Opposition supporter killed in Venezuela as presidential campaigns close

A campaign coordinator for the opposition candidate in Venezuela's 14 April presidential elections was kidnapped on 8 April and later found dead, while masked men on motorbikes attacked opposition supporters after an event on 10 April, injuring 14, media reported. There was to be no more campaigning or publicity after 11 April. Juan Aranda was a coordinator for the liberal candidate Henrique Capriles Radonsky in Pedro María Ureña in the eastern state of Táchira. The killing was being investigated, although the opposition's local campaign chief Alejandro García said he suspected it was politically motivated. Relatives declared that Aranda and colleagues had earlier crossed a group of government supporters while campaigning locally but no incident had occurred, Colombia's Caracol radio reported on 10 April, citing Venezuela's El Universal. The daily separately reported an attack on opposition supporters after a campaign gathering in the nothern district of Mérida on 10 April. Masked men riding bikes began pushing and beating Capriles supporters as they left a gathering, and police were said to have done nothing, Europa Press and El Universal reported. One witness of the attack was the Archbishop of Mérida Baltazar Porras Cardozo, who observed that police let him know they had been ordered not to intervene against those "wearing red." Capriles told the BBC in Caracas on 10 April that - in spite of a contrary impression among observers - he believed he could win the presidency on 14 April as he was now a "national leader" competing against "a very bad candidate," the Acting President Nicolás Maduro. Capriles lost to Hugo Chávez in the elections of October 2012, but he told the BBC he won 45 per cent of votes then "with less than this force," presumably referring to his current support. He suggested the government could not garner more than six million votes without Chávez, while "my take-off point is seven million votes." Should he win, he said, he would seek to work with, not confront, state institutions he said were currently run by "partial" figures and government appointees. He deplored the "fear" he said government propaganda was sowing, as it sought to "make many people believe they will lose something if Capriles wins. They will lose nothing."

Murders said increased in Medellín in 2013, two gangsters caught

State coroners counted 295 homicides in Medellín, Colombia, in the first three months of 2013, that is 40 cases or 15,7 per cent more than for the same period in 2012. The city in north-western Colombia was the setting of police raids and increased police presence in late March against a surge in violence, which authorities said more than halved crime within days. A report issued by the country's Legal Medicine authority counted 90 homicides in the city in January 2013, 101 in February and 104 in March, Caracol radio reported on 8 April. Its report cited the 13-San Javier and Candelaria "communes" as the most violent neighbourhoods respectively with 50 and 45 killings for the period cited. In total it counted 5,231 violent deaths in Medellín from 2010 to the end of March 2013. The security affairs chief for the Medellín city government, Arnulfo Serna Giraldo, commented on 8 April that there were 17 homicides in Medellín in the first week of April, three fewer than for the same period in 2012, adding that he observed a downward tendency in homicides that month. "The projection has diminished. The aim was to end the year with a 52-per-cent reduction but we are at 47 per cent if the trend continues," Medellín's El Mundo reported on 8 April. Recent police operations he said had focused most on the comuna San Javier or 13. "Our greatest concern is to reduce homicides in the city and we shall work so these diminish by the end of the year," he said. Authorities separately reported the capture on or before 6 April of two suspected members of the Rastrojos gang in the departments of Valle de Cauca and Caldas in western and central Colombia, the broadcaster Caracol reported. The detained were identified as a deputy-head of the Rastrojos in the Valle de Cauca, a man dubbed el Choricito (Little sausage) caught in the district of Viterbo, and a gang "nurse" dubbed Alex caught in Trujillo in Caldas. El Choricito was thought to be in charge of drug trafficking in the northern part of Valle de Cauca, but also ordered "assassinations, extortions, kidnappings and disappearances," Caracol reported, citing the findings of a special gangs court.

Colombian soldiers, guerrillas killed in fighting

Three Colombian soldiers died and three were injured on 6 or 7 April in gun battles with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the southern department of Caquetá. Fighting was said continuing in the district of Milán on 7 April with guerrillas of fronts 15 and 49 of the FARC's Southern Block, RCN La Radio reported. The broadcaster Caracol described Milán is one of the districts of southern Colombian with the highest concentration of FARC fighters. In northern Colombia the army shot dead four FARC fighters including a local commander, during anti-drugs operations on 7 April near Panama's frontier, Europa Press reported, citing El Tiempo. The casualties included the deputy-head of Front 57 - James or el Chacal - and a veteran telecommunications operator dubbed Verónica; troops and police also detained two suspected guerrillas in the operations in the Darién section of the Chocó department, and confiscated arms, ammunition and equipment. The army considers Front 57 to be mainly engaged in arms and drug trafficking for the FARC, the agency reported. The FARC separately named in a communiqué four new members of their team negotiating a possible peace with Colombian representatives in Cuba. These were the head of the Western Block Jorge Torres Victoria or Pablo Catatumbo, and three guerrillas named or dubbed Freddy González, Lucas Carvajal and Victoria Sandino Palmera. They were allowed to fly out of Colombia with a suspension on 6 April of army operations in the southern Cauca department and perhaps elsewhere. Colombian media earlier named another possible addition to the FARC team, namely the head of the Southern Block - a guerrilla dubbed Fabián Ramírez - though this was yet to be confirmed, Europa Press reported on 6 April.

