• The mother of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a political prisoner who died last year after a prolonged hunger strike, says she will continue to fight for democracy in Cuba after she emigrates to the United States on Thursday.
• Haitians cleaned up homes and streets Wednesday as rains let up and rivers receded following an early summer storm that caused flooding, wrecked homes and killed more than two dozen people.

Central America

• Amnesty International said Tuesday that a former Guatemalan police chief must be brought to justice on allegations of his involvement in extrajudicial executions.
• A Harvard law professor and his affiliates authored a report examining the constitutionality of the 2009 coup in Honduras and have called for constitutional reforms in the country.
• The British government updated its travel advice about Costa Rica, warning that eight foreign nationals have gone missing in the country in the last two years.
• El Salvador’s foreign minister says Central American nations should share some embassies to reduce costs.

Andes

• Leftist guerrillas in southern Colombia have kidnapped four oil workers for Emerald Energy, which is a subsidiary of Chinese chemical company Sinochem (600500.SH), a military official said Wednesday.
• Peru’s leftist president elect Ollanta Humala said he would govern as a moderate and invited investors to buy beaten-down Peruvian stocks, in an interview Wednesday with the Wall Street Journal.

Southern Cone

• The Brazilian Supreme Court ruled not to extradite leftist militant Cesare Battisti to his home country of Italy after he was convicted of the murder of four people during the 1970s.
• A soccer stadium in Santa Fe, Argentina, that will be hosting Copa America games lacks a lighting system just three weeks before the tournament begins.
• Uruguayans pay the highest power and fuel prices in South America, including taxes, according to an Argentine energy consultant group.

Image:Juan Manuel @ Flickr.

The highway to San Diego, California.

Today in Latin America

Top Story — United States authorities in San Diego discovered Wednesday an underground tunnel connecting two warehouses on the U.S.-Mexico border that was used to smuggle drugs.

Along with discovering the tunnel, authorities also seized over 20 tons of pot, in what is one of the largest marijuana seizures in the United States. Mexican authorities also confiscated four tons of pot from the warehouse on their side of the border in Tijuana.

The tunnel, which is more than 1,640 ft long, has a rail system, ventilation and lighting. The tunnel was raided after a 12-hour operation that began Tuesday night when authorities watching one of the warehouses under surveillance followed a tractor-trailer as it left the building.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents notified California Highway Patrol, who stopped the truck near Temecula and discovered ten pounds of pot. The driver, who is a U.S. citizen, and his Mexican wife were arrested and will be arraigned today in San Diego.

The size of the operation lead authorities to suspect that the tunnel was the work of a major Mexican drug cartel, especially as it comes two weeks after Mexican authorities discovered a record 134 tons of marijuana in an industrial area near Tijuana. Authorities are still unsure if there is a connection between the two events.

“I can promise you there are some very unhappy people in the cartel,” said John Morton, director of ICE, according to The Los Angeles Times.

Drug tunnels are frequently used by the Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs into the U.S., with the majority of the tunnels connecting cities on Mexico’s border with California and Arizona.

In 2006, U.S. federal agents discovered a tunnel measuring 2,400 feet under the same stretch of border from Tijuana to Otay Mesa, California. It holds the record for the longest such tunnel found to date.

Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch

• Argentines came together to remember their former President Néstor Kirchner at his funeral on Monday. Joel Richards sent us this photo essay from Buenos Aires.
• National Public Radio reported last week that the private prison industry played a key role in the crafting of Arizona’s controversial immigration law. Molly O’Toole, who interviewed Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce before the primary elections, has more.
• Hispanic voices are becoming more influential as the mid-term elections approach, reports Von Diaz.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• Companies seeking a larger number of legal foreign workers through changes to immigration law likely will find their push thwarted by the Republicans’ sweeping election gains.
• A major drug tunnel has been discovered under the San Diego-Tijuana border, a roughly 1,800-foot passageway found in a warehouse in Otay Mesa where U.S. authorities seized more than 20 tons of marijuana, according to U.S. and Mexican officials.
• Mexico’s peso closed Wednesday at its strongest level against the dollar since late April as the U.S. Federal Reserve unveiled plans to buy Treasurys in support of the U.S. economic recovery.
• Suspect Miguel Ángel Nevarez Escajeda, alias “El Lentes” (Glasses), has been arrested in the killing of two American citizens – a U.S. consulate employee and her husband – in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, or PGR, said in a statement.

Caribbean

• Tomas regained tropical storm strength as it barreled toward Haiti, threatening the already battered Caribbean nation with a direct hit. Tropical storm watches were also issued for parts of Cuba, the Dominican Republic.
• Researchers should determine whether United Nations peacekeepers were the source of a deadly outbreak of cholera in Haiti, two public health experts, including a U.N. official, said Wednesday.
• A fugitive sought by the U.S. EPA for falsifying asbestos abatement certificates was captured in the Dominican Republic, the environmental agency said.

