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Peru has ratcheted up the pressure on Japan to extradite its exiled former president, Alberto Fujimori. Frustrated by Japan's failure to give an official response to its two extradition requests, Peru raised the issue at the eight-day UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Bangkok, Thailand, on 24 April.

"My country hopes that the government of Japan hands over Alberto Fujimori and shows the international community its true commitment to defend human rights and fight organised crime. No more rhetoric, the international community needs concrete action," Peru's justice minister, Eduardo Salhuana, said addressing the crime conference, which was made up of some 3,000 delegates, including justice ministers, judges, heads of police and representatives from international human-rights bodies and NGOs. The purpose of the UN congress, which is held every five years, is to improve inter-state cooperation against organised crime. Salhuana said it was necessary "to establish general procedures so that countries adopt a proactive role in extradition requests_" 

Salhuana's comments before the UN congress elicited an immediate response from the head of the Japanese delegation, Kunihiro Matsuo. "The government of Japan considers that we are in a meeting all together and this is not the place to point the finger," he said. "We think that the issue can be resolved at a bilateral level." He added that Japan was looking into Peru's two extradition requests but it needed more evidence.

Peru has been growing increasingly fed up with its lack of progress at a bilateral level with Japan, which it perceives as prevaricating. Salhuana chose to take Matsuo's remarks as a positive sign. He said it was the first time that Japan had given a public response in an international forum. This is a highly optimistic appraisal of the remarks. It is more likely that Japan was caught off guard by Peru's raising the issue and sought to get it off the agenda immediately.

There is good reason to suspect that Japan will not give ground: Fujimori enjoys Japanese citizenship and Japan has no extradition treaty with Peru. The Peruvian government maintains that Fujimori knew about and approved of the acts of the paramilitary group, Colina, which murdered 25 people in the early 1990s in La Cantuta and Barrios Altos.

Interestingly, on 31 March the Financial Times suggested that Peru had "all but abandoned" its efforts to persuade the Japanese government to extradite Fujimori after Denise Ledgard, legal attaché of the Peruvian embassy in Tokyo and the person in charge of Peru's extradition request, said she was returning to Lima and the government failed to name a replacement. 

One explanation for withdrawing Ledgard is that Peru has given up on trying to resolve the issue at a bilateral level. This is consistent both with Salhuana raising the issue at the UN crime conference and Manuel Rodrí­guez Cuadros, the Peruvian foreign minister, saying in February this year that Peru intended to present an appeal at the International Court of Justice in The Hague by June.

Another explanation for Peru's renewed vigour is that, shortly before Salhuana's comments, Fujimori announced on 19 April that he would return to Peru by the end of the year in order to run in the presidential election in 2006. The Toledo administration is determined to prevent this from happening. Fujimori, who plans to launch a soft drink called Fuji-Cola to fund his election campaign, was barred from running for office for 10 years by the constitutional tribunal in February 2005.

BRAZIL-US DIPLOMACY: Powell travels to Brasilia

BLURRING THE LINES: Report fears armies are carrying out civilian work

COLOMBIA: General Hill uses retirement speech to criticise Venezuela

CORRUPTION: Nicaragua, Peru sign up for anti-corruption initiative

NARCO-TERRORISM: Interpol to work more closely with Mexican authorities

BRAZIL-US DIPLOMACY
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, arrived in Brazil on 4 October for a two-day visit to strengthen US relations with the government of President Lula da Silva. According to Powell, the relations between both countries are becoming 'stronger' and the Bush administration has an interest in driving forward the 'good relationship' with the Brazilian government. After a meeting with Lula and the Brazilian foreign minister, Celso Amorim, in Brasí­lia on 5 October, Powell said Brazil was 'a solid candidate' for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Powell praised the 'significant role' Brazil is playing to stabilise the continent, referring to its leadership of the UN stabilisation force in Haiti, and Venezuela, where Brazil supported the democratic referendum on Hugo Chávez 's government. According to Powell, the country is an 'important and serious' candidate for the seat because of its strategic position and leadership in trade issues. Powell also said that the US administration 'trusts' that the Brazilian nuclear programme does not have military objectives. The Brazilian reluctance to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to look at the country's 'special centrifugal technology' was one key issue that Powell addressed. However it seems Powell was satisfied with Amorim's explanation that Brazil is not hiding its nuclear programme but that it preferred to 'safeguard for the moment' its atomic technology. Powell said the issue should be 'resolved' between Brazil and the IAEA but the US was not 'preoccupied'. Another crucial issue that Powell touched upon was the reopening of FTAA negotiations in 2005. According to Powell there are some 'short-term difficulties' such as agricultural subsidies but these are 'only natural'.

BLURRING THE LINES
A new joint publication entitled Blurring the Lines was released on 5 October by the Latin America Working Group (LAWG), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), and the Center for International Policy (CIP). The central contention of the report was that US policy in Latin America is 'blurring' distinctions between military and civilian roles in the region with the result that the military ends up playing too active a role. 'US military programs are strongly encouraging Latin American militaries to carry out internal roles that civilians can fill, such as crime fighting, road building and protecting the environment,' the report said. The most worrying aspect of the military's involvement in 'internal duties', according to the report, is the potential for 'politicising the armed forces which in turn leads the military to use (or threaten to use) its monopoly of arms whenever it disagrees with the civilian consensus. Utilizing the armed forces in police roles can lead to excessive use of force. Too often in Latin America, when armies have focused on an internal enemy, the definition of enemies has included political opponents of the regime in power_' the report concludes.

