Fausta's Blog

Key issues on Obama’s Mexico trip: Trade, immigration and drug war.

On immigration, Obama

To sell his immigration overhaul back home, he needs a growing economy in Mexico and a Mexican president willing to help him secure the border.

On trade

Border crossing takes so long in large part because of inadequate infrastructure and inadequate staffing for the amount of traffic, she says. It also results from significant bureaucracy – duplicate customs forms and other procedures.

The capacity of the border entry points to clear trade traffic into the USA has not kept pace with the increase in trade in the border region. In addition, the 9/11 attacks in 2001 prompted added security measures, which slow things down and raise expenses for businesses.

Among the ideas to improve commercial traffic are better use of shipper screening programs that allow low-risk shipments and carefully investigated shippers faster access over the border, say analysts, and should be on the agenda of the two presidents.

On drugs, Mexico’s Curbs on U.S. Role in Drug Fight Spark Friction

shortly after Mexico’s new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, took office in December, American agents got a clear message that the dynamics, with Washington holding the clear upper hand, were about to change.

“So do we get to polygraph you?” one incoming Mexican official asked his American counterparts, alarming United States security officials who consider the vetting of the Mexicans central to tracking down drug kingpins. The Mexican government briefly stopped its vetted officials from cooperating in sensitive investigations. The Americans are waiting to see if Mexico allows polygraphs when assigning new members to units, a senior Obama administration official said.

In another clash, American security officials were recently asked to leave an important intelligence center in Monterrey, where they had worked side by side with an array of Mexican military and police commanders collecting and analyzing tips and intelligence on drug gangs. The Mexicans, scoffing at the notion of Americans’ having so much contact with different agencies, questioned the value of the center and made clear that they would put tighter reins on the sharing of drug intelligence.

Peña Nieto’s focusing on managing the violence, rather than on confronting the cartels.

Tomorrow Obama will visit Costa Rica, returning to the US on Saturday.

A meteor lit up the night last Sunday in Argentina, but the big news wasn’t the meteor, it was the courts. Mary O’Grady writes on how Kirchner Targets Argentina’s Judiciary

Congressional midterm elections are set for October and the kirchneristas are desperate to win a majority so that they can change the law to allow the president to run for a third term. To reach that goal, the government decided that more cooperation from the courts is in order.

Mrs. Kirchner’s government drafted and Congress has now approved a law that, among other things, does away with existing rules for picking members of the magistrate council, the body that chooses and can impeach federal judges. Those rules ensured that the council would be made up of a politically mixed group of individuals chosen by politicians, judges, lawyers and academics.

In their place, the reform stipulates that the council will be elected by popular vote in the same election that chooses the president—raising the likelihood that the executive will control the judiciary. If 51% of voters want judges who will strip the other 49% of their property, so be it. The reform also limits to six months any injunction against a government policy, conveniently destroying the protection that Clarin now enjoys. There will also be new appellate courts with judges appointed by the council.

Caudilla Cristina: divide the opposition, take control of all the institutions, demonize a foreign country to create a common enemy.
ARGENTINA
36 Hours in Salta, Argentina

BRAZIL
‘Problems’ as Maracana stadium reopens in Rio

CARIBBEAN
US tries new aerial tools in Caribbean drug fight (H/T DP)

COLOMBIA
Colombia’s FARC guerrillas thank US lawmakers for supporting Havana peace process

CUBA
Rosa Maria Paya, you have the Castro dictatorship’s attention

Note to AP: Mariela Castro is a Cuban Regime Official

Woman indicted in Cuba spy case is in Sweden and out of U.S. reach

ECUADOR
Government of Ecuador to sue newspaper La Hora for a third time

GUATEMALA
Guatemala’s genocide trial
Playing for time
The spectre of never-ending impunity returns to a divided country

MEXICO
USDA/Mexico Spanish-language flyer: Get kids on food stamps without showing documents

Thirteen die in Mexico prison battle
At least 13 people die and dozens are injured after fighting breaks out between rival groups of inmates at a prison in central Mexico.