Coroners see murders halved in a year in El Salvador

State coroners counted 545 homicides in El Salvador in the first three months of 2013, 49.9 per cent fewer than the 1,078 registered for the same period in 2012. This was another figure corroborating government officials' assertions that the truce and disarmament process the state has begun with street gangs has considerably reduced crime. The figure given by the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML) was lower than those of the police, its head José Miguel Fortín Magaña said, adding that this was likely for uncertainties in identifying certain body remains, El Salvador's El Mundo reported on 5 April. An IML report indicated that the San Salvador department had the most murders in the first quarter of 2013 with 151, followed by La Paz on the Pacific coast with 49, while firearms caused 343 or 62.9 per cent of the deaths. Almost 70 per cent of victims were in the 15-39 age group, coroners found. The coroners' report indicated that the most violent month in the two periods was January 2012 with 413 killings, followed by February 2012 with 402; the gangs' ceasefire began in March 2012, giving a figure of 263 killings for that months. On 5 April one of the mediators in the truce, the army Bishop Fabio Colindres urged the gangs to stop their extortion activities and maintain their pledge to abandon crime. He was speaking at an event to include the district of San Vicente north of the capital among several municipalities declared as free of violent crime. A day before a spokesman for one of the main gangs MS (Mara Salvatrucha) said "conditions need be generated" to allow the gangs to consider ending extortion, which is a financing mechanism, El Mundo reported. The Security and Justice Ministry reportedly observed a 17 per cent fall over 2012-13 in extortions, described as modest compared to killings. There were 216 complaints to police about extortion in the first quarter of 2013, compared to 262 in the same period in 2012, the daily cited the Ministry as stating. This apparently excluded extortions that went unreported.

Suspected gang chief caught in Guatemala

Guatemalan police and state prosecutors detained on 3 April a suspect identified as the chief in Guatemala of the Mara Salvatrucha - the local branch of one of Central America's main criminal gangs - following a joint operation in Iztapa on the Pacific Coast, Europa Press reported citing Guatemalan media. Marco Antonio Sian Chávez - el Bufón - was one of three suspected gang chiefs detained in 30 operations against gangs around the country that day. Police also caught a suspected gunman of the Maras with Sian Chávez - a 21-year-old dubbed el Enano. The gang leader was sought for his suspected role in at least four killings, of a rival and three alleged police informants, Prensa Libre reported on 4 April. The state attributes most extortions in the country to the two main gangs, M-18 and Mara Salvatrucha.

FARC to shuffle negotiators in Cuba, move closer to ELN rebels

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), engaged in talks with representatives of the Colombian state to end decades of civil conflict, were reportedly to envisage changing some of their negotiators in Cuba, in part to show that all factions of the FARC supported the peace process, El Colombiano reported on 5 April.  Details of changes were not given but they may include a member of their Secretariat and head of the FARC's Western Block joining the negotiating team. Rotations were envisaged from the start of talks, the daily cited the Senator Roy Barreras Montealegre as saying, but the move was said also to be in response to a letter to negotiators by President Juan Manuel Santos who asked the FARC to clarify whether or not their Southern and Western Blocks were backing talks. The possible new participant, the guerrilla dubbed Pablo Catatumbo is commander of such units as the Sixth Front and the Jacobo Arenas Mobile Column, particularly active in fighting the army the southern departments of Cauca and Valle de Cauca; he joined the FARC in the late 1980s and its Secretariat in 2008, El Colombiano reported. The daily separately reported on 4 April that the FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN) - the other, smaller communist guerrilla force - declared in a joint communiqué dated 30 March their intention to join forces to "fortify the Revolutionary Popular Block" and "confront with decision the great oligopolies, transnational capital and imperialism." They did not specify if this meant collaborating to bomb energy-sector installations or kidnap contract workers, a practice of both armies, although mining and related activities in eastern Colombia and specifically the department of Arauca were apparently cited as as a "threat against the people." The communiqué stated that the rebels had also "evaluated the post-conflict" situation when some at least in Colombia, hope the guerrillas will enter public life as politicians.