COLOMBIA
On 5 October the head of the US Southern Command, General James Hill said on his last visit to Colombia that the US would continue to support the country in its war against leftist guerrillas, calling them 'the incarnation of hatred, ignorance and intolerance.' Speaking in Bogotá, Hill, who retires next month, said 'I have a tremendous degree of realistic optimism about what the Colombian military can accomplish […] So we will stay the course and the American people [...] will assist the Colombian people in ways that are necessary to win the war.' Hill also took the opportunity to chastise Venezuela for failing to contribute to the war against guerrilla groups that funded themselves through drug-trafficking. The general said that Colombia's other neighbours such as Ecuador, Brazil, Peru and Panama were helping and he expressed hope that Venezuela would too one day. Hill was presented with the Antonio Narino Medal, the highest order of merit given by the Colombian military, by Colombia's defence minister Jorge Alberto Uribe. Hill will be replaced by Lieutenant General Bantz Craddock, who is currently serving as senior military adviser to the US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

CORRUPTION
On 5 October the US announced that Nicaragua, Peru, Georgia and Nigeria had joined forces with the G-8 to fight corruption in order to strengthen transparency, development and democracy. In a press conference Alan Larson, the US subsecretary of state for economic affairs, pointedly avoided commenting on the scandal that has embroiled the president of the Organization of American States, Miguel Angel Rodrí­guez. Larson also said that the extradition of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori from Tokyo to Lima was a matter for the governments of Peru and Japan. Instead, Larson and Earl Wayne, from the office of economic affairs and trade at the state department, announced that the US would give financial and technical assistance to those four countries to help them fight corruption.

NARCO-TERRORISM
The US acknowledged on 5 October that dismantling the links between terrorist and drug-trafficking organisations is an 'area in which we need cooperation with Interpol and with many other countries in the region'. Speaking in Cancún at a meeting of Interpol and the US department of homeland security, Michael Garcia, who works for both organisations, mentioned specifically that the US needs to 'do a lot of work with the Mexican authorities'. He added, 'We have specific cases which involve the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia (FARC) in drug-trafficking in Miami, Florida and we see this as a real threat to the internal security of the US.'

SECURITY UPDATE is part of the Latinnews Daily service. Published every Thursday, Security Update provides pointers on key security issues in the region.

`Aspects' of the anticrime drive launched eight months ago by Prime Minister PJ Patterson have failed, according to Police Commissioner Francis Forbes. `I think,' he says, `we have to go back to the drawing board.' The initial objective of reducing reported crime by 20% is, according to Forbes, `out the window'. Indeed, he acknowledges that the police have not yet been able to achieve 15% of the target, which was what had been expected after this time lapse.

While overall crime has been reduced somewhat, murders so far this year have increased overall by 1%. This is a misleading figure, because rates have varied significantly from one area to the next. In St Catherine North, for instance, shootings are up by almost 100% since last year, and murders by close to 50%. In St Catherine South police statistics show shootings up by 13%. St James is another area where major crime is higher than last year. These `spikes' in the figures are attributed mainly to turf wars between gangs.

Police officers in the field have been suggesting that one of the features of the anticrime strategy, the imposition of curfews, has only really succeeded in driving the gunmen to other areas. It has also been suggested that enforcing the curfews has drawn resources away from other crime-fighting activities - a view Deputy Commissioner Lucius Thomas refutes, noting that the Constabulary's Mobile Reserves have been used to balance the allocation of manpower.

Another area where the December drive failed to meet expectations is that of gathering adequate intelligence on the gangs being targeted. The new Organised Crime Investigation Division (OCID) is now saying that a number of the `old' gangs have merged into bigger and better organised units, rendering much of the previous intelligence obsolete. This process of mergers is related to the turf wars behind upsurges of violence in some areas of Kingston. The OCID was set up two months ago, after commissioner Forbes disbanded the Crime Management Unit (CMU) led by Reneto Adams.

Further expert analysis on security issues affecting the region is available in LAN's new monthly publication, Latin American Security & Strategic Review. For a free sample issue or for details of how to subscribe, please email [email protected]

FRIDAY

PANAMA: Annual assembly of the Federation of Latin American Banks (Felaban)

SATURDAY

ARGENTINA: Latin American International Tourism Fair (FIT)

SUNDAY

MEXICO: Ex-presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador will celebrate the III National Democratic Assembly.

BRAZIL: German Economy Minister Michael Glos will begin a tour of Brazil, Chile and Argentina, which will continue until the 22 November.

MONDAY

ECUADOR: the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, will begin a six day official visit to China where he will discuss bilateral agreements and other "issues of common interest" with his counterpart Hu Jintao.

THURSDAY

BRAZIL: Brazilian President Lula da Silva will pay a two day visit to Cuba

One decision Alan Garcí­a will be pressed to make soon after he takes office as president on 28 July is what to do about Peru's aging fleet of MiG-29s, already at least six years overdue for major maintenance and upgrading. A Russian technical team has been preparing a menu of options: the Peruvian airforce has already stated its preference for a level of upgrading that would give them parity with Chile's new fleet of F-16s.

Six of Peru's MiG-29s were built in 1987; the other nine in 1988. They were bought in 1996, secondhand, from Belorussia, a move which led a piqued Russia to deny Peru technical support for these aircraft until the government of President Alberto Fujimori bought three MiG-2-SEs directly from Russia in 1998.

When President Alejandro Toledo took office he cut defence spending sharply, in the hope that this gesture would be mirrored by its neighbours, particularly Chile. However, Chile went ahead with its plans to renew its fleet of military aircraft, ordering 10 F-16s from the US and another 24 from the Netherlands. In 2004, Toledo changed his defence policy, setting up a national defence fund to be fed with revenues from the development of the Camisea gas deposits. That same year Peru signed a maintenance agreement with the Russian aircraft manufacturer RAC-MiG.

It is under that agreement that an RAC-MiG team travelled in May to Peru to inspect the MiGs stationed at the Chiclayo airbase (both the older and the newer batches) and start drawing up the plans for an upgrade to be financed from the new fund. The options range from basic maintenance and enough of an upgrade to extend the aircrafts' useful lives, to a major overhaul to bring them up to the standard of the MiG-2-SMT, which should not only prolong their cycle but also match (the Russians say improve upon) features of the new Chilean F-16s such as inflight refuelling, missile arsenal and modern guidance systems.

The latter is what the Peruvian airforce wants. Garcí­a has been reiterating of late that he does not want to become involved in an arms race. He may, however, choose to emulate neighbours like Chile, Brazil and Venezuela, and claim that refitting or replacing equipment at the end of its useful life is merely restoring the previous balance, not racing to gain advantage.

Peru has relied heavily on Russian (previously Soviet) defence equipment since the left-leaning military government headed by General Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-75) chose to break away from dependence on US supplies. Apart from the MiGs, the Peruvian airforce has in service 18 Sukhoi-22s, whose useful life runs out in 2010. It also has 12 French Mirage-2000s, whose useful life runs out in 2007 (and are eight years past their scheduled major maintenance).

