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The government finally set in motion its land reform project this week, although the only details provided relate to rural development rather than land redistribution. The announcement was hastened after landless groups threatened a new wave of estate invasions because of the lack of progress on land reform. It also came days after the publication of a report written by Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, for congress, warning of a possible escalation in violence, targeting Brazilian landowners. President Fernando Lugo issued a statement underlining that the estates of the so-called Brasiguayos would be protected.

The first stage of the plan will focus on the provision of assistance for 5,500 families in six of Paraguay's 17 departments and the construction of roads, bridges, schools and medical clinics. The minister for land and rural development, Alberto Alderete, presented the plan in the central department of San Pedro, the epicentre of protests by landless groups, and it was no surprise that 60% of the families to benefit from government assistance come from here.

It is unlikely that Alderete's plan will placate landless groups. Odilón Espí­nola, the head of the Federación Nacional Campesina (FNC), made it clear the day before he presented it that as far as landless groups were concerned the definition of land reform was recovering land from foreign landowners, particularly Brasiguayos with large soya estates. Alderete preferred to take the emphasis off this core demand by focusing on “integral land reform", which equates to an entire rural regeneration plan. The trouble with this, as Amorim pointed out in his report, is that Lugo raised expectations during his campaign that he would deliver on the sort of land reform envisaged by Espí­nola.

• Army deployment

The interior minister, Rafael Filizzola announced the deployment of troops to the departments of San Pedro, Concepción and Amambay, on the Brazilian border, this week. Ostensibly they are being sent to assist the police in tracking down members of an armed group, Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo (EPP), which attacked a small military base in Tacuatí­, San Pedro, on 31 December, disarmed its sole defender, stole weapons and burned down the armoury. The military will also be in a position, however, to respond quickly to any unrest from landless groups, which have criticised the deployment.

The US President, Barack Obama, paid a brief visit to Mexico on 16 April, en route to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. Obama pleased the Mexican government by praising President Felipe Calderón's efforts against organised crime as “heroic", but he also made it clear that while he wanted closer US-Mexico relations, the US congress will limit what he can do. Capitol Hill ultimately has the final say on key Mexican demands, notably tighter US controls on gun sales and immigration reform.

Mexico has jumped up the list of US foreign policy priorities since Obama took office. Some of this may be due to the US media's sensationalist reporting of the Calderón government's bloody war on organised crime and drug gangs, and its allegations that the violence was in danger of spilling into the US.

In a clear indication of this new priority, there have been a string of high-profile visits to Mexico by senior US policy makers. In the first 85 days of the new administration, the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, the head of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, the Secretary for Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, and the attorney general, Eric Holder, have all visited.  

On 16 April Obama declared “a new era of cooperation and partnership" between the US and Mexico. Yet, in a joint press conference with Calderón, he made it clear that reviving restrictions on sales of assault weapons in the US (introduced, co-incidentally by Bill Clinton, the last US president to visit Mexico City) was politically impossible because of opposition by US gun enthusiasts.

What he offered instead was to lobby the US Senate to ratify the long-stalled Inter-American Arms Treaty, which the US had a major hand in negotiating through the Organization of American States. This treaty, again signed by Clinton, stalled in the Senate, but went into effect elsewhere in 1998. The treaty seeks to crack down on the trade in firearms by establishing a system for the import, export and transfer of firearms.

• Immigration

At the centrepiece of Obama's trip, a dinner hosted by President Calderón at the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, Calderón praised Obama's commitment to reforming US immigration rules. A move by the US on this issue, in a direction approved by Mexico, looks likely. US trade unions are swinging behind the suggestion that the reform should legalise the 14m to 15m Latin Americans (mostly Mexicans) that currently live and work illegally in the US. Previously, organised labour has been against immigration reform.

The ruling Acuerdo Paí­s (AP) won the presidency and two vice-presidencies in the new congress, which convened for the first time on 31 July. Fernando Cordero will be the president of congress. He presided over the rump of the constituent assembly - the transition legislature, or congresillo. He was chosen by 74 of the 124 legislators. Irina Cabezas and Rolando Panchana picked up the first and second vice-presidencies respectively for the AP.

Only the Partido Sociedad Patriótica (PSP), the party of former president Lucio Gutiérrez, contested the positions. The nominally Maoist Movimiento Popular Democrático (MPD) and Pachakutik, the political arm of the umbrella indigenous organisation Conaie (which have nine deputies between them) abstained from voting. This sent a clear signal that they will not be pliant members of the government's professed alliance with smaller left-wing parties to secure a working majority: the AP has 59 seats, four short of a majority.

President Rafael Correa had enjoyed a two-thirds majority in the constituent assembly. Correa will be inaugurated under the new constitution on 10 August - the bicentenary of Ecuador's “Grito de Independencia" from Spain.

HAITI | New cabinet. Jean Max Bellerive was confirmed as Haiti's new prime minister on 7 November, following ratification by both houses of parliament. Two days later he unveiled his new cabinet, choices which reflected considerable input from President René Préval. Bellerive's new ministerial team includes 11 of the 18 officials that served under his predecessor, Michí¨lle Pierre-Louis, with those considered “too close" to Pierre-Louis excluded. New faces include Paul Denis, Préval's key advisor and former 2005 presidential candidate for the opposition Organisation du Peuple en Lutte (OPL), as minister for justice and public security; and Yves Christalin, an influential member of Fanmi Lavalas, the party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as labour and social affairs minister. The new economy minister is Ronald Baudin, hitherto general secretary of Pierre-Louis's office,while  the foreign affairs portfolio went to Marie Michí¨le Rey, another advisor to Préval, who served as Haiti's representative before the Caribbean Community (Caricom).

GUATEMALA | Remittances. In the first 10 months of 2009, remittances came to US$3.299bn, down 9.9% on the same period of the previous year, according to Guatemala's central bank (Banguat). The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reported that more than 1.3m Guatemalans in the US are affected by unemployment, which has caused monthly average remittance inflows to drop to US$272 in 2009, from US$345 in 2008. The IOM expects remittances to decline 11% overall for the year. Total remittances to Guatemala came to US$4.3bn in 2008, accounting for 11.1% of GDP.

Ancient augurs would have found plenty to say, without needing to consult oracles, when Sebastián Piñera was sworn in as president on 11 March. Just 20 minutes before Chile's first elected right-wing president since 1958 was inaugurated in Valparaí­so, fierce aftershocks struck central and southern regions of Chile, leaving congressmen and the seven visiting presidents looking anxiously at the ceiling overhead. No sooner had Piñera received the presidential sash and the star of Bernardo O'Higgins than he was off to Rancagua, the capital of the region named after the country's liberator, to see the worst of the latest damage for himself.

What Piñera's election portends for Chile will become apparent in the coming months but, if anything, the damage wrought by the earthquake and several powerful aftershocks should, from a purely political perspective, be positive for him. It should afford him an extended honeymoon of about six months as the opposition Concertación will to some extent have to comply with his campaign call for 'a government of national unity', rather than accustoming itself to the role of opposition, in the interests of rebuilding Chile.

Piñera subtly adapted the inaugural speech of his predecessor Michelle Bachelet in 2006 by promising “a new transition to construct a developed country, without poverty and with genuinely equal opportunities, irrespective of origins" (literally “from whatever cradle you come"). Bachelet's main campaign promise was to provide “social protection from the cradle to the grave". He did not borrow any lines from Bachelet after the ceremony, pointedly trying to differentiate his rapid response to the aftershocks from his predecessor's dithering. He declared a state of emergency in O'Higgins (VI Region) and said the government would “deploy all the troops that may be necessary" to ensure public order. “This government will not hesitate one instant, nor wait one second to act," he said.

