WASHINGTON
Ahead of President Barack Obama’s trip to Mexico and Costa Rica, experts here are expecting that security will take a back seat to issues of economic cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico.
A group of business executives, civil society leaders, policy experts and former government officials from Mexico and the United States are recommending that the two countries expand cooperative law-enforcement efforts along the border.
"We will not stop fighting until there is justice for our children," says Araceli Rodríguez, the mother of a young federal police agent in Mexico who disappeared along with seven other people in the western state of Michoacán on Nov. 16, 2009.
The electoral and political stars are aligning in ways that offer the United States and Mexico major opportunities to substantially deepen their cooperation, particularly on trade, energy, and immigration, according to a report released here Wednesday by a special commission of the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD).
The research wing of the U.S. Congress is warning that three decades of “historically unprecedented” build-up in the number of prisoners incarcerated in the United States have led to a level of overcrowding that is now “taking a toll on the infrastructure” of the federal prison system.
Since the U.S. states of Colorado and Washington fully legalised marijuana via ballot initiatives in the November 2012 elections, efforts to medicalise, decriminalise, or legalise marijuana at the state level are sprouting up like so many hemp stalks on a sunny day.
Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala face the need to modify their approach to the fight against drug trafficking and are urging the world to do the same. But Mexico and Colombia’s willingness to make the necessary changes is unclear.
Following two groundbreaking rulings in recent days by the Supreme Court of Mexico, rights campaigners here on Thursday expressed optimism that widely criticised military legal jurisdiction over cases of human rights violations in Mexico’s anti-drugs fight could soon be overturned.
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers", a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico has told Al Jazeera, instead "they try to manage the drug trade".
A rise in drug trafficking in Honduras has resulted in a sharp increase in violence, leading some to question the United States' influence in the country.
"You don’t close down a bank by arresting the tellers." That phrase, from Argentine expert Edgardo Buscaglia, illustrates the challenge of the fight against money coming from illegal activities in Mexico.
Emma Veleta and Toribio Muñoz were married 40 years ago and had seven children, four boys and three girls. They lived in the town of Anáhuac, 100 km from the capital of the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua. But on Jun. 19, 2011, as they were celebrating Father’s Day, tragedy struck.
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