On 30 August, Mexico's state oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, announced that it had found a vast new oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. The field could double the country's oil reserves, Pemex said. A week later, the company issued a clarification: it admitted that it had not actually found any oil, only that its seismic surveying had suggested that there was a high probability of a lot of oil lurking in the depths of the Gulf.

The raising of expectations over the phantom find was deliberate. Executives at Pemex know that there is probably a lot of oil in the Mexican part of the Gulf: geologically it is unlikely that the oil fields found in the US part of the Gulf give out when they reach the maritime frontier lines. The Pemex executives also know that the company simply does not have the technology to drill and produce oil from deepwater wells. The executives know that they will have to buy in the technology in some way. What they are doing, by claiming to have found oil, is to soften up the government to relax the onerous rules under which Pemex operates. In particular the company wants to be able to offer attractive deals on production sharing to potential partners in the Gulf.  

The politicians, from all parties, are unconvinced by Pemex's pleas to be given more operational freedom. The politicians may well have a point. The surge in international oil prices means that Pemex, which by law has a monopoly over oil and gas production in Mexican territory, is now a highly eligible partner, at least in the politicians' eyes. The Pemex executives simply see the company's weakness in lots of key areas.  

Gallingly for Pemex executives, the world leader in deep-sea oil production is Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company. Petrobras had to develop the technology following the government's decision that the country had to find and develop its own oilfields. Petrobras is looking at going into partnership with Cuba's state oil company to look for oil in the Cuban part of the Gulf of Mexico.

PEOPLE PROFILE is published every Tuesday and describes the professional background of key people emerging in the political and economic scenario.

Who is Carlos Tomada?
Labour minister in Argentina. Tomada is charged with solving two of the country’s most pressing problems: unemployment and underemployment (floating around the 30% mark) and the confrontation between the `piqueteros’ (marginalised groups) and the government over viable social and economic assistance.

Why watch him?
Last Thursday, he was besieged in the labour ministry in Buenos Aires after 200 piqueteros blocked the entrances and exits to the building. He was incarcerated in the ministry until five o’clock in the morning. The government of Néstor Kirchner, still enjoying a post-electoral honeymoon, with all social sectors, has condemned the piqueteros, a living emblem of social protest in Argentina since the end of the 1990s.

The file:

Born: 4 May 1948

Place of birth: Buenos Aires, Argentina

Education:
Qualified in law from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in 1973. Carried out postgraduate studies in industrial relations, labour problems and labour relations, supported by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the University of Castilla La Mancha and the University of Bologna in 2000.

Public life:
Since he turned 30, his professional life his been centred on labour relations as an advisor, investigator, manager, consultant, official and university lecturer

Timeline:
1986 Hired consultant of the ILO and the Friedrich Ebert foundation for technical assistance, in Argentina and abroad, on labour relations.
1988 Lectures at the UBA on labour relations 1987-1988 National director of labour relations
1995 Postgraduate teaching at the centre for advanced studies and the economic science faculty at the UBA
2002 Labour secretary under labour minister Alfredo Atanosof during the provisional presidency of Eduardo Duhalde
2003 Labour minister under President Néstor Kirchner

Strong points
He is a recognised labour consultant with strong links to the private sector and trade unions. He has a lot of experience in conflict negotiation and mediation. In the political arena, his ties with the powerful Peronist apparatus in the province of Buenos Aires are strong.

Weak points
He is suddenly on unfamiliar ground. The piqueteros are characterised by the unpredictability of their actions. Tomada is experienced in dealing with well-organised trade unions and social organisations but he is now struggling with the same problem that afflicted his predecessors: how to establish rules of negotiation with groups characterised by their divisiveness, and extremist claims and tactics. The piqueteros are quite happy to carry out impromptu protest actions like last Thursday, when he was prevented from leaving his ministry.

Prospects
By deciding to take on the piqueteros, Tomada has transformed what was an uneasy truce between the government and these unemployed groups into the first social battle of Kirchner’s administration. The piqueteros have for two years cut the main avenues and access routes into Buenos Aires on a daily basis, causing chaos in the city and forcing the government to seek a balance between the population’s mounting frustration at this form of protest and the fear of unleashing the police to clamp down on the piqueteros. During the Duhalde administration, a bungled effort by the police to disperse a piquetero march resulted in two deaths. Tomada has the tough task of preventing the piqueteros from becoming a social time bomb for Kirchner.

Jacqueline Farí­a - Venezuela

Who is she? Vice president of the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) for the states of Zulia and Falcón and, until April 2009, the president of a state firm, Movilnet.

On 13 April 2009 she was personally chosen by President Hugo Chávez to become the first head of government of the Caracas Capital District, a new city authority that will controversially assume much of the resources and power of the elected mayor of Greater Caracas, a post won by the opposition's Antonio Ledezma in the most recent regional elections in November 2008.

The new head of government for Caracas will principally govern the Libertador municipality (pop 2m) which corresponds to the main Caracas city area and is the biggest of the five Caracas districts. It is also the only one that remained in the hands of the PSUV after the municipal elections in November.

Ledezma's office will remain, but he will only exercise the function of a coordinating body for the four smaller municipalities of Caracas: Chacao, El Hatillo, Sucre and Baruta, all opposition-run.

Why watch her? With her controversial appointment, Farí­a becomes the face of the president's latest manoeuvres to usurp elected opposition figures. The opposition claims the president is acting unconstitutionally and is striking at decentralisation and institutional autonomy.

Education: Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV). Farí­a graduated as a civil engineer, specialising in hydraulic engineering. Her career has focused on city water supplies, sanitation and the environment.

Public Life:
Her early career as an administrator quickly gave way to more political role as a Chavista civil servant. Farí­a first came to public prominence in 1999 as the head of the Caracas city waterworks company Hidrocapital, before being appointed as environment minister in January 2005.  

Early on Farí­a was a signed up member of the Chávez -allied leftwing group, Patria para Todos (PPT). Like other PPT members, she subsequently became a PSUV member. The president has marginalised non-conforming PPT members.

Timeline:
Pre-1999: Farí­a spent her early career at the National Institute of Public Sanitation, where she headed the underground wells division. She was also manager of the Caracas metropolitan aqueduct and was director for the provision of works and services for the Mayor of Libertador.

