BY NICK MIROFF

MEXICO CITY — The recent changes ordered by new President Enrique Peña Nieto to Mexico’s anti-narcotics partnership with the United States have produced markedly different reactions here and in Washington, underscoring what appear to be diverging perceptions of the drug war’s goals and the costs of fighting it.

Peña Nieto’s decision to limit the ability of American agents to operate in Mexico has been met with dismay by U.S. law enforcement agencies, which left a heavy footprint under the previous administration of Felipe Calderon. They warn that intelligence sharing will suffer if they can no longer choose which Mexican force — the army, navy or federal police — to give sensitive information to; they’ve been instructed to now funnel everything through Mexico’s Interior Ministry instead.

The agents also caution that the personal relationships developed under Calderon will fray if they are no longer welcome to work side by side with trusted partners ... Read More

WHEN Evo Morales ordered the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) out of Bolivia on May 1st, it looked as if the football-fanatic president had scored an own goal. Mr Morales has made helping the poor his political brand. Why cut off a ready source of aid to South America’s poorest country?

Playing on fears of malign yanqui influence has been a cornerstone of Mr Morales’ government since he came to power in 2006. In 2008 he expelled the United States’ ambassador and Drug Enforcement Administration for supposedly plotting to unseat him. The charges this time were similar: USAID was a “smokescreen [for the United States] to involve itself in our country’s political affairs”, said Álvaro García Linera, the vice-president. John Kerry, the United States’ secretary of state, had unwisely referred to Latin America in remarks on April 18th as “our backyard”, a red rag to those incensed by past meddling.

Mr Morales ... Read More

BY JAIME DAREMBLUM

During his trip to Mexico and Costa Rica last week, President Obama tried to highlight the positive and downplay the negative. Thus, he spoke at length about the growth of trade, commerce, and economic partnerships, arguing that security issues should not be allowed to dominate all discussions of U.S. policy in the region. (Of course, Obama voted against the Central America Free Trade Agreement when he was a senator, and he canceled a U.S.-Mexico pilot trucking program during his first months as president, but never mind.) His remarks were surely welcomed by Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, who has taken great pains to transform his country’s image abroad. Whereas many Americans and others have come to associate Mexico with drug trafficking and brutal cartel violence, Peña Nieto wants them to learn more about Mexico’s emergence as a manufacturing powerhouse, its increasingly important role in the global economy, and the expansion of its middle class.

His desire to emphasize ... Read More

BY ERIC FARNSWORTH

Bolivia is the poorest nation in South America. Along with Haiti and Nicaragua, it is one of the poorest in all of the western hemisphere. So what’s President Evo Morales’ latest strategy to improve social indicators? Expel USAID, the US government aid agency that spent some $28m last year promoting healthcare among poor Bolivians and working to protect the environment.

In the alternative universe of the Morales government, USAID is a tool of “political interference” stemming from a “mentality of domination and submission”. That’ll be news to Bolivia’s rural communities and aid recipients, including municipalities, which have relied on capacity building and technical training assistance. Since 1964, US taxpayers have willingly and generously offered the Bolivian people nearly $2bn in development assistance, much of it going to supplement Bolivia’s own health and education services and to work in coordination with Bolivia’s government to preserve sensitive environmental lands.

The expulsion of USAID ... Read More

The recent capture of one of Italy’s top mafia bosses in the Colombian city of Medellín highlights the growing ties between Latin America’s drug cartels and Italy’s notorious crime families.

After a three-year manhunt, 39-year old Domenico Trimboli was arrested in Medellín’s upscale Laureles neighborhood, where he had purportedly lived for three years with his partner and two children. Born in Argentina, Trimboli was the head of the ‘Ndrangheta –Italy’s richest and most powerful criminal organization– and was one of Europe’s 20 most wanted criminals.

If convicted on drug trafficking charges, Trimboli faces up to 12 years in prison once extradited back to Italy.

The ‘Ndrangheta capo “had a lot of money and this facilitated his peaceful stay in Colombia,” said Nicola Gratteri, an Italian prosecutor in the Calabria region where the ‘Ndrangheta maintains its base of operations.

The ‘Nhdrangheta is an organized crime family similar to the Sicilian mafia and it is estimated that  it ... Read More

Bolivian President Evo Morales has said he will expel the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Mr Morales accused the agency of seeking to “conspire against” the Bolivian people and his government.