PANAMA
Fossil of “most ancient” monkey of Americas found in Panama Canal

PARAGUAY
Paraguay’s elections
Return of the Colorados
A tobacco magnate promises change in one of South America’s poorest countries

PUERTO RICO
Puerto Rico Teams Take Top Spots at 20th NASA Great Moonbuggy Race

St. LUCIA
‘Miracle’ survival after St Lucia fishing boat sinks

VENEZUELA
Arrestan en Venezuela al ex general Antonio Rivero
El ex general denunció en el pasado la “cubanización” de las fuerzas armadas venezolanas y presentó ante la fiscalía casos de intromisión.

Viceroy Maduro swears fealty to his supreme overlord King Raul

INFORME ESPECIAL: Resumen de los principales casos de represión del Gobierno de Venezuela a Grupos Estudiantiles. Enero-Abril 2013

General Carlos Julio Peñaloza
CUBA CONTROLÓ ELECCIONES MEDIANTE RED SECRETA, pag.14

Escuchen a Diosdado Cabello dando instrucciones contra Capriles en reunión privada en Margarita

The Cubanization of Venezuela: Cuba creates 5-million Venezuelan voters out of thin air

Chavismo: from XXI century socialism to XXI century fascism

The week’s posts and podcast:
Venezuela: Maduro has US citizen arrested

Argentina: The high cost of not doing business

Cuba: no off-shore oil

Venezuela: Persecuting Capriles

Argentina: Sunday meteor

Mexico: Striking teachers dig in their heels

Venezuela: You call that an audit?

Podcast:
In Silvio Canto’s podcast, talking to Jon Perdue.

Latin Leaders Abandon Democracy in Venezuela
Despite serious election irregularities, they rush to recognize Nicolás Maduro as president.

In a better world such repression would have provoked objections from the Organization of American States. Its Democratic Charter is a pledge by all members to stand up for democratic principles throughout the hemisphere. Yet since the charter was ratified in 2001, the OAS has done nothing to stop the destruction of institutional checks and balances by left-wing caudillos like Chávez. It has used its power, under the leadership of Secretary-General Miguel Insulza (a Chilean socialist) since 2005, to beat up on countries that push back against what Chávez called “21st century socialism.”

ARGENTINA
Argentines Protest Fernandez’s Bid to Increase Grip on Courts

Argentina, Where Dollars Are the New Drugs

BRAZIL
Inflation in Brazil
Behind the curve
The Central Bank acts belatedly to bring prices back under control

CHILE
Education in Chile
Beyer gets the boot

COLOMBIA
Santos announces stimulus package

More information from government would facilitate and legitimize peace process, and strengthen role of media

Colombia seizes drug lord’s villas
Properties and goods worth more than $25m (£16m) belonging to notorious Colombian drug lord Madman Barrera are seized in a police operation.

CUBA
Two American Hostages in Two Terrorist States

HONDURAS
Honduras: Attorney General Is Suspended

LATIN AMERICA
Video from HACER: Amigos de la Libertad: Carlos Alberto Montaner (in Spanish)

MEXICO
Mexican Drug Cartel Power Shift, More Americans Becoming Their Smugglers

Mexican President Outlines his Future Foreign Policy Agenda

Mexico drops charges against general
Prosecutors in Mexico dismiss the case on drug charges against ex-assistant defence minister Gen Tomas Angeles.

Mexico’s First Lady among the best dressed… and that’s about it for now

PARAGUAY
EVO MORALES, CONTENTO CON TRIUNFO DE CARTES? CARTES INCLUIDO EN RED DE LAVADO DE DINERO

Candidate Disparages Gays in Paraguay, Stirring Dispute

Paraguay holds key presidential election
Voters in Paraguay go to the polls on Sunday in a presidential election seen as key to restoring the country’s democratic credentials.

PUERTO RICO
Son of US Judge Faces Murder Trial in Puerto Rico

VENEZUELA
Maduro’s lousy start
A narrow, tainted election victory is a fitting epitaph for his rotten predecessor. But Venezuela is on the brink

The week’s posts and podcast,
Fonseca flash mob on Times Square!

