When one thinks about turn-around narratives in Latin America, Colombia’s story is pretty hard to beat. However, Peru is close on its heels. It somehow survived a decades-long tug-of-war between left-wing politicians and right-wing generals, treasury-draining years of Alan García’s populist first presidency, the brutal fight to reduce the Sendero Luminoso’s terrorist strangle-hold in the upper mountain valleys, as well as president Alberto Fujimori’s self-coup and crazy authoritarianism. Since then, political discourse has flourished and involves increasing segments of society, the economy has boomed along with free trade, and Peru has become more of a serious player in regional geo-politics.
Most of the credit goes to the majority of Peruvians who support democratic government and have come to reject rigid ideologies. Part goes to quality leaders who have applied a steady hand on the tiller of the ship of state—like former shoeshine boy-turned accomplished economist Alejandro Toledo, Alan García in a successful second term, and now, it seems, former military firebrand Ollanta Humala who, so far, has turned out to be a chief executive who listens. But part of their success owes to some of the people who have surrounded them.
Last week, Interior Minister Daniel Lozada and Defense Minister Alberto Otárola resigned after bandits linked with the old Sendero movement ambushed and killed eight policemen seeking to free kidnapped oil workers in the highlands. “Recent events have led me to take this decision so that our government and the people can unite behind our security forces, to give them the support they need to defeat narcoterrorism,” Otárola told reporters after stepping down in a refreshing display of candor. Obviously, President Humala will need replacements with different talents to reform what some observers see as a lack of coordination between the armed forces and police as well as the army’s out-dated love affair with stovepipes and hierarchical command.
Promising new leadership has apparently arrived in Peru’s National Commission for Development and a Drug-Free Life (DEVIDA), similar to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. Named drug czar in February, Carmen Masías took over from Ricardo Soberón, who pushed a policy of halting coca eradication just as Peru’s cocaine output began to exceed that of Colombia. The nation’s anti-drug strategy will now concentrate on prevention, eradication, alternative crops, and, more importantly, staying in touch with rural communities.
Speaking at CSIS on May 11, Masías said the social dynamics of coca growing in the Andean highlands has been misunderstood. For example, who knew that many of the region’s small farms are run by women and that coca production is a family affair. Masías, a practicing psychologist and long-time development professional, believes values, culture, and education, in addition to incentives and disincentives, must be part of any solution to reduce drug production and, hence, trafficking (to see the new strategy online, click here).
The success of any presidency, and to a larger extent, any country, depends on getting the right people in the right positions. In Colombia, Álvaro Uribe’s presidency brought in a huge number of talented young technocrats. While many cycled through, enough good people stayed long enough to help steer that country away from disaster. Peru’s President Humala is on a similar hunt. At the beginning of his administration, some early departures are to be expected. And while no president makes inspired choices all the time, one could say that matching Carmen Masías with the drug czar’s job gave it the experience and level head it needed.
Stephen Johnson is a senior fellow and director of the CSIS Americas Program.
On the evening of Sunday May 6, Mexico’s four presidential candidates faced off in a debate that was widely hailed as an acid test for the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN). Leading by a formidable margin in the polls, EPN is generally seen as an intellectual lightweight compared to his opponents, so the debate was seen as an opportunity for Josefina Vázquez Mota (JVM), the candidate for the ruling PAN party, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) of the leftist PRD, to chip away at his lead. JVM and AMLO were each expected to launch a vehement attack on the PRIista, raising accusations of corruption and mismanagement during Peña Nieto’s tenure as governor of the State of Mexico.
In the end, the expected fireworks proved to be more damp squibs than electrifying pyrotechnics. AMLO’s performance, in particular, was disappointing in the extreme, as he appeared slow, out of touch and repetitive. Despite his reputation as a firebrand representative of Mexico’s disadvantaged classes, AMLO seemed unable to muster his famous blood and thunder, instead speaking so slowly that he was cut off by the timekeeper over and over again. He made a number of rookie television errors, such as holding up supposedly damning photographs, but upside down or off- camera. His attacks on EPN focused on the elite groups backing him, the same groups that AMLO claims have held back Mexican development. He also made reference to the misappropriation of funds during Peña Nieto’s mandate as governor; the PRIista simply brushed away the accusation.
