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ENTIRE REGION

• The Obama administration released its 2011 budget request to Congress this week, which includes its request for next year's foreign assistance. The new aid numbers for 2011 have been added to the "Just the Facts" database, and so far it looks like there will be a sharp decrease in military and police assistance to the region, especially for Mexico and Colombia, the region's two largest aid recipients. The FY2011 request also reflects the official launch of the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, a new counternarcotics and citizen security program focusing on the fifteen countries of the Caribbean Basin.

ARGENTINA

• President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner formally dismissed Central Bank president Martin Perez Redrado this week, after he resigned last Friday. Mercedes Marcó del Pont was named to replace Redrado as the new head of the Central Bank.

COLOMBIA

• Constitutional Court Judge Humberto Sierra has recommended that the country's highest court reject a proposal to allow President Alvaro Uribe to seek re-election due to legal irregularities.
• Human Rights Watch released its new report on Colombia this week, "Paramilitaries' Heirs: The New Face of Violence in Colombia." The report documents the rise of "emerging" paramilitary groups throughout the country and is critical of the Colombian government's "weak and ineffective" response to this increasing phenomenon.
• More details on the mass grave in the town of La Macarena were released this week. Initial reports indicated that the gravesite contains as many as 2,000 bodies, though the mayor of La Macarena says the cemetery contains 1,000 human remains, of which 346 are unidentified combat dead buried since 2004. The Center for International Policy's Plan Colombia and Beyond blog has more details.

COSTA RICA

• Presidential elections will be held on Sunday in Costa Rica. A recent poll by Demoscopía places Laura Chinchilla, of the governing Liberal National Party, as the frontrunner, with 45.1%. Otto Guevara, of the Libertarian Movement, follows with 30.1% of the vote. If none of the candidates win more than 40% of the vote on Sunday, a run-off election will be held.

ECUADOR

• Ecuador's growing importance as a hub for narcotrafficking and organized crime operations made several news stories this week, after a Washington think tank, the International Assessment and Strategy Center, released a new report titled "Ecuador at Risk: Drugs, Thugs, Guerrillas and the Citizens Revolution". The country seized 63 tons of cocaine last year, twice as much as in 2008, though some experts estimate that as much as 200 tons of cocaine may be transiting through Ecuador, "four times the estimated percentage a decade ago."

HAITI

• Once again, this week's news on Haiti focused on bottlenecks affecting the distribution of aid. A new food distribution system that focuses on distributing food to women has proven successful, though Reuters reports that bags of rice from the United States are already appearing on the black market.
• Ten American missionaries who tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the country last week have been charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy by the Haitian government.

HONDURAS

• A representative from the Organization of American States arrived in Honduras on Wednesday to help set up a truth commission. This is the final step from the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord that must be completed before the OAS will consider the country's reinsertion into the international organization. Principal deputy assistant secretary of state Craig Kelly noted that the "country has taken steps to move ahead, and that is gratifying." However, former President Manuel Zelaya said, from his place of exile in the Dominican Republic, that President Lobo has done nothing to remove those who carried out the coup and an In These Times article reports that the human rights crisis is deepening under Lobo. "Despite Lobo's rhetoric, there seems to be little peace or freedom in Honduras these days."

MEXICO

• Sixteen teenagers were killed at a birthday party earlier this week in the country's most violent city, Ciudad Juárez. In response to public outcry, Mexican President Felipe Calderón admitted that the deployment of the army and federal police to Ciudad Juárez has not been sufficient in stopping crime and violence. President Calderón promised to put in place new social initiatives that will help prevent crime and decrease violence.
• Miguel Angel Caro Quintero, who led the Sonora Cartel in Mexico for over a decade, has been sentenced to 17 years in prison for trafficking drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border by a U.S. court.

PERU

• South Korea announced it will donate eight A-37 light attack planes to Peru that will be used to conduct counternarcotics and counterterrorism operations.
• The Christian Science Monitor reports on a story about some Peruvian farmers' decision to replace their coca crops with cacao.

VENEZUELA

• On his eleventh anniversary as President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez suggested that he hopes to lead the country for at least 11 more years: "I am 55 years old and have been president for 11 years. In the next 11 years, I promise to take care of myself a little more and if you all want it, within 11 years I will be 66 years, God willing, and have been president for 22."
• On Tuesday, the U.S. National Director of Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, presented the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (PDF) before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The title of the report's Latin America section is "Latin America Stable, but Challenged by Crime and Populism," and a large chunk of this section is dedicated to Venezuela. The report classifies President Chávez as an "anti-U.S. leader," notes that Chávez continues "his covert support to the terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)," and states that he continues to "impose an authoritarian populist political model in Venezuela that undermines democratic institutions." The Venezuelan government responded to the United States, denouncing that again the country "attempts to criminalize our government and encourage sectors of the Venezuelan opposition who look for antidemocratic ways to take control."