Argentina: Creditors say “no”

Venezuela: The inaugural crasher

Venezuela: Electoral council agrees to audit itself UPDATED

Puerto Rico: Doctors moving to the US mainland

Venezuela: No recount, says Supreme Court

Venezuela: US not so sure

Venezuela: the military ask for recount?

Venezuela: For the short term, more moving to FL

Podcast,
Mexico & other US-Latin America issues

Thousands of armed vigilantes takeover Mexican town, arrest police and shoot at tourists after ‘commander’ is killed and dumped in the street. Tierra Colorada is in the southern state of Guerrero on the way from Mexico City to Acapulco

‘Community police’ arrest former director of security in Tierra Colorado [sic]
They allege he took part in killing of their leader, 28, for criminal cartel
State prosecutors agree to investigate official’s links to organised crime
Vigilantes have been stopping traffic at checkpoints and searching homes
Tourist injured after vigilantes opened fire because he failed to stop his car
Takeover comes amid growing ‘self defence’ movement against cartels

Risk of Deadly TB Exposure Grows Along U.S.-Mexico Border

Officials say that when drug-resistant cases show up in the U.S., there is often a Mexico connection. Of San Diego’s 14 multidrug-resistant TB cases between 2007 and 2011, half were either from Mexico or had a Mexico link based on the particular strain of the disease, said Kathleen Moser of the county’s Health & Human Services Agency, which sees many patients who live and work on both sides of the border.

Part of the problem, of course, is that Mexico’s rate of TB infection is much higher—in some cases 10 times higher. The resistant strains begin to breed, experts say, when doctors there give patients similar drug regimens over and over. Other times, patients who aren’t supervised closely abandon treatment before they are cured.

It’s worse because of the Mexican drug violence:

Funding isn’t the only issue. As a key part of prevention efforts, U.S. experts have regularly crossed the border in California and Texas to keep tabs on and help patients directly. But drug-related violence along parts of the U.S.-Mexico border has shot up, forcing workers to consult only from the U.S. side. Among them is Barbara Seaworth, the medical director of a TB center in San Antonio, who stopped a few years ago after making the trips for nearly 20 years.

Compounding the problem: Mexico lacks enough health workers to offer directly observed therapy to every patient.

ARGENTINA
Argentina Signals Willingness With Holdout Creditors

Former Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón is romancing Cristina Fernández (link in Spanish).

BRAZIL
Brazil Santa Maria nightclub fire death toll rises to 240
The death toll from Brazil’s deadliest fire in decades has risen to 240 with the death of a man in hospital, a month after the nightclub tragedy.

Social spending in Brazil
The end of poverty?

CHILE
Pinochet Tried Defying Defeat, Papers Show

COLOMBIA
Medellin is ‘most innovative city’
The Colombian city of Medellin is voted as the world’s most innovative for its modern transport system, environmental policies and cultural offerings.

Medellin – The Monotone City; The Truth About Living in Medellin, Colombia

Colombia’s economy
The black stuff
Disruption in key industries
The price of a cup of coffee
OIL may now be Colombia’s biggest export, but coal comes second and coffee, no longer paramount as it long was, is still the fifth-biggest foreign-exchange earner.

CUBA
How Cubans’ Travel Rattles the Regime
To persuade the world it is reforming, the regime lets more people travel. What they say isn’t reassuring.

Cuba’s leaders
The new man
The Castros unveil their successor

In Spain, the truth starts to come out about Paya ‘accident’

Breaking the Castro embargo, one tweet at a time

HAITI
Haiti’s ex-ruler ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier attends court

MEXICO
Mexican authorities participated in civilian disappearances, report says

¿Venganza o parteaguas?

Pena Nieto Pushes Mexico’s Ruling Party to End Pemex Monopoly

Power in Mexico
“The Teacher” in detention
Enrique Peña Nieto’s government has arrested a powerful union leader. Is this the start of something?

