Posts tagged #Crime

Settling Accounts: Latin American rage reaches the US

By Rodrigo Acuña

The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

20 August 2008

Despite the best spin on the benefits of neoliberal accords such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by sections of the U.S. press, large numbers of Mexicans and Latin Americans have been illegally heading north due to poor employment opportunities at home.

In 2004, after ten years of the NAFTA agreement, open unemployment in Mexico "reached an all-time high" according to one expert, while "there are more illegal immigrants pouring into the United States than ever."

A Narco-Terrorist State

By Rodrigo Acuña

New Matilda

18 April 2007

A recent article by Paul Richter and Greg Miller in the Los Angeles Times has again brought international attention on Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez. At the centre of the LA Times article is a leaked report from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which claims that Colombian army chief General Mario Montoya and a paramilitary group carried out an operation against Marxist rebels in 2002, that left 14 people dead and ‘dozens more disappeared in its aftermath’.

Given the nature of the activities of paramilitary groups in Colombia and Uribe’s ‘long and close association’ with Montoya, the revelation adds to a scandal which, Richter and Miller say, ‘already has implicated the country’s former Foreign Minister, at least one State Governor, legislators and the head of the national police’.