US state department spokesman Patrick Ventrell rejected the allegations as “baseless and unfounded”.

USAID has been working in Bolivia for almost five decades, and had a budget of $52.1m (£33.4m) for the country in 2010, according to its website.

“This harms the Bolivian people. We think the programmes have been positive for the Bolivian people and fully co-ordinated with the Bolivian government and appropriate agencies under their own national development plan,” said Mr Ventrell.

In 2008, Mr Morales expelled the US ambassador and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for allegedly conspiring against his government.

‘Nationalise dignity’

On previous May Days, Mr Morales had announced the nationalisation of key industries, such as hydroelectric power and the electricity grid.

But on Wednesday he said he “would only nationalise the ... Read More

BY JAY WEAVER

Sandra Avila Beltran, the dark-haired Mexican beauty dubbed the “Queen of the Pacific,” has pleaded guilty to a drug-trafficking charge in Miami, closing the curtain on the once celebrity-like role of the reputed cocaine smuggler.

Avila, 52, admitted Tuesday in federal court that she helped her former boyfriend, a one-time Colombian cartel boss, evade prosecution for cocaine importation and distribution charges in the United States. She pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to his conspiracy crimes, for which the ex-boyfriend, Juan Diego Espinosa Ramirez, was ultimately convicted.

Avila, who stood out in a narco-trafficking world dominated by macho men, avoided a potential life sentence if convicted on the same conspiracy offenses at trial next month. With her plea, she now faces up to 15 years in prison at her sentencing before U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore. But she is expected to receive a much lesser sentence, ... Read More

BY JAY SOLOMON

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration charged Hezbollah with operating like an international drug cartel and blacklisted two Lebanese money-exchange houses for allegedly moving tens of millions of dollars of drug profit through the U.S. financial system on behalf of the militant group.

The Treasury Department’s action Tuesday marked the latest salvo in a two-year U.S. government campaign against Hezbollah’s alleged drug-trafficking activities.

U.S. officials alleged that Hezbollah is using proceeds from this narcotics trade to fund international terrorist activities and to bolster the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in their fight against a widening political rebellion.

U.S. officials also said Hezbollah is increasingly reverting to illicit trade to offset diminished funding coming from Iran, the organization’s closest ally.

“Hezbollah is operating like a major drug cartel,” said Derek Maltz, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, who is overseeing the U.S. probe into Hezbollah. “These proceeds are funding violence against Americans.”

Bulgaria’s Interior ... Read More

BY RICHARD VALDMANIS

DAKAR – The U.S. Department of Justice has accused Guinea-Bissau’s top military official of plotting to traffic cocaine to the United States and sell weapons to Colombian rebels, according to court documents seen by Reuters on Thursday.

The accusation against General Antonio Indjai - widely seen as the coup-prone West African nation’s most powerful man – is the first official signal that criminality may go straight to the top in what has for years been labeled a ‘narco-state’.

Guinea Bissau authorities repeatedly have denied any involvement in drug trafficking and Indjai is believed to be in the country.

The indictment filed in New York’s Southern District Court and seen by a Reuters reporter, charges Indjai on four counts: “narco-terrorism conspiracy”, conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, cocaine importation conspiracy and conspiracy to acquire and transfer anti-aircraft missiles.

The charges said Indjai planned to store FARC-owned cocaine in Guinea Bissau and sell ... Read More

BY JAN-ALBERT HOOTSEN

BADIRAGUATO, Mexico – Neat, freshly painted buildings and a renovated church line the central square. Shiny SUVs rest curbside. Some lack license plates, as if the law doesn’t apply. Mansions crown the surrounding hills.

Badiraguato, a town of 7,000 in Sinaloa state, shouldn’t have such wealth. It’s among the poorest municipalities in Mexico. But you’re better off not asking questions here.

This is a secretive place, hot and quiet in the Sierra Madre foothills. There’s an army barracks, but soldiers mostly stay inside.

It’s the heart of drug country, home to Mexico’s most powerful criminal syndicate: the Sinaloa cartel, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

For well over a century, local farmers have harvested marijuana and opium in the rugged mountains surrounding Badiraguato. Since the 1980s, the Sinaloa cartel has acted as their Wal-Mart, transporting the mind-bending cargo north with quasi-corporate efficiency, and distributing it to a narcotics-craving United States market.