Oft-deported Mexican migrants keep trying to return to the United States
For Mexican men with wives, children and former jobs in the United States, the “Whisper Trail” across a rugged stretch of border heavily patrolled by U.S. officers remains their best hope of resuming their former lives.

PERU
Peru Sol Falls to Three-Month Low as Banks Buy Dollars

U.S. tourist who was missing in Peru sends greetings from military base

PUERTO RICO
New Push to Curb Puerto Rico’s Thriving Drug Trade
As Trafficking Hub Spurs Crime Wave, U.S., Local Authorities Step Up Action

VENEZUELA
Isla Presidencial: Venezuelan Internet spoof on presidents attracts serious fans
‘Isla Presidencial,’ an Internet cartoon that pillories politicos, may be at a crossroads now that Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez is out of view. Here’s their Harlem Shake episode:

Hugo’s Health

Venezuela: El imperio electrónico de Fidel – por Gral. Carlos Peñaloza

The Possibility of an Island

Speculation, Devaluation and Idiotic Policies In Venezuela

Back to court: multiple jeopardy for Leopoldo Lopez

Hugo Chavez, “battling for life”?

The week’s posts:
Separated at birth? Or is it all in the hair?

Update on Hugo Chavez

Melgen-Menendez-Noriega?

“Hugo Chavez is brain dead”

Podcast: US-Latin America : The latest from Cuba

The article TRAFFICKING COCAINE IN THE NAME OF ALLAH highlights the terrorists’ sources of income,

But drug smuggling is not new to Africa. Latin American drug cartels have collaborated with Nigerian organized crime groups for decades; shipping heroin from Asia to the Europe and the U.S., and South American cocaine across the Sahara to Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and by air and sea to Europe.

Not to be dismissed is Hezbollah, which for decades used its drug trafficking operations in South America’s Tri-border region and Mexico, to purchase used cars in the U.S. then ship them to Western African countries with large Middle Eastern communities. While the criminal activities of these groups are no secret, stopping their money laundering operations is difficult. Last summer’s seizure of $150 million from the now defunct Montreal brunch of the Beirut based Lebanese Canadian Bank, is an exception.

Drug trafficking’s enormous revenues have corrupted many countries in the region, and helped al Qaeda to buy the loyalty of public officials and law enforcement. The destitution of the Sahel region makes it easier.

Read the whole thing.

“to bolster President Obama’s reelection campaign”. Imagine that!

New special ops command in Mexico politically motivated, analysts claim

the e-mails, released by WikiLeaks last year, chronicle the political calculations that influenced planning meetings in 2010 between military and White House officials about extending American special forces into Mexico.

At those meetings, held at JSOC headquarters in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, National Security Council members reportedly suggested that the new command — focused on fighting Mexican drug traffickers — could be “a possible window” to highlight Obama’s tough stance on drug violence, just as the White House was ramping up its reelection campaign.

“The matter is being looked at by the NSC as a possible advantage to Obama’s reelection campaign, however, State [Department] is raising objections,” Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla wrote in a Nov. 2010 e-mail.

“The recent killings of [American citizens] . . . are being viewed as a possible window to ‘spin’ a get tough on drug violence [and] narcos” that would have been a part of the Obama admininstration’s reelection platform, Bhalla wrote at the time.

The decision “will be a political one,” she added regarding the possible creation of the new special operations command.

So, let me get this straight: In 2009,

the Obama administration was ordering gun dealers to sell gunsto individuals the dealers feared were criminals. Despite desparate warnings from Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (BATF) agents, the guns were not traced. To top it off, Mexican officials were never informed.

U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered with one of those guns, along with 300 Mexicans. Many questions remain unanswered.

And, not letting any crisis go to waste,

the creation of the Special Operations Command-North is timed to bolster President Obama’s reelection campaign? Instapundit asks, I wonder if there’s a “Fast And Furious” tie-in?

At the same time, the PRI is back in power in Mexico, while the

American military trainers attached to the new special-forces counternarcotics hub will school Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on how to track and target key traffickers within the country’s numerous drug cartels.

What could possibly go wrong?

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.

