Soldiers re-occupy Mexico’s Hot Land

MEXICO CITY — Villagers in Mexico’s troubled western state of Michoacan lined the highways this week to cheer the arrival of soldiers sent by President Enrique Peña Nieto to reoccupy their towns. But the scenes have underscored the seeming intractability of the country’s security problems. Read full article >>

Jorge Rafael Videla, ruthless Argentine junta leader, dies at 87

Jorge Rafael Videla, the remorseless Argentine army commander who came to power in a coup that launched the most barbaric period of the country’s modern history, including thousands of extrajudicial killings and kidnappings, died May 17 at a prison near Buenos Aires. He was 87. Read full article >>

Maligned dollar flourishes in Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela — The once-almighty U.S. dollar has lost its luster in some corners of the world.But there’s one outpost where greenbacks have never been stronger: in socialist, anti-imperialist Venezuela, whose government rails against American-style capitalism as the bane of humanity. The dollar is not just holding steady here — it is flourishing like nowhere else, the byproduct of the f

Uruguay’s Mujica talks up Brazil ties

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — It is clear where Jose Mujica’s priorities lie. And they are not across the River Plate.After a spot of morning work on his tractor, the maverick Uruguayan president dismisses Argentina as “very, very, very closed in on itself, very 1960s-ish.” The former leftist guerrilla then lauds his northern neighbor, Brazil, for “knowing what it wants and going for it.” Read full

Colombian rebels recruit child fighters even as they negotiate to end conflict

CALI, Colombia — Colombia’s largest rebel organization has stepped up the recruitment of children to boost its weakened fighting units even as it talks peace with the government, according to child welfare workers, officials and community leaders. Read full article >>

In Mexico, restrictions on U.S. agents signal drug war shift

MEXICO CITY — The recent changes ordered by new President Enrique Peña Nieto to Mexico’s anti-narcotics partnership with the United States have produced markedly different reactions here and in Washington, underscoring what appear to be diverging perceptions of the drug war’s goals and the costs of fighting it. Read full article >>

Venezuelan president, accused of electoral fraud at home, finds backing abroad

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s embattled new president, Nicolás Maduro, worked hard this week to strengthen diplomatic ties with neighbors, winning much-needed support from some of the continent’s biggest democracies as he faced accusations at home that his government stole April’s presidential election. Read full article >>

To power Mexico forward, Peña Nieto looks to energy reform

MEXICO CITY — It has been 75 years since President Lázaro ­Cárdenas seized the country’s ­foreign-dominated petroleum industry and placed every drop of oil under the everlasting domain of the Mexican people. Read full article >>

Obama wraps up Latin American trip, reaffirms hopes for immigration reform

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — President Obama on Saturday completed a three-day visit to Mexico and Costa Rica and now returns to Washington with hopes of finishing what could become the biggest accomplishment of his second term: an overhaul of immigration laws. Read full article >>

Obama’s trip to Mexico hints at new balance of power

MEXICO CITY — For generations, Mexico has been widely seen in the United States as a Third World neighbor, a source of cheap labor, illegal immigration and drugs.But now, Mexico’s growing economic might is transforming relations between the two countries, foreshadowing a new balance of power that was hinted at in President Obama’s visit to the region Thursday and Friday. Read full article >>

Venezuela’s president orders arrest of American filmmaker

CARACAS, Venezuela – Facing an invigorated opposition and mounting demands for a recount, President Nicolas Maduro’s week-old government on Friday stepped up accusations that its political adversaries are plotting to destabilize the country. Read full article >>

Nicolas Maduro is sworn in as Venezuelan president after disputed vote

CARACAS, Venezuela — Nicolas Maduro was sworn in Friday as president after a disputed presidential election that has sharply divided the country between Venezuelans who want to continue the socialist system begun by his charismatic predecessor, Hugo Chavez, and those who contend that the ruling party won through a fraudulent vote. Read full article >>

Venezuelans are polarized in post-election crisis

CARACAS, Venezuela — People have spit on each other in the meat section, and one woman had to be stopped from throwing a soft drink at another in the checkout line.Grocery store owner Jose Duarte finally had enough when a customer berated a shopper in military uniform for serving the socialist government, which on Friday is inaugurating interim leader Nicolas Maduro as president while his adv

Venezuelan government blames losing presidential candidate for deadly violence

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s socialist government, stung by nationwide protests against interim leader Nicolas Maduro’s razor-thin win in Sunday’s presidential election, on Tuesday blamed opposition leader Henrique Capriles for the disturbances and for violence that officials say has left at least seven people dead. Read full article >>

Venezuela government defends election result, backtracks on recount pledge

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s government on Monday defended a presidential election that authorities said gave interim leader Nicolas Maduro a six-year term, backtracking on a pledge he had made to permit an audit of ballots demanded by the opposition after the razor-thin victory. Read full article >>

