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President Hugo Chávez followed up his recent expulsion of the US ambassador by expelling the regional director of the US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) and his deputy from Venezuela this week. The two men had released in Venezuela a 230-page report entitled, “A Decade Under Chávez : Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela", which made the incendiary claims that not only had Chávez 's time in office constituted a “lost decade" but he had also used the short-lived coup of 2002 as a pretext to consolidate his grip on power to the detriment of state institutions and human rights guarantees.

There are worrying signs for Chávez that patience in Latin America with his melodramatic gestures and confrontational style is beginning to wear a bit thin and that his influence, especially in view of the instability of oil prices, could be on the wane. It was noteworthy that when Chávez announced that he had thwarted a fresh coup attempt in Venezuela last week, heads of state did not rush to offer rhetorical support for him as they did for Bolivia's President Evo Morales. However, when Chávez decided to expel HRW director José Miguel Vivanco and his deputy Daniel Wilkinson, implying that their report was part of an overarching conspiracy to unseat him, he got nothing but criticism.

Chile led the way. While making it clear that it did not necessarily share the view of the report's author (a Chilean), it sent a diplomatic note of protest. Deputy foreign minister Alberto Van Klaveren accused Chávez of a disproportionate response to the report, and José Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) and likely candidate in Chile's presidential elections next year, echoed his sentiments (see sidebar).

So just what did the report say?
Distilled to essentials, the report accused Chávez of discrimination on political grounds, open disregard for the principle of the separation of powers, progressive undermining of freedom of expression, and undercutting established unions by setting up new, parallel unions that support his political agenda.

The Venezuelan Information Office (VIO), a government agency based in the US, rebuffed many of the findings of the report, pointing out that the “most fundamental" human rights to food, education, and health care have expanded significantly under Chávez ; that the opposition still dominates the airwaves; and that democratic institutions are still independent, as shown by the national electoral council which upheld the “no" victory in last December's referendum on constitutional reforms. All of this is irrefutable, but the foreign ministry preferred to focus on what it described as the report's link to the “unacceptable strategy of aggression" of the US government. This is unsustainable: HRW is even more critical of Colombia, a key US ally in the region.

The government is clearly getting jittery about the upcoming regional elections. It is possible to see how the timing of the release of such a damning report (especially as HRW has released similarly critical reports before key votes in the past) could be construed as politically motivated by a government so sensitive to external criticism. On the other hand, Chávez 's overreaction merely drew more attention to the report.

Coup
If the HRW report had come out after the elections it would have been less provocative. It would also almost certainly have had something to say about the latest coup claims [WR-08-37]. Last week former Vice-President José Vicente Rangel, now an investigative journalist, informed the national assembly of his ongoing investigations into the alleged coup attempt. Rangel presented a far-fetched conspiracy theory. He claimed that the Venezuelan opposition, the Colombian government, the domestic and international media, and the US government were behind the coup. A handful of retired military officers have been arrested so far.

Rangel sought to link retired General Raúl Isaí­as Baduel, a former ally of Chávez turned critic, with a future coup attempt, claiming he had recently met Pedro Carmona, who was briefly president during the April 2002 coup. He also maintained that the plot had been accelerated because US President George W Bush was determined to oust Chávez before leaving office in January.

• Unasur summit
  Chile was irked at President Hugo Chávez 's attempts to politicise the first meeting of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) in Santiago last week, on the Bolivian crisis, by calling for a clause to be inserted into the final declaration condemning US interference. Significantly, Brazil's President Lula da Silva, a model of moderation, and not Chávez emerged strongest from the summit.
  

President Rafael Correa defended his vision of modern socialism during a trip to Cuba last week where he met his Cuban peer Raúl Castro. “Traditional socialism made enormous mistakes," Correa said, adding that “perhaps the most important of these mistakes was never disputing a notion of development with capitalism". Correa aims to rectify that mistake in Ecuador, through a new constitution privileging “the people" first and foremost. Leftwingers argue that his new mining law, approved this week, contradicts this vision.

Correa said he could listen and learn from Castro for hours, although he was just as keen to give his own lesson. “We cannot continue to sustain dogmas history has defeated: the class struggle, dialectical materialism, the nationalisation of all property, the refusal to recognise the market," Correa said, in a country where the state controls 90% of the economy and rejects market mechanisms.

Correa did not define his own vision of socialism as emphatically as he dismantled the traditional vision. He focused on vague concepts of social justice and state intervention in the economy and society when necessary. He is on course to secure re-election in April, finishing his second year in power on 15 January with a 70% approval rating, according to an opinion poll by Cedatos Gallup. This smashes the previous record of popularity for a president at this stage of his mandate. However, only half of respondents approved of his tough treatment meted out to other state institutions, the media and the opposition, and he could face some of the most serious protest action since taking office over the course of the next week.

The umbrella indigenous group, Conaie, is promising a “mass mobilisation" on 20 January against the new mining law approved by the interim congress, or congresillo, this week. Conaie is incensed at the government's refusal to seek authorisation from indigenous communities for any mining activity on their lands. It also says the law contains inadequate environmental safeguards. The government disputes this, and argues the new law will create 300,000 jobs.

Conaie lacks the support of other indigenous groups, but the leftwing Coordinadora por la Unidad de la Izquierda y Defensa de la Vida, set up by Correa's former spokeswoman, Mónica Chuji, last November [WR-08-46] backs Conaie. Chuji said the new law was unconstitutional (and neoliberal) as it allowed multinationals to hold majority stakes in mines in contravention of the new constitution which stipulates that the state must hold a 50% stake in all mines. Under the new law the state's minimum stake is just 5%.

Trade unions, meanwhile, are preparing protest marches of their own: the Frente Unitario de Trabajadores (FUT) on 15 January; the Unión Nacional de Educadores, on 22 January. They want an increase in the minimum wage and are protesting against the purchase of bonds with money from the social security system, which they say will jeopardise workers' pensions. Confusingly, the government made a US$30.47m coupon due on its US$650m Global 2015 bond issue this week. By doing so it unexpectedly backtracked on its resolution last month - when it refused to pay a US$30.6m coupon on its US$3.8bn Global 2012 bond issue - that the 30-day 'technical moratorium' on the Global 2015 bond would become outright default [WR-08-50].

The government of President Lula da Silva presented its draft budget plan for 2010, reducing Brazil's tight primary fiscal surplus target down to 3.3% of GDP, from 3.8% currently. Under the plans, the government will have further scope to reduce the target down to 2.8% of GDP. The government claims the move is necessary to allow it to prime domestic demand via continued public spending and potential further temporary tax reductions in order to ease the effects of the global economic crisis on the Brazilian economy. The opposition claims the move is politically motivated to allow Lula to avoid making tricky spending decisions ahead of next year's presidential election.

For 2009, the government had already decided to cut the fiscal surplus target to 2.5%, revising it down from 3.8%, amid weaker tax receipts as economic output stagnates. But, thanks to several years of cautious fiscal management, Brazil's budget position remains remarkably sound. Public debt levels are low at 37% of GDP, underpinning Brazil's recently acquired investment grade rating. Most analysts agree the country is well placed to rebound in 2010 and beyond, after a small economic contraction this year.

