Latin America: Week in Review, Mexico
2010 Brings Record Violence In Mexico’s Drug War
January 13, 2011 By Staff
Mexican President Felipe Calderón.
Today in Latin America
Top Story — The year 2010 brought the most drug-related deaths in Mexico since President Felipe Calderón launched his offensive against the country’s cartels in 2006.
According to a report whose results were made public by the Mexican government on Wednesday, 15,273 people were killed in drug war violence — up from 9,616 in 2009, according to The Guardian.
Most of the killings took place in the three northern states of Chihuahua, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa, security spokesman Alejandro Poiré said.
All told, 34,616 people have died in Mexico’s drug war since 2006, according to the report.
Calderón said there had also been progress despite the rise in violence, pointing to the fact that 19 of the 37 main drug trafficking leaders had been arrested or killed since 2009, and seizures of drugs and arms have risen.
Just Published at the Latin America News Dispatch
- With Chile’s 33 trapped miners safe and sound, President Sebastián Piñera now struggles to retain his popularity. Latin America News Dispatch contributor Patrick Burns reports.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- Mexico’s drug-related violence seems to be hurting the country’s economy and investment outlook, Fitch Ratings said on Wednesday.
- A fight in a prison in the Mexican state of Durango has left 11 inmates dead, officials say.
- The Chihuahua state legislature has voted to launch impeachment proceedings against three Mexican judges who acquitted a defendant in the 2008 killing of 16-year-old Rubi Marisol Frayre, legislative spokesmen said.
Caribbean
- Haiti mourned more than 300,000 victims of its devastating 2010 earthquake on Wednesday in a somber, poignant one-year anniversary clouded by pessimism over slow reconstruction and political uncertainty.
- The reconstruction of Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake will take years, representatives of U.N. agencies and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Tuesday.
- Cuba’s communist government last year consolidated a practice of pervasive and constant “low-intensity” repression, the opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation said Tuesday.
Central America
- Former Guatemalan Interior Minister Raul Velásquez, a fugitive since last March, was ordered held without bail Tuesday after surrendering to face corruption charges.
- Tourist visits to Guatemala grew 5.6 percent last year compared with 2009, while the country’s tourism revenues increased 6.2 percent, the Guatemalan Tourism Institute said.
- Panama is again seeking the extradition of former dictator Manuel Noriega from France, this time for his role in the killing of the leader of an attempted military coup in 1989.
Andes
- Colombia’s government Tuesday reset its annual minimum wage increase, changing it to a 4.0% hike rather than 3.4% after labor unions complained that higher-than-expected inflation data rendered the original increase insufficient.
- Faced with a deteriorating infrastructure and overwhelming demand, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa declared a state of emergency in the public health system this week aimed at improving care in some of the nation’s largest public hospitals.
- Ecuador sent Venezuela an initial shipment of crude palm oil under a new trade currency regime known as the Unified System for Regional Compensation, or Sucre, the Ecuadorian government said Tuesday.
- Authorities in Moscow have opened a murder investigation in the case of a Peruvian diplomat who went missing there on New Year’s Day, a Russian official told EFE on Wednesday.
Southern Cone
- Heavy flooding in southeastern Brazil on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning may have killed 260 or more people, according to Brazilian news media reports.
- Two Chilean women were killed in protests against a recent hike in gas prices in Punta Arenas, Chile.
- U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela would not comment on Chile’s recognition of a sovereign Palestine, joining neighbors Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay and Ecuador.
- No one was injured in a bomb blast at Paraguay’s TV Cerro Cora in Asunción early Wednesday morning, but police arrested a suspect from Colombia.
Image: Gobierno Federal @ Flickr.
Subscribe to Today in Latin America by Email
3 Comments
[…] Cuba calls immigration talks with US ‘fruitful’ [AP] 2010 Brings Record Violence In Mexico’s Drug War [Latin American Dispatch] Brazil flood and mudslide deaths rise past 300 as search goes on […]
[…] 2010 Brings Record Violence In Mexico's Drug War | Latin America … Posted in General Tags: america, chile, dispatch, era-now, patrick, patrick-burns, popularity, […]
[…] The government released its last figure of 34,600 drug war-related killings in January. […]
Comments are closed.