Nicolas Maduro narrowly wins presidential election in Venezuela

CARACAS, Venezuela —Calling himself the “Son of Chavez,” Nicolas Maduro, the interim president, won a slim victory after a brief but nasty presidential campaign in which he had pledged to complete the socialist transformation of this oil-rich nation that began under the man he served loyally for 20 years, President Hugo Chavez. Read full article >>

With sale, Venezuela’s last critical news outlet may be neutralized

CARACAS, Venezuela — In his 14-year-rule, President Hugo Chavez zeroed in on the country’s four major private television news outlets, shutting down one and co-opting two others to neutralize critical coverage of his self-styled revolutionary government. Read full article >>

In Mexico, an upsurge of vigilantism

TIERRA COLORADA, Mexico — Three months ago, Pedro Garibo was a farmer tilling the wild and arid lands of Mexico’s Guerrero state. Today, he is a vigilante standing at an improvised roadblock on a section of the old Mexico City-to-Acapulco highway with a semiautomatic rifle across his chest. Read full article >>

Brazil grapples with dysfunctional Congress

SAO PAULO, Brazil — The YouTube video of Marcos Feliciano, a Brazilian evangelical pastor and federal congressman, would be funny were it not so tragic. In it, the preacher derides a member of his congregation for giving him a credit card without the PIN number during collection time. Read full article >>

Argentina, Iran to investigate ’94 bombing of Jewish center

BUENOS AIRES — She was just 21, visiting the city’s main Jewish community center with her mother, when a suicide bomber detonated a rental van loaded with explosives.Paola Czyzewski and 84 others were killed in the July 18, 1994, bombing, which was considered the bloodiest attack against Jews since World War II. Although Iran was widely believed to be responsible for the attack, Argentina bun

Maids’ win impinges on Brazil’s economy

SAO PAULO — Josimayra Ayres is one of the luckier members of Sao Paulo’s army of domestic workers.While many live in suffocating conditions at their employers’ houses, she works set hours and lives at her own home with her husband. Read full article >>

Brazilian chief uses technology to help save his tribe and curb deforestation

SEVENTH OF SEPTEMBER RESERVE, Brazil — As a small boy in the early ’80s, Almir Surui hunted monkeys with a bow and arrow, wore a loincloth and struggled with Brazil’s official language, Portuguese. At 38, he is the tech-savvy, ­university-educated chief of the Paiter Surui, or “the real people,” of this western corner of Brazil. Read full article >>

In Pope Francis, other faiths see a friend

Nearly every July 18, the bitter anniversary of the 1994 truck bombing that ripped apart a Jewish community here, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio would arrive to pay tribute at a memorial to the 85 victims. Read full article >>

Pope Francis was often quiet on Argentine sex abuse cases as archbishop

HURLINGHAM, Argentina — Father Julio Cesar Grassi was a celebrity in the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires. The young, dynamic, ­media-savvy priest networked with wealthy Argentines to fund an array of schools, orphanages and job training programs for poor and abandoned youths, winning praise from Argentine politicians and his superior, Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Read full article >>

Notable death: Jose Alfredo Martinez de Hoz, former Argentine economy minister

Jose Alfredo Martinez de Hoz, Argentina’s former economy minister, died Saturday in Buenos Aires while awaiting sentencing for human rights abuses during the military dictatorship. He was 87.The exact cause of death was not immediately announced, according to the state news agency Telam. Read full article >>

Bergoglio tested by Argentine leaders

While Jorge Mario Bergoglio served a higher authority as a Catholic shepherd in this cosmopolitan capital, he was also tested by more earthly powers: Argentine governments.With the historic rise of an Argentine to the throne of St. Peter, this nation has erupted in celebration and debate, with one of its own becoming the first Latin American pope. The story of his relationship with his home g

Yoani Sanchez, dissident Cuban blogger behind ‘Generation Y,’ goes on tour

CARACAS, Venezuela — Yoani Sanchez, the celebrated Cuban dissident blogger, says she still has to steel her nerves when she prepares to write yet another vignette about the boredom, grim despair and hardship that mark life in Communist Cuba. Read full article >>

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles announces he will run for president

CARACAS, Venezuela —Henrique Capriles, a young governor who ran a spirited but unsuccessful effort to unseat President Hugo Chavez in an October election, said Sunday that he will run against the late president’s handpicked successor in a snap vote that will determine the future of the late leader’s self-styled socialist revolution. Read full article >>

Leaders of Latin America’s new left gather to say farewell to Hugo Chavez

With her friend President Hugo Chavez dead, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner came to Venezuela dressed in black and ready to mourn.Jose “Pepe” Mujica, a former rebel turned president of Uruguay, flew at once from the other side of the continent. Evo Morales, the Aymara Indian president of Bolivia, choked up as he spoke of “being very hurt” by Chavez’s passing as he stood jus

A day after his death, Venezuela pays homage to Hugo Chavez

CARACAS, Venezuela — A vast crowd of red-clad Venezuelans filled the streets of the capital Wednesday to mourn President Hugo Chavez, as governments across Latin America began looking ahead to an election that will determine his successor and the direction of the South American energy giant. Read full article >>