Ms. Vázquez Mota was not much better. Her performance was variously described as “robotic”, “mechanical” and most damningly, “dull”. She launched attack after attack on Peña Nieto, but he rebutted by claiming that she had been misinformed by her advisors. Faced with EPN’s stonewalling, the PANista had few other weapons in her arsenal.
EPN countered with accusations concerning JVM’s attendance in the Congress (which she denied), and was able to make a number of statements regarding his own policy proposals. In response to AMLO’s accusation that he would privatize Pemex, the national oil company, Peña Nieto emphatically stated that his government would not pursue such a strategy. Neither of his main opponents could penetrate his famed “Teflon” coating, and he finished the debate undamaged. The PRI’s man even managed to appear presidential at certain moments of the debate.
The fourth candidate, Gabriel Quadri de la Torre (GQT), proved to be the surprise of the debate, as he escaped attacks by the others and managed to distinguish himself as the “non-politician”. His policy proposals made sense, and he came across as statesman-like. Of course, Quadri de la Torre had little or nothing to lose, commanding only 1 percent of popular support in recent polls. His performance, however, was widely recognized as the most competent of the four.
Press coverage of the debate has been fascinating, with different newspapers nominating different candidates as the victor. Reforma newspaper, of course, declared Ms. Vázquez Mota the winner, while La Jornada, a leftist paper, went with AMLO. Social media coverage of the debate was frantic and wildly popular, with Twitter feeds and Facebook posts on the event dominating web content in Mexico on Sunday night and Monday. On political website Animal Politico, analyst José Antonio Crespo argued that the big winner was Quadri de la Torre, and therefore Elba Esther Gordillo (known as La Maestra) who heads the teachers’ union and is behind GQT’s PANAL party.
But the reality is that this was a missed opportunity for JVM and AMLO. Their failure to significantly damage EPN’s image, to land knock-out punches, or to expose his supposed intellectual fragility, means that Peña Nieto will continue his march towards July 1 with little change in his polling numbers. Indeed, Milenio newspaper has been publishing a daily poll and the latest results show that EPN was unaffected by the debate, whereas Quadri de la Torre is up to around 4.7 percent. This means that, if the party can hold this support, the PANAL will likely retain its status as an official party.
Duncan Wood is a senior associate of the CSIS Americas Program.
Following an election victory on May 2, 2011 that gave the Conservative Party 166 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been heading his first majority government for one full year. Many Canadian observers thought that with a majority government, Harper would throw caution to the wind and show his true colors as a right-wing ideologue. But has he?
For the past several days, pundits and commentators have rendered a mixed – and contradictory – judgment of the Harper majority. John Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail gave a lengthyappraisal of the prime minister’s record, and found him to have pursued a kind of conservative nationalism that emphasized ties to the British (and Canadian) monarchy, sports success, and military heroism that made many Canadians proud and had attracted support from immigrant communities that formerly voted for the Liberal Party.
Writing in the National Post, Andrew Coyne criticized Harper as governing timidly—as though he was still leading a minority government—afraid to push for conservative principles now that he has the chance. Maclean’s Magazine’s Aaron Wherry was similarly underwhelmed, even though he noted that Stephen Harper marked the anniversary of his government in the House of Commons with a speech that bragged of transformational change to Canada as a result of his government’s efforts.
Last month, the New Democratic Party selected Quebec Member of Parliament Thomas Mulcair to replace the late Jack Layton as party leader and, due to the NDP’s 101 seats in the House of Commons, Mulcair is now the Leader of the Official Opposition. For the first time in nearly a year, Harper faces a sharp debater and articulate critic in the Commons who lost no time in debunking Harper’s claims of achievements during the past 12 months.
Canadians will continue to debate whether the past year under Harper’s majority government has been a shift to the right or just to a whiter shade of pale. The challenge from Mulcair and an NDP surging in the pollswill make the answer to this question central to Canadian politics in the near future.
Christopher Sands is a senior associate with the CSIS Americas Program and a senior fellow with the Washington-based Hudson Institute.
On March 31, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, the head of Mexico’s second largest TV station, TV Azteca, announced that, instead of broadcasting the debate between presidential candidates on the evening of May 6, his station would instead broadcast a soccer game. Salinas Pliego tweeted that if viewers wanted to watch the debate, then they should switch to another channel. Since then, Televisa, the nation’s leading television station, has announced that it will not broadcast the debate on any of its main channels.