Piñera then conducted a two-day visit to the other regions where states of emergency have been declared - Maule and Biobí­o. He set a deadline of two months to restore health, education and road conditions to normalcy. Piñera also complied with his standout campaign promise by sending a bill to congress on 15 March to approve the so-called “Bono Marzo", from which he said “more than 1m poor and middle class households" would benefit: each eligible family will receive Ch$40,000 (US$74), at a cost of US$320m for the state. This bond was announced long before the earthquake and tsunami struck on 27 February but Piñera said it would help provide relief for those who had been affected by it.

Piñera asked lawmakers to expedite the bond's approval so that the money could be disbursed by early April. The opposition Democracia Cristiana (DC) argued that the bond, envisaged as a one-off subsidy, should be increased to Ch$100,000 (US$185) to assist those directly affected by the quake. The finance minister, Felipe Larraí­n, said that funds had been set aside for these people under the government's reconstruction project 'Levantemos Chile' ('Let's raise Chile').

* Ironically a concert being held in Santiago to raise money for victims of the earthquake was the casualty of a power cut stretching 1,000km north of Santiago to the Atacama desert and 1,000km south to the island of Chiloé - an area encompassing 80% of Chile's population - on the evening of 14 March. The outage was caused by the breakdown of a transformer, almost certainly damaged by the earthquake, in Temuco: metro stations and malls had to be evacuated.

COSTA RICA | Sugar. The US last week lifted its ban on tariff-free sugar imports from Costa Rica, imposed in January 2010 in light of Costa Rica's failure to implement reforms in line with the regional free trade agreement with the US (DR-Cafta). The lifting of the ban follows the approval by Costa Rica's congress in April of the last reform necessary to complete Cafta-DR - the toughening up of copyright laws to protect intellectual property rights. Costa Rica's sugar industry, which usually exports between 130,000 and 140,000 tonnes of sugar a year, put the losses from the US suspension at up to US$1m.

When the 33 miners were successfully winched to safety last week, the media was full of psychoanalysts expatiating on the difficulties of managing fame but nobody saw fit to offer the same advice to a little-known politician who shot to international prominence after the rescue operation. Laurence Golborne, the mining minister, was the least recognised member of the cabinet. He is now the most popular politician in Chile by a country mile, and is being touted as a successor to President Sebastián Piñera. Smooth, charming and media savvy, Golborne has many of the intangible qualities a head of state requires but capitalising on the political opportunity provided by the mining rescue could pose a still greater challenge.

The Chilean media, and some of the foreign media, is almost as obsessed with the Golborne phenomenon as it is with the soap opera of the rescued miners. Golborne is not an archetypal politician: he does not even represent a political party. Rather he is a new breed of politician selected by Piñera - a technocrat with a social conscience and an innate political nous.

On national television on 17 October, Piñera's right-hand man during last year's electoral campaign, Vice-President and Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter, said that Golborne's role in the rescue operation justified that he be considered as a possible presidential candidate. “He has a great chance to convert himself into a political leader and naturally, from this perspective, for his training, and his trajectory, and for his popular support, he could without doubt be a presidential candidate."

It is, of course, important to bear in mind the famous adage that a week is a long time in politics and there are nearly three years before Chile moves into presidential campaign mode. Hinzpeter conceded that talk of a prospective Golborne candidacy was “very premature", but before now there was no talk whatsoever of a possible successor to Piñera.

Before his trip to Europe this week (see overleaf) Piñera, just seven months into his four-year term, echoed this sentiment, stressing that politics is dynamic. But it will be fascinating to see what Piñera decides to do with Golborne now. Between July and September Golborne leapt from 16% to 72% in public recognition and, after his initial faux pas when he said the chances of survival for the miners were low, his approval rating soared. It is now nudging 90%, according to the national pollster Adimark.

Catapulted into the media spotlight with the mining rescue, Golborne is understandably very cautious about responding to speculation about his future. He has been careful to praise Piñera for his handling of the mining rescue, saying that “his commitment, without weighing the political consequences, was extraordinary". He also said that he wanted to continue in the mining ministry. Piñera might leave him there to oversee some of the promised changes to mining safety regulations, but it is difficult to imagine that he will not move him to a higher-profile ministry, such as public works or housing.

Either of these moves could work on two levels. Firstly, Golborne would be the best equipped to sustain some of the political capital, won by the government through the mining rescue, among the popular sectors where Piñera has least support: both these ministries will have large resources to channel into the massive post-earthquake reconstruction. Secondly, either of these moves would also make sense if Piñera wanted to groom Golborne as a successor, as the post-earthquake reconstruction will run for at least the three years until the 2013 elections, ensuring he remains a high-profile figure.

Parties eye up Golborne
It is not just Piñera who is weighing up what to do about Golborne now. The two main parties in the ruling Coalición por el Cambio - the right-wing Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI) and the more moderate centre-right Renovación Nacional (RN), which Piñera left before taking office in a sign of his independence - could seek to persuade him to join their ranks. Of the two the RN is the more natural fit. Golborne's agnosticism, and six children with two different wives, could make him difficult to swallow for the staunchly conservative UDI, which is closely allied to the Roman Catholic Church. Golborne has also privately expressed reservations about the UDI's efforts to impose moral values on the rest of the population.

The president of the UDI, Juan Antonio Coloma, part of Piñera's entourage in Europe, was giving nothing away. Speaking in London he said he was delighted and proud that the government had produced ministers with such a high approval rating as Golborne, but he said the priority right now must be to consolidate a good government rather than to discuss future presidential candidates.

What is certain, however, is that the UDI will insist, when it feels the time is right, that as the senior partner in the coalition it gets to choose the next presidential candidate. As things stand that should benefit Joaquí­n Laví­n, who will be enviously watching the adulation of Golborne. Laví­n is unlikely to get such a golden opportunity to boost his image as education minister, although his predecessors invariably had to deal with at least one serious student protest during their stint in office.

It is highly speculative but there is always the possibility that Golborne could seek to run as in independent candidate. His support transcends political affiliations. He has upwards of 60,000 Twitter followers and Facebook pages calling for him to run for president have sprouted up. Marco Enrí­quez-Ominami fared well as an independent in the last elections but still not well enough to make the second round - and he had strong political links. There is no precedent of a candidate with no roots in Chile's traditional parties running for election. The binomial system also makes it very hard for independents in Chile. But then again Piñera might seek to shake-up the electoral system.

Piñera laps up attention on European tour
President Piñera sought to capitalise on Chile's enhanced international image on a tour of Europe's three heavyweights - the UK, France and Germany - this week. Piñera is using the hard-earned publicity of Chile's efficiency and competence to try and attract foreign investment. 

British Prime Minister David Cameron received Piñera at 10 Downing Street, outside of which he showed reporters a gift box from Piñera containing a piece of rock from the San José mine and a copy of the first message sent up by one of the miners. Cameron presented Piñera with 33 bottles of London Pride beer and pint glasses for the freed miners, as well as an early edition of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, based on the story of a Scottish castaway stranded for four years on a Pacific island off the coast of Chile, known since 1966 as Robinson Crusoe island. Piñera and his wife, Cecilia Morel, then had a private audience with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Things will get harder for Piñera. He will need to decide whether to use his newfound political capital to undertake bold reforms in sensitive areas such as education, public security, poverty, political reform and fighting poverty. The left-wing Concertación is only just beginning to adapt to life in the opposition, and will surely have its house in order soon, and while the government has ended the Mapuche hunger strike, the underlying dispute is far from over.