This will not come as a surprise to long-term readers of this blog: Al-Qaeda’s at the center of drug trafficking.

Revealed: how Saharan caravans of cocaine help to fund al-Qaeda in terrorists’ North African domain
The 37 foreign workers who died in the assault on an Algerian gas plant were victims of terrorists whose weapons may have been paid for by cocaine users of Britain and Europe, reports Colin Freeman.

Unlike their ancestors’ cargoes of spices, salts and silks, the contraband that Gao’s smugglers bring in today from Colombia is deemed strictly “haram”, or forbidden, by Islam.
Yet the city’s ever-zealous Islamist morality police have a good reason for turning a blind eye. For it is thanks to the trans-Saharan cocaine trade that Islamist groups like al-Qaeda have become a power in the region, building up formidable war chests to buy both arms and recruits.

The cocaine trade first exploded in this region five years ago, as Latino cartels, faced with a saturated market in the US, sought new routes to get their product to Europe’s borders. First the drug is shipped or flown across the Atlantic to lawless, corrupt coastal states like Guinea Bissau, then it is moved thousands of miles across the Sahara to Algeria, Morocco and Libya.
…
Now, though, the trade’s potential to wreak far wider havoc has become horrifyingly clear, in helping to bankroll the al-Qaeda movements behind both the Islamist take-over of northern Mali and the murder of western workers at the Algerian gas facility earlier this month.

The planes into Gao fly in directly from Venezuela, drugs’ #1 point of departure in Latin America.

In addition to the profiting, al-Qaeda terrorists use stimulants – cocaine, meth – during battle.

The war on terror and the war on drugs have joined into a new stage.

Read the whole report.

Mexican Authorities Find Smuggling Tunnel Equipped With Electricity Near Border

Mexican authorities have discovered a sophisticated smuggling tunnel equipped with electricity and ventilation not far from the Nogales port of entry into Arizona, U.S. and Mexican officials said Friday.

The Mexican army said the tunnel was found Thursday after authorities received an anonymous call in the border city of Nogales, Sonora, south of Arizona. U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed that the Mexican military had discovered the football field-long tunnel with elaborate electricity and ventilation systems.

U.S. Border Patrol spokesman Victor Brabble said the tunnel did not cross into the U.S.

This is not the first, nor the only; in fact,

More than 70 such tunnels have been found since October 2008, most of them concentrated along the border in California and Arizona. In Nogales, Arizona, smugglers tap into vast underground drainage canals.

In other drug war news, the war is not only against law enforcement, it’s also cartel vs. cartel, for territory:Nine slain in Mexican town as cartels clash in Sinaloa

A group of armed men stormed a town in the mountains of the western state of Sinaloa on Christmas Eve and shot nine men to death with assault weapons, then dumped their bodies on a sports field as part of a war between Mexico’s two most powerful cartels, officials said Wednesday.
Sinaloa state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez said the town of El Platanar de Los Ontiveros had become part of a dispute between the Sinaloa cartel controlled by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most-wanted man, and remnants of the Beltran-Leyva cartel who have allied themselves with the Zetas, a paramilitary organized-crime group founded by ex-members of the Mexican special forces.
…
Another cartel fight is raging to the south, along the border between the state of Jalisco and Michoacan. At least seven people have been killed in the area since Sunday. Officials in both states said Wednesday they could not confirm local media reports of more than a dozen new deaths in clashes in the area. Michoacan authorities did report the slaying of a mother and her three children in the capital, Morelia, which has been mostly spared the worst of the state’s drug violence.
Prosecutors said 41-year-old Maria Elena Lopez Bautista and her 19-year-old daughter and 18- and 13-year-old sons appeared to have been tied hand and foot with wire and burned to death inside their home on Monday.
Officials did not speculate on the motive for the crime, but the border with Jalisco has been hit by clashes between Michoacan’s dominant Knights Templar cartel, and the New Generation cartel that operates in much of Jalisco.

With the PRI back in power in Mexico, and marijuana legalization in the USA, 2013 will be an interesting year.

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.