The decision not to broadcast the presidential debate on any of the nation’s leading channels has caused an uproar on social networking sites, and has generated an active and highly heated debate on the political website, AnimalPolitico.com. The reason is clear: given the public concern over Televisa and TVAzteca’s open support for PRI candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN), it appears that both networks are trying to minimize public exposure to a debate in which the former governor of the State of Mexico will come under direct attack from his opponents.
The general consensus in Mexico is that, despite his overwhelming lead in the polls, the debate on May 6 is an opportunity for the PAN and PRD candidates to expose Peña Nieto’s weaknesses, in particular his poor debating skills and his perceived lack of “depth”. The debate itself has been difficult to arrange, and now that television exposure will be limited, critics of the PRI candidate are keen to suggest that a conspiracy is at work. For his part, EPN has responded that he is not responsible for the television networks’ scheduling, whereas Josefina Vázquez Mota of the PAN and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the PRD have both expressed their disappointment in the networks’ decision. The Federal Elections Institute, meanwhile, has published a list of radio and TV networks that will be carrying the debate.
Duncan Wood is a senior associate of the CSIS Americas Program.
Thomas Hobbes describes the importance of a social contract between man and government in his book The Leviathan. The contract compels individuals to give up some personal rights in return for peace and security under the rule of law. Democracy is strong when government sticks to its part, but grows weak when the government fails to uphold its end of the bargain.
In Mexico, many observers worry that the social contract is almost broken. According to the public policy analysis center Mexico Evalua, impunity remains an endemic problem: eight out of ten criminal cases go unpunished in Mexico – and the number rises to nine out of ten in states like Durango, Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Guerrero. Lack of confidence in institutions is also high with Mexicans claiming that judges and police officials are “not effective” or “hardly effective,” according to a 2011 national confidence poll conducted by the National Institute for Statistics and Geography (INEGI). Overall perception of insecurity at the municipal level has risen from 40 to 60 percent since 2005.
In fairness, Mexico’s justice system has been undergoing a transition from an antiquated inquisitorial legal system inherited from colonial masters to one with oral, adversarial trials. The old system (in which judges sat behind closed doors reading lengthy written briefs to determine culpability) bred suspicion, corruption, and in the long run, resentment among a population that suspected that family connections, political favors, and pesos could pull the levers of justice. In 2008, President Felipe Calderón, accompanied by legal scholars and international experts labored to establish a new justice system with public trials at its core.
The new system, which borrows English case law concepts introduced in Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Argentina, was designed to help fight organized crime and give Mexicans trust in their government and institutions. Those accused of wrongdoing now enjoy a presumption of innocence, cross-examination, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and other rights. In addition, the new system lets prosecutors order judge-approved pre-trial detentions of up to 80 days, seize personal and real property tied to organized crime, and conduct phone intercepts related to a crime with the permission of one of the parties.
The Mexican Constitution allows for an eight-year period for all of its 31 states and the capital city to incorporate public trials into the legal system. Thus far, three (Chihuahua, Mexico and Morelos) have a fully incorporated system, while another 25 have only partly implemented the new procedures. So far, results seem encouraging. States like Guanajuato and Mexico have successfully used ADR to settle a large number of cases to the satisfaction of both the injured and the state. Baja California developed internal indicators to drive state officials toward improving service delivery; and Morelos and Durango implemented public campaigns to train journalists and educate citizens on the new system. Mexican Interior Minister Alejandro Poiré claims the new system adjudicated roughly half of some 3,000 cases since 2008, 18 of them through public trials. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has also been an encouraging partner, training over 30,000 legal professionals, arranging exchanges between judges and lawyers from third countries, and ensuring U.S. and Mexican agencies, universities, and state attorneys general develop collaborative relations.
Law professors Miguel Carbonell and Enrique Ochoa note that oral trials guarantee the presumption of innocence and due process by forcing the state to bring evidence against the defendant. Opponents are troubled by recently enacted changes to the Federal Criminal Procedure Code, which, they claim, allows warrantless searches based on anonymous tips and admits statements made under duress or torture. They also claim technicalities allow dangerous criminals to go free, discouraging victims from reporting crimes. Lastly, they say high costs are another reason to roll back the new system, referring to Chile’s former President, Michelle Bachelet, who once reportedly said that Chile´s expenditure of $15 billion to institute a public trial system was wasteful.