The government partly engineered the reduction by taking the state oil company, Petrobras, off the books: it considers Petrobras to be private despite the government's 53% controlling stake. While this will allow Petrobras to continue with its ambitious five-year US$174.4bn investment plan, it will also take pressure off the government to cut spending outlays ahead of general elections. This is due to Petrobras's commitment to some US$77bn of projects included in the government's economic acceleration programme (PAC), which is being managed by Lula's preferred successor, Dilma Rousseff [WR-09-06].

Political manoeuvre
The opposition argues that this suggests the government's decision is politically motivated to boost Rousseff's chances of winning the presidential election. Only recently, Lula increased the maximum per-capita family income limit for beneficiaries of the government's cash handouts under its poverty-alleviation programme Bolsa Famí­lia to R$137 (US$61.5) monthly, from R$120 (US$54). It is estimated that this seemingly small difference will include an extra 2m families to the 11.1m that already benefit from the programme.

Earlier this month, Lula also submitted a new provisional measure (MP) to congress authorising the release of up to R$1bn (US$460m) in additional funds to compensate the country's 5,564 municipalities for unexpected losses in federal transfers this year. The opposition said the cash was aimed at keeping municipalities on the government's side ahead of the 2010 elections, in which voters will also choose governors and congressional representatives. The government-allied Partido Movimiento Democratico Brasileiro (PMDB) runs the majority of town halls in Brazil and as such will be the biggest beneficiary, making the party's grassroots more sympathetic to the idea of joining Rousseff's ticket.

Lula has now also created a R$4bn (US$1.8bn) credit line to state governments through the federal development bank, Bndes. As with municipalities, all states will be eligible for the funds regardless of their fiscal position, dismissing the so-called Fiscal Responsibility Law. This will allow 13 indebted states, of Brazil's 27, to make bigger public disbursements. Six of these are from Lula's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). All this generosity is expected to increase the level of public debt.

• Impeachment

The supreme court will debate recent rulings by the electoral court, under which two governors were impeached for electoral crimes committed in the 2006 gubernatorial elections and their mandates given to the second-placed candidates. Several supreme court judges argue that the constitution stipulates that an indirect election should be carried out by local assemblies to choose the new governor. The PMDB has been the beneficiary of the electoral court's rulings, bringing the total number of states it controls to nine. And it may yet add another to its portfolio by 2010.

GUATEMALA | Police chief investigated. Last week President Alvaro Colom ordered an investigation into allegations that the new chief of police (PNC), Porfirio Pérez Paniagua, was responsible for the disappearance of US$300,000 seized in a police operation on 10 June, two days after he assumed his position [WR-09-23]. According to the local press, on 29 June, the PNC's deputy operations director, Héctor Castellanos ordered the suspension of the investigation into the missing money. Castellanos was sacked from the PNC for corruption the previous year but reportedly received his new position following Pérez's appointment. Pérez denies the accusations and has called for an immediate investigation into the claims.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC | Protests. The umbrella health workers' union, Coordinadora de los Gremios de la Salud, announced a general 72 strike starting on 29 July to demand better wages and working conditions.  The doctors - who currently earn US$611 a month in the public sector - are demanding their salary be more than doubled to US$1611 - although the government of President Leonel Fernández maintains it lacks the funds to meet the demand. The industrial action is only the latest sign of unrest in the country; the previous week saw a 42 hour general strike to demand an end to electricity blackouts, improvements to the water supply and other public works programmes. The electricity crisis, caused by failings in the country's power infrastructure, came to a head on 15 July with an outage which left much of the country without power for over three hours. The hastily struck agreement on 22 July between the government and electricity sector, whereby Fernández offered up US$15m to fund fuel for two plants that are currently offline, has failed to placate protesters however; on 28 July picketers gathered outside the state power holding company (CDEEE) premises demanding the resignation of CDEEE vice president, Radhamés Segura. Protesters were unwilling to buy Segura's line that the shortages owe to an increase in the population's energy demand and the private sector's failure to invest in energy generation.

URUGUAY | FA won't lift banking secrecy. Danilo Astori, who served as outgoing President Tabaré Vázquez's economy minister and is now running as vice-presidential candidate of the ruling FA, announced on 6 November that the debate over banking secrecy within the FA had ended, and that a decision had been taken not to lift it. Presidential candidate José Mujica had said last May that, were it up to him, he would lift banking secrecy. The OECD later published a list of tax havens in which Uruguay figured as one of the least cooperative ones.

PARAGUAY-BRAZIL | First-ever shutdown of Itaipú. A still-unidentified fault on a transmission line owned by the Brazilian firm CESP led to an interruption of the power supply to southern, southeastern and central-western Brazil on 10 November, then to the Paraguayan grid. The blackout, which lasted only about 20 minutes, was the first suffered by the Itaipú system since it was commissioned in 1982. The event was initially attributed to an explosion, but this was soon dismissed, and a communiqué from the binational firm that runs the complex said on 11 November that it had ruled out 'any kind of sabotage'.

BRAZIL | Trade war. The government has decided to increase the import tax of 102 US-made products, totalling US$591m, after receiving authorisation from the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO has ruled three times in favour of Brazil in cases against US government subsidies to the US cotton industry. The Brazilian government, however, says it is willing to reach an accord with the US before the tax hike takes place, next month. A US trade committee is currently in Brazil for negotiations.

Six member states of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) signed an agreement in Castries, St Lucia, on 18 June creating an Economic Union. The leaders of Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines marked the 29th anniversary of the signature of the founding treaty of the OECS by opting for “a single economic and financial space" to deepen the integration of the sub-region. The British dependency of Montserrat is expected to join the Economic Union within the next few weeks, followed by Anguilla and the British Virgin islands, which are associate members of the OECS.

The OECS Director-General, Len Ishmael, described the new accord, which revises the 1981 Treaty of Basseterre signed in St Kitts, as “the christening of the OECS". She said that the global financial crisis underlined the need for economic unity within the OECS, which has a combined population of 600,000, to “reinforce the resilience of member states to ensure their survival", increasing the competitiveness and presence of the group on the international stage.

Members of the OECS already have a common currency, and regional institutions such as the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, Supreme Court and civil aviation authorities. The Economic Union, when it is ratified by the respective parliaments, will allow free movement of goods and, crucially, labour; remove barriers to intra-regional trade; deepen cooperation in the areas of agriculture, tourism, and telecommunications; and pool resources to fight crime.

The treaty also establishes a new organ, the OECS Commission, to be launched by January 2011. This supranational executive institution, which will include the current Secretariat as its administrative arm, will function like a board of directors, with the OECS Director-General as Chairman and members from each country of ambassadorial rank on the board. It is designed to improve links with member countries, and to have real decision-making clout, the lack of which is a perennial criticism of the 15-member Caribbean Community (Caricom) to which the OECS belongs.

