Monday, January 31, 2011

Gubernatorial election in Guerrero

Unite and conquer

Jan 31st 2011, 21:29 by T.W. | MEXICO CITY

THE first of Mexico’s six elections for state governor in 2011 fell to the left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) yesterday. Guerrero, the state on the Pacific coast that is home to Acapulco, voted the party back for another term with a handsome 14% lead on their rivals, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

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Thursday, January 27, 2011

Mexico's presidential campaign

Saddling up for the trail to Los Pinos

Can anyone stop Enrique Peña Nieto (pictured, second from left) restoring the PRI to power next year?

THE election is not until July of next year, but the beating of a party activist into a coma on January 12th, apparently by a rival party’s mob, signalled the start of what will be a long, rough campaign for the presidency of Mexico. Candidates are jostling for party nominations, and lieutenants are preparing for the election of six governors this year, the first of them in Guerrero state on January 30th. Already the main question is whether anyone can prevent the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico as a one-party state for seven decades until 2000, from returning to Los Pinos, the presidential residence.

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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Organised crime in Central America

The rot spreads

Drug-trafficking gangs find a promising new home in some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries in the Americas

Jan 20th 2011 | SAN SALVADOR


BATTLEFIELDS aside, the countries known as “the northern triangle” of the Central American isthmus form what is now the most violent region on earth. El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, along with Jamaica and Venezuela, suffer the world’s highest murder rates (see map). The first two are bloodier now than they were during their civil wars in the 1980s.

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The coca leaf

Storm in an Andean teacup

A battle over mastication

TOURISTS who visit Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, or Cusco, Peru’s former Inca seat, are routinely given welcome cups of coca tea to mitigate soroche (altitude sickness). For centuries, people who live in the high Andes have chewed coca leaves, whose alkaloids act as a mild stimulant and help to ward off cold and hunger. The Spanish conquistadors declared coca a tool of the devil, until they saw how it improved the work rate of the Indians they sent down the mines.

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Monday, January 17, 2011

Enrique Peña Nieto in the FT

The transatlantic echo chamber

Jan 17th 2011, 16:03 by T.W. | MEXICO CITY

A PRESIDENTIAL election is due next summer in Mexico, and Enrique Peña Nieto, the early front-runner, has to get his message out to 100m Mexicans. So why announce his latest campaign proposals in a newspaper 5,000 miles away?

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Friday, January 7, 2011

Negotiating with the cartels

A pax narcotica?

Jan 7th 2011, 16:15 by T.W. | MEXICO CITY

AS WE noted a few weeks back, Mexico’s success in capturing or killing drug-trafficking kingpins has not stopped the rise in violence in the country. Although ten of the 24 most-wanted villains have been jailed or slain, last year’s drug-war body count topped 12,000, a 30% increase on 2009’s total.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011

Food in Mexico

Centéotl's pricier feast

The tortilla-makers cry wolf