MEXICO-US | Moving US border controls closer to Guatemala. The newspaper Jornada reported on 29 July that the draft of the official Mexican press release on US Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano’s visit that month had included a reference to discussions about Mexico’s southern border, which was excised from the final version. On 22 August the Washington Free Beacon (WFB) published a report by Bill Gertz citing US officials who requested anonymity as saying that what had been discussed was the establishment of a three-tier security system close to Mexico’s southern border. This would be formed by cordons of electronic sensors…

President Enrique Peña Nieto has trumpeted the fact that the number of homicide cases has fallen significantly in his first eight months in office, and has attributed this to greater cooperation between federal and state authorities and improved intelligence. However, a leading private tally of ‘executions’ shows that this year the decline that began in April lost steam in the ensuing two months and turned into a sharp increase in July. Official data also show another major crime, kidnapping, rising to its highest level in a decade. On 27 August, addressing the 34th session of the Consejo Nacional de Seguridad…