• Von Baer
  There is some speculation in the national press that President Piñera might choose to replace the government spokeswoman, Ena Von Baer, with Laurence Golborne. Von Baer was largely anonymous during the mining rescue and opinion polls show she is one of the least popular politicians in the cabinet. The problem with this job, however, is that Golborne would be competing directly with Piñera, who likes to address the media himself.

Furious youths camping out in the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana, throwing stones at the interior ministry and waving placards calling for the Castro brothers to go, while soldiers sit by and watch. This image formed part of two opening paragraphs of wishful thinking in El Nuevo Herald this week as it sought to equate Cairo with Havana. If the Cuban government is at all perturbed by any repercussions of Egypt's revolution it is not showing it. Fidel Castro penned a “Reflection" this week expressing support for the Egyptian people in their righteous revolution against oppression.
 
In fairness to El Nuevo Herald, it was cautious about overplaying the parallels. As is should be. Egypt is, after all, an Arab country and Middle Eastern lynchpin buttressed by the US; Cuba, a Communist island in the Western Hemisphere, with comparatively little to do with the rest of the world, and still less the US. Reports of the imminent downfall of the Castro brothers have hardly been lacking since 1959 and yet despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, Fidel's serious illness, and US President Barack Obama's coming to power, to name but three events that were meant to hasten the end of the Revolution, the Castros remain firmly in charge.

It is not altogether surprising that the government has not restricted access to information about Egypt. Fidel was able to cast the revolt as the “overthrow of the principal ally of the US in the heart of the Arab world: Hosni Mubarak, who exploited and plundered his own people." Extolling the Egyptian people's “brave fight for political rights and social justice" was somewhat dangerous ground to stray onto for a long-ruling autocrat in a one-party state, with no freedom of the press, but Castro seemingly failed to detect any irony. It is widely assumed by political commentators beyond Miami that most Cubans will fail to see this irony, or at least ignore it. But, the Cuban government must be steeling itself for an incredibly difficult year, which just might lead to social unrest: five ministries - sugar, agriculture, construction, public health and tourism - are in the process of cutting 500,000 jobs in the state workforce; and food prices, on staples like rice and even sugar, are going up (see sidebar).

• Sugar and rice

The government has announced the “gradual" liberalisation of the sale of sugar, which has been subsidised for decades. The national daily Juventud Rebelde explained that this was “necessary _ for the successful development of the self-employed sector" as private restaurants in the future will require large amounts of sugar. Refined and raw sugar will gradually be eliminated from the ration book, which itself is being phased out. The price of imported rice will also be increased by more than 40% from 3.5 pesos a pound to five pesos a pound. The US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council said US food sales to Cuba declined by 31% in 2010, partly because Cuba lacked the foreign exchange to pay.

Link-up with neighbouring governments as maras spread inland from the Guatemalan border. Meanwhile, El Salvador becomes a policy test case.

Mexico has decided to join in the Central American effort to combat the threat posed by the maras (street gangs), after having to admit that it had spread into its own territory. The trigger was a turf war between mareros in a Mexican prison that left 16 people injured, some seriously. The incident took place in a correctional establishment for minors, the Centro Tutelar para Menores Infractores Villas Crisol, in Berriozábal, Chiapas — the southern state that sits on the border with Guatemala.

Central Mexico has been spared the street-gang threat (see page 14), despite the fact that it has received 85% of the 400,000-or-so criminals deported by the US to Latin American and Caribbean countries. Since 1996, when legislation imposed a life ban on any non-citizen sentenced to a year or more in prison, the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported about 500,000 criminals to 160 countries, with Latin America and the Caribbean taking about 80%.

Gangland in Chiapas
Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of deportees have gone to Mexico, they have tended to remain in or nearby the border towns to which they are transported — awaiting, like most other returned migrants, the opportunity to cross back into the US. The maras, however, have made an appearance on Mexico's southern border with Guatemala, the far gateway on the drugs- and people-trafficking route to the US. The gangs active there, unsurprisingly, are the same ones that dominate the scene further south: Salvatrucha and `la 18' [SSR-03-02]. Salvatrucha, the biggest, appears to have established a firm foothold in Tapachula, the first city on the Pan American highway inside Mexico, with a population of more than 140,000.

Guatemala is the second-largest recipient of US criminal deportees in Mexico's immediate vicinity, followed by El Salvador. Smaller contingents have gone to Honduras and, in the Caribbean, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Mexico's chief prosecutor's office, the PGR, has established contact with the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Belize to work out a coordinated campaign against the gangs. Chief prosecutor Rafael Macedo says his agency has already made a head start: `We know how [the maras] are operating, and the state government [of Chiapas] is doing a good job. There have been arrests, as part of the investigations we are conducting.'

Salvadorean policy challenge
The Central American governments have only recently started coming to grips with the problem of the maras, as we reported two months ago. Two countries, Honduras and El Salvador, have passed legislation which tries to apply the same kind of approach as US anti-racketeering norms, criminalising mere membership of the gangs. Guatemala has been considering following suit, but the outcome of the recent elections suggests that passage by congress will not come easily.

In El Salvador, President Francisco Flores has become embroiled in a very public dispute with judges who set free most of the mareros the police capture, both on procedural grounds and because they consider that the new legislation clashes with constitutionally guaranteed rights. 

Flores has accused them of refusing to obey the law, and urged the public to put pressure on the judges to change course. He has been openly dismissive of their reservations, saying, `Their complaints that our insistence on them obeying the law is tantamount to curtailing their independence make it sound as if it were optional for a judge to decide beforehand if he will apply the laws of El Salvador.'

Between 23 July, when President Flores launched his `Firm Hand' campaign against the maras (street gangs), and mid-November, police have arrested 5,056 suspected gang members — but judges have only remanded in custody 292 of them.

The Salvadorean supreme court has managed to sit firmly on the fence, issuing a communiqué‚ which on the one hand says that the anti-mara legislation `contains the relevant procedures and sanctions' and on the other that the judges must apply it `within the constitutional framework.' It also calls on the government to `foster respect for constitutional principles [because] a conduct of disobedience could generate the very grave danger of turning back the clock of history and reinstating patterns of authoritarianism and dictatorship we had left behind.'

Flores has pushed through congress two further reforms in order to limit the judges' leeway. The latest amendments, in early November, explicitly made mere membership of a mara a punishable offence (regardless of whether any crime was committed), and ordered the creation of special courts to try mareros.

The supreme court may soon have to become less equivocal. In mid-November special prosecutor for human rights Beatrice de Carrillo filed before it a suit seeking to have many of the provisions in the anti-mara legislation declared unconstitutional. She has challenged almost half of the 49 articles on new anti-mara legislation as breaching such constitutional principles as equality before the law, presumption of innocence, freedom of expression and freedom of association. The chief state prosecutor, Roy Edmundo Medina, argues that the norms are constitutional but that further legislation must be introduced to tighten the implementation procedures.

Criticism of the government's approach to the maras has also come from the president of the national security commission, Salvador Samayoa. He says that locking up gang members will only produce temporary relief, and that what is needed is a set of effective crime prevention policies.

Grim immediate outlook
What seems certain is that the problem is likely to get worse before it gets better. According to police statistics, in the first nine months of this year the US has deported 917 Salvadoreans with criminal records, of whom 138 have been identified as gang members. According to figures from the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as many as 250,000 aliens now serving time in US prisons, or who are on probation or parole, have been marked for deportation.