Although it may not look like it at times, Mexico is working to improve law enforcement from beginning to end. Public trials actually fall in the middle of the justice chain between crime investigation and penitentiaries. Progress requires many steps. First, the development of new curriculum for law students and the re-training of judges and attorneys needs time and resources. Second, federal, state, and local governments must continue replacing corrupt police with those who meet high standards, and government at all levels must improve pay. Last, the federal government will have to regain control of its penitentiary system by establishing crime-free environments and anti-recidivism programs.
The new oral trial system can give Mexicans a fair day in court and deprive special and criminal interests from corrupting judges. Public trials can strengthen justice institutions, target corruption, and corral impunity. In time, Mexicans will come to realize this approach provides the best option for protecting individual rights across the board. In Hobbesian terms, democracy should prosper because the state will have delivered what citizens want most from government: peace and security.
Juan Manuel Henao is former Mexico country director for the International Republican Institute (IRI), a democracy promotion organization based in Washington, DC. He is currently a consultant based in Mexico City.
Since the lifting of the ban on campaigning at the end of March, the big change in the respective standings of the candidates is that the PAN’s Josefina Vázquez Mota (JVM) appears to have lost considerable ground versus her two rivals, Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) of the PRI and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) of the PRD. In fact, far from closing the gap on EPN, the PAN candidate has slipped back to a point where she may be tied for third place with AMLO. The Mexican press has been filled with the multiple gaffes made by the JVM campaign team that have marked the first week of the official campaign season, including a messy appearance just outside of Mexico City, damaging tweets from a senior staffer, and the lingering questions over who has been tapping Ms. Vázquez Mota’s phone lines.
The Vázquez Mota campaign has responded with a wholesale shuffle of the election team with a number of names from the Calderón administration, including individuals very close to the president himself, being placed in key positions. There has also been a shift in the main campaign slogan. In the first week of the campaign, Ms. Vázquez Mota was promoted as “Josefina, Diferente” (Josefina, Different) in a lackluster attempt to distinguish herself from the other candidates and from the previous administration. The new slogan is “Jefa Josefina” (Boss Josefina), to grant her an air of control and strength. It seems unlikely that these two changes are going to have the desired impact and cause an upward swing in her polling numbers. The incorporation of high profile figures from the Calderón administration from his successful 2006 election campaign only serves to cement the idea that this is the same PAN party that is generally believed to have failed to steer Mexico on a steady forward course. The placement of people close to the president himself, and in particular members of his family (Luisa Calderón, the president’s sister has been called in, as well as the president’s brother-in-law, Juan Ignacio Zavala), smacks of nepotism. The new slogan fails to play to the strengths of the candidate, and lacks credibility as JVM has mishandled her campaign thus far.
There is, however, one major new development in the campaign that may have some impact. Despite IFE rules that prohibit negative campaigning, last week a series of new TV ads appeared attacking Enrique Peña Nieto’s record as governor of the State of Mexico and claiming that he failed to live up to political commitments and campaign promises. It has been widely noted in the Mexican media that there is a broad similarity between these “spots” and ads that were used effectively in 2006 against AMLO, which helped to weaken support for the PRD candidate, particularly among undecided voters.
The PAN has so far been permitted to run these ads because they are sponsored by PAN deputies rather than by the JVM campaign. This circumvention of the IFE rules is not a direct violation, but certainly goes against the spirit of the campaign laws. It places the IFE in a controversial position once again. In recent weeks electoral laws has come under criticism from the PAN and PRD as favoring the PRI. The month-long veda, or ban on campaigning during March is said to have helped the EPN campaign at a time when the PAN was beginning to acquire some momentum, and to take away the feel-good factor for the PAN after the election of Ms Vazquez Mota. The ban on negative campaigning is also seen as an important factor in protecting EPN’s lead in the polls, and a limitation on freedom of democratic expression.
Duncan Wood is a senior associate of the CSIS Americas Program.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of re-examining the hemisphere’s current policies against illicit drug use, weak law enforcement has always been a huge problem in many Latin American countries. In days when oligarchs and authoritarian leaders held sway, poorly educated and ill-paid police harassed the rabble more than they supplied citizen security. While Latin America has come a long way in electoral and economic performance, policing and justice are still catching up.