1999-2005: Director of the state-run Caracas waterworks company, Hidrocapital, where she boosted a project of technical table rounds for water, sewerage and drainage services in the program of Urban Improvement in Caracas low-income areas.

January 2005- January 2007:   Minister of the Environment. In 2006, set up the project to purify the Guaire River, which serves Caracas. The project is due to be completed in 2014.

February 2007-May-2007: Member of the Liaison Committee between the US firm Verizon and the Chávez government during the nationalization of the telecoms firm Cantv.

May 2007-April 2008: President of Movilnet, Cantv's mobile arm.

As president of Movilnet, Faria oversaw strong growth. With a focus on providing cheap phones and accessible tariffs to low income subscribers, Movilnet is the second biggest mobile firm in Venezuela by subscriber numbers, with 41.5% of the market, vying closely for top position with Movistar (owned by Spain's Telefónica), which has an estimated 42% market share. She began Movilnet's migration to 3G technology, although the process has not been without difficulties and Movilnet has lagged behind the country's other operators (Movistar and Digicel) in this respect. Some local opposition press reports have suggested Faria was not a hands-on manager (allegedly routinely failing to attend key meetings) and was unpopular during her time at Movilnet.

2008: Vice president of the PSUV in the states of Zulia and Falcón. In the November 2008 regional elections, the opposition won the state of Zulia and took the mayoralty of the state capital Maracaibo from the PSUV.

April 2009: Head of Government, Caracas district.

Strengths: Farí­a is a proven and loyal Chávez civil servant, who has had a well defined career path. Her early stints working on behalf of the Caracas city authorities mean that she is familiar with the local government structure and is well aware of the issues on the ground.

She successfully transferred Hidrocapital from the central government back to the local Caracas authorities and later oversaw the negotiations for the transfer of Cantv back to state hands, for which she was rewarded with the presidency of Movilnet.

Her supporters cite her efficiency and good management skills and her ability to get the job done. The president clearly sees her as a capable and reliable pair of hands.

Farí­a defended her appointment to run Caracas in terms of the need to assure control over the downturn area of Caracas, described by the government as a 'sensitive risk area' on the grounds it is the seat of most public institutions and is near to the seat of government.

She also said she would work to improve the delivery of essential services to the city, including low income housing, under the auspices of the 'Socialist Caracas' project.

Weaknesses:
The opposition is deeply suspicious of Farí­a ever since her stance over the 'Tascón List' in 2004, when, as the president of Hidrocapital, she appeared on national television to deny that company employees had been dismissed for signing a petition (to recall the president via referendum).

Faria admitted that she was aware of who signed the petition, "because the list was made public," but, at the time, insisted that "there is no sanction in this regard."

"I do know who they are, and I do want to change their minds," she declared. "I have to show them how wonderful Hugo Chávez 's administration is."

That opposition has recently dragged up that statement as evidence that Farí­a is not to be trusted and that, much like Chávez , she does not brook political opposition.

Indeed, when the local press asked her how it felt to take over from the mayor of Greater Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, who was elected with over 700,000 votes in November, she quipped that “the finger[s] of Chávez are the fingers of the people, their fingers want the best for Caracas".

Prospects:   With the clear support of the president, and 90% of the resources previously meant for Ledezma, Farí­a's political position is unassailable for now.  

Although a political appointee, she will still have to deliver in Caracas, where the public services are notoriously poor. Her attitude towards the opposition municipalities, with whom she must work, will tell much about her much vaunted management skills and leadership abilities.

A successful tenure in Caracas would leave her well placed in the PSUV ahead of congressional elections in 2011 and the presidential vote in 2012.

A sudden spike in violent actions by the Brazilian drug gang Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) has shaken Paraguay, once again, into awareness of the growing threat to public security they, and their counterparts of the Comando Vermelho, pose in the border region. It is now increasingly evident that the Brazilian gangs see that region as more than just a way station for their traffic in drugs and weapons.

On 3 May a convoy of six vehicles surrounded the prison of Pedro Juan Caballero, Amambay, just across from Ponta Porã in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. While a group of gunmen opened fire on the front, the wall at the back was breached and six inmates, all members of the PCC awaiting trial, were freed. Two of them, Emiliano Rojas Giménez and Eduardo Feu da Silva, are accused of having taken part in a failed attempt to kill Senator Roberto Acevedo in April last year.

Just over a week later about ten gunmen, later identified as PCC members, took hostage the manager of the Banco Continental in Salto del Guairá, capital of the border department of Canindeyú (just across from Guaíra, Paraná) and used him to gain access to the bank and steal the equivalent of US$800,000. Seven of the robbers were captured soon afterwards, but the money was not recovered.

The director of the Pedro Juan prison, Catalino Díaz, was arrested on suspicion of having colluded, together with four guards, with the PCC jailbreak, and another 17 guards were relieved of their duties. In the wake of the jailbreak Mercedes Castiñeira, operations director of Paraguay's anti-drugs secretariat, Senad, was widely quoted as having said that the PCC was trying to establish itself in the area. The remark raised eyebrows since her boss, Miguel Chaparro, had stated as recently as mid-April that both the PCC and the Comando Vermelho (CV) had established a presence in Pedro Juan, Saltos del Guairá  and Ciudad del Este (Alto Paraná).

The departments of Amambay and Canindeyú, he said, were where most of Paraguay's cannabis was grown, and 80% of the cannabis was being sent to Brazil by those two gangs.

The presence of the CV in Paraguay's border area was detected as early as 2001; the PCC is known to have established itself as early as 2003. Its local boss at the time, Nilton Cezar Antunes Veron (‘Cezinha'), now serving a prison term in Asunción, had been given a contract to kill Roberto Acevedo, then governor of Amambay, which he never managed to carry out. Both the CV and the PCC bought large rural estates in the border area which, emulating the Colombian cartels, they devoted to cattle ranching, an ideal vehicle for money-laundering.

The recent PCC actions in Amambay and Canindeyú are not the gang's first, or the most spectacular: in early 2006, 30 PCC gunmen took part in a failed attempt to rob the ABN Amro Bank in Asunción. Later that year, in a preview of Mercedes Castiñeira's recent performance, Hugo Castor Ibarra, then head of Senad, announced that there were ‘indications' that the PCC and CV had plans to establish themselves ‘definitively' in Paraguay's border area.