Many of these, of course, will go elsewhere in the region where, according to a survey conducted recently by Associated Press, Guyana has already received 600 such deportees, Honduras 7,000 and Jamaica about 10,000. The AP report has already provoked a wave of commentary about the responsibility of the US in the gang phenomenon. A good example is the Jamaica Gleaner's reading that the `United States' aggressive deportation policy may be directly responsible for a large chunk of Jamaica's surging crime rate in the last five years.'

HAITI | Minustah becomes more assertive. Apparently stung by criticism that its inability to quell violence might prompt recourse to US and French troops for the 'rapid deployment force' ordered by the UN Security Council, Minustah has been adopting a visibly more aggressive stance. On 29 June about 300 troops were mobilised in an eight-hour raid on four sectors of the Bel Air district in Port-au-Prince. Their main targets were those suspected of involvement in a recent wave of kidnappings: 13 of them were arrested and handed over to the Haitian national police. Resistance was strong, but Minustah emerged with its personnel unscathed, whereas six gunmen were killed.

A new major deployment took place on 6 July in Cité Soleil, where Minustah troops engaged in a gunfight that ended with five gunmen dead, among them gang leader Emmanuel (Dread) Wilme. At about the same time, Minustah's Chilean contingent reported that it had succeeded in pacifying Cap Haí¯tien, to the point that only one armed group, reputedly 75 strong, was still operational. Despite this, the violence has deterred voter registration to the point that OAS secretary-general José Miguel Insulza has conceded that the electoral calendar hitherto considered untouchable may have to be amended. The only 'untouchable' date, he said after visiting the island on 6-7 July, was the scheduled handover of power to an elected government on 7 February 2006.

Speculation about recourse to US and French troops (and possibly also Canadian) was revived in late June. The Washington Post, which in early June had written an editorial advocating a US deployment, said the matter was discussed by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 28 June. According to this version, similar invitations to France and Canada were also being considered.

There appeared to be good practical reasons to send in US and French troops as part of the 750-strong 'rapid reaction force' authorised by the UN Security Council. There is little time available before the October-December election period to deploy fresh troops and familiarise them with the situation enough to make them effective guarantors of public security. However, both the US and France have troops, drawn from 'rapid reaction' forces, with recent prior experience of action in Haiti. However, later in July the same off-the-record US sources who first indicated that this was being considered changed their tune and said the idea had been dismissed.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC | The anticrime plan, again. In late July President Leonel Fernández conducted what could be described as the relaunch of the 'democratic security' anticrime plan he had first 'launched' almost four months earlier [SSR-05-03]. A few more details have been disclosed: it will entail posting an extra 2,000 police officers to patrol duty and assigning an additional 1,000 to the criminal investigations department. At present, only 8,000 of the 32,000 serving police officers are on patrol duty.

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POINTERS

MEXICO | Slow start for Calderón's 'integral' anticrime plan. Officials of the national security cabinet have been confiding to the media that President Felipe Calderón's 'Integral Strategy of Crime Prevention and Fight Against Crime', unveiled in March, is going to take some time to implement. Some say that with luck about 80% of what has been envisaged will have got under way within a year, and full implementation will take another two years.

Part of the problem is that the government has yet to obtain congressional sanction for a core feature of the strategy: the merger into a single federal police unit (Cuerpo Federal de Policí­a / CFP) of four federal law-enforcement agencies - the Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI), the Policí­a Federal Preventiva (PFP), the Policí­a Fiscal (tax and customs police) and the Inspección Migratoria (migration police). 
Since December the government has been acting as if the CFP were already in existence. It appointed the same man, General Ardelio Vargas Fosado, as commissioner of both the AFI and the PFP, and started alluding to their actions as carried out by the legally non-existent CFP. This was easy enough to d from an administrative point of view, as both AFI and PFP are under the wing of the federal public security ministry. Legislation is unavoidable, however, to reassign the tax & customs and migrations agents, which are currently under the jurisdictions of the finance and interior ministries.

The absence of enabling legislation is also holding up the plan to establish 500 new police stations to receive reports of crimes from the public and react rapidly to them. At best the authorities now hope to have the first 100 stations in operation, using premises the PFP will vacate. Personnel for the 500 stations is to be drawn from the defunct highway force, the Policí­a Federal de Caminos.

The government's plan envisages the CFP as a 30,000-strong force, without counting the 10,000 military personnel (7,500 military police and 2,500 marines) currently seconded to the PFP. At present, the combined core of the CFP is 20,000 strong: 6,000 officers in the AFI and 14,000 in the PFP. The federal public security ministry also plans to recruit this year about 8,000 university graduates to analyse and process police information.

MEXICO-US | Cartels enter people-smuggling business. Unofficial briefings by US law-enforcement agents coincide in claiming that Mexico's drug cartels have shifted from arms-length coexistenc, with the smuggling of illegal immigrants to heavy involvement in the 'people-trafficking' trade. Explanations tend to differ as to the reasons. Some say this is a response to the increasing difficulty (and hence cost) of getting drugs across the US border. Certainly increased US border control has translated into a rise in drug intercepts: over the past half-year on the Arizona border authorities reported seizures of cocaine up by 20% on the comparable period of last year, and those of marijuana up by 28%. At the same time, the capture of illegal immigrants along that border was down by almost 18%. In the Laredo area of the Texas border, the inter-agency BEST task force also reports an increase in seizures of drugs and of firearms. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) additionally reports 'an unprecedented surge in brutality by drug and human smuggling and trafficking organisations along the Southwest border'.
The second explanation for the cartels' shift into people smuggling suggests a tactical rationale: migrants are herded towards certain crossing-points so as to attract the attention of US border control agencies, and the consequent lowering of their guard on the routes the drug traffickers intend to use.

• Confirmed

Mexican officials have confirmed that they have been receiving reports of drug-gang members exacting money from would-be illegal border crossers.

Further unilateral releases of prisoners by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (Farc) do not appear to have moved the government to accept the group's terms for a broader 'humanitarian' exchange. A presidential adviser has ruled this out completely. The latest releases have restored the prestige of senator Piedad Córdoba as a go-between, while another side-effect has been the vindication of Brazilian president Lula da Silva's position regarding the Colombian conflict.

On 1 February the Farc released three police officers and a soldier. Two days later they freed former Meta department governor Alan Jara, and on 5 February they released former regional congressman Sigifredo López. This was widely interpreted as a political gesture designed to muster more support for the guerrillas' proposed exchange of prisoners. As a gesture it was  a mixed bag. It was preceded by three bombings in city centres (Bogotá, Neiva and Cali) over the previous fortnight, which claimed four lives and left 38 injured. It was followed by a warning that the remainder of the 'exchangeable' captives, all of them members of the security services, would not be released except as part of the proposed exchange for 500 imprisoned Farc fighters.

The release of the prisoners had been brokered by senator Piedad Córdoba, a leftwinger who is a close friend of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez , with whom she engineered the first, frustrated release of a large group of Farc captives — an episode which greatly eroded Chávez 's image as a potential broker of any peace agreement.

Unlike Ingrid Betancourt, the former presidential candidate rescued last July by the army along with another 14 captives, former governor Jara emerged with a scathing attack on President Álvaro Uribe. Upon his release he said, 'I feel wholeheartedly that Uribe did nothing for our freedom [...] President Uribe's attitude has not contributed at all to the realisation of a humanitarian exchange, and thus the liberation of the prisoners [...] It would appear that the situation of war the country is in suits the president, and it would appear that the Farc are pleased that Uribe is in power.'