Thus it is not surprising that there would be cries to strike certain kinds of crimes off the books to try to make problems impacting the justice sector easier to manage. After all, pursuing drug traffickers and associated violent actors means confronting a vast global enterprise that earns more in a year than the gross domestic product of Argentina. So why not legalize some level of drug use and trafficking in order to get violent criminals out of the distribution business?
Dealing with crime is and has always been a management issue, as no society has been able to stop it. Drug trafficking is but one category. Unfortunately, policing is so weak in some states that you’d almost have to go beyond legalizing drugs to abolishing laws against murder and theft in order for law enforcement to look like it is catching up. That is the reality in three Central American countries and one nation in northern South America.
Last Tuesday, the CSIS Americas Program sponsored a panel discussion on police reform in Latin America, based on a report on that topic made possible by an Open Society Foundation grant. Steven Dudley, a seasoned journalist and co-director of the website Insight on Organized Crime in the Americas, revealed the extent to which criminal organizations target poorly resourced police units for penetration through bribes and extortion. As a result, a fair number of police get killed when they are identified as rivals by other criminal organizations.
Ralph Espach, a field researcher at the Center for Naval Analysis discussed the relative calm of rural areas where drug production and trafficking take place compared to inner cities where criminals compete over territory. Factors leading to a life of crime include minimal education, poor job prospects, and negative family experiences. Taking one category of crime off the books won’t affect those conditions or resultant violence very much.
The bottom line: if anyone believes that drug decriminalization or legalization will ease Latin America’s law enforcement woes, they are probably misguided. As long as there are some prohibitions, there will be criminal involvement. If there are no prohibitions, the public health costs may prove unsustainable. Even so, other categories of crime will still be there, along with social conditions that promote them. While dialogue to seek better ways of dealing with drug abuse and trafficking is useful and should be welcome, poorly resourced police institutions in some countries will still be unable to manage crime overall.
Stephen Johnson is a senior fellow and director of the CSIS Americas Program.
The recent five-day visit of Chilean President Sebastián Piñera to Vietnam —accompanied by the first lady, a congressional delegation, and select business leaders—highlights Chile’s increasingly strategic approach toward Asia-Pacific.
Chile was the second western hemisphere country that recognized Vietnam’s independence from France and, in 1971, it established diplomatic relations with North Vietnam. That relationship was interrupted by Chile’s coup d’état in 1973. However, Chile and Vietnam resumed relations in 1990. Senior leader exchanges have continued since then. The recent visit of President Piñera marked the third presidential trip to Vietnam following Ricardo Lagos in 2003, and Michelle Bachelet in 2006.
Previously, the two countries signed cooperative agreements in fisheries, mining, science and technology, and tourism. This time, Piñera and President Trương Tấn Sang and Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng were able to build on a bilateral free trade agreement signed in November 2011. Ratified by Chile’s congress on March 14 this year, the agreement will enable significant tariff reductions. Roughly three quarters of both countries’ exports will be able to enter each other’s markets duty free. During his visit, Piñera said that Chile would like to expand bilateral cooperation to include services and investments.
The FTA with Vietnam is not the only bilateral accord that Chile has struck with countries in Southeast Asia. Chile also has a trade pact with Malaysia that entered into force this year. Chile has also been negotiating similar agreements with Indonesia and Thailand. By forging commercial relations with individual countries in Southeast Asia, Chile has shown its desire to become a partner through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Becoming a regional economic community by 2015, ASEAN could serve as an immense market opener for Chile. Already, ASEAN has played a key role in developing links with China, Japan, and South Korea as well as Australia, India, and New Zealand. A dialogue with ASEAN would expand Chile’s outreach not only to Southeast Asia, but toward the Asia-Pacific region as a whole.
Behind all this, looms the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement originated among four pioneering countries—Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore—that entered into force in 2006. Today, Australia, Malaysia, Peru, the United States, and Vietnam are in the negotiating process while Canada, Japan, and Mexico have expressed interest to join the pact. But that is a path already charted and opened for others by Chile in strategic efforts to expand commerce with the Pacific Rim through bilateral and multilateral agreements.
Siremorn Asvapromtada is an intern scholar in the CSIS Americas Program.
For those who might have missed it, President Obama suspended Argentina from the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) trade program on March 26. The action came after a review found that Argentina had failed to pay two arbitration awards totaling some $300 million plus interest dating from 2005.