Antidrugs operations
In February 2010 the governments of Paraguay and Brazil signed an agreement for the former antidrugs agency, the Secretaría Nacional Antidrogas (Senad), and the Brazilian federal police to conduct joint antidrugs drives over a three-year period under the codename Operación Nueva Alianza (‘Operation New Alliance').

A key feature of these drives is to conduct marijuana eradication sweeps in time for the beginning of the harvest, in order to cause the greatest financial impact, since by then the traffickers will have invested in planting, paid the farmers and acquired the necessary equipment. Under Nueva Alianza I-2011, launched in late February this year, 168 hectares of marijuana plantations in the vicinity of Pedro Juan Caballero were reported eradicated by 2 March. Senad calculated that this meant withholding from the market almost 500 tonnes of cannabis, valued at more than US$500m on the strength of recorded prices in the markets of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile (an average US$1,000 per kilo).

A month later another joint drive eradicated 101ha in the same area, nominally withholding from the market 312t of cannabis, this time valued by Senad at ‘more than US$4m'

Operación Nueva Alianza dovetails with another launched earlier this year by the Paraguayan government, codenamed Ko'e Pyahu (‘New Dawn' in Guaraní). By mid-April interior minister Rafael Filizzola was reporting that it had yielded the eradication of 800t on marijuana. He said, ‘The estimated value at the site of production is about US$10m, and placed in the regional markets it is US$200m, which represents a major blow to organised crime.'

Senad has reported the eradication of 1,011ha of marijuana plantations in the whole of 2010, which it said represented 3,000t of the drug.

In early April, Senad agents captured in Puente Khyá, Canindeyú, five Brazilian nationals suspected of being members of the CV. They were found in possession of two rifles, a machinegun, bulletproof vests and several 1.5kg bricks of cannabis. Their armament suggested that they were involved in, or preparing for confrontation with rival trafficking gangs.

Airborne cocaine
Senad has also reported success against the traffic in cocaine that passes through Paraguayan territory. On 6 May it reported the seizure of a load of 400kg of cocaine that had been dropped from a light aircraft on a clandestine airstrip in Colonia San Alfredo, Concepción, close to the border with the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. The airplane was tracked to a an airstrip much farther south, on a farm next to San Juan Bautista, Misiones, close to the border with the Argentine province of Corrientes.

There Senad agents found and seized seven other light aircraft thought to be used for transporting cocaine. The fact that the first aircraft was being expected when it dropped its cargo and that the authorities were able to track it to a location approximately 600 kilometres further south suggests, though it was not officially acknowledged, that Brazilian cooperation in the field of aerial surveillance may have played an important role in the operations.

Not only is Brazil able to ‘see' well into the territory of neighbouring countries with the radar, satellite and aerial resources of its Sivam system, but under recent agreements the use of unmanned Brazilian aircraft along (and across) the Paraguayan border has enhanced surveillance capabilities. The Brazilians, for example, have been able to track low-altitude drug-carrying flights that eluded the air-control radars.

Development: On 28 June Argentina's President Cristina Fernández officially launched the ‘southern belt' (Cinturón Sur) security plan for southern neighbourhoods of the city of Buenos Aires (Caba) in the presence of her mayoral candidate, Daniel Filmus.

Significance: The participation of Filmus and Fernández in the launch of Cinturón Sur has clear electoral purposes and is the first time the president has appeared in public with the Frente para la Victoria (FPV)'s mayoral candidate since his bid was formalised. Fernández's support in the Caba (as per voting intentions in polls) is significantly higher than that of Filmus and she will likely devote time to boosting his candidacy in the city.

Key points:

• As of 4 July, the Gendarmería Nacional Argentina (GNA) and the Prefectura Naval Argentina (PNA) will each deploy 1,250 officers across eight police stations in southern neighbourhoods of the Caba. The police stations are located in designated ‘red zones' on the crime map of the Caba, typically slum areas (villas miseria) in which large and small drug-trafficking groups operate freely.

• The decision to more than double the security presence in certain neighbourhoods is a clear shift in the government's position, in that it no longer argues that crime is a "sensation" aggravated by the opposition media. In all the opinion polls, crime is a key electoral issue.

• "[Greater] security is a demand that will never be met, because new problems always emerge; if someone promises that [to end insecurity] they are lying", said Fernández. Despite her call to coordinate the activities of all four forces sharing the same jurisdiction, Mayor Mauricio Macri was not invited to the launch.

• Today (29 June), Macri is deploying 300 members of his fledgling metropolitan police force to the same area for the first time since the force's creation in 2008. In coming months, he expects to double the number of officers in the city's south. The deployment was allegedly brought forward (from 1 July) to avoid conflicts with the mayor's campaign schedule.

Development: On 12 May, in a speech that contained several veiled remarks directed at Hugo Moyano, the infamous secretary general of the central confederation of labour (CGT), Argentina's President Cristina Fernández proclaimed, "when a trade union organisation only cares about its members and takes positions that end up damaging society as a whole, it stops being a union and becomes a corporation".

Significance: The speech contained the most direct attacks and warnings against the CGT in the eight years of Kirchnerista rule. Fernández has now positioned herself for a win-win situation, regardless of Moyano's reaction, which initially was to reiterate his backing for Fernández's re-election bid in the 23 October general elections and deny that the president's message was directed at the union.

Fernández's tactic plays well with the middle classes because they can see a president who is not afraid of confronting one of the most politically dangerous men in Argentina. If, despite the CGT's rhetoric, the union continues to "bring the country to a halt", as Pablo Moyano, Hugo's son, warned last week, it will only lend weight to Fernández's denunciation of "those who claim to help, and live off Cristina's name, but the next day do the exact opposite, so that this [the model] has problems or crumbles."

Key points:

• It is not a coincidence that Fernández's comments came just 24 hours after Omar Viviani, head of the taxi drivers' union in the city of Buenos Aires, announced that some CGT members were unhappy with the administration of Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli and backed another local mayor to challenge Scioli in the Partido Justicialista (PJ, Peronists) primaries. The government's stance has always been clear: decisions regarding candidacies in the province of Buenos Aires are for Scioli and Fernández alone to decide. Despite Moyano's attempts to distance himself from Viviani's position, the move has been widely interpreted as another attempt by the CGT to exert pressure on Fernández so that one third of candidates, in all districts and at all levels, come from CGT ranks.