He also undermined the government's line that the Farc is badly beaten. 'The Farc,' he said, 'are not at all weakened [...] There are many over there, most of them youths [...] I see no solution other than a negotiated one.'

Former congressman López, the only survivor of a group of 12 legislators kidnapped in April 2002, did not go that far, but he did argue in favour of an exchange. 'The unilateral release of all civilians and the exchange of imprisoned combatants is necessary,' he said. 'It is the only possibility to bring back alive the 22 military officers that have been tied to a tree for the past 10 years.' López did nothing to help the Farc's image: he confirmed that the other 11 former legislators in his group had been murdered by the guerrillas and had not, as the Farc had claimed, been killed during an army raid.

'No humanitarian exchange'
On 5 February, Jesús Santrich, commander of the Farc's 'Caribbean bloc' and a member of the organisation's general staff, made it clear that no other captives would be released unless Uribe agreed to an exchange of prisoners on the Farc's terms. Even before the recent releases, Uribe had stated that there would be no further negotiations. Following Santrich's statement, José Obdulio Gaviria, one of the president's closest advisers, reiterated this in unequivocal terms. 'A humanitarian exchange,' he told the newspaper El Paí­s, 'is something that is negotiated between states, between belligerent forces. Colombia is not at war with any state nor does it have prisoners of war [...] The only options to free those who have been kidnapped are another Operación Jaque [the rescue operation that freed Betancourt and others], a humanitarian encirclement or a mixture of both.'

Gaviria dismissed the recent releases as 'a publicity stunt in favour of the Farc and organised by the Farc, under the guise of a humanitarian act, when they are the kidnappers and they are using their victims and Colombian society as instruments.'

It has emerged that the first of the recent batch of releases was very nearly aborted because the government breached its agreement with the Red Cross and sent military surveillance aircraft to fly over the area where the release was due to take place. Only when the Red Cross representative in the area, Christophe Beney, protested, did Uribe order the suspension of the flights. The government had initially denied that any flights had taken place, then claimed that they had only taken place above an agreed ceiling of 20,000 feet. The Red Cross later issued a communiqué laying out the facts and noting that the 20,000-foot ceiling had been set for commercial, not military, flights.

Lula's role
Senator Córdoba was not the only politician whose prestige was enhanced by the successful conclusion of these recent releases. Kudos also went to the Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, who provided military helicopters and personnel for the operation. Brazil's role was accepted by both Uribe and the Farc, thus vindicating Lula's refusal to support the move by Colombia and the US to have the Farc declared an international terrorist organisation by the Organisation of American States (OAS). He had justified his stance on the grounds that this would hinder any future role Brazil might be called upon to play as a mediator. Uribe's response at the time was that Colombia had no need for mediators. He has not alluded again to this disagreement. Instead he flew to Brazil on 16 February to thank Lula personally for his assistance. Announcing the trip, Colombia's foreign minister, Jaime Bermúdez, said, 'Brazil is a strategic ally for Colombia and for the region. We want to be ever closer to that country.'

Depletion of Farc ranks
As former governor Jara was being released, the government announced that in January 251 guerrilla fighters had turned themselves in to the authorities. Of these, 196 were Farc members. This brings to 18,168 the number of guerrillas who have surrendered since Uribe first took office in August 2002. The number of defectors in January was 41% higher than the monthly average for the rest of this period. The most recent defections have taken place in seven departments: Nariño, Cauca, Valle del Cauca, Huila, Caquetá, Cundinamarca and Meta. This is considered an indication of where the Farc is faring the worst under the pressure exerted by the military.

On 20 February the Miami-based newspaper El Nuevo Herald reported that the Farc's military commander, Jorge Briceño Suárez ('Mono Jojoy'), may be terminally ill. Sources were cited as saying, 'He is skin and bones [...] He has no food or medicine and his people have to carry him when he moves from one camp to another.' Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos confirmed only part of the report saying, 'It is all true except that he is on his deathbed. Our intelligence has no information about that. We do know that he is ill, finished, surrounded and harassed [but] that he is dying is information we do not have.'

 

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC | Gauging the impact of corruption. Known cases of corruption in the Dominican Republic in the past 10 years have involved the misappropriation of about US$2.9bn, according to Hotoniel Bonilla, director of the department of prevention of administrative corruption (DPCA). He said that 95% of the cases remain unpunished because the legal system is weighted in favour of the powerful.
Of the total tallied by Bonilla, almost US$2bn was diverted in the fraud cases that led to the collapse of three banks in 2003. 'The political system,' he says, 'has great influence over the judicial system, including the public prosecution service, the police and all investigative agencies.'

GUATEMALA | Zetas 'cell' disbanded. On 30 August the national police (PNC) raided a house in San Pedro Carcha, in the northern department of Alta Verapaz and arrested four Guatemalan nationals, one of them a former inspector of the PNC's special forces, suspected of being an 'operational cell' of the Mexican Los Zetas cartel. The former inspector, Sender Durini Chavarrí­a, had a pending arrest warrant for criminal conspiracy and 'facilitation of information' to criminals.
In the house the police found a substantial arsenal, which included six assault rifles, five M-79 grenades, and more than a thousand rounds of ammunition.

GUATEMALA | Murders down, lynchings up. The Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM), an NGO that monitors crime in Guatemala, reports that in January-August there were 2,132 murders countrywide, down from 2,580 in the same period of 2009. This year, the department of Guatemala, which includes the capital, accounted for just under 50% of the murders.
The GAM also reported that lynchings and attempted lynchings had been on the rise, with 136 cases recorded in January-August, as against 136 in the same period of last year. Two of this year's cases ended in the death of the victims; in all others injuries were reported.

NICARAGUA | Major drug seizures. On 19 September the Nicaraguan naval force engaged a group of Colombian traffickers who beached and abandoned a boat loaded with 1.2 tonnes of cocaine close to Prinzapolka, on the northern Caribbean coastline. Army units were despatched to pursue the traffickers into the Wonta mountains. Earlier in the month, also on the Caribbean coast, the naval force exchanged gunfire on two occasions with groups of traffickers, killing one and arresting four. In these engagements they seized 360 kilos of cocaine and 10 bales of cannabis.

TRINIDAD & TOBAGO | Rise in serious crime. Statistics show an increase in serious crime in January-June. Murders peaked in June with 55 cases, the highest monthly figure this year, which took the total for the first six months to 354. Other categories showing increases were robbery, larceny, car theft, woundings & shootings, drug trafficking and sexual crimes.

The tri-border area (TBA) between Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay has been under scrutiny for more than two decades. The region is populated by around 25,000 people of Arab origin, mostly Shia Muslims. These are alleged to have been used by Iran to support terrorist activities in Latin America, including the AMIA bombing of 1994.   It is Iran's status as the parent of Lebanon's Hezbollah that has insinuated Tehran's involvement in a region that has been identified as one of the most important centers for financing Islamic terrorism outside the Middle East.

In 2004, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) named Assad Ahmad Barakat as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist" for acting as the key financer for Hezbollah in Latin America. Barakat, currently held in a Paraguayan jail, has been identified as having served as a treasurer for Hezbollah and the primary liaison in the TBA for Hezbollah's Secretary General, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. As of late 2001, Barakat reportedly was traveling to Lebanon and Iran annually, meeting with both Nasrallah and Hezbollah's Spiritual Leader Hussein Fadlallah. Barakat has also served as the deputy financial director of the Husaniyya Imam aI-Khomeini mosque in Brazil.