It has been over a decade since a U.S. President has been compelled to remove a developing country from eligibility for GSP duty-free benefits and the first time a country has been suspended from GSP for non-payment of arbitration awards. Key members of Congress including Dave Camp (R-MI) and Kevin Brady (R-TX) are backing the President Obama’s decision on this matter which becomes effective in 60 days.
The payments in question stem from a decision by the World Bank’s Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) that ordered the Argentine government to compensate a Michigan gas transmission company and a Texas water services company for breaches in contracts that allegedly occurred during Argentina’s debt crisis more than a decade ago. In one case, the award was substantially lower than damages requested by the company.
In 2011, GSP waived $17 million in duties for such products as wine, beef products, and olive oil. Suspension would have a minor overall effect on U.S.-Argentine bilateral trade totaling some $12 billion last year. Still, the suspension and reports that the United States has been voting against loans to Argentina in the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, put more distance between the Obama and Fernández de Kirchner administrations.
Now that Argentina is out of the GSP program, any redesignation of benefits will occur only after a comprehensive review of Argentina’s trade policies that, for now, appear to be to deteriorating. Many U.S. businesses are more and more skeptical about the safety of their investments and are sure to weigh in with concerns about where Argentina is headed.
International investors claim that Argentina has been unwilling or slow to repay debts following its 2001 default. For its part, Argentina claims that it would have to violate its own laws to do so. For the near term, fallout from the default crisis and improvised economic policies will continue to tarnish Argentina’s reputation. However, market-oriented reforms and responsible development of considerable hydrocarbon resources could help reverse that situation.
Stephen Johnson is a senior fellow and director of the Americas Program and Meredith Broadbent is a senior adviser and holds the William M. Scholl Chair in International Business at CSIS.
Comayagua prison in Honduras got a lot of attention as the death toll rose to 356 after a fatal fire—the worst in Latin America in 10 years. Days later, a similar scene played out in Nuevo Leon, Mexico at Apodaca penitentiary with the murder of 44 inmates at the hands of 33 others who fled the prison thanks to a pre-arranged fire.
Critics describe Mexico's 447 prisons (six of which are under federal control) as crowded, crime-ridden corruption centers where drugs, prostitution, alcohol, extortion, bribes, cartel hits, and business interlock. According to Guillermo Zepeda of the Institute of Technology for Superior Studies West (ITESO), the prison system—designed to hold 167,000 inmates—is overpopulated with 229,000. Furthermore, high-risk criminals mingle with individuals awaiting sentencing, minor offenders and pickpockets. Mexican politicians are aware of the problems, and of cartel influence in prisons, but are seemingly afraid, in collusion, or not interested in reforming the system.
Soon after the incident, anxious parents, families and news media surrounded the prison. Days later, facts emerged: guards single-handedly turned over inmates from the Gulf Cartel to members of the rival Zetas hit squad in a play for turf and vengeance. In sum, planning and financing at the highest levels allowed the Zetas to murder rivals and flee the prison. The jail’s director and chief of security, along with 26 guards, were arrested after each confessed to some level of involvement.
Prison Incidents 2008: 19 dead and 30 injured in Baja California. An additional 21 dead and 11 injured in a Tamaulipas riot.
2009: 20 dead and 3 injured in Chihuahua. An additional 22 dead and 30 injured in Durango.
2011: 20 dead and 12 injured in Tamaulipas.
2012: 31 dead and 13 injured in Tamaulipas.
Mexico´s Secretary of Public Security, Genaro García Luna asserted that escapes only take place in state prisons, not federal. Garcia Luna claimed that close to 50 percent of the country´s prison population is safely secured in five federal prisons where no escapes take place. He inferred that events like the Apodaca massacre only take place because corruption between state officials and cartels allows it. For some, the Secretary’s comments failed to ring true. While some business leaders in Nuevo Leon sought the PRI governor's resignation, many pinned the blame on the federal government. Leading presidential contender, Enrique Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), also pointed fingers at the federal government, providing a bit of political cover for the state’s PRI governor. Other political opponents from the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the Labor Party (PT) chimed in blaming President Felipe Calderón´s effort to combat the drug cartels as the leading cause for Apodaca and the nation´s penitentiary system problem.
