Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico, North America
Peña Nieto, PRI Victory In Mexico
July 1, 2012 By Staff
Top Story— Mexican voters returned the Institutional Revolutionary Party to power on Sunday after PRI candidate and front-runner Enrique Peña Nieto outpaced his rivals to win Mexico’s presidential elections with about 38 percent of the vote. Peña Nieto’s campaign manager called the result a “resounding victory” for the PRI, which ruled Mexico for an uninterrupted seven decades before losing power for the first time in 2000. Exit polls Sunday night showed Peña Nieto with a solid lead over nearest rival Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the candidate of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Josefina Vázquez Mota, Mexico’s first female presidential candidate from the ruling National Action Party (PAN), conceded the election Sunday night when exit polls showed she was trailing the top two candidates. Along with elections for president and local officials, Mexicans on Sunday voted for new members of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, as well as six state governors and the mayor of Mexico City.
Read more from the Miami Herald.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- Mexican police are investigating the death of 22 year-old journalist and AP intern Armando Montano, who was found dead in an elevator shaft early Saturday.
- The Mexican Interior Ministry sent the army to patrol the city of Nuevo Laredo on Sunday for the elections after a bomb went off near City Hall on Friday, destroying 11 cars.
- Hector Echavarria, the police chief of Choix in Sinaloa, Mexico, was shot and killed by gunmen.
- Mexican newspaper Milenio reported that drug-related homicides fell between May and June from 1,091 to 901 per month.
Caribbean
- Jamaican police have charged a suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Michelle Coudray-Greaves, a high school teacher and daughter of Trinidadian Minister Marlene Coudray.
- Australian swimmer and grandmother Penny Palfrey ended her attempt to swim unaided between Florida and Cuba due to a swift and dangerous current.
Central America
- Archaeologists announced this week that Guatemalan and U.S. university students uncovered a 1,300 year-old stone Mayan carving in northwest Guatemala indicating that the civilization’s “baktun” period will end on December 21, but it isn’t a reference to the end of the world.
Andes
- Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted on Saturday, prompting Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to issue a red alert for the surrounding area.
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and rival Henrique Capriles kicked off the official start of Venezuela’s presidential campaign season on Sunday.
- Five people in a bar near Tumaco, Colombia were killed by gunmen who entered the bar on Sunday and opened fire.
- Archaeologists in Peru have discovered Wari artifacts, including an ancient sundial, dating back to between 600 and 1100 AD.
Southern Cone
- Mercosur nations Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay on Friday extended the suspension of Paraguay from the regional trade bloc, but stopped short of imposing sanctions.
- Mercosur members — minus Paraguay — voted to make Venezuela an official member of the trade bloc, starting next month.
- Two Brazilian Air Force jets caused nearly all of the windows in the Supreme Court building to shatter when they flew too low to the ground during a flag-changing ceremony on Sunday.
Image: World Economic Forum @ Flickr.
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