Barakat is accused of providing a large part of the US$20m sent annually from the TBA to finance Hezbollah, an amount representing one-third of what Iran contributes to Hezbollah's annual US$100m budget. Barakat's businesses, Casa Apollo and Barakat Import Export Ltd, were alleged to have been used as front companies for Hezbollah activities and cells.

Funds were reportedly raised from the proceeds of pirated goods and drug trafficking, along with a pervasive protection racket on local Lebanese merchants. Since the 9/11 2001 attacks, the TBA has attracted closer attention from international intelligence communities.

Yet there is no clear smoking gun between the TBA and Iran. In December 2004, a communiqué of the 3 + 1 Group on Tri-Border Area Security found no operational activities of terrorism in the TBA   area. A US congressman, Eliot Engel, said in October 2009 that the US is working with the governments of the bordering countries in the “3 plus 1" arrangement whereby it is trying to halt the smuggling and the possibility of terror financing. “I have no information about any active and operative terror cells in this region," he said.

President Vicente Fox Quesada delivered his fourth Informe (state of the union) address to congress on 1 September. The speech was long on rhetoric and exhortation but short on humility and responsibility. The keynote of the speech was an appeal for congress to work with the government. He was interrupted 19 times: the president of congress had to appeal to deputies to behave. At the end of the Informe, despite its appeal for politicians to work together, all of the members of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) turned their backs to the president.

The Informe is one of the great set pieces of the Mexican political calendar. In the bad old days, (ie until the end of the administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1994) the TV coverage used to focus entirely on the president. The opposition's great game then was to try and get the cameras to show their protests. Political commentators still prefer to watch the Informe on TV rather than see it live: only by seeing it on TV, they say, can they assess its impact. 

The Informe has several parts. The president delivers a speech, usually about one hour long, which sets out his government's achievements and goals. The government also publishes a vast amount of accompanying data on all aspects of Mexican life. We pick out some highlights in our sidebars. Once the president has delivered his speech members of congress reply to him. It used to be that there would be only one speech: now all the parties comment. The president, however, only has to sit through the first of the replies, which are invariably highly critical of him. This year members of the opposition-dominated congress replied to the president's speech by blaming him and his government for the lack of progress on key reforms. President Fox argued that Mexico would not forgive politicians who failed to work together for the national good: congress retorted that Fox was coming round to the idea of bi-partisanship and consensus rather late in the day. He has two more years left in office.

Manlio Fabio Beltrones, the president of the lower chamber of congress and a prominent member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), made the first reply to the Informe. He accused Fox of preferring to score worthless points in the media rather than work towards building a common vision for how Mexico should develop. Beltrones also said that Fox should stop trying to force reforms through congress which did not command broad support in the country. The PRI still dominates congress and the country even though it lost the presidency to Fox in 2000. Fox left congress after Beltrones's formal reply to his Informe, so he did not hear even more strident criticism of his administration. The lower chamber of congress had approved a proposal which would have forced the president to sit through comments on his Informe from all the parties represented in the chamber: fortunately for Fox this bill had been kicked out by the senate.

Beltrones's criticism was backed up by another Prií­sta, Senator Ernesto Gil Elorduy, who said that the government had compounded its arrogance with inefficiency, a lack of direction and drive and a lack of vision. Gil accused the government of wasting time trading insults with other parties while refusing to discuss the big issues facing the country. Even members of Fox's own Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) admitted that the government had resorted to dirty tricks. Jorge Zermeño, a PAN senator, said that the government had used unfair methods to attack an adversary. This was seen as barely veiled criticism of the federal government's campaign against Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the mayor of Mexico City and the leading candidate for the presidency in 2006.

Jesús Ortega, a senator from López Obrador's Partido de la Revolución Democrática, summed up the criticism of Fox by saying that he had taken office in 2000 amid great hopes and expectation but had produced little but disappointment. He accused Fox of wanting to revert to authoritarianism and of being hypocritical in claiming that he was upholding the rule of law yet going after López Obrador.

Fox's Informe accepted some of the politicians' criticisms. He admitted that the whole political process risked falling into disrepute if politicians did not address pressing problems or refused to sort them out. Fox tried to be upbeat, claiming that the best was still to come. How he will achieve this improvement is far from clear. The Informe was short on firm commitments. There was the traditional praise for the loyalty of the armed forces even though the minister of defence, General Gerardo Clemente Vega, has made less than coded criticism of the government in the past few months. One firm commitment from Fox was that he would double the spending on law and order in the 2005 budget (see p8). He also appealed to congress to help his government to do more to lower poverty, which he said was the country's most pressing problem.

Still more popular than when he was elected

Although there were protests against President Fox when he arrived at Congress to deliver the Informe, and policemen were pelted with eggs and tomatoes as they kept the demonstrators away, President Fox is still popular. His opinion-poll scores run between 58% and 54%, according to polls published on 1 September by El Universal and Reforma, two leading Mexico City newspapers. Fox was elected in 2000 with only 43% of the vote. Fox's disapproval ratings, according to the polls in El Universal, are falling slightly. Disapproval stands at 39% now, down from 43% in June. One worrying sign for the government is that the El Universal poll showed that more people think things are spinning out of control: 60% agreed that they were, up from 55% in June. Furthermore, 55% agreed that Mexico was stuck, while only 24% thought that things were getting better: 18% thought that they were getting worse.

• The row between President Fox and López Obrador has poisoned political debate in the country for most of this year. López Obrador claims that the federal government has been trying to undermine him, first with the broadcasting of videos showing a Mexico City official and then a colleague of López Obrador, respectively, gambling and taking a bribe. This smear has been followed by a bizarre attempt to prosecute López Obrador for contempt of court because he flouted an injunction that would have prevented the execution of a compulsory purchase order needed to improve access to a public hospital. The federal government argues that it is not plotting against López Obrador, who heads the polls for the presidential elections in 2006. Instead, the federal government is simply trying to uphold the rule of law. What is clear is that the spat has alarmed ordinary Mexicans about what will happen politically and economically in the next few years.

Drug Interceptions
	Marijuana	cocaine	opium	heroin	pills
	t	t	kg	kg	number
1985	173.8	2.6	200	na	na
1995	780.2	22.2	223	203	589,789
2000	2,050.4	23.2	469	299	3,418,369
2003	2,242.0	21.1	198	289	8.859,994
Source: Informe

Immigration to the US has been a crucial escape valve for the Mexican economy. Not only does the US economy provide new jobs for about 500,000 Mexicans every year (more than President Fox has managed in any of his six years in office) but remittances also provide a vital source of funds for some of the most marginalised parts of Mexico. This year remittances are still rising at a spanking rate: 22% in the first seven months. As the US economy is slowing down, the prospects for migrants are deteriorating. What makes this recession unusual is that the official US attitude to migrants has changed. This may mean that migration to the US will fall, or possibly even reverse. 

The US economy is clearly slowing down. In the second quarter growth was revised down to 2.6% on 28 September. In the first quarter growth had been (annualised, as is the US habit) 5.6%. The big fall was in household consumption: this dropped from 4.8% in the first quarter to 2.6%. Household consumption accounts for 70% of GDP. 

If US households are having to cut back, they are likely to start doing more of their own gardening, cooking and childcare. If this happens the US demand for (cheap) Mexican labour will collapse. There will be a foretaste of this when the US construction industry starts to lay people off in large numbers. This must happen soon because fewer new houses are being started in US. The first people to be let go will be the (illegal) Mexican workers. 