FARC guerrillas launch deadly attacks in Colombia

Two attacks attributed to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on 4 and 5 April killed three soldiers and three civilians and injured 11, while Caracol radio reported continued fighting on 5 April between soldiers and the FARC's Sixth Front around the Corinto district, media reported. Early that day the suspected FARC guerrillas launched a bomb attack on telecommunication installations outside the town of Corinto early on 5 April, killing three soldiers and injuring seven, El Espectador reported, citing comments by the head of army's Task Apollo Force active in the zone, General Jorge Jerez. The day before the FARC fired explosives onto the locality of Guatemala in the district of Miranda, in northern Cauca, killing three including "two children" and injuring four, Caracol radio reported on 4 April. In that attack the FARC began "indiscriminately launching improvised explosive artefacts against houses," El Espectador reported locals as saying. Also on 4 April, a policeman was injured when suspected guerrillas fired on a police station in the district of San Calixto, in the Norte de Santander department, northern Colombia. The attack was attributed to Front 33 of the FARC, the broadcaster Caracol reported.

Foreign politicians drawn into Venezuelan polls, minister calls Paraguay's leader scum

The candidates in Venezuela's 14 April presidential elections have begun to use some blunt talk that may yet become ruder even than words traded in the 2012 campaign between Henrique Capriles and Hugo Chávez. Rudeness was also evident in Venezuelan reactions to foreign politicians' recent comments about Venezuela and its leaders. On 4 April Venezuela's Foreign Minister said he was "obliged to respond" to comments made about Chávez by Paraguay's President Federico Franco, qualifying Franco as "human and political scum." Speaking on TeleSur, Jaua contrasted the late president's "moral and human stature" with "the human and political scum President Franco signifies," but regretted that Franco "is not the last human and political scum who will be able to offend and attack the memory of that historical giant," Europa Press reported. The two states have minimal ties, and Franco recently called Chávez's death a miracle. Another conservative critic of Venezuela was the former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who has several times accused Venezuela of backing Colombia's two communist guerrilla armies. He wrote on the website Twitter on 30 March that Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro had "raised the tone" by calling his opponents the "heirs of Adolf Hitler" and there was "no limit" to his cynicism; Maduro replied on Uribe's account, asking him if he should have called them "your heirs." Uribe then wrote that Maduro's "partners" - Colombia's communist FARC guerrillas - chain "hostages to wire fences like Hitler," Bogotá's Radio Santa Fe reported on 31 March. Foreign Minister Jaua praised Maduro's response to the "genocidal" Uribe, the website Noticia al Dia reported. Brazil's former president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva separately upset the Venezuelan opposition after stating support  for Maduro on 3 April. Lula told a Uruguayan daily that while not as charismatic as Chávez, Maduro was "an extraordinary human being...who I think is totally prepared" to govern as his predecessor, Globovisión reported. "I think he will win the elections and will govern," Lula said. The Venezuelan parliamentarian Maria Corina Machado called his "rude intervention" the next day "grotesque and unacceptable," and said Lula had become Maduro's "salesman" and "electoral agent." Machado is the foreign affairs spokeswoman on the Capriles election team. His comments Machado said, did not so much befit a former statesman as "a merchant." She said "someone who is unaware of the reality of our country and ignores the problems Venezuelans have to deal with every day has no right to state opinions. We wonder if Maduro has spoken to Lula of the dead taken to the morgues every day, the product of [crime] violence, under the complicit gaze of this government," Globovisión reported on 4 April. Venezuela's opposition has repeatedly accused the regime of neglecting the problem of crime.

Venezuelan opposition fears regime allies may "sabotage" vote machines

A member of the opposition election team in Venezuela claimed on 3 April that one or perhaps more members of the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) backing Acting President Nicolás Maduro's presidential election on 14 April, could "sabotage" vote machines for having an access code, though apparently results could not be changed with that code. This was apparently the "grave" matter the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles had earlier said he would divulge. Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, coordinator of the Simón Bolivar Commando (Comando Simón Bolívar) backing Capriles said opposition technicians noted during an inspection on 30 March that a technician of the PSUV was "able to activate a voting machine as he was in possession of the code" needed to start or run the system, Globovisión reported. "This key cannot be in the hands of political organizations," he told a press conference in Caracas, adding however that the code did not allow its holder to access voters' identities or change results. It could "affect the functioning of the machines...it can sabotage the equipment and make it defective," he said. The head of the National Electoral Council (CNE) Sandra Oblitas replied on state television on 4 April that the election process in Venezuela was "absolutely inviolable, invulnerable and incorruptible," and warned "one must be cautious about observations made and their tone...those who made these observations were obliged to recognize the system's security," the official AVN news agency reported. She said technicians of the political parties checked the system "daily." It was not immediately clear if international observers would be watching the elections. On 3 April the head of the Organization of American States (OEA) José Miguel Insulza said the Venezuelan government had "unfortunately" not invited the OEA as observers. He told Spain's EFE in Madrid that while the quality of elections had improved in Latin America, Venezuela was among cases where the state apparatus was used to favour "a particular candidate." "The problem will not be on voting day...my concern is not over fraud if one may use that word, the concern is that a government and the opposition are not talking. There is no political dialogue" he said, or "relationship between political forces."

