- The news story of the week last week was certainly WikiLeaks. The Washington Post's Juan Forero offers a quick summary of many of the Latin America-related cables here. Or you can find links to extended coverage of the leaked cables on Just the Facts. One cable about ...
- To start the week, on November 29 a convoy of gunmen, reportedly working for drug traffickers, shot and killed female police chief Hermila Garcia Quiñones on her way to work in the northern Mexican town of Meoqui. Her death is the most recent example of the shared goal amongst drug cartels to intimidate officials and disrupt the rule of law.
- The Mexican army arrested 14 year old drug hitman ...
Greetings from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where the Ninth bi-annual Conference of Ministers of Defense of the Americas has just ended. It was four days of discussions and meetings between defense delegations from every country in the region except Cuba and Honduras, the two countries currently suspended from the Organization of American States.
The main issues discussed were
- Ways to increase transparency over defense expenditures in a region where defense budgets and arms purchases have been growing; and
- Ways to ...
The following is an overview of the most recent violence in Colombia:
• Colombian authorities have reported that shortly after 2:00 am on November 10th, guerrilla forces began an offensive against the town of El Tambo in Cauca, leaving a police officer injured and over 80 buildings damaged. Sources have indicated that the rebel offensive included an attempted robbery of the Agrarian Bank: the official police report negates this, however. The mayor of El Tambo, Hugo Ferney Muñoz, has stated that the reason behind the attack of the town in unclear- it...
Below is a list of private companies contracted by the U.S. State and Defense Departments in 2009 to carry out activities related to U.S. military and police aid to Colombia. The source is an annual report (4.78MB PDF file) required by section 694(b) of the 2003 Foreign Relations Authorization Act.
The report is worth a read. Colombia is the only country in the world for which Congress requires the U.S. government to list its military and police assistance...
I'm very happy to present a report that George Withers, Lucila Santos and I have been working on since the summer. "Preach What You Practice" looks at how the United States separates military and police roles at home, and questions why U.S. aid programs so frequently encourage a completely different model in the Americas.
"Preach What You Practice" is available as a...