In August, housing starts declined by 6% to an annual rate of 1.66m. Compared with August 2005, housing starts are 20% lower. The issuance of building permits also fell to its lowest level for four years. This was the seventh straight month of a decline in the issuance of permits. Such a sustained decline has not occurred for 20 years. This combination of factors meant that builders' confidence indices dropped to a 15-year low. 

What is clear is that life for migrants to the US is becoming harsher. Construction and agriculture are the big employers of migrant labour. Around a quarter of all employed migrants work on the land. About one in five works in construction crews. Agricultural workers, some of whom come to harvest crops for the same farmers each year, say that the combination of low wages and high petrol prices has meant that they have barely broken even this year. A lot of agricultural workers follow the harvest as it moves across the US. They also say that they feel less welcome this year. Some, polled in Illinois, doubt that they will return in 2007. 

The Illinois Migrant Council, which helps migrant workers, said that about 2,000 of the usual 32,000 migrant workers who arrive each summer to help with the harvest did not turn up this year. The change in the US attitude to migrant workers in the past five years is a major deterrent for migrant workers, farmers and migrant workers groups agree. Tom Nassif, president and chief executive of Western Growers, one of the biggest fresh produce firms in the western US, said that many growers were struggling to find enough labourers to harvest this year's crops. What happens to the apple crop in Washington State will be a major pointer to whether farmers are just grumbling or have real problems.

The persistent anti-immigrant drumbeat from rightwing politicians was not present in 2000. As a result, official attitudes to migrants have toughened in petty ways and may, if the US House of Representatives harsh immigration reform bill comes out on top of the more liberal Senate proposal, lead to tougher laws on migrants already settled in the US. This could happen when the new congress convenes in January 2007. 

The current position in the US is, essentially, that the US authorities are trying to prevent more migrants crossing the border into the US. The US authorities are much less interested in expelling illegals who are making it in the US. The House bill would change that attitude, forcing the authorities to treat all illegal migrants as criminals. If this happens, it seems likely that a lot of illegals will return to Mexico. Migrant workers and their support organisations claim that officials are already jumping the gun and becoming more active in trying to catch illegal immigrants.

The reversal of the direction of immigration, should it occur, will have major political and economic effects. Where will the migrants go? Will they go to the more prosperous states in Mexico or will they go home? What will they do wherever they go, given that even a boom the Mexican economy has failed to create the jobs it needs? The fear must be that an exodus from the US will increase social and law and order problems in Mexico. 

It might well be that the recent rise in unemployment rates in Mexico (in July and August) is due to changes in patterns of Mexican migration. The lower death toll on the border suggests that there has been no increase from 2005 in the number of people trying to cross illegally into the US. Migrant groups are not sure that this is the case: they claim that it is simply a milder summer that has lowered the death toll of people trying to cross the Arizona desert illegally. In August 2006 unemployment in Mexico, which defines someone as unemployed if they have failed to work for one hour in the week of the survey, popped over 4%. In August 2005, the rate had been 3.65%. 

Repatriations: Over 12,000 illegal immigrants have so far taken part this year in the Voluntary Repatriation to Mexico 2006 programme. This is a joint initiative between the Mexican and US governments to provide migrants who are detained by the US Border Patrol with a safe way of returning home. The programme was established in 2004, and since then has been implemented in the Arizona-Sonora corridor during the hottest months of the year when the risks are particularly high for Mexican migrants crossing the desert into the US. 

This year's programme began on 7 July and ended on 30 September. According to Russell Ahr of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Arizona, an average of 180 migrants per day have volunteered to return to their home towns via Mexico City on flights departing from Tucson in Arizona. This is significantly fewer than last year's figure of over 20,000 repatriated migrants. The US Border Patrol is still arresting almost 1,100 illegal migrants in the Tucson area every day. What is not clear is whether fewer Mexicans are trying to cross the border illegally. What is clear is that the death toll in the Arizona-Sonora corridor is down significantly this year. US Border Patrol agents say that this is simply because this year was not as hot as previous years.

On 12 January Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, entertained the US president-elect, Barack Obama, with a lunch at the Instituto Cultural de México in Washington, DC. To the surprise of the Mexicans, the Obama team claimed that the key issue in the meeting was Obama's proposal to Calderón to “upgrade" the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).

The Mexican delegation, which included the foreign minister, Patricia Espinosa, the interior minister, Fernando Francisco Gómez-Mont Urueta, and the finance minister, Agustí­n Carstens, was taken aback by Obama's move on Nafta. They should not have been. Obama promised during the election campaign, that when he became president that   he “would immediately call the president of Mexico, the president of Canada [sic] to try to amend Nafta because I think that we can get labour agreements in that agreement right now."

Calderón warned Obama several times, both before and after the election, against tinkering with the Nafta treaty. Calderón's official statement on his meeting with Obama did not mention Obama's proposal to “upgrade" Nafta. Indeed, neither man mentioned Nafta when they made some brief comments after the lunch.

The comment about Obama's ambitions on Nafta came from his official spokesman, Robert Gibbs. He said that Obama had proposed setting up a consultative group of US and Mexican officials to discuss key bilateral issues such as Nafta, energy and infrastructure. A Mexican official accompanying Calderón commented that he did not understand what “upgrade" would mean in practice.

Whether Obama will reopen Nafta is far from certain, but his decision to raise the prospect of doing so shows that, for all his rhetoric, Obama's priority in relations with Latin America is shoring up his domestic support. US trade unions are unhappy about cheap labour competition from Mexico and Obama is appeasing them by threatening to reopen the accord.

Mexico's big fear is that, under the Nafta treaty, any of the three signatories (the US, Mexico and Canada) can withdraw simply by giving six months' notice.  

Mexico was pleased, however, that Obama met Calderón on what is effectively Mexican soil. Obama's aides were quick to confirm that Mexico's presidential guard was responsible, along with the US Secret Service, for the president-elect's security. This underlines the change from President George W. Bush, who upset Chile (and the rest of Latin America) by insisting on bringing his own heavily armed security teams to protect him during a trip to Santiago in 2004.

Since 1980, newly-elected US presidents have developed a habit of making sure that they meet the Mexican president ahead of any other head of state prior to their inauguration. Obama's first foreign trip will be to Canada to meet its prime minister, Stephen Harper.

According to the Mexican version of the meeting, Obama praised Calderón for his leadership in Latin America and said that Mexico was an important ally in the expansion of democracy. This could be construed as praise for Calderón's initiative in repairing Mexico's relations with Cuba, which had been virtually broken off by Calderón's predecessor, Vicente Fox. It may be a hint that Mexico, rather than Brazil, will be the US preferred intermediary with the Castro regime. Calderón himself is due to visit Cuba in March.

The Mexicans also played up Calderón's proposal to Obama that the US should seal a formal alliance to deal with what Calderón called “joint problems" such as security. Calderón's proposal had more than a tinge of desperation: “I think the safer Mexico is, the safer the US will be," Calderón declared. “The idea is that we will have to fight the common problem of organized crime, terrorism and drug trafficking, which is an international problem, together."

Oddly, if security was Mexico's priority issue for Obama, the Mexican delegation included none of the security ministers. This may be an indication that Calderón is finally preparing to reshuffle and streamline the security side of his administration. He could argue he needs a new team that can mesh better with Obama's team. Obama has yet to announce who will be running his policies towards Latin America. One appointee who has a major bearing on relations with Mexico is Janet Napolitano, the former Democrat governor of Arizona, who will be Obama's Homeland Security Secretary.

