Every new government generates expectations, and they are larger when the topics are most sensitive for the population.
For the new president of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, her experience as Justice and Security minister increases hope in her government to revert growing insecurity in the country.
As her rival candidates, Chinchilla’s proposals were headed by the security topic, and include placing experienced people in key security roles.
Brazil gave Guatemala a 12-year loan for the purchase of six Super Tucano Embraer aircraft and radars from Taiwan.
The Brazilian Export Bank confirmed the loan during the Brazilian President’s visit to Guatemala.
The credit will be applied toward the purchase of an aerial surveillance system and aerial interception in which the fighters are linked to a radar and satellite information system to help combat drug trafficking.
In the small Central American economies, the effects of the intrusion of drug money would be devastating.
Although there are increasing rumors of money laundering from the sale of drugs in the Central American financial system, the phenomenon is far from having the magnitude that it has in Mexico and Colombia. However, the pressure that is being exerted in these countries against drug trafficking activities is forcing criminals to look to other countries in the region, searching for lesser repression. Central American countries are, for various reasons, including the weakness of their police forces, the most likely for this undesirable migration.
Life in Mexico is becoming uncomfortable for drug traffickers who find it easy to install themselves and continue their operations in Costa Rica.
According to the Costa Rican Drug Institute (ICD), the confiscation of cocaine rose from 3 thousand tons in 2002 to more than 32 thousand tons in 2007, and this does not appear to be due to increased efficiency of the authorities responsible for traffic enforcement, but merely that Costa Rica has become the passage route by air, sea and land for the drug to United States. It is estimated that the relationship between drugs captured and the total traffic through the country is 1:10.
Uribe insists on building the road through the Darien Gap, meeting with old reluctance from Panama.
It is only 108 kilometers of road that are missing so that the Americas can be traveled by land from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but there are two arguments for refusing construction. One is that this is one of the few quasi-virgin regions left in the world, and it is feared that the inevitable progress that the road would bring would harm the environment and biodiversity, in addition to threatening aboriginal cultures.
The US Navy is going to reactivate its Latin American command, the Fourth Fleet, for the first time since 1950.
The Fourth Fleet was deactivated in the wake of the second world war, but as of July 1 the US Navy will once again have a high-level command specifically charged with supervision of its units in Latin America and the Caribbean.