Ever since former President ... Read More

BY KEEGAN HAMILTON

The rumor started Thursday afternoon when the newspaper Prensa Libre reported that several narcos were killed during shootout in Guatemala’s remote Petén region. Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez said one of the corpses was “physically very similar” to Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, top boss of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. Other outlets, including the unfiltered drug war diary Blog del Narco, spread the word on Twitter, piquing the interest of the international press, and sending Mexican and Guatemalan officials scrambling to confirm the powerful drug lord’s purported demise.

The rumor was soon thoroughly debunked. There was no shootout, let alone one that claimed the life of the modern day Pablo Escobar. (Lopez, the Interior Minister, later apologized for the “misunderstanding” and blamed contradictory reports for the confusion.) Not only is El Chapo still very much alive, his legend has grown larger than ever. Already a billionaire according to Forbes, the Sinaloa capo has supplanted Osama bin Laden as ... Read More

BY JAIME DAREMBLUM

About two years ago, a senior Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official said that a certain Latin American country was becoming a veritable “United Nations” of organized criminal activity, attracting gangsters from such diverse and faraway places as Albania, China, Italy, and Ukraine. He was not talking about Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, or Brazil. No, Jay Bergman, the DEA’s Andean regional director, was describing Ecuador, a small nation of 15 million people that is tucked between two of the largest cocaine-producing countries on earth. “If I’m an Italian organized drug trafficker and I want to meet with my Colombian counterpart,” Bergman told Reuters, “I would probably prefer to meet in Ecuador than to meet in Colombia.”

Last October, Ecuadorean police busted a pair of drug networks with Eastern European connections. Several weeks later, former Ecuadorean military intelligence chief Mario Pazmiño estimated that the number of maritime routes used for shipping drugs out of the country had increased by 90 percent since 2005. “Even if the increase ... Read More

BY GUY TAYLOR

Despite pleas from liberal lawmakers on Capitol Hill, the State and Justice departments have no intention of investigating purported human-rights violations and misconduct by Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Honduras, The Washington Times has learned.

Four Honduran villagers, including two women and a 14-year-old boy, were killed during a May 2012 drug interdiction operation in Ahuas, a municipality on the northeast Caribbean coast. The incident has for months prompted questions from human-rights groups and lawmakers demanding to know the extent to which DEA agents — deployed to Honduras to mentor local counternarcotics teams — were involved.

While a probe conducted by the Honduran government last year cleared the DEA of any wrongdoing, 58 House Democrats recently sent a letter to Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. calling the probe “deeply flawed.”

The Jan. 30 letter, which exposed a rift between the Obama administration and progressives on Capitol Hill, called for a new “thorough and credible investigation” to be opened into what role — ... Read More

The crew members aboard the USS Underwood could see through their night goggles what was happening on the fleeing go-fast boat: Someone was dumping bales.

When the Navy guided-missile frigate later dropped anchor in Panamanian waters on that sunny August morning, Ensign Clarissa Carpio, a 23-year-old from San Francisco, climbed into the inflatable dinghy with four unarmed sailors and two Coast Guard officers like herself, carrying light submachine guns. It was her first deployment, but Carpio was ready for combat.

Fighting drug traffickers was precisely what she’d trained for.

In the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War, the U.S. has militarized the battle against the traffickers, spending more than $20 billion in the past decade. U.S. Army troops, Air Force pilots and Navy ships outfitted with Coast Guard counternarcotics teams are routinely deployed to chase, track and capture drug smugglers.

The sophistication and violence of the traffickers is so great ... Read More

“Depending on what happens in Venezuela, there may really be an opportunity for a transition there,” incoming U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate hearing Thursday, alluding to the expectation that Hugo Chavez may soon lose his bout with cancer. Unfortunately, at this very moment, Mr. Chavez’s cronies are doing whatever is necessary to hold on to power indefinitely. The most Mr. Kerry may be able to do is convince Mr. Chavez’s successors to end the dangerous alliances with drug traffickers, Iran and Hezbollah that pose a growing threat to U.S. security.

