Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico
Twelve Mexican Police Die In Ambush While Investigating Murders
March 20, 2012 By Staff
Today in Latin America
Top Story — Gunmen in Mexico ambushed and killed twelve Guerrero state police officers Sunday night as they traveled in pickups to search for the bodies of ten recent murder victims. The twelve local and state policeman rode in six vehicles on their way out of Teloloapan, where authorities had discovered the heads of seven men and three women earlier that day. The officers were reportedly ambushed on the mountain highway when assailants opened fire on their convoy. Along with the twelve killed, eleven other officers were wounded in gunfire. The zone where the police officers were killed is frequented by the La Familia and Knights Templar drug cartels, along with other gangs fighting for territory. The heads left near the Teloloapan slaughterhouse earlier on Sunday were reportedly found with a note threatening the La Familia cartel, but the identity of the gunmen who killed the police officers remains unknown. Two years ago, nine police officers were kidnapped in Teloloapan while investigating another killing, and only of them one survived.
Read more from Reuters.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- Mexican drug cartel the Knights Templar has hung at least eleven banners throughout Guanajuato declaring that it will not carry out any attacks during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI next week.
- Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida dedicated a memorial last Thursday to four students and two professors killed in the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Caribbean
- Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won all 20 of Puerto Rico’s GOP delegates and convincingly beat Rick Santorum in the island.
- At least seven people died when an SUV crashed in the northern Dominican city of Santiago early on Sunday morning.
- Jamaica’s Ministry of Health is working to get approval for a bill that would ban smoking in public places and the workplace.
Central America
- Salvadoran Minister of Justice and Public Security David Munguia called a press conference Friday to declare that the Salvadoran government has not negotiated with gangs in order to reduce violence.
- Costa Rican Finance Minister Fernando Herrero said the country would seek to sell $500 million worth of bonds abroad this year to sustain Costa Rica’s economic growth.
- Seven year-old Salvadoran Gisselle Bonilla returned to El Salvador Monday as the end of her 90-day humanitarian parole to donate bone marrow cells to her sister in the United States expires Wednesday.
Andes
- In a decision sure to generate tension within UNASUR nations, particularly Argentina, Peru permitted British warship HMS Montrose to dock in the port of Callao for four days.
- The Bolivian government deployed 2,300 troops to carry out night patrols with police in La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz in response to anti-violence and anti-crime protests.
- Ecuador on Sunday deported Juan Carlos Calle Serna to Colombia. Serna is the younger brother of drug trafficking suspects Luis Enrique and Javier Antonio Calle Serna.
- Colombian authorities reported that alleged submarine drug trafficker Jose Samir Renteria was captured.
Southern Cone
- The Chilean government sent an embassy representative in Caracas to Maracaibo to provide aid to the family of consul Fernando Berendique after his daughter was shot by Venezuelan police on Saturday.
- A Brazilian prosecutor pursuing criminal charges against Chevron and Transocean employees for a leak off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state said he would allege that the companies should not have permitted a deep-water well in the area.
- Two Uruguayan nurses were charged Sunday in the deaths of 16 patients and another nurse was charged with coverup after the nurses allegedly gave patients overdoses of morphine.
- Argentine truckers are on strike in protest of the government’s alleged failure to ensure a minimum hauling tariff it had agreed to in October.
Image: Vanessa Crossdresser @ Flickr.
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