Central America

• Discussions on the fledgling U.N.-backed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) scheme are dominated by concerns that the voices of indigenous peoples and local communities may be lost in complex decision-making processes that aim to make forest functions in developing countries part of global climate action.
• Honduras lost 37 percent of its forests over the past 20 years, revealed the Treehugger website owned by Discovery, which places this country among the most deforested in the world.
• The National Civil Police of El Salvador (PNC) reported an increase in the number of homicides in October, with 344, for a daily average of over 10.
• Young Cuban musicians Daniel Rodriguez Hart and Fidel Leal Camacho won the first and second prize, respectively, at the 6th Maria Clara Cullell International Piano Contest in Costa Rica, held from October 21st through the 31st.

Andes

• Colombia’s army has suspended seven officers and soldiers for failing to control their troops in connection with the brutal murders last month of three impoverished children near Colombia’s northeast border with Venezuela.
• A Basque separatist fighting extradition to Spain testified before Venezuelan prosecutors on Wednesday, a Venezuelan activist said.
• A government health official said a team of specialists believe 17 Yanomami Indians have died in a malaria outbreak in the past three months – a toll considerably lower than initially reported by indigenous health workers.
• President Alan García of Peru has made a formal request for President Obama’s intervention in a long-running dispute over the ownership of a large group of artifacts excavated in 1912 at Machu Picchu by a Yale explorer.

Southern Cone

• Uruguay’s Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of an investigation into murders committed by former Uruguayan president Juan María Bordaberry during the country’s 1973-85 dictatorship, coinciding with a controversial bill in Congress that may annul the country’s 1986 amnesty law.
• Brazil criticized the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to buy billions of dollars of bonds on Wednesday, which could cause the real to appreciate and make Brazilian exports less competitive.
• Rescued Chilean miner Edison Pena will take a tour of the United States, making stops in New York City, Graceland, and Las Vegas.
• The brother of Paraguayan soccer muse Larissa Riquelme was arrested for his involvement in a bank robbery in which $20,000 were stolen.

Image: mylifeafterdeath @ Flickr.

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Mexican authorities seized 105-tons of marijuana in Tijuana

Today in Latin America

Top Story – Mexican authorities seized a huge amount of marijuana Monday in the border city of Tijuana, one of the largest drug busts in years for Mexico.

Soldiers and police officers seized 105-tons of marijuana during a series of pre-dawn raids in three Tijuana neighborhoods. Before the raids a shootout occured between security forces and gunmen in a convoy of vehicles, where 11 people were arrested.

“The seizure of these drugs is without precedent in the country,” General Alfonso Duarte told reporters, according to the BBC. The bags are still being counted and the exact figure of the drugs confiscated could increase, Duarte added.

Along with the 10,000 packages of marijuana, authorities also seized trailers, trucks and two large fire arms.

The Mexican street value of the seized marijuana is suspected to be around $335 million dollars, with the price doubling or tripling in the United States.

The seizure comes amidst a growing debate in Mexico over the legalization of marijuana in the U.S. state of California and in Mexico itself. Mexican President Felipe Calderón opposes the Proposition 19 measure up for vote in two weeks, while other influential Mexicans – including former President Vicente Fox – are advocating legalization.

Calderón has called for a debate on the subject.

Tijuana, along with other Mexican cities bordering the U.S., has taken much of the brunt of the conflict between the Mexican government and the country’s drug cartels. Since Calderón launched a crackdown in 2006, deploying 50,000 troops, there have been some 28,000 deaths related to the violence.

Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch

• With it the nation’s toughest state immigration law, Arizona has taken center stage in the national debate about immigration as the midterm elections approach. Molly O’Toole reports from Arizona in a three-part series.
• Hispanic groups are attempting to mobilize voters amid concerns that voter turnout will be low for midterm elections.
• Criminal deportations have reached a record high under the Obama Administration. Raisa Camargo reports from Washington.

Headlines from the Western Hemisphere

North America

• In a meeting with Hispanic high school students on Friday, Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle downplayed her campaign’s use of generic pictures of Latinos to present a negative image of undocumented immigrants.
• Mexico’s stocks powered to a record-high close Monday as local retail shares saw solid gains and a wave of optimism swept through U.S. markets after a strong report by banking giant Citigroup.
• Bad weather prevented authorities on Monday from retrieving the body of a California doctor who was killed with three other U.S. citizens when their plane crashed while on a medical aid mission in northern Mexico.
• Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Monday a 17 percent drop in Border Patrol arrests this year shows heightened enforcement is slowing illegal immigration.

Caribbean

• A senior U.S. diplomat met Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez in New York last month to urge Cuba to release an American contractor held on suspicion of espionage, a U.S. official said Monday.
• The Cuban government launched a YouTube and Facebook campaign starring a terrorist- turned-car thief who allegedly points the blame at Venezuelan and Cuban exiles in Miami.
• Steady rains flooded portions of the Haitian capital over the weekend, turning streets into rivers and leaving at least 12 people dead, civil protection officials said Monday.
• The family of a British woman who died of starvation in the Dominican Republic have called for a full investigation into her death.