Indeed, reports from Mexico´s Public Safety Ministry (SSP) reveal that homicides within the federal penitentiary system have risen from 64 to 330 in the past five years—a 400 percent increase. During this time, the prison population also quintupled. Yet to his credit, President Calderón launched a Federal Penitentiary Strategy, with infrastructure and technology upgrades for Mexican prisons, and created an academy for penitentiary guards. In the next year, 10 more prisons are scheduled to be built while the Mexican congress has promised additional funds for penal reform.
Apodaca is a reminder that Mexican public officials and prison authorities long ago ceded power to organized criminal groups. Today, the result is an overpopulated prison system with underpaid and undertrained staff. Mexico needs to accelerate its prison overhaul if it expects to turn the corner on organized crime. Back-tracking won’t work. Only bold strides will strengthen the rule of law and provide confidence to the majority of Mexicans who want to put impunity and lawlessness behind them.
Juan Manuel Henao is former Mexico country director for the International Republican Institute (IRI), a democracy promotion organization based in Washington, DC. He is currently a consultant based in Mexico City.
When one thinks about turn-around narratives in Latin America, Colombia’s story is pretty hard to beat. However, Peru is close on its heels. It somehow survived a decades-long tug-of-war between left-wing politicians and right-wing generals, treasury-draining years of Alan García’s populist first presidency, the brutal fight to reduce the Sendero Luminoso’s terrorist strangle-hold in the upper mountain valleys, as well as president Alberto Fujimori’s self-coup and crazy authoritarianism. Since then, political discourse has flourished and involves increasing segments of society, the economy has boomed along with free trade, and Peru has become more of a serious player in regional geo-politics. 
On the evening of Sunday May 6, Mexico’s four presidential candidates faced off in a debate that was widely hailed as an acid test for the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN). Leading by a formidable margin in the polls, EPN is generally seen as an intellectual lightweight compared to his opponents, so the debate was seen as an opportunity for Josefina Vázquez Mota (JVM), the candidate for the ruling PAN party, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) of the leftist PRD, to chip away at his lead. JVM and AMLO were each expected to launch a vehement attack on the PRIista, raising accusations of corruption and mismanagement during Peña Nieto’s tenure as governor of the State of Mexico. 
Following an election victory on May 2, 2011 that gave the Conservative Party 166 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been heading his first majority government for one full year. Many Canadian observers thought that with a majority government, Harper would throw caution to the wind and show his true colors as a right-wing ideologue. But has he?
On March 31, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, the head of Mexico’s second largest TV station, TV Azteca, announced that, instead of broadcasting the debate between presidential candidates on the evening of May 6, his station would instead broadcast a soccer game. Salinas Pliego tweeted that if viewers wanted to watch the debate, then they should switch to another channel. Since then, Televisa, the nation’s leading television station, has announced that it will not broadcast the debate on any of its main channels.
Thomas Hobbes describes the importance of a social contract between man and government in his book The Leviathan. The contract compels individuals to give up some personal rights in return for peace and security under the rule of law. Democracy is strong when government sticks to its part, but grows weak when the government fails to uphold its end of the bargain. 
Since the lifting of the ban on campaigning at the end of March, the big change in the respective standings of the candidates is that the PAN’s Josefina Vázquez Mota (JVM) 
Regardless of what anyone thinks of re-examining the hemisphere’s current policies against illicit drug use, weak law enforcement has always been a huge problem in many Latin American countries. In days when oligarchs and authoritarian leaders held sway, poorly educated and ill-paid police harassed the rabble more than they supplied citizen security. While Latin America has come a long way in electoral and economic performance, policing and justice are still catching up. 
The recent five-day visit of Chilean President Sebastián Piñera to Vietnam —accompanied by the first lady, a congressional delegation, and select business leaders—highlights Chile’s increasingly strategic approach toward Asia-Pacific.
For those who might have missed it, President Obama suspended Argentina from the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) trade program on March 26. The action came after a review found that Argentina had failed to pay two arbitration awards totaling some $300 million plus interest dating from 2005. 
Comayagua prison in Honduras got a lot of attention as the death toll rose to 356 after a fatal fire—the worst in Latin America in 10 years. Days later, a similar scene played out in Nuevo Leon, Mexico at Apodaca penitentiary with the murder of 44 inmates at the hands of 33 others who fled the prison thanks to a pre-arranged fire. 