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Washington Post reporter Mary Beth Sheridan published a piece with new information about the Defense Department’s rapidly expanding role in Mexico. Sheridan points out that even as U.S. aid to Mexico through the “regular” foreign aid budget becomes less military in nature, the amount of aid to Mexico’s security forces through the Defense budget has tripled. “The Obama administration is now considering what more it can do for Mexico’s security forces,” possibly including a US$50 million Defense-budget program to help Mexico fortify its border with Guatemala. “Mexico is our number-one priority,” Sheridan quotes the commander of Northern Command, Gen. James Winnefeld, as having said. Gen. Winnefeld declined to be interviewed for the article.

Meanwhile in Mexico, the Mexican military’s November 5 killing of Gulf cartel leader Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas, alias “Tony Tormenta,” has left citizens terrified in the eastern segment of the U.S.-Mexico border region. They fear a period of vicious competition, with the murderous Zetas – the Gulf cartel’s former security force – likely poised to swoop in to contest control of the Gulf cartel’s drug trafficking routes into the United States.

Meanwhile another Mexican cartel, the cultish, ruthless, Michoacán-based La Familia, distributed letters and hung banners this week announcing their intention to disband “if federal police promise to act honestly and fight to the death to defend the state.” The statements’ authenticity couldn’t be verified.

Gen. Henry Rangel Silva, the Venezuelan officer who told reporters Monday that the armed forces would not accept an opposition-ruled government, was rebuked Wednesday by OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza, who called the general’s comments “unacceptable and “very serious.” Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez responded in a nationally televised address on Thursday night: he promoted Gen. Rangel Silva to “general in chief.”

Venezuela and the United States are both seeking the extradition of a Venezuelan citizen currently imprisoned in Colombia on narcotrafficking charges. Walid Makled has told television interviewers that he has evidence of Venezuelan narco-corruption at the highest levels. The Obama administration is demanding his extradition, but President Chávez says that Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who is seeking to improve relations with Venezuela, has promised to send Makled to Venezuela. Writing in the Huffington Post, Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Joel Hirst argues that would be unwise.

U.S. Ambassador to Colombia James McKinley gave one of his first interviews since taking over in August, with the Colombian daily El Espectador. He didn’t stray far from talking points.

El Tiempo is reporting that four Awá indigenous people were massacred last weekend in the highly conflictive Pacific coast municipality of Barbacoas, Nariño. Ten members of the Awá nation have been murdered so far this year.

The Ecuadorian daily La Hora reported Thursday that U.S.-funded Colombian police fumigation planes had been spraying coca fields with herbicides within ten kilometers of the Colombia-Ecuador border, in contravention of a 2005 agreement between the two countries. A 2006 spray campaign in the same Colombian department – Putumayo – caused an ugly diplomatic spat between the two countries. On the day that the La Hora piece came out, Colombia’s Foreign Ministry issued a denial that any spraying had taken place in the area.

An indigenous shaman from Putumayo known as “Taita Juan” was arrested in the Houston airport, and is now imprisoned as a suspected narcotrafficker. He was on his way to a gathering of indigenous leaders, and had in his baggage some ayahuasca, a ceremonial drug made from the yagé plant that, though legal in Colombia, has hallucinogenic properties. Taita Juan faces twenty years in U.S. prison unless prosecutors realize that he probably isn’t, in fact, a drug dealer. A group of U.S. activists has set up a website (www.freetaitajuan.org) in his defense.

Brazil is hosting a multinational Air Force exercise, CRUZEX, with the participation of planes and airmen from the United States, France, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. Both the United States and France are in the running for a potentially huge sale of fighter aircraft to Brazil. While CRUZEX would give both countries a chance to woo Brazilian purchasers by showing off their planes, a Twitter exchange with @bloggingsbyboz shows that “US is flying F-16s and trying to sell F-18s to Brazil. France flying their Rafale, pushing hard not to lose the deal.”

There are small signs of a possible thaw in U.S. relations with Bolivia; the two countries have not had ambassadors in each others’ capitals since Evo Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador in 2008 over his contacts with the political opposition. On a visit to Paraguay, Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela voiced his hope that relations might be restored soon; Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca responded receptively.

Two Peruvian coca eradicators were shot to death in two days last weekend in the remote Tocache region, where remnants of the Shining Path guerrillas continue to operate.

An investigation by a Dominican newspaper contends that 5,000 members of the Dominican Republic’s security forces went on trial, came under investigation, or were fired or punished for drug-related corruption during the past three years. A police major was caught this week attempting to ship 400 kilograms of cocaine to the United States.

The OAS is considering a worsening border dispute over territory along the San Juan River between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The problems began a few weeks ago, when Nicaragua began dredging a section of the river and stationed soldiers in disputed territory. The Economist lays responsibility for the episode on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who is seeking reelection in 2011 despite flagging approval ratings. The Nicaraguan daily El Nuevo Diario has a chronology of the dispute. Bloggings by Boz discusses the role that Google Maps may or may not have played.

In Uruguay, two referendum votes over the past several years failed to overturn an amnesty granted for human rights crimes committed during the country’s 1973-85 military dictatorship. The country’s Supreme Court, however, overturned the amnesty with a single ruling in October. Now Miguel Dalmao is the first active-duty general to be arrested and to face trial for a human rights violation.