One of the least appreciated but most crucial achievements of the government of President Vicente Fox (2000 to 2006) was to enable Mexico's constitutional machinery to function. The big beneficiary of the first non-Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) president since the Revolution was the supreme court. Thanks largely to Fox the supreme court has made a series of profound and illuminating decisions on a range of issues. Now the court is looking for both a new president and a new judge to replace one of its most important members, José de Jesús Gudiño Pelayo, who died suddenly on 19 September while on a trip to London.

Changes on the supreme court, after being initially rare following the court's reformation in 1995, have become more frequent. In 2009 President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa had to nominate two replacements for retiring judges. Supreme court justices are chosen by the senate from a shortlist submitted by the president.

The new president of the supreme court will also chair the Consejo de la Judicatura Federal, and the supreme court will supply a member for the committee which is implementing the new criminal justice system. This is moving Mexico away, state-by-state, from a system which not only presumed the guilt of the accused but also did not allow trials in which evidence is submitted orally rather than in writing. Oral evidence is also subject to cross examination which written evidence is not. 

Probably the most important of the supreme court's recent judgments came in June 2003 when it authorised the extradition of Ricardo Miguel Cavallo, an Argentine wanted in Spain for human rights abuses committed during Argentina's dirty war. Bizarrely, Cavallo has ended up in Mexico as head of the national vehicle registration agency (Renave) which he ran as Ricardo Cavallo. In Argentina he was Miguel Cavallo and also known as Serpico, who was notorious for his torturing exploits at the Naval Mechanics School during the Dirty War.

Rigoberta Menchú, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said at the time of Cavallo's extradition to Spain that the decision had set a precedent because Mexico was the first country in the region to extradite a human rights abuse suspect to a third country. She was not quite accurate. Cavallo was extradited to face terrorism and genocide charges, not torture charges, which had expired. The court specifically rejected Cavallo's legal argument that because genocide and terrorism were not specified in the extradition treaty between Spain and Mexico, Cavallo could not be extradited.

The court is now facing some fundamental changes in the way it works. Currently it has 10 members, because the president has yet to nominate a successor to Gudiño Pelayo. The court itself has to pick a new president because its presiding magistrate, Guillermo I. Ortiz Mayagoitia, is coming to the end of his term.

The most likely successor to Mayagoitia was assumed, by commentators, to be José Ramón Cossí­o. On 11 October, however, Cossí­o issued a letter saying that he had no interest in stepping up to the presidency of the supreme court. He said that he thought that the role was too administrative and would cramp his ability to speak his mind. Sceptics claim that Cossí­o may have been ruling himself out because he had worked out that he would not get the votes he needed to win the presidency of the supreme court.

Cossí­o's decision leaves the presidency open to Juan N. Silva Meza, commentators in Mexico City say. He is one of only three members to have been on the court since its reconstruction in 1995. The other long-serving justice, Olga Marí­a Sánchez Cordero, has ruled herself out, while Sergio Salvador Aguirre Anguiano, the third possibility, has admitted that he is not equipped to become president of the supreme court

José de Jesús Gudiño Pelayo
José de Jesús Gudiño Pelayo, 67, had another five years to serve on the court.  He was appointed in 1995 for a 20-year term. He was one of the most independent-minded of the bench. His judgments were rarely predictable.
He advocated a bigger role for the human rights commission, and argued against the courts becoming involved in human rights issues which he said would involve the supreme court becoming, as it has been in the US, a referee on political issues. This was part of his view that the legal system should not be used by politicians to achieve their goals. His view was the courts were there to clarify the law, not make it.
In recent decisions Gudiño allied himself with the more liberal justices. On cases such as Lydia Cacho (a journalist who was persecuted by the former governor of Puebla), and who was to blame for the fire at the ABC nursery in Hermosillo, he consistently argued (often in a minority) that senior officials should be answerable for their acts. He was also in favour of decriminalising abortion and allowing gay marriage.

• Supreme court judges appointed in 1995

 José Vicente Aguinaco (retired 2003, now dead)
 Juventino Castro y Castro (retired 2003, now a federal (PRD) deputy
 Juan Dí­az Romero (retired 2006)
 Mariano Azuela Güitron (retired November 2009)
 Genaro Góngora Pimentel (retired November 2009)
 Humberto Román Palacios (died 2004)
 José de Jesús Gudiño  (died 2010)
 Guillermo Ortiz Mayagoitia (currently president, retires in 2012)
 Salvador Aguirre Anguiano (retires in 2012)
 Olga Sánchez Cordero (retires in 2015)
 Juan Silva Meza (retires in 2015)

• Judges appointed since 2003 (all for 15 years)
   José Ramón Cossí­o (2003)
   Margarita Luna Ramos (2004)
   Sergio Valls (2004)
   Fernando Franco (2006)
   Arturo Zaldí­var (2009)
   Luis Marí­a Aguilar (2009)

Argentina's President Cristina Fernández, unlike her deceased husband and predecessor, Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), enjoys the global exposure afforded by international events, particularly summits at which she can fraternise with global leaders in front of the cameras. Foreign relations have always interested Fernández and sometimes turning her attention to international issues has presented her with an escape from political battles at home. Many local commentators in Argentina, however, believe that her government has manipulated a diplomatic dispute with the US to divert attention from domestic travails, and channelled its disappointment over US President Barack Obama's decision not to include Argentina in his upcoming mini-tour of the region into this confrontation.

The Argentine government feels it stuck its neck out for the US over the Wikileaks scandal when it blocked a Bolivian and Venezuelan initiative to condemn the US at the last Union of South American Nations (Unasur) summit in December, but since then the contents of the cables have become more problematic for President Fernández, especially in an electoral year. It now seems that if the US cannot be her friend, Fernández may make it her enemy (at least rhetorically), a move that would resonate with the ruling Frente para la Victoria's (FPV) voting base.

To be fair, it should be taken into consideration that if the roles were reversed and an Argentine air force plane landed on US soil with part of its cargo undeclared (see box below), US authorities would have responded in a similar manner; the difference is the US did not expect such a vehement response from a government led by a president who on many occasions has gone out of her way to win over Obama's sympathies.

Further complicating matters is the key role played by the Argentine foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, whose rhetoric at home is anything but diplomatic. Timerman's constant public battles with political opponents in his preferred social networking site have turned him into something of a celebrity, with the media dubbing him 'Twitterman'. This week, Timerman made the ill-fated mistake of treating relations with the US the same way he would treat an exchange with a local TV personality, blowing up something that could have been a minor diplomatic altercation.

Nonetheless, the row with the US has become much more than a defence of Argentine laws and sovereignty as government officials repeatedly state in front of the cameras; it appears to have become a convenient smokescreen to divert attention away from the ferocious internal battles in the Partido Justicialista (PJ) and the fragile position the government could find itself in if Federal Judge Norberto Oyarbide were to prosecute the powerful head of the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), Hugo Moyano, for his alleged involvement in the so-called medicines' mafia.