• Tensions between Fernández and Moyano have been rumoured for several years and the relationship between the government and the CGT had always been handled by Fernández's late husband, former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007). The increasing frequency of strike actions called by CGT-enrolled unions since the beginning of the year was yesterday deplored by Fernández as selfish and motivated by a lack of "loyalty", which she said was a "scant" value.

• In the past fortnight, Fernández has faced strike actions by: hydrocarbons workers in her home province of Santa Cruz; teachers in Santa Cruz who blockaded access to oil fields (rather than the desolate Patagonian roads); and employees of gas stations in the province of Buenos Aires. Pablo Moyano also threatened a truckers' union strike to block the distribution of petrol to gas stations and, finally, there was an impromptu strike by a small union representing the administrators of the state-owned airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas, which paralysed domestic flights for half a day on 10 May. On the back of all these disruptions, petrol shortages in greater Buenos Aires became a reality this week.

•For Fernández, the Aerolíneas strike was the final straw: "I will not allow extortion", she said. "There are some leaders who subject us to practices that are bad for themselves and they don't realise that they end up discrediting the union movement", she concluded, in clear reference to the Moyano clan.

• Fernández conditioned confirmation of her re-election bid on a dialogue with the CGT and a promise by the union to avoid strike actions. "I am not dying to be president again guys...I've given all I had to give, and you won't chase me...I'm making an immense personal and even physical effort to go on. If there are some who think another model can be better or [they] believe to possess so much power as to impose their will, so that this model is discredited, I want to tell them they can't count on me."

• Moyano, who is bedridden with flu, is believed to have asked his closest collaborators to publicly defend his allegiance to Fernández. The problem was that a message Tweeted by Julio Piumato, head of the judicial workers' union, which said that "no one commits [political] suicide and least of all the chieftess", sounded more like a threat than an expression of support.

A year on, President Alvaro Uribe's policy of using paid informants to undermine the power of Colombia's armed groups has significant results to show. Interestingly, it seems to have been most effective against common criminals. 

When President Uribe launched his Red de Cooperación Ciudadana ('Network of Citizen Cooperation') in August last year, he spoke of blanketing the country with 'a million' informants who would be rewarded for any leads producing tangible results. Recruitment was more successful than anticipated: the network currently has more that 1.6m members. 

The first working day of the week has become 'reward Monday', when a big show is made of announcing the amounts paid out for fruitful leads. Over the past year, a total of Col$2.56bn (US$890,730) has been distributed among 2,808 informants - an average of US$403 each. 

Balance sheet 

The Red was meant primarily to assist in the campaign against guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug traffickers. The information it provided led to the capture of 1,822 members of armed organisations and helped the security forces 'locate and kill 307 members of outlawed armed organisations.' In these actions 1,672 firearms were seized and four camps of guerrillas and paramilitaries were destroyed. The information also led to the freeing of 97 hostages. 

On the counternarcotics front, the Red is credited with having led to the seizure of 8.6 tonnes of cocaine, 5t of marihuana and 177 kilos of heroin, and the destruction of eight drug-processing labs. 

A side benefit was the information that led to the arrest of 3,915 common criminals - twice as many as the guerrillas and paramilitaries captured. 

Intelligence from prisons 

Officials say that similar success has accompanied a far less publicised component of Uribe's 'democratic security' strategy: gathering 'preventive' intelligence in prisons on the organisation of kidnapping networks; their leaders, modus operandi, and financing. This is credited with the increased effectiveness of the police in thwarting kidnap attempts and solving cases of abduction.

He told the supreme court president he expects the whole court to step down; replacements will be `non-partisan'.

As explained by President Nicanor Duarte, the meeting he held early last week with supreme court president Bonifacio Rí­os haD been to tell the magistrate that `he has an historic responsibility.' In the context of Duarte's plans for a reform of the judiciary, this means that Rí­os was told that the government expects him and his colleagues to resign. Duarte said Paraguay needed a court that would inspire confidence, if it wanted lower courts to act `with a real sense of justice'.

Vice-President Luis Castiglioni later joined the dots, stating explicitly that the overhaul of the judiciary would include everything `from the supreme court to the last justice of the peace' and the state prosecution service as well. Both Duarte and Castiglioni have emphasised that the aim is to appoint a non-partisan supreme court, `neither Colorado nor Liberal [but with] respected people.' According to Castiglioni, the supreme court justices are `well disposed [and] open to this kind of dialogue.'

VENEZUELA | Growth outlook. The Venezuelan economy has continued its downslide: in the third quarter, activity was running 7.1% lower than a year earlier (making it the seventh quarter running to show year-on-year falls). The only comfort the central bank was able to draw from the situation was that this represented a lesser pace of decline: in the second quarter, GDP was down 9.2% on the same period of 2002.

Chiefly responsible for the QIII contraction was a 9% fall in the oil sector (which accounts for just under a third of GDP), led by a slump in production in the state subsector; the non-oil economy shrank by 6%, with construction down 33.9%, commerce down 10% and manufacturing down 9.9%. The accumulated fall in the first three quarters of the year was 14.7%.

COLOMBIA | Market upswing boosts export earnings. Colombia's export earnings in the first nine months of this year reached US$9.55bn, or 7.7% more than in the same period of 2002. The increase was borne mainly by raw materials, many of them buoyed by better world prices. Earnings from oil, coal, coffee and ferronickel jointly grew by 15.9%, to US$4.45bn -- or 46.6% of total export earnings, up from 43.3% in the same period last year.

Even the flagging oil industry was favoured, achieving a 5.3% increase in earnings despite a 13.9% fall in volume. The end of the prolonged coffee crisis translated a 4.5% increase in volume into a 9.9% rise in earnings. Similarly, ferronickel was up 14.3% in volume, 41% in earnings. Coal was a different proposition: it achieved a 47% increase in earnings, but on the strength of a 65.5% increase in volume.