Central America

• U.S. Assistant Secretary David Johnson will travel to Honduras and Guatemala from October 18 to 21, 2010.
• U.S. police have arrested the suspected killer of a Honduran former government minister as part of a multinational roundup of fugitives, authorities said Monday.

Andes

• A standoff between Spain and Venezuela is heating up as Spanish authorities move toward requesting the extradition of an alleged ETA member working within the government of President Hugo Chávez.
• Rescuers sought for a fourth day Monday to locate two missing miners in a collapsed gold mine, sorting through rubble by hands in hopes of finding them alive.
• The only non-Chilean among the 33 men freed from a mine last week returned to his native Bolivia on Monday and received a hero’s welcome and a $1,000-a-month job at a state company.
• Bolivia’s government, aiming to boost mining exports, said on Monday it set December as the target to award the contract to build two zinc smelters, a project estimated at $500 million.

Southern Cone

• Mercosur nations Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay joined Argentina in issuing a communique condemning the UK’s missile tests in the Falkland Islands.
• The Paraguayan rebel group EPP singled out four men suspected of being police informants on Monday for execution.
• Recent polls show Brazilian presidential candidate Jose Serra trailing front-runner Dilma Rousseff by 4 to 7 percentage points.

Image: Isha.Net*~ Errror99 @ Flickr.

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SAN DIEGO — Last year Jorge, a Tijuana business owner who asked for anonymity for safety reasons, was driving home from work when several cars attempted to corner him.

When he realized that he was in the middle of a classic kidnap setup, he quickly accelerated and squeezed his Mini-Cooper in between two of the cars. As Jorge escaped, shots rang out behind him and he arrived to the police station with a bullet wound to his arm.

At the station, however, the police told Jorge that there was little that they could do for him.

“I was told that as soon as I left they could not guarantee that I would live.” They asked Jorge if he wanted to be taken to the airport or the U.S.-Mexican border.

Even though Jorge’s life was threatened in Mexico and he fears returning, he does not want to risk losing his tourist visa in the United States by applying for political asylum or refugee status.

Holders of tourist visas in the U.S. who apply for asylum risk losing those visas if their case is denied, according to San Diego immigration attorney Jacob Sapochnick. Applying for refugee or asylum status demonstrates the intention to stay permanently in the U.S. — a measure used by the State Department as the basis to deny a tourist visa, Sapochnick says.

Those who have “a well-founded fear of persecution based on at least one of five internationally recognized grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” can apply for asylum and refugee status, according to a 2005 U.S. Justice Department report.

Yet it is often very difficult for asylum and refugee status to be granted. “Just witnessing a crime will not be sufficient. But, for example, former police high-ranking officers, government employees that were targeted could be potentially good candidates,” said Sapochnick.

One option available to wealthy Mexicans who flee the violence in their country is to apply for an E-2 or Investor’s Visa.

Since 1994, Mexico has been a so-called Treaty Country, making its residents eligible for E-2 visas. While the State Department only says that the investment needed must be “substantial,” Sapochnick says that a recommended investment varies between 50,000 to 100,000 dollars.

“[O]rdinary skilled and unskilled workers do not qualify” for E-2 visas, according to the State Department guidelines.

Such requirements disqualify many victims of violence in Mexico. In 2008, The Los Angeles Times reported that half of the victims of violence in Mexico were at or below the middle class level.

The select few who meet the investment requirements to qualify for the E-2 visa must then show that they are involved in their business. “The visa is not just about moving the funds,” Sapochnick said. “We need to show they set up the company, have a lease, start doing business.”

Not many of these visas are granted every year. In 2009, the U.S. granted Mexico only 2,499 treaty investor and treaty trader visas. This is a small number compared to the 7,598 student visas and 6,020 exchange visitor visas approved for Mexicans in 2009, according to State Department statistics.

Yet, the small number of E-2 recipients is partially due to the small number of applicants — 70 percent of all E-2 applicants in 2009 were granted visas, according to a 2009 State Department report.

As a point of reference, the ceiling for the number of refugees admitted by the U.S. in 2009 was 5,000 for all of Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a State Department’s Report to Congress.

Jorge now lives in San Diego, California in a house bought in the name of his girlfriend, a U.S. citizen. He hopes to soon have enough saved to apply for an E-2 visa. Meanwhile, Jorge must decide whether to risk his life by returning to Mexico or continuing to overstay his tourist visa in the U.S.

“Today, in spite of the tranquility of living in a country [the U.S.] with guaranteed security, I still have to risk my life when I go to Tijuana to work,” said Jorge.

Image: Paola Reyes

Tijuana has seen nearly 200 people killed since Dec. 1 of last year and is regarded as one of the hotspots for violence between warring drug cartels in Mexico.

Since Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched the offensive against the drug cartels in 2007, more than 15,000 have been killed in drug related violence.

For more in depth analysis of the Mexican Drug War visit the New York Times website to read their series on Mexican drug trafficking or the Los Angeles Times website to read their series “Mexico Under Siege.”