Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico
Gunmen Kill Eight Mexican Police Officers During An Ambush In Sinaloa
October 12, 2010 By Staff
A ceremony honoring Mexico's police last week.
Today in Latin America
Top Story — Gunmen killed eight police officers and wounded another during an ambush in northern Mexico.
The gunmen attacked four police cars on a highway in the town of Navolato Monday and then fled, allegedly abandoning a vehicle several miles away.
“They were surprised by a convoy of three or four cars … (The police) were driving on the highway when this gang caught up with them and began shooting with automatic weapons,” a spokesman for the state prosecutor’s office said, according to Reuters.
Navolato is located in Mexico’s Sinaloa state, which is a major marijuana producing region and has registered some 1,700 suspected drug-related deaths so far this year.
It is also home to one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels, the Sinaloa cartel, which is led by Mexico’s most-wanted fugitive, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
The attack occurred 50 miles from the state capital, Culiacán.
More than 28,000 people have died in drug violence since Mexican President Felipe Calderón began his assault on the drug cartels in December of 2006, which has sparked turf wars between rival groups, shootouts and an increased focus on violence in the country.
It was also reported that two headless bodies were found hanging from their feet on a bridge near the border city of Tijuana.
Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch
- Criminal deportations have reached a record high under the Obama Administration. Raisa Camargo reports from Washington.
- Photojournalist James Rodríguez explores the controversy surrounding Goldcorp’s Peñasquito Mine in Mazapil, Mexico.
- A new report from the Pew Hispanic Center finds that the Latino vote leans toward the Democrats in advance of mid-term elections. Alison Bowen has more at her blog Beyond Borders.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- Undocumented immigrants, nervous about stronger enforcement, have started drawing up legal documents to spell out what they want to happen to their families and belongings if they are deported.
- Eulalia Garcia Maturey will become a U.S. citizen on the 101st anniversary of her crossing into the United States from Mexico.
- Suspected drug smugglers digging a tunnel across the Mexico-U.S. border hit a sewage line near Arizona, an official with Arizona’s Nogales Utility said Monday night.
Caribbean
- A once-abandoned dog that helped save lives after the Haiti earthquake and a three-legged cat that inspired a series of children’s books have received national honors.
- Dominican police say a British national allegedly killed two men during a dispute over a 22-year-old Haitian woman and then tried to take his own life.
Central America
- Costa Rican police arrested two Mexicans on Monday, who are allegedly the leaders of a drug ring connected to the Guatemalan plane that crashed Sunday in Costa Rica while carrying 173 kilograms of cocaine.
- Four people died and another four were wounded in a shootout aboard a bus in southeastern Guatemala.
- U.S President Barack Obama apologized to Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom in light of the recent discovery that U.S. researchers infected Guatemalan’s with sexually transmitted diseases in the 1940s.
Andes
- Colombian stocks continued a streak of record highs Monday, boosted by shares of key oil companies in the country’s blue-chip index, while the peso was mostly flat as pressure continued to mount on the central bank to rein in the currency.
- The Bolivian government has said it has annulled a new coca production law which cut by a third the number of coca leaves which growers could sell.
- President Hugo Chávez announced the expropriation of two more companies Sunday, the latest among hundreds of enterprises taken over in the socialist leaders campaign to make Venezuela less capitalistic.
- The Central Reserve Bank of Peru intervened in the foreign-exchange market Monday to buy $35 million at an average of PEN2.7870 per U.S. dollar.
Southern Cone
- Engineers in Chile on Monday practiced lowering a rescue capsule into the mine where the 33 trapped miners are expecting to be rescued this week.
- Argentina filed a formal complaint to the UN General Secretary after protesting the British military’s presence in the Falkland Islands to the British ambassador.
- The Brazilian government will allow private companies to log land in the Amazon rainforest, granting concessions for 1 million hectares by the end of this year.
Image: Gobierno Federal @ Flickr.
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