Here’s a puzzler. Latin America has never been more democratic: of 34 nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, all except one (Cuba) are constitutional democracies, with laws guaranteeing open elections, independent courts, legislatures, and freedom of expression. So why do so many governments still trample on citizens’ rights, bully journalists, harass private business, and generally lord over hearth and home? Incidents in just the last few weeks range from the...

Editor's Note: No one knows exactly why journalist Armando Rodriguez was gunned down at his home in Ciudad Juarez last November. But his colleagues believe it was a warning to the rest of the local media that writing about drug cartels is a dangerous business. Six months later, journalists are still scared about talking about their experiences reporting. NAM contributor José Luis Sierra interviewed reporters in Ciudad Juarez who spoke on condition of anonymity. Being a journalist in...

Last week's Mexico car bomb in the border town of Cuidad Juarez killed three. It is the first known use of a car bomb against authorities and marks a troubling new level of violence in the country's brutal drug war. For years drug experts, security officials, and political analysts have questioned the “Colombianization” of Mexico. Mexico had already overtaken Colombia in terms of kidnappings. The public has long gotten accustomed to a censored press, threats to politicians, and...

As Mexico’s 2012 presidential election gets underway, a national conversation has finally begun on the country’s future. Thanks in part to the recently published book *A Future for Mexico*, which I coauthored with Héctor Aguilar Camín, one of the country’s most distinguished pundits, historians, and novelists, the issue of how Mexico can become in the next 15 years what we call a “middle-class society” has taken center stage. Through public debates...

In the last seven years in Mexico, 35 journalists were killed and six went missing, 84 media workers filed complaints of insults or attacks in 2007, and in the first few days of 2008, the prestigious independent radio commentator Carmen Aristegui, who has often criticised the powers that be, was fired. Given that outlook, many analysts wonder whether the media in Mexico is really as free as the government of conservative President Felipe Calderón claims. "The record in terms...

Where Pacific coast State, Michoacan, Mexico Who 1 Ostensibly, China,, Hugo Chavez -Venezuela, USA, Carlos Slim, Salinas Pliego, Kansas City Southern Mexico, Drug Cartels - La Familia Michoacana - Los Zetas, EZLN. Who 2 Iran - Islam What Destabilize, proselytize - convert - ideological social, political and religious loyalties Objectives - Geopolitical General Reinforce existing Mexican popular sentiment to support Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Cuba against the US....

Molino de los Arcos is one of the poorest neighbourhoods of San Cristóbal de las Casas, the second largest city in Chiapas and popular with tourists for its colonial beauty. The barrio is ethnically almost entirely indigenous, with Tzotzil Mayan as the dominant language. On Fridays, though, you can hear the slow, monotonous Arab chants of Muslim prayer. In a wooden shack, painted with Arab religious phrases, some twenty Tzotzil Muslim families have established a small place of...

Nearly three months after the Mexican army kicked off Operation Chihuahua Together against drug trafficking organizations in Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua, multiple accusations of human rights violations committed by soldiers are surfacing in the press. A hot point of contention is in the Juarez Valley just outside the border city of the same name. Long the stomping ground of drug traffickers and other criminal bands, the rural area bordering the Rio Grande has been the target of...

Figures contradict U.S. numbers; complaints rise as drug war rages.The Mexican military has convicted just one soldier of a serious human rights violation during a bloody, three-year campaign against drug traffickers, according to Interior Ministry figures that are significantly lower than those reported by the U.S. government. The Mexican military has come under scrutiny because of a surge in complaints against soldiers, including allegations of torture, beatings and illegal raids and...

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