The untouchables
The power of the CGT was demonstrated late last week following the arrest and prosecution of Gerónimo “Momo" Venegas, the head of the Argentine union of rural workers and stevedores (Uatre), in relation to the investigation of the medicines' mafia. Venegas has led the Uatre for 20 years, he is the leader of the 62 Peronist Organisations and also serves as the interior secretary for the CGT. Although he is a die-hard Duhaldista, backing the Peronistas Federales (PF), whose de facto leader is former president Eduardo Duhalde (2002-2003) in the internal PJ battle against Fernández's FPV, his role as a union leader put him, in the eyes of Moyano and the CGT, above all Peronist divisions.

In addition to giving Duhalde and Moyano an opportunity to flex their political muscles, the reaction to Venegas's arrest is interesting because of how it contrasts with the reaction to the arrest of another politician in relation to the same investigation: on 8 February, Oyarbide filed charges against Héctor Capaccioli, the former superintendent of health services and the main fundraiser for Fernández's 2007 campaign, for misappropriation of public funds and failure to comply with his duties as a public servant. On 10 February, Venegas was arrested for his suspected involvement in diverting public funds destined for a medical prevention campaign - those irregularly allocated by Capaccioli - defrauding the state and distributing adulterated medicines. The news of Capaccioli's arrest quickly prompted members of the administration to distance themselves from him claiming that his political allegiance, then and now, lay with the former chief of cabinet, Alberto Fernández (2003-2008); when they tried to do the same with Venegas, citing his allegiance to Duhalde, the unions took to the streets.

The speed of Venegas's release, only 24 hours after his arrest, showed that Duhalde's political power is not as weak as the government would like to believe; Duhalde mobilised his support base, calling in old favours and receiving the backing of Peronist leaders in greater Buenos Aires, including some who ostensibly support President Fernández inside the PJ. More importantly, Venegas's release also showed that when personal interests are threatened, Moyano is more likely to side with fellow unionists, even if politically opposed to him, than with the government.

For the government, the end result was perturbing because it left it in a no-win situation: if Oyarbide doesn't pursue the investigation, the electorate will be disappointed with what it considers to be widespread judicial ineffectiveness; if Oyarbide presses on, union leaders suspected of involvement in the scandal could bring the country to a halt, creating chaos in an electoral year.

The 'convenient' coincidence
As the scandal triggered by Venegas's arrest snowballed, the Argentine government received a gift (or a curse) from the sky: a US air force C-17 Globemaster III plane carrying equipment to be used during the training course of the federal police (PFA) special forces (Geof) landed at Buenos Aires's Ezeiza airport. According to the Argentine government, a third of the plane's cargo had not been declared in the flight manifesto submitted by the US. This, however, was not the first time the declared cargo and a plane's content failed to match: in August 2010 the same course had to be postponed for similar reasons but on that occasion, the plane, with its full cargo, was allowed to return to the US.
      Since late last week, a storm of accusations and counter-accusations has rained down from both sides; the most controversial undoubtedly came from the Argentine camp when in an interview with CNN en Español Timerman said that “Argentina has suffered two terrorist attacks and has very strict laws about what can and cannot enter the country to avoid having a third attack." Why Timerman implicitly stated the US could be behind the plotting of a terrorist attack on Argentine soil has kept many commentators awake at night but to no avail.
      The spat will have a detrimental effect on bilateral relations: on Saturday, US diplomats apparently stayed with the plane's cargo until the contents were fastened with a satellite monitored seal, exemplifying a total sense of mistrust, especially since the Argentine judicial recess has meant that three different judges have been temporarily in charge of the investigation. The final judicial decision will have to determine if the US committed a customs offence, which would carry a fine, or if it intentionally concealed the contents of the plane, at which point the materials would be destroyed.

• A cheeky diplomatic comeback

According to Joaquí­n Morales Solá, a columnist for the daily La Nación, when he asked a US diplomat for his opinion about the row, the representative answered: “If those 50 employees [who searched the US plane] had been at the military [air] base of Morón, a tonne of drugs would have never left from there to Spain". The clear reference to the January scandal over the shipment of 944kg of cocaine to Barcelona in a plane piloted by the sons of two former Argentine Brigadiers was intended to underline a double standard at Argentine airports and to imply that the problem with the plane's contents was politically motivated.

ARGENTINA | Tackling kidnapping countrywide. The government of President Néstor Kirchner announced in mid-November the creation of a special anti-kidnap unit with powers to act anywhere in the country. The new 100-strong `anti-kidnap brigade', is headed by federal police commissioner Juan José Schetino, a man with a reputation as a first-class investigator. Days before his new appointment, Schetino led the team that located and rescued a kidnapped businessman.

The unit is intended to work in coordination with provincial police forces and, says the government, will enjoy `total autonomy' to deploy anywhere in the country if the judge in charge of a kidnap case should deem it necessary. This could run into legal problems. At present, federal police and security forces can only be deployed outside the federal capital to deal with cases that are clearly within federal jurisdiction (border matters, interprovincial traffic) or when a provincial government requests their assistance. Unlike the US, there is no legal provision for treating kidnappings as a specifically federal offence; they would only fall within federal jurisdiction if the victim were taken across provincial boundaries.

The increase in kidnappings provoked a mass street protest in Buenos Aires at the end of October. In the Greater Buenos Aires area, which includes the federal capital and a ring of municipalities in the province of Buenos Aires, there have been 207 reported kidnap cases in the first half of this year: 95% of the national total and 25% more than in the same period of last year.

ARGENTINA | Tighter noose on bent police. Continuing the crackdown on corruption within Argentina's police forces [SSR-03-03], on 12 November the chamber of deputies unanimously approved, without debate, a bill stiffening the penalties for crimes committed by members of the security, police and prison services. The bill had been approved by the senate on 6 August, but had been gathering dust in the lower chamber until the public demand spurred the legislators into action.

President Kirchner has publicly accused members of the Buenos Aires provincial police of involvement in kidnapping and other criminal activities. In response, death threats were issued against his family. The President reacted proclaiming, `I will not remain silent. I am saying this to the uniformed brothers of the Buenos Aires police [and] all the police forces in Argentina: it is time to end this business of seeing involved in crimes the men to whom we give a uniform and a pistol to defend the public.'

CHILE | Spying on Argentina. A bungled break-in by Chilean military intelligence agents to the Argentina consulate in the southern city of Punta Arenas has raised questions about, first, how high up the operation was authorised, and second, what the purpose was. One explanation that has gained considerable currency in Chilean military circles is that the purpose of the break-in was to obtain evidence that the Argentine vice-consul was involved in spying, running a local network of information to collect strategic information, particularly about the secret berths of Chile's missile-equipped launches. 

More conspiratorial offerings: an attempt by disaffected military to embarrass defence minister Michelle Bachelet, or to provoke an incident between Argentina and Chile. The one that is most likely to earn official acceptance is that it was a local rogue operation. The officers most directly involved (a major and a lieutenant-colonel) are facing court-martial; their regional commander, a general, has resigned.