Until now, most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment has ignored the growing body of evidence that homegrown narco-traffickers in Colombia, Central America and Mexico have teamed up with Hezbollah to conduct criminal operations on our doorstep. What’s worse, this narco-terrorist alliance is aided and abetted by the governments of Venezuela and Iran. To put it bluntly, ... Read More

POR ROGER F. NORIEGA Y JOSE R. CARDENAS

Mientras el congreso estadounidense lucha para superar la crisis económica y hacer frente a amenazas contra la seguridad de los Estados Unidos, Latinoamérica se está transformando de manera significativa y resulta imperante fortalecer la cooperación económica y en materia de seguridad con nuestros aliados en la región. Países como México y Brasil se están convirtiendo en actores globales que merecen nuestra atención y cooperación bipartidista para promover una agenda regional que fomente el crecimiento del libre mercado, iniciativas practicas – no retoricas – que animen a países y vecinos a unirse a un esfuerzo colectivo de mutuo beneficio.

Los puntos clave de esta Perspectiva:

Tanto la crisis económica estadounidense como las amenazas a su seguridad han socavado su papel tradicional como líder mundial, debilitando sus vínculos con las naciones de América Latina que siguen modernizando sus economías. Estados Unidos debe recuperar su credibilidad regional adoptando iniciativas audaces ... Read More

BY DOUGLAS FARAH

The challenges presented by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas—having been led by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, and including Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua as active leaders1—are significant and often underestimated. Nor does Chávez’s departure from the scene resolve the problem. The criminal corruption within these governments, their shared hostility toward the United States, the close links with Iran, their embrace of concepts of asymmetrical warfare against the United States, and the systematic assaults on the independent media, judiciaries, and other democratic institutions all continue to bode ill.

Over the past decade, there has been little sustained U.S. interest in the Bolivarian revolution, the significant inroads made in shaping the hemispheric agenda and organizations, the systematic undermining of U.S. objectives, and the creation of multiple regional and hemispheric bodies designed to specifically isolate or minimize U.S. influence. As a result, ... Read More

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — At least one suspected drug trafficker died in the first U.S.-supported anti-narcotics raid in Honduras following a five-month suspension in radar intelligence sharing between the countries, authorities said.

The cooperation was halted after the Honduran air force shot down two suspected drug planes in violation of agreements with Washington.

The Honduran navy said late Wednesday that one of three Jamaican men on a go-fast boat carrying 350 kilograms (772 pounds) of cocaine died when a Honduran coast guard vessel rammed the craft before dawn about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) off the country’s northern coast.

Rear Adm. Rigoberto Espinal said one of the other Jamaicans jumped into the sea and disappeared, but his fate had not been confirmed. The third man was detained.

The Jamaicans “did not put up any armed resistance, but we had to ram the boat with a coast guard vessel, with the unfortunate result that one of the ... Read More

JUAN PABLO REYES

CIUDAD DE MÉXICO, 14 de enero.- Lavado de dinero y entrenamiento en armamento son los puntos principales en la relación entre cárteles de la droga mexicanos y grupos terroristas internacionales que presuntamente operan en el país como Hezbolá.

A pesar de que no han sido confirmados los vínculos entre el narco y agrupaciones del terrorismo por autoridades mexicanas, de acuerdo con especialistas y a un análisis realizado por el Instituto de Estudios Estratégicos del United States Army War College se planteó lo contrario.

La presencia en nuestro país, el año pasado, de un integrante de Hezbolá y otros dos presuntos miembros de la agrupación terrorista también pusieron en alerta a las autoridades mexicanas y de Estados Unidos.

Según un estudio, realizado por el analista internacional Douglas Farah, en los últimos años ha existido una relación que involucra simplemente negocios y lavado de dinero entre el cártel de Los Zetas y la organización terrorista ... Read More

WEST PALM BEACH, FL, January 6, 2012 ― Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is dying.

Despite the secrecy from Venezuela and Cuba, all signs point to the likelihood that 58-year-old dictator Hugo Chavez is dying from the cancer he has battled since June 2011. Chavez underwent a fourth round of treatment for unspecified cancer in Cuba in early December, and uncharacteristically has not stepped in front of the cameras since that time.

Also uncharacteristically, Chavez named an heir before the latest operation – something he has avoided doing at any previous time in his presidency.

The latest statements from anointed successor and Vice President Nicolas Maduro say Chavez’s condition is “delicate” and that he is suffering from a serious respiratory infection as well as “other complications” from the surgery  He insists, however, that the bombastic president will recover and run the country.

Chavez won a fourth presidential term in October. His inauguration is scheduled for January 10, but ... Read More