ECUADOR | Earnings lifted by oil price. Improved world oil prices have raised Petroecuador's oil export earnings in the first 10 months of the year to US$933.6m, or 14.1% more than in the comparable period of 2002. The state oil company's contribution to the fiscal purse increased by about the same amount. The price for Ecuador's mix of crudes averaged US$26.12 per barrel in January-October.

The pro-Alemán faction of the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC) has come up with a new attempt to get their leader, imprisoned on corruption charges, set free: an amnesty law, which would not only benefit former President Arnoldo Alemán but also any other former member of his administration facing corruption charges.

A bill, backed by 20 of the 45 pro-Alemán Liberals in the national assembly, was smuggled in on 10 February, when the attention of most Nicaraguans was focused on the shocking murder of a leading TV journalist (see page 16). It went straight into the justice committee, which is chaired by one of the bill's authors, Donald Lacayo, and where the Liberals are in a majority. The manoeuvre was made possible by the `unification' deal brokered by US ambassador Barbara Moore [WR-03-49], which gave the pro-Alemán Liberals control of the legislature's top offices.

Apparently, the intention was to seek a deal with the Sandinistas, offering them a way out of their own old corruption dilemma, the so-called piñata, under which state-owned properties were distributed among the party faithful as their régime came to an end. The Sandinistas have denied even discussing this with the pro-Alemán Liberals. These are just short of the majority needed to pass the amnesty.

Continuing unrest in the southern township of Ilave, where the mayor was recently lynched [WR-04-18], is being blamed by the government on the Sendero Luminoso guerrillas. Protests - so far peaceful - have continued in the area, together with an all-out `stoppage' which new interior minister Javier Reátegui failed to get called off.

According to Reátegui, intelligence services have reported that `there are some indications that [the people behind the protests] are mainly senderistas and, maybe, of Patria Roja; they are terrorist groups that take advantage of this situation to attract attention to themselves.'
Government officials have frequently mentioned Sendero and Patria Roja in the same breath.

Though the two are splinters of the Peruvian Communist party, the latter did not follow Sendero into armed insurrection. In this case the connection appears to be that both the late mayor Cirilo Robles and his deputy Alberto Sandoval (accused of engineering the lynching) had been associated with Patria Roja in their student days.

Ostensibly, the protests in Ilave, aimed at securing the release of six people accused of participation in the lynching, are led by the Frente de Defensa de los Intereses de la Nación Aymara - a previously unknown ethnic organisation.

Few paid too much attention when, on 24 July, justice minister Márcio Thomaz Bastos announced that Brazil will be starting to train a new 'national security force' to cope with internal security threats that overwhelm the capacity of the local police forces. The rationale offered by government officials, plausible on the surface, does not appear all that sound when examined more closely.

Minister Bastos said the new force, to be drawn from among the best police officers put forward by the state governments, will not have a dedicated base of its own: 'It will be a virtual force, inasmuch as it will not be in a barracks of its own. Once trained, the police officers will return to their respective states. They will be summoned as and when emergencies demand it.'

A first contingent of 270 is due to start training at the federal police academy on 10 August. 'Before the end of the year,' said Bastos, 'we'll have 1,500 men trained and ready to act [...] Its first two missions will probably be executed towards the end of the year.' He excused himself from identifying those first two missions, but the media immediately began to venture that they were likely to be operations against the drug-trafficking gangs that dominate the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro.

As officials (unofficially) explain it, the creation of the new force is a response to a peculiarly Brazilian problem. This is that each state is responsible for its security policy and its police forces. The jurisdiction of the federal police is limited to interstate issues, border control and such crimes as drug trafficking and smuggling. Hence, whenever the local police face a security emergency that overwhelms them, the central government has no choice but to resort to the army. The army, say the officials, accepts this role only reluctantly, noting that their troops are trained to combat enemies, not to police civilians.

The idea of a new federal force, the version goes, began to be mooted towards the end of last year, when the government of Rio de Janeiro state, 'overwhelmed' by a turf war between drug gangs, asked for federal military assistance.

Dissecting the rationale
There are several problems with this outline. To start at the end, it was only after much arm-twisting by the federal government that the Rio authorities agreed to state that their police had been 'overwhelmed', on the grounds that this was formally required to justify the deployment of troops [WR-04-22]. Interestingly, since the troops were sent in there have been no glowing reports of their successes, whereas there have been many accounts of coups by the local police.

Second, the army has long had an official doctrine for so-called GLO ('guarantee of law and order') operations, and has engaged in many of them - few of which obviously involved a situation of overwhelmed local police. There have indeed been public expressions of military discomfort with this policing role, but of late this appears to have been wearing off. As troops were recently being prepared to serve as peacekeepers in Haiti, a general enthusiastically noted that such missions would help train them to deal with situations such as that of Rio.

Rival army programme
Moreover, towards the end of June the army high command announced that its 11th infantry brigade, a 4,500-strong unit stationed at Campinas (about 95 kilometres northwest of São Paulo), would begin retraining to carry out policing duties. This will involve re-equipping the brigade with smaller-calibre weapons, rubber bullets and protective gear. A brigade spokesman said this was part of the army's broader reorganisation plan, which also envisages increasing the number of military police units (not to be confused with the state forces that go by the same name, but are not part of the armed forces). A detail that has emerged from this announcement is that there is only one army unit, stationed at Capacava in the interior of São Paulo state, trained for domestic operations. Apart from the military police companies, there are nine battalions with training that is described as 'similar' but not specifically designed for army operations in the streets of Brazilian cities.

The Campinas brigade was chosen for this new role because of its proximity to Cavex, the army air command located in Taubaté, which makes for ease of rapid deployment. Maria Cristina von Zuben de Arruda Sampaio, who has been a professor at the military police academy and now lectures on ethics and human rights to police officers at the university of Campinas, says the soldiers will have to absorb a fundamental shift of emphasis, from killing in war situations to a more 'defensive' stance in dealing with civilians on the streets.

Bastos made no mention of how this programme will fit in with the creation of the new 'national security' force, though the implication was that the latter was being set up so as to avoid resorting to the former.

Federal police sidestepped
Yet another inconsistency is that the federal police has been called upon to perform a role beyond its core responsibilities. There has been no explanation as to why, if even the training of the new force is being entrusted to the federal police, the scheme did not simply start by adding a new security-emergency role to the federal force.