Just as US instructors were arriving in Paraguay to train their local counterparts in antiterrorist techniques, the local media was briefed about the 'discovery' that the Triple Border had become the source of almost a fifth of the military budget of Hezbollah, and an important proportion of the resources of Hamas. Separately, a public prosecutor announced that definitive proof had been found of the Farc guerrillas' involvement in the kidnapping of Cecilia Cubas, a recent cause célí¨bre.

The information was attributed to a report resulting from the combined effort of Seprinte, the Paraguayan antiterrorist agency, US security agents, the Mossad and MI6. Among the instances cited is that of Ali Dahroug Nizar, said to have remitted US$10m in 2000-01, mostly to an account held by his uncle Muhammad Dahroug Dahroug in the same Dallas bank the Holy Land Foundation (closed by the US in December 2001 as a front for Hamas). Dahroug Dahroug's name is said to have been found in the address book of Abu Zubeidah (one of several men described as al-Qaida's 'number three' or 'chief of operations', arrested in Pakistan in March 2002). Another instance is that of Kassem Mohammad Hijazi, found to have remitted abroad US$62m in two years.

The 'report' appears to have been largely fabricated. It is full of gross mistakes, like citing Al Muqawama and Hamas as separate organisations (the latter's name is an acronym of Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, Islamic Resistance Movement). Dahroug Dahroug emerges as a pivotal figure, linked to Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaida. Almost all the locals mentioned have been under arrest for up to three years, and many of them have been formally charged with tax evasion, money-laundering and associated offences - but not with any linked to terrorism.

Interestingly, the only Paraguayan official quoted on the record, procurator-general Marcos Alcarraz, reportedly says, after having 'taken part personally' in the operations against suspected members of terrorist groups, that 'the Triple Border may be serving as a financial support for terrorism.' Left unmentioned is the fact that Alcarraz said that in 2001. The original reports, as happened with the earlier story about a US base to be established in the Paraguayan Chaco (see page 6), have since been considerably embellished - in one case incorporating the myth that Osama bin-Laden himself visited the Triple Border (and that the Brazilian federal police actually have a video recording of the occasion).

The other 'revelation' came from public prosecutor Arnaldo Giuzzio, who on 21 July announced that in the formal charges against those accused in the 2004 Cubas kidnapping and ensuing murder, he would be including 'several emails which directly connect Señor Osmar Martí­nez with leaders of the Farc; specifically with Rodrigo Granda'. Martí­nez, leader of a breakaway faction of the leftwing party Patria Libre, arrested in January, is considered the mastermind of the kidnapping. 'The accused are Paraguayans and what we want to prove is that they requested foreign advice,' said Giuzzio. The prosecutor did not exhibit the email messages, which had been mentioned earlier, but said that Microsoft had provided evidence of the accounts held by both Granda and Martí­nez.

In both of these cases the information made public is old, and in the first of them has been tailored by inexpert hands. The purpose appears to be to justify before the Paraguayan public the series of US-provided training exercises in which the Paraguayan military and police have embarked.

HAITI | More gang leaders captured. On 4 April the national police captured William Baptiste ('Ti Blanc'), leader of an armed gang in the Cité Militaire slum district in Port-au-Prince. Ti Blanc had been unsuccessfully arguing that the gang leaders be treated as politicians rather than criminals. On 5 April, Alain Cadet, number-two in the Bélony gang, was arrested. Bélony himself remains at large, as does Amaral Duclona.

Minustah and the national police are maintaining the momentum gained by their incursions into Cité Soleil which began in December and have continued since then. Last month this offensive resulted in the capture of Evens Jeune, boss of the gang based in the Boston quarter of Cité Soleil.

NICARAGUA | Sinaloa cartel link disrupted. Combined army-police operations conducted between 13 and 15 April led to the disruption of a local organisation linked to the Mexican Sinaloa drugs cartel. A shootout with a group of five Mexicans on the Pan-American highway on 13 April precipitated actions which had been meant to culminate in the seizure of a shipment of 2 tonnes of cocaine expected to be landed soon on a 1,500-metre clandestine airstrip in the locality of San Agustí­n, 67 kilometres north of Managua. Over the following two days another 12 people were arrested in different parts of the country. One of them was a Mexican suspected of being a gunman sent to assassinate Commissioner Aminta Granera, the director of the national police. The Sinaloa cartel had issued death threats against top police officials in Nicaragua.

PANAMA-COLOMBIA | Joint anticrime task force. The governments of Panama and Colombia signed on 13 April an agreement to set up a joint task force to deal with crimes committed inside Panama by Colombian nationals. First Vice-President and foreign minister Samuel Lewis Navarro was at pains to explain that this task force would only be activated at Panama's request. Lewis said that his government had launched a 'frontal fight' against the 'different modalities of criminality' that had emerged in the country. He did not explicitly link this with Colombians, although it is hardly a secret that the 266-kilometre common border has long been a conduit for drug trafficking and gunrunning, and that Colombian armed groups have conducted raids into Panama.

HONDURAS | Lowering of penalties for gang members is nixed. A recommendation of the UN's working group on arbitrary detention that Honduras should lower the penalties imposed on gang members solely for being members was rejected on 13 April by the president of congress, Roberto Micheletti. The law currently set prison terms of up to 30 years for gang leaders and 20 for rank-and-file members. The working party, which submitted its recommendation on 11 April, said the penalties were 'disproportionate'.

COSTA RICA-NICARAGUA | Row over 'abolished' army. The Nicaraguan ambassador to Costa Rica, Harold Rivas, was summoned to the Costa Rican foreign ministry for a dressing-down on 8 January, following statements he had made to the Nicaraguan press which cast doubt on Costa Rica's claim that it has not had an army since 1946. Rivas had commented on the 'heavy' weaponry [M-16 rifles] he had seen in the hands of the police on the border with his country. Costa Rican security minister, Janina del Vecchio, issued a communiqué noting that legislation allows the police to use M-16 rifles, and that this is frequent in border areas because of the illegal traffic in drugs, arms and people. Actually, President Óscar Arias recently signed a decree authorising the police to use 'prohibited weapons' (a category that includes any firearm capable of firing bursts of bullets) to control strikes and demonstrations. Del Vecchio has also quietly confirmed that Costa Rica will resume sending police officers to train at the US-based Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School for the Americas (SOA).

CARIBBEAN BASIN | Violent crime rising almost everywhere. Statistics for crime in the Caribbean Basin in 2008 show homicides rising in four countries — most spectacularly in Panama. A notable exception was El Salvador, recently at the top of the Latin American murder league: in 2008 it recorded a decline in the number of murders. Details:

El Salvador: The Policí­a Nacional Civil (PNC) reports 49 homicides in December 2008, most of them in San Salvador and 80% caused by firearms. This has taken the total for the whole of 2008 to 3,175, a decrease of 9.2% on 2007. PNC figures are provisional; a definitive tally will only emerge when data from the public prosecution service and the Instituto de Medicina Legal becomes available.

Dominican Republic: The institute of forensic pathology reports that homicides in 2008 increased by 13% to 959. Of this total, 792 involved the use of firearms. Police data show that in the first nine months of the year there were 343 deaths in exchanges of gunfire with the police.