As Governor of Arizona, Napolitano had decent relations with her counterparts in Sonora. Sonora is a fiefdom of the traditional Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). It is worth noting that of Mexico's six states bordering the US, only Baja California is run by Calderón's Partido Acción Nacional (PAN).

Obama did not bring Napolitano to the lunch meeting with Calderón. He did field his Chief of Staff Designate, Rahm Emanuel; his National Security Advisor Designate, General Jim Jones; and the White House National Economic Council Director-Designate, Lawrence Summers.

Mexico said that it was happy with Obama's explicit backing for the Iniciativa Mérida, which boosts US military aid to Mexico. There is some doubt, however, that the US Congress, with so many calls on government funds to combat the economic crisis, will back the Iniciativa Mérida to the budgeted US$400m in 2009. The outgoing Bush government has delivered US$298m in two tranches.    

It is worth noting that Calderón followed up his lunch with Obama with a dinner for senior US senators and congressmen. Calderón drew an impressive list of US senators: attendees included Jeff Bingaman, president of the senate energy committee who is sponsoring a bill to reduce weapons-smuggling from the US to Mexico; Mel Martí­nez, a prominent Cuban-American Republican from Florida; John Kerry, a former presidential candidate and likely chairman of the senate foreign relations' committee and Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the senate intelligence committee.

Obama's own comments on the meeting with Calderón were positive. He was, however, non-committal about immigration reform, a key issue from Mexico's point of view. Obama said that the two men had discussed “how we can have a comprehensive and thoughtful strategy that ultimately strengthens both countries."   Sceptical Mexicans noted, however, that Obama said nothing about halting construction of the barriers on the US side of the border designed to deter illegal immigrants.

Obama underlined how important Napolitano will be in relations with Mexico by saying, after the meeting with Calderón, that he “believe[d] the cooperation under the Mérida Initiative can be a building block for a deeper relationship_[and] _support [ed]_ efforts in the border states in both the US and Mexico to eradicate drug-related violence and stop the flow of guns and cash." Obama also told Calderón that he intends to ask the Secretary of Homeland Security to lead an effort to increase information sharing to strengthen those efforts.   Obama also pledged to take more effective action from the US to stem the flow of arms from the US to Mexico.

• Networking
  Besides meeting Obama for lunch and US senators for dinner, President Calderón also held meetings with Harry Reid, the Democrat leader of the Senate and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat leader in the House.

• All invited
  Calderón took three senators with him to Washington. They were Rosario Green, a former foreign minister (and member of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional); Luis Alberto Villarreal (from the Partido Acción Nacional) and Silvano Aureoles (from the Partido de la Revolución Democrática).
  

US spring break students stay away: On 23 February Ernesto Rodrí­guez Escalona, the secretary for tourism in the state of Guerrero, admitted that the traditional spring break arrival of US students on Guerrero beaches had not occurred this year. Hotels in the resort say that they expect 1,000 US spring breakers this year down from the usual 13,000. Gang violence in Acapulco, the main resort in Guerrero, explains why some US students avoided the resort this year. Worryingly for Mexico, peaceful resorts, such as Puerta Vallarta in Jalisco, are also reporting a collapse in the number of US students. Puerto Vallarta normally expects to entertain 20,000, but only 800 arrived this year.  

US vigilante faces execution for killing migrants: On 22 February a US jury in Tucson, Arizona, convicted and sentenced a former Minuteman vigilante to death for killing two undocumented migrants. Two other US citizens have yet to be tried for their part in the murder of Raúl Flores and his daughter in their home at Arivaca in May 2009. Shawna Forde, who at the time was a member of the 12,000 strong vigilante group, the Minuteman American Defense, was sentenced to death by a jury for her part in the two deaths. The verdict shows that the US courts respect illegal migrants' right to life. The Minutemen wanted to defend the US against illegal migrants with all means possible.

The main prosecution witness against Forde was Flores's wife, Gina González, who only herself escaped being killed in May 2009 by playing dead. Jurors said that her testimony moved them deeply. The Flores family was attacked when Forde and an accomplice pretended to be immigration officials when they went to Flores's house. When Flores asked to see identification the Minutemen started shooting. Arizona last executed a convict in May 2007.

US warns officials against Mexico travel:   On 17 February, the US consulate in Monterrey advised US officials to avoid the state of San Luis Potosí­ (SLP).The decision followed the 15 February attack in SLP of two US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, in which one agent was killed. Oddly, the death toll in SLP to date in 2011 is 40, considerably lower than that of the state of Nuevo León, of which Monterrey is the capital. In Nuevo León, 151 people have been killed in gang related violence so far this year.

The US consulate is also warning US officials to take care when travelling in Zacatecas (24 gang killings so far this year), Aguascalientes (10) and Guanajuato (nine). All these states have previously been classed as comparatively peaceful. Separately, in the state of Veracruz (27 gang deaths from 1 January to 25 February 2011), six headless bodies were dumped outside a police station in the municipality of Pánuco.

The president of Panama, Martí­n Torrijos, is holding good to a promise he made at his inauguration on 1 September to redress the wrongs committed during the administration of his predecessor Mireya Moscoso. On 1 November, the government announced that it was pursuing the former economy and finance minister, Norberto Delgado, on corruption charges.  

The government wants Delgado to provide an explanation for the origin of various bank accounts and property that came into his possession while he was serving in the government. The current deputy economy and finance minister, Rolando Mirones, alleges that Delgado left office with far more of both than he had when he arrived. Moscoso herself could be next in line. Although she categorically denies that she ever 'stole anything' during her mandate, allegations are likely to materialise. According to a poll carried out in October by Dichter & Neira for the national daily La Prensa, a massive 71.4% of respondents believe corruption is the main problem in Panama.

ECONOMIC OVERVIEW: PANAMA

The economy is doing rather well. The Alatest report of the state of the economy by the Controlaria, which covers August, pointed out that most indicators were pointing upwards. The most positive figures came from electricity generation, the Colón free zone (which saw re-exports up by 22% for the first eight months of the year at US$3.25bn), the shrimp industry, and exports in general. The weakest sectors were the banana industry, the stock market, and construction. Outlook The agricultural sector has high hopes for the 2005 season. Non-traditional agricultural exports such as watermelons, pineapples and pumpkins are doing well. Melon exports have tripled so far this year to around US$19m and pineapple exports are up sixfold to US$5m. The Grupo de Agroexportadores Non-Tradicionales de Panamá reckons that it will ship 3,000 containers of products to the US and Europe this winter, 1,000 more than it managed in the last season. The trade should be worth US$35m. The EU is the biggest market for agricultural exports accounting for 62%. The US buys about a third and Costa Rica the rest.

There are growing questions about the quality of the country's tourist earnings. In 2005 the average tourist spends only US$103.7 a day during their time in the country. Of all Caribbean destinations, only Cuba has a lower figure.

Tourists volumes are fine. In January, one of the key months, the number of tourists flying into the country was up by 7%, compared with January 2005, at 316,652.

The problem is spending. In Puerto Rico, tourists spend over US$160 a day while in more up-market destinations such as the Bahamas and Aruba, tourists spend on average over US$250 a day.

Worryingly, the DR seems to the losing ground in Europe, and especially Germany. The US send 51% of the country's tourists in January and Europe just under 42%, down from 43% in the whole of 2005.