One tentative explanation is that the federal government wanted to avoid appearing to be trampling on constitutionally enshrined state jurisdictions. However, the impression given by Bastos was that the new force, while physically dispersed, would be mobilised by the federal authorities. The tough negotiations over control of the army units sent to assist the government of Rio de Janeiro make it clear that this is an institutional and political nightmare.

The absence of public debate about this initiative has meant, among other things, that experiences elsewhere were not examined. Argentina, with a federal setup similar to Brazil's, recently announced the creation of a new federal force as part of President Néstor Kirchner's three-year anticrime plan. It instantly triggered suspicious, even hostile, reactions from provincial governors. In the end it was quietly set aside. In Brazil, with local elections due later in the year and the military establishment on a roll, reactions are likely to start surfacing as soon as the details of the Bastos scheme are known.

Allied with the public's scant confidence in the police, the impunity with which criminals can act in Mexico is not only encouraging them to commit more crimes: it is also provoking irate citizens to take the law into their own hands. Vigilantism appears to be spreading, and in several instances punishment has verged on lynching.

A catalogue of recent near-lynchings published last week by the newspaper El Universal displays a disquieting feature: in some instances the targets were the police. The most notable cases were:

• Cuajimalpa (Mexico City): Policeman beaten unconscious, patrol car torched, after fatal collision with a civilian. 
• San Pablo Oztotepec (Mexico City): Two suspected car thieves beaten unconscious, lives saved by passing public-prosecutor. 
• San Mateo Tlaltenango (Mexico City): Police patrol car torched after drunken driver collided with two taxis and attempted to escape the scene. 
• Santa Rosa Xochiac (state of Mexico): Suspected thief tied, beaten and nearly burnt alive. 
• Campeche: Vehicles of a visiting circus torched by mob after an employee was accused of sexually molesting a minor. 
• Yucatán: Suspected arsonist doused with petrol and threatened with burning.

Columnist Ana Marí­a Salazar, an expert on public security, is cited as saying, 'This has happened before, but has got worse now […] The general perception is that if you go out and commit a crime, nothing happens. This goes for the vigilantes as well as the criminals.'

President Vicente Fox has ordered the army to provide the muscle for a multi-agency contingent charged with running the country's premier high-security prison, La Palma, after an undercover operation revealed that it had virtually fallen under the control of imprisoned drug barons, acting through a tight network of inmates and guards. The move may be the first step towards a broader purge of the prison system, apparently as infiltrated by the drug gangs as the other law enforcement agencies.

A 750-strong unit of army soldiers and agents of the chief prosecutor's office (PGR), the Policí­a Federal Preventiva (PFP) and the prison service moved into La Palma on 14 January. For the public at large this appeared to be a progression from the 4 January removal of the prison warden, Guillermo Montoya, and two of his deputies, after four successive assassinations of inmates proved that the turf war between the big drug gangs had moved into the prisons [WR-04-48]. 

This was followed on 9 January by the strengthening of prison security, with 179 guards moved to La Palma from the other three high-security federal prisons - Puente Grande (Jalisco), Matamoros (Tamaulipas) and El Rincón (Nayarit). Just before the combined force moved in, the government dismissed the director of federal prisons, Carlos Tornero.

Only after the special force moved into La Palma did it emerge that an undercover operation initiated in 2004 had revealed the extent of the penetration of La Palma by the drug barons. This had begun after the PGR found that neither the interior ministry nor the public security ministry had been able to collect any intelligence on the situation inside the prison. An undisclosed number of officers of the Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (AFI) were placed inside La Palma, some as inmates, others as guards.

They discovered a network commanded by Osiel Cárdenas, boss of the Gulf 'cartel', who had a cadre of 37 inmates on his payroll, plus about 40 guards who acted as couriers and enabled the introduction of contraband drugs and weapons. From there Cárdenas, and his ally Benjamí­n Arellano Félix of the Tijuana cartel, ran their outside businesses and their turf war with the Juárez cartel and other interlopers. Apart from using the guards, communications with the outside were conducted through lawyers and 'pseudo-lawyers'.

One damning piece of evidence was a video showing prison warden Montoya holding a meeting with Cárdenas, Benjamí­n and Francisco Rafael Arellano Félix, Albino Quintero and Miguel Angel Caro Quintero - all the upper-echelon drug-trafficking inmates. Reporters who were shown the video without a soundtrack saw Montoya politely shaking hands with his guests.

The government has announced that the 'state of alert' in La Palma will continue until there is 'full certainty [that it] has recovered its maximum-security conditions and that all regulations are strictly adhered to'. Santiago Vasconcelos, the deputy chief prosecutor in charge of organised crime, hinted on 14 January that the drive might not end there. 'The government,' he said, 'will not allow organised crime to continue breaching the security of the federal penitentiary centres.'

MEXICO | Remittances still growing fast. Remittances by Mexican expatriates in the first two months of the year reached US$2.53bn, or 25.2% more than in the same period of last year. In 2004 remittances totalled US$16.6bn, a monthly average of US$1.38bn - though it must be kept in mind that remittances tend to peak towards the end of the year. Since 2003 remittances have been Mexico's second-biggest source of hard currency, after oil exports and ahead of foreign direct investment. The government has projected for this year as a whole that remittances will reach US$17bn, but if the performance so far holds, this could be exceeded.

MEXICO | Pemex 'on brink of bankruptcy'. The director-general of state oil company Pemex, Luis Ramí­rez Corzo, said last week that the firm was 'on the brink of bankruptcy [...] at the point at which it starts eating into its capital'. Pemex, he said, has liabilities of US$90bn and investment requirements of US$10bn if it is to maintain output at 3m to 3.5m barrels per day. Of its liabilities, about half are accounted for by its Pidiregas (deferred registry) investments, a borrowing scheme used to keep up its essential investments. The big problem is that Pemex is used as a milch cow by the state: last year, though the firm chalked up record gross earnings of US$70bn, 77% of that amount (or 103% of net profits) went to state coffers in the form of tax, duties, and royalties.

MEXICO | Year begins with promising investment rate. Gross fixed investment in January was up 10.2% on the same month last year, driven by machinery and equipment (up 15%). Last year, when GDP expanded by 4.4%, gross fixed investment grew by 7.5%.