Puerto Rico: Homicides reported up to 30 December last year totalled 802, 11% more than in 2007 and the highest figure on record since the 1996 peak of 868.

Panama: Deputy Chief Prosecutor Luis Martí­nez reports that homicides in 2008 totalled 368, up almost 50% on the previous year. There were increases in two other major crime categories: armed robberies totalled 2,360 (up 55%) and kidnappings 13 (up 44%). Reported rapes, on the other hand, were down by 40% to 209.

Costa Rica: The Red Cross reports 1,090 violent deaths in 2008, an increase of 12.8% on 2007. This total includes all kinds of violent deaths: traffic accidents accounted for 37%. Killings by firearms or knives, 284 in all, accounted for 26% of the total.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made headlines in early September when she said that in the threat from the drug-trafficking organisations was 'in some cases morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency in Mexico and in Central America' and that the situation in Mexico was 'looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago [when] it got to the point where more than a third of the country, nearly 40 percent of the country at one time or another was controlled by the insurgents, by the Farc.'

She was speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations on 8 September, but these remarks were not part of her prepared address; they were a response to a question by former Nafta negotiator Carla Hills about how the US was 'implementing strategies' to reverse its own contributions to the northbound flow of drugs and the southbound flow of weapons.

Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela rushed to amend Clinton's statement. He said, '[The] term insurgency should not be viewed in the same way we would refer to a Colombian insurgency. Not an insurgency of a militarised group within a society that is attempting to take over the state for political reasons. [What Mexico is seeing is] an increase in violence but not under the terms of an insurgency [...] What we are concerned about is the fact that you see the development of phenomena of car bombs that can affect innocent people and these are terrorist acts, you can define them as terrorist acts.'

Officials and politicians in Mexico, as well as advocacy groups in the US, responded critically to the media summaries of Clinton's remarks, dismissing her comparison with the situation in Colombia two decades ago. None, however, picked up a telling appraisal of the situation published days earlier by a Mexican senatorial committee.

The senate's committee on municipal development unveiled on 31 August a study entitled Ayuntamientos y crimen organizado ('Municipal governments and organised crime'). This document claimed that 195 of Mexico's municipalities (8% of the total) are completely under the control of organised crime, and another 1,536 (63%) are 'infiltrated' by organised crime. 'In the majority of Mexico's municipalities,' it says, 'there is a criminal structure capable of controlling the businesses of organised crime, retail drug trafficking, the cultivation and trafficking of drugs, kidnapping and extortion.'

These criminal structures, it says, operate 'under the cover of corruption, protected politically and enjoying the logistical support of the municipal police'. The drug cartels, it notes, 'have understood that the municipality, as the level of government closest to the people, had to be put in their pocket, particularly for the purpose of retail trafficking.'

President Felipe Calderón has gained the support of all 32 state governors for a scheme to create new state police forces that would absorb the existing municipal ones. He still has to persuade the federal congress and obtain the approval of the state legislatures. In August the national conference of municipal public security and the association of municipalities called on the federal and state governments to hold off on this initiative until such time as it had taken into consideration the views of the municipal  governments.

Of Mexico's 427,534 police officers, 165,610 (38.7%) serve in municipal forces, and another 222,958 (52.2%) in state forces. The federal police accounts for only 9.1%. The plan to build up the federal police, recruiting up to 10,000 new officers at a rate of about 1,500 a year, with preference for graduates and undergraduates to strengthen the force's investigative and intelligence capabilities, is way behind expectations. Moreover, in September the federal police announced that it had dismissed 3,200 officers in a major purge.

Government coups: how successful?
President Calderón claimed in September that since he took office in December 2006 the authorities had arrested more than 5,100 members of drug cartels and 125 cartel leaders. The figures have raised many eyebrows. In a report to congress the government had previously claimed to have arrested, up to March this year, 121,199 people suspected of links with organised crime. This translated into some 47,000 investigations by the PGR, the federal chief prosecutor's office, which resulted in 1,359 cases in which evidence was found of association with the drug cartels. Of these 1,194 went to trial and 735 ended in firm sentences [SSR-10-06].

Since the beginning of 2009 the authorities have arrested 16 leading members of the drug cartels, of whom 10 were clearly top-echelon bosses, on top of which two top bosses and an important lieutenant were killed. Of the overall total, seven were captured in 2010, two of them top-ranking cartel bosses: Teodoro Garcí­a Simental ('el Teo'), formerly one of the leaders of the Tijuana cartel, who had split with cartel leader Fernando Sánchez Arellano in early 2008 and become an ally of the Sinaloa and La Familia Michoacana cartels; and Edgar Valdez Villareal ('la Barbie'), former chief 'enforcer' of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, who had broken away to rival Héctor Beltrán Leyva ('el H'), in a fight for leadership of the gang.

The capture of 'la Barbie' on 30 August prompted the authorities to proclaim that this spelt the end of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, much as the arrest of 'el Teo' on 12 January had been portrayed as the final nail in the coffin of the Tijuana cartel.

Even the most cursory review of the lists of most wanted traffickers in Mexico and of those designated 'kingpins' by the US government reveals that in six of the seven main cartels a large number of their top leaders, including many members of the founding groups or clans, are still at large and active (see table below). Even in the divided Beltrán Leyva gang, one of the Beltrán Leyva brothers (Héctor) remains in charge of the core group.

Surviving major cartel bosses

US anxiety about Iran's activities in Latin America persists. In congressional testimony in January 2009, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates maintained that he was concerned about the level of “subversive activity that the Iranians are carrying on in a number of places in Latin America, particularly South America and Central America". Gates added that Iran's close alliance with certain Latin American countries has caused more concern for him than Russia's recent naval manouevres in the region.

US suspicions about Iran's intent in its own backyard have been accentuated by the testimony of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, whose office has launched investigations designed to show Iran is using Venezuela's and Panama's banking network to circumvent international sanctions and acquire the materials needed for its nuclear program.   “The opening of Venezuela's banks to the Iranians guarantees the continued development of nuclear technology and long-range missiles," Morgenthau told a briefing at the Brookings Institution in early September 2009.

The US State Department has also flagged up its concern about Iran's extensive reach into Latin America. In May 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a typical response to news that Iran was building a large embassy in Managua. “You can only imagine what that's for," she said.

However, the State Department appears relatively sanguine about Iran's influence in Latin America, in stark contrast to former president George W. Bush's worldview. The Obama administration has, despite the post-12 June political crisis in Iran, sought to dampen expectations about what it is prepared to do to counter Iran.   It believes that the economic ties as such do not represent the first step towards Venezuela acting as a missile launchpad for Iran.

This is a cause for frustration among the US conservative/pro-Israel lobby. "Generally speaking, nobody is focused sufficiently on the threat of the Iran-Venezuela connection," complained Morgenthau.

