Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico, North America
Mexico’s Lopez Obrador Says Money Laundering Influenced Election
July 19, 2012 By Staff
Top Story — Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Wednesday accused Enrique Peña Nieto, the apparent victor in Mexico’s July 1 presidential elections, of laundering money to finance his presidential campaign. López Obrador says Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) used illicit funds to buy $7.6 million worth of prepaid debit cards to hand out to voters before the elections, and presented a 36-page document outlining his claim. Peña Nieto called his win “categorical”, and the PRI has said that the allegations constitute “flagrant defamation”. Peña Nieto apparently won the elections by more than six percentage points, but Mexico’s election tribunal will have until September to declare an official winner.
Read more from Reuters.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- The U.S.-born children of Mexican immigrants find themselves unable to access basic social services when their families return to Mexico.
- A Mexican special prosecutor said that 67 journalists have been murdered and 14 are missing since 2006.
- A coalition of groups opposed to Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law are seeking to overturn the “show me your papers” provision that was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Caribbean
- A journalist for Cuban state paper Granma is now facing a fifteen-year prison sentence for spying, but dissidents suspect he was arrested for an exposé he wrote two years ago about a failed aqueduct project.
- Jamaican police arrested Kingston Deputy Mayor Michael Troupe and St. James Councilor Sylvan Reid for allegedly participating in a scheme to scan elderly Americans.
Central America
- Researchers in Guatemala have discovered the ruins of an ancient dam, viaducts and a reservoir that may have been built around 700 AD.
- Belize is looking into decriminalizing marijuana as a way to combat drug trafficking.
Andes
- Two Catholic priests arrived in Peru’s Cajamarca region with the intention of helping resolve the conflict between indigenous groups opposed to the Congas mining project and Peru’s government.
- A 22-year old indigenous man was allegedly killed in Colombia’s Cauca province, where indigenous community members are trying to get both the government and the FARC to leave their territory.
- Ecuador may buy $400 million worth of crude oil from Iran despite U.S. and EU sanctions.
Southern Cone
- The family members of 85 victims of a 1994 bombing of a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires have asked the Argentine government to put pressure on Iran to turn over the suspected bombers.
- The homicide rate for Brazilians under age 19 increased 346 percent between 1980 and 2010, according to a study by the Latin American School of Social Sciences.
- Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said that more measures will be enacted in Chile to combat pedophilia.
Image: Mexicanos Sin Fronteras @ Flickr.
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