Over 50 reported killed, found dead in Mexico in days

Every day in Mexico yields a steady stream of violent deaths - many related to drugs and cartels - that make corresponding figures in other Latin American countries seem paltry or risible. At least 51 were reported as killed or found dead from late 28 March to 2 April. The review Proceso counted at least 14 killings around the country on or just before 29 March; victims included five shot to death that day in a dispute between unspecified individuals gathered in a house in the north-western district of Sinaloa de Leyva, Proceso reported. At least 13 were killed on 30 March: these included a policeman who was among five shot dead in the state of Morelos, a decapitated body found in the northern frontier city of Juárez, and two men executed and left hanging from a bridge in Atizapán de Zaragoza in central Mexico, Proceso reported. It reported separately the kidnapping of five men described as in their 20s, while driving before dawn on 30 March in the west-coast state of Guerrero. An unnamed individual "who apparently escaped" from the incident was cited as saying that gunmen forced the five into three cars on a road between Acapulco and Zihuatanejo, in the district of Atoyac de Álvarez, Proceso reported. Five were shot dead and 16 injured on 31 March in attacks on two bars in the western city of Guadalajara, and nine dismembered bodies were found at the back of a van outside the north-eastern city of Victoria, Proceso reported. The review observed that a surge in violence in Ciudad Victoria was attributed to an intensifying turf war between the Gulf and Zetas cartels. Five presumed members of a family were murdered in a village outside the north-western resort of Mazatlán in Sinaloa early on 2 April, Milenio reported. They were found in the village of Chilacayota, three of them in a house "with torture marks," state prosecutors were cited as saying. These may have been among the 10 Proceso counted as killed on 2 April, as it stated six of them were killed in the state of Sinaloa. In the eastern state of Veracruz, authorities publicly presented on 2 April 10 municipal policemen detained at an unspecified date when they were caught selling drugs. State police and marines caught the policemen of the district of Coatepec selling synthetic drugs by a road outside the state capital Xalapa; firearms and "497 doses of green weed, apparently marijuana" were taken from their cars, Milenio reported on 3 April. The policemen confessed to complementing their policing work with drug dealing, while one admitted collaborating with an unspecified gang or cartel, Proceso reported.

Police counted 44 killings in El Salvador over Easter

El Salvador's National Civil Police (Policía Nacional Civil) counted 44 homicides around El Salvador between 23 and 31 March, which it stated was nine fewer than in the same period in 2012, La Prensa Gráfica reported on 2 April. The figures included deaths in drunken brawls and from gang activities. A deputy-head of the Police Mauricio Ramírez Landaverde reportedly attributed eight of the killings to drunken incidents, while the deputy-police chief for Public Security Howard Cotto said 26 were for "social violence...we have fully established that 12 of the 44 homicides, that is 27 per cent, were for fights between gangs." The police stated that the most violent departments for the period were San Salvador with 14 homicides, La Libertad, north west of San Salvador with six homicides, and Sonsonate on the Pacific coast with six. It was not immediately clear if the total figure included two women the daily reported as killed in the late hours of 31 March in the north-western district of Coatepeque. At least two other persons were reported killed around the country following the Easter period, including a man reported as kidnapped on 1 April, La Prensa Gráfica reported on 3 April. He was found shot dead on 2 April in Apopa north of the capital, one of the districts earlier declared as free of violent crime as part of an ongoing process to disarm the country's gangs. Officials maintain the truce has considerably reduced crime. On 2 April the country's Minister of Justice David Munguía Payés said on television that officials and personalities involved in the truce would soon tour Washington DC as guests of the Organization of American States, to inform politicians, think tanks and members of the Salvadorean community there about of the truce but also seek funding for the truce, which involves the social reintegration of criminals. The delegation would include Munguía, truce mediators and police officials, the Ministry website and La Prensa Gráfica reported on 3 April.