The US leadership appears more preoccupied by Brazil's intentions towards Iran than the Venezuela-Iran axis. The view of congressman Eliot Engel, the Democrat chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, of the welcome given by Lula to Ahmadinejad in November, was damning. “This state visit is a gross error, a terrible mistake. He is illegitimate with his own people, and Brazil is now going to give him the air of legitimacy at a time when the world is trying to figure out how to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. It makes no sense to me, and it tarnishes the image of Brazil, quite frankly."

Officially, the Obama administration says it is optimistic that the meeting will not damage the efforts already under way by Washington and European powers to deal with Iran. Brazil's foreign minister Celso Amorim even claimed Western leaders, including President Obama, had encouraged Lula, , to seek a “direct and open dialogue" with Iran, in particular on the nuclear issue.

• Iran's foreign policy

Iran's external relations are far more complicated than any other Middle Eastern state, and reflect the labyrinthine domestic political process in which a variety of interest groups compete for power and influence. Unlike the Gulf States and the secular Middle Eastern autocracies, power is not centralised under one ruler.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), headed by Ali Larijani, the country's negotiator on nuclear issues, wields wide-ranging influence over foreign policy.   This body enjoys close relations with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the final arbiter on SNSC decisions. Decisions are made by consensus rather then decree.

This may be changing in the aftermath of the disputed 12 June 2009 presidential election, which has polarised Iran. The command structure of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's main security apparatus from which Ahmadinejad garners much of his support, is likely to figure more strongly in future decision-making forums. Since the June election, the Revolutionary Guards' influence has increased, with members and allies gaining some of the highest offices in the country. This platform will provide hardliners with greater influence in deciding the choice of successor to Ali Khamenei.

The country's traditional non-aligned position in foreign policy has forced it to seek out countries with similar outlooks. Under Ahmadinejad, more so than his predecessors, the country's policy has been more explicitly framed to oppose Israel and its primary sponsor, the US. Support for the Palestinian cause has come to form a significant component of the Islamic Republic's legitimacy. The country's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, though officially denied, is seen as challenging Israel's monopoly on nuclear strike craft in the region. It also bolsters Iran's pretentions to regional power status.    

While Iran has little overt diplomatic clout, its patronage of a network of political parties and militias has enabled it to become an actor in the key Middle East battleground of Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. This has been successful to the extent that Iran is now feared as a mortal foe by much of the Middle East. This power is out of kilter with Iran's relatively marginal economic influence - all of Iran's oil exports could be replaced within weeks by increased Saudi supply - and a modest conventional military force.  

Iran's current diplomatic thrust towards Latin America is not necessarily shared across the political spectrum in Tehran. Ahmadinejad's defeated opponent in the June election. Mir Hossein Mousavi, has criticised the resources devoted to Latin America. There is no guarantee that Ahmadinejad's successor will view the region in the same terms. And yet the focus on Latin America does conform to a consistent foreign policy strain witnessed over the past 30 years, in which Iran has sought to counter American influence in the region by opportunistically hedging in order to capitalise on unexpected changes.

The 7 June decision by the US Supreme Court to allow Mexican trucks to use US roads has still to be implemented. Both the US Department of Transportation and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration have to review the decision. This was expected to take at least 30 days, but they still had to issue their findings two months later.

Only once the policy is approved will work start on implementing it. The Transportation Department will then have to start processing the  applications from Mexican haulage companies which want to use US roads and the US and Mexican authorities will have to agree on how the  inspections of Mexican trucks should be carried out. On top of this, John Kerry, the Democratic candidate for the presidency has said he will review all trade agreements. He expects this review to take at least three months. The new rules for Mexican trucks will clearly fall within his review.

Even if Bush retains the presidency, it is unlikely Mexican trucks will be using US roads before the end of the year because of all the administrative decisions that still have to be made. One key issue is working out a way of inspecting Mexican trucks to prevent the increase in the number of Mexican trucks crossing the border leading to an increase in the smuggling people and drugs from Mexico into the US. The problem US border patrol officials face is that too rigorous inspections could be construed as a non-tariff  barrier by the World Trade Organization.  

Just how significant the decision will be for Mexican hauliers is far from clear. Mexican trucks will only be allowed to take loads from a Mexican location to a US one. Mexican trucks will not be allowed to pick up loads from one US location and transport them to another. Mexican trucks are allowed to carry loads from a US location to a Mexican one. Currently Mexican trucks are only allowed to carry goods 20 miles inside the US. What the trucking deal should do is to lower the cost for maquiladoras  supplying US companies. They should not be able to avoid having to offload goods from one lorry to another for onward shipment into the US.  

The deputy interior minister, Arturo Chávez , said on 27 September that the government was "contemplating" the use of force to end four months of unrest in Oaxaca. The use of force to settle the crisis in Oaxaca would mean that the authorities would be taking two major risks. The first is that they could restore order without too much bloodshed. The second is that they could refute the allegations from the Left that the federal authorities were acting not on principle, but from low political calculation. The Left believes that the federal government, run by the Partido Acción Nacional, is selling its support to the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which in name at least runs Oaxaca, in return for the promise of PRI votes in the federal congress. 

There are three pieces of evidence for such a deal. The first is that the PRI in the senate tabled a motion to withdraw a motion passed by the old senate (then dominated by the PRI) which called for the resignation of the (PRI) governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz. The Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), which broadly supports the protesters in Oaxaca, argues that the incoming senate cannot just abandon motions passed by the preceding senate. 

The second piece of evidence was a call from the PRI's Comité Ejecutivo Nacional on 21 September for the federal government to send "public security services" to support the government of Oaxaca and to restore law and order in the capital. The third piece of evidence is the support that 11 of the PRI's 17 governors showed for Ruiz at a reception in the presidential residence, Los Pinos, on 25 September.

Doubts about how effectively the federal government would deploy its forces are well founded. The feds did use force twice earlier in the year to end protests. The problem is that its application was so clumsy that the protests took on a new justification. The protests in Oaxaca are of a different order, so any confrontation with the feds is likely to produce a high death toll. Given that there are important elections in Tabasco on 15 October, Chávez is probably temporising rather than issuing a final warning.

Oaxaca has been seething with unrest for the past four months. The core of the protest was a strike by teachers for higher pay. The teachers were called out by Elba Esther Gordillo, a dissident leader (now expelled) from the PRI, who runs the teachers' union and has a feud with the (PRI) governor, Ruiz. The teachers' strike was then broadened out into the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO). The APPO has now taken over the centre of the city, radio and TV stations and brought the state government to a virtual halt. The APPO has beaten off attempts by the state authorities to force its members out of the city. The APPO says that only the resignation of Ruiz will end its protests and allow all of the state's 14,000 schools to reopen.

The state government's inability to deal with the protests and the federal government's failure to broker a compromise after six rounds of negotiations means that the APPO has grown stronger. It has (literally) fortified its position in the colonial centre of Oaxaca and effectively holds 2,000 Oaqueños hostage.

Calderón senses that the situation in Oaxaca is dangerous. His idea is to try and find some middle ground between the APPO and the state government. He has summoned a former governor, businessmen and state deputies for consultations about finding a way out of the impasse. This will be a first test of his administrative style, which he calls "inclusive."

