MEXICO | Peña Nieto’s security plans emerge, slowly. On 13 October the newspaper Reforma published a report based, it said, on a document produced by President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto’s transition team. The document is entitled Breve Diagnóstico sobre la Seguridad Pública (‘Brief Diagnosis on Public Security’). However, what the newspaper cited was not a diagnosis but a set of aims. The general aims, it said, were the introduction of a national policy of crime prevention; the modernisation of the penitentiary system; the strengthening of anticrime intelligence; and international cooperation. It also says that the new government will seek broad consensus…

The ‘decapitation’ of the Gulf cartel has been followed by that of Los Zetas. This has left the Sinaloa/Pacífico cartel as the last big one still standing. It has also triggered a wave of speculation about what will happen next within the Zetas structure and, by extension, what will happen in the broader universe of the drugs trade and organised crime that President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto will be facing when he takes office on 1 December. In September President Felipe Calderón announced the “decapitation” of the Gulf cartel and the capture of Iván Velázquez Caballero (‘El Talibán’ or ‘Z-50’), a…