Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico
Mexican Gun Battle Leaves 11 Alleged Zeta Gang Members Dead
November 19, 2010 By Staff
Mexican President Felipe Calderón spoke on Thursday at the 24th session of the National Public Security Council.
Today in Latin America
Top Story — Mexican troops killed 11 alleged gang members in a gun battle in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, officials said Thursday.
The soldiers came under fire Wednesday afternoon while looking into a tip about armed men in the town of Nueva Ciudad Guerrero. Eleven men were killed in the fight, but all the troops remained unharmed.
A statement released on Thursday by Mexico’s Defense Department said that all the men killed in the gun battle were thought to have been members of the Zetas drug gang, the former armed branch of the Gulf Cartel that split off into a separate drug-trafficking organization earlier this year.
United States Customs and Border Protection reinforced security at the Falcon Dam and Roma international-border crossings due to the gunfire, said agency spokesman Rick Pauza. The Zetas control the Mexican side of Falcon Lake, which was created when the Rio Grande was dammed in the 1950s and is a key staging area for marijuana shipments.
Falcon Lake is the site where American David Hartley was allegedly shot and killed in September.
Mexican authorities also captured two suspects and seized 25 pounds of marijuana after the gun battle.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- The manager for the international oil services firm Weatherford was kidnapped and killed in the Mexican Gulf coast city of Tihuatlan earlier this week.
- A kidnapped South Carolina girl and her alleged kidnapper may be headed to Mexico, according to a flier sent out by the F.B.I.
Caribbean
- Fidel Castro says he is happy with the direction Cuba is taking under the leadership of his brother Raul, his most explicit remarks to date about the sweeping economic changes the country is undergoing.
- Protesters in Haiti’s capital continue to lash out at United Nations peacekeepers and the government, blocking roads and attacking foreigners’ vehicles.
- Freddy Beras Goico, an actor and comedian considered the most influential television figure in his native Dominican Republic, died Thursday in New York. He was 69.
Central America
- Panama and the U.S. will sign an agreement to exchange tax information this month, as the Central American nation seeks to clear the way for lawmakers in Washington to approve a free-trade pact.
- Inmate Luis Miguel Marinero became the 27th fatality from the fire that broke out on Nov. 10 in a Salvadoran prison.
- Costa Rica is taking its border dispute with Nicaragua to the International Court of Justice.
- President Porfirio Lobo’s government is to blame for the deaths of five peasants this week in a clash with private security guards, Honduran rural and human rights organizations said Thursday.
Andes
- After leading a bloody native uprising last year that convulsed Peru, Alberto Pizango on Thursday announced he will run in the April 2011 presidential election representing the country’s indigenous groups.
- A Yale University delegation will travel to Peru this weekend to discuss the return of thousands of archeological artifacts found in Machu Picchu a century ago, President Alan García said Thursday.
- The commanding general of Bolivia’s army has declared the Andean nation’s forces “socialist,” “anti-capitalist,” and “anti-imperialist,” positions that were immediately echoed by President Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president.
- The Inter-American Development Bank has approved a loan worth $90 million for Ecuador to expand measures to improve property rights and a system to register property ownership.
Southern Cone
- The 33 Chilean miners rescued last month arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday to begin taping “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute,” set to air on Thanksgiving.
- A three year-old girl who fell down an abandoned well in Argentina was rescued in a six-hour operation Thursday and is doing fine.
- The ongoing strike at the Collahuasi copper mine in Chile possibly influenced a deal between union workers and management at Antofagata Plc’s Los Pelambres copper mine on Thursday.
Image: Gobierno Federal @ Flickr.
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