Businessmen in Oaxaca, however, are running out of patience. Tourists, who used to visit Oaxaca in large numbers, have been scared away. On 28 September, businesses in Oaxaca held a one-day shutdown to back their demand for an end to the crisis. The strike was not well supported: businessmen said that this was because some of their colleagues had been intimidated by the APPO into remaining open. Eduardo Garcí­a, president of the Oaxaca state Cámara Nacional de Comercio said that out of 85,000 businesses, only about 10,000 had shut. 

The PRD, which can claim to be the biggest party in the state (after winning 42% of the votes in Oaxaca in the congressional elections on 2 July) and is still sore at the defeat of its presidential candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the presidential election, claims that the stand-off in Oaxaca is the result of a deal between the PRI and Calderón. The PRD argues that the federal government is not prepared to take the obvious way out of the crisis and ask Ruiz to resign, because to do so would be to antagonise the bulk of the PRI. The PRI governors are likely to have a major influence on the party's 105 deputies in the federal congress who can give the government a majority or defeat it. It is unlikely that there is a deal between the PRI and Calderón because Gordillo is a key supporter of Calderón's. She wants Ruiz out and humiliated.

The federal government's interventions earlier this year, first to end a strike at a steel plant in Michoacán and then to deal with a parochial problem (between flower sellers) at Atenco, in the Estado de México, left three people dead. Just as serious for authorities were widespread and well-substantiated accusations that the feds involved in the Atenco operation raped at least seven of the female protesters they had arrested.

Shootout: On 24 September there was a shoot-out in the centre of the city. Members of the APPO were waiting to protest against the state governor, Ulises Ruiz, who was apparently visiting the Hotel Camino Real. Before he arrived, a couple of pick-ups full of (state) police zoomed down the street and started firing at the APPO picketeers who fired back. At least one person on each side was wounded. The shoot-out followed an attempt by the APPO to storm the Teatro Juárez earlier in the morning of 24 September. The APPO was beaten back. 

Tabasco: Elections in Tabasco tend to have national implications. The gubernatorial election on 15 October is no exception: it will decide whether Andrés Manuel López Obrador's protests against his defeat in the presidential election on 2 July fizzle out or are rekindled. Unfortunately for López Obrador, the latest opinion poll by GEA-ISA shows his candidate César Raúl Ojeda Zubieta lagging 11 percentage points behind the candidate from the PRI, Andrés Rafael Granier Melo. The Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) candidate is almost 20 percentage points behind Ojeda. 

A defeat for López Obrador in his home state will knock the stuffing out of his already faltering protest campaign. A victory, however, will cause major problems for the incoming government. Tabasco elections invariably pose problems for new presidents. López Obrador lost a famous gubernatorial election in 1994 in which the winner, Roberto Madrazo, spent more than the US president spent in his election in 1992. 

President Ernesto Zedillo refused to recognise Madrazo's victory for three months and only did so when he needed the party's support to push through his post-devaluation measures. In 2000, the cheating was so outrageous that the federal authorities ordered the first ever re-run of a state election. Ojeda Zubieta claims that the cheating this time is equally outrageous: the state is run by the PRI.

Returning migrants: On 30 October the Asociación Mundial de Mexicanos en el Exterior claimed that 1.6m Mexicans would return from the US to live permanently in Mexico. These returnees would outnumber by four to one those Mexicans who cross the border into the US every year to try to better themselves. If the flood of migrants turns south, Mexico's social cohesion will be severely tested: successive Mexican governments have depended on migration to the US as an economic and social safety valve.

The Asociación reckons that 600,000 Mexicans living in the US will return by Christmas and that another 900,000 will return in January, when the boom in temporary jobs to meet the US Christmas rush ends. The US economy registered a contraction of 0.3% in the third quarter of 2008, and most US economists expect the economy to continue to contract into the first half of 2009. The president of the association, Carlos Villanueva, said that in only one consulate in Santa Ana, California, 570 families had asked about going home. Most of them come from the poor states of Zacatecas and Michoacán.

February has got off to an awful start for the government of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa. The centres of the country's second and third biggest cities, Guadalajara and Monterrey, looked like war zones as drug gangs challenged the authorities on 31 January and 1 February. The national employers' organisation, Coparmex, says that the violence is now running at intolerable levels.

The gangs seem to be responding to the Calderón's administration's claims that it is finally getting on top of them and bringing down the murder rate. The government argues that it is successfully decapitating the gangs and corralling the violence. The outbursts in Monterrey and Guadalajara and elsewhere undermine this claim. To date this year, 121 people have been killed in Monterrey. On 1 February the first federal police officer was killed, though 20 state and municipal police officers have already been killed by the gangs, who have started to attack police checkpoints with grenades. As we report inside, the death toll in Baghdad, at 22 per 100,000 inhabitants, is considerably lower than in the most violent cities in Mexico.

Alarmingly, the violence is spreading. In January, 57 people were killed in gang-related violence in the state of Jalisco, whose capital is Guadalajara. In 2010, 545 were killed in Jalisco, more than twice the 2009 toll of 212. Before the government launched its 'war' on the country's drug gangs on 1 December 2006, the gangs were much less murderous. In 2006, 45 people were killed by gangs in Jalisco. In Guadalajara, the criminality appears to be morphing into outright terrorism. Gang members have started to seize buses and other vehicles simply to set them on fire. The Guadalajara state government claims that this terrorism is a reaction to the arrest of two gang leaders in the city.

According to 'tweeting' eyewitnesses, gang violence has also arrived in Zacatecas, where “only" 21 people were killed by gangs in 2010. So far this year, six people have already been killed.

On 2 February the Confederación Patronal de la República Mexicana (Coparmex) issued a statement saying that the violence had reached intolerable levels. Coparmex blames the government for allowing the violence to get out of hand because it has failed to coordinate its response with state and municipal authorities. It forecasts that business investment will fall because of this failure. The confederation's outspokenness follows the kidnapping and murder of several of its leaders in 2011: the most notorious was the kidnapping and murder of Jorge Arturo Pérez Gavilán León, the Coparmex president, in Mazatlán.

Miguel Pastor, the mayor of Tegucigalpa, and a member of the ruling Partido Nacional (PN), is topping the polls for the November 2005 presidential elections. Pastor received 23% of public support, according to the latest survey carried out by LatiNetwork Dichter & Neira published in the national daily El Heraldo. 

A mere 10% of respondents backed Porfirio Lobo Sosa (PN), the president of Congress, who also belongs to the PN. The results of the poll might deter Lobo Sosa from running against Pastor in a potentially damaging party primary election scheduled for next February. Political pressure has been building up against the IMF-sponsored austerity measures championed by the incumbent Maduro administration with public-sector unions, starting with the teachers, up in arms over pay. Both Pastor and Sosa are promising some pretty lavish spending to court public support. The leading candidate for the opposition Partido Liberal in the poll was Manuel Zelaya, who garnered 7% support.