Youngsters gunned down in Medellín

Four young men including a 15-year-old were reported shot to death near a football pitch in Medellín, north-western Colombia, late on 1 April, though authorities were not yet sure why, the Medellín paper El Colombiano reported on 3 April. Unnamed witnesses reportedly told police that gunmen arrived and asked the men if they were selling drugs, and shot them with "automatic weapons" when given a negative response. A security official reportedly said the boys did not have criminal records but were reputed to have bought drugs at the spot. A policeman was separately shot dead in the district of Andes south of Medellín on 2 April when suspects sought to prevent policemen searching a property for arms, El Colombiano reported. A father and two sons were arrested over the shooting. Police also arrested at an unspecified date in the district of Necoclí on Colombia's north-western coast, a man identified as one of the regional bosses of the criminal gang Los Rastrojos. The suspect, dubbed el Pantera, was thought to be a head of the Rastrojos in the southern department of Nariño and to have fled to Necoclí from the district of Barbacoas in Nariño, El Colombiano reported on 3 April. Police suspected that the detainee was, while in hiding, busy networking with local criminals, El Colombiano observed.

Venezuelan leader says Hugo Chávez blessed him through a bird

In what is perhaps a modern, socialist, equivalent of an apotheosis, Venezuela's President and presidential candidate Nicolás Maduro has not shirked from linking his deceased predecessor to celestial affairs, first comparing his followers' grief for the death of Hugo Chávez to that of the Apostles for Christ, and now saying Chávez blessed him through "a tiny little bird" hovering over him on 1 or 2 April. This followed from a short cartoon he had placed on the Internet showing Chávez, who died of cancer in March, flying to Heaven as a bird, CNN reported on 2 April. Maduro made the comments on 2 April while addressing a crowd in the western district of Barinas at the start of the campaign for the 14 April elections. He said "a little bird" flew into a chapel where he was praying alone in the nearby district of Sabanetas, and flew three times above him, which he interpreted as a blessing from Chávez ahead of the polls, El Nacional reported. It seems however that credulity is not what it used to be, as the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has accused him of lying several times in recent months. There were no immediate reports of his reacting to the claims although Capriles vowed on the website Twitter to shortly inform voters of an unspecified but "very grave" matter relating to the elections, Globovisión reported on 3 April. The candidates began moving around Venezuela as the short campaign period began; Capriles was in the eastern district of Maturín in Monagas on 2 April, although reported earlier as starting his campaign in Barinas where the presidential party was gathered. In Maturín he criticized again the regime's largesse with Venezuelan petrodollars, telling a crowd "you know how oil resources are given away...used to present ambulances and police patrol cars to other countries, and give them light bulbs. Is that because nothing is needed any more in any neighborhood of Monagas? I think a lot is missing," Globovisión reported on 2 April. Separately on 3 April, the conservative president of Paraguay - which cut ties with Venezuela in 2012 - said he considered Chávez's death "a miracle" for the harm he had done to Paraguay. Venezuela was one of several American countries to isolate Paraguay after parliament sacked its Leftist president, Fernando Lugo; Paraguay was notably excluded from regional trading blocks. Federico Franco Gómez told a business gathering at the Ritz hotel in Madrid that "for me it is a miracle Mr Chávez should have disappeared from the face of the earth...yes, because he greatly harmed my country...Paraguay is not a territory for Bolivarian ideas," Europa Press reported. He accused Chávez of complicity in killings and kidnappings for having given asylum to a small militant group, the Paraguayan People's Army (El Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo). Paraguay is to hold general elections in April 2013.

Venezuelan presidential aspirants set to begin race

Venezuela's opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonsky was to begin his campaign on 2 April, hoping a second time - and against the odds observers believe - to take the presidency on 14 April, this time from an Acting President and heir to the late Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro Moros. Capriles said on 29 March that he would begin campaigning in the state of Barinas south west of Caracas, where the presidential party also began its campaign on 30 March. Maduro spoke at a rally that day in the city of Barinas, a day after Capriles toured coastal districts of the state of Falcón where he was pictured waving at beach-goers from a boat in the district of Tucacas, Globovisión reported. He told the press that Venezuela needed a national government so people "who think differently can live better, so there are no blackouts like here" in Falcón. His campaign he said would be a "spiritual battle" against "lies, and fresh lies this time. Venezuela needs a government that works with the truth...there are two candidates here, the candidate of truth against the candidate of lies, and that is Nicolás." The Information Minister Ernesto Villegas termed the "Hate Commando's" decision to start campaigning in Barinas a "provocation," writing on the website Twitter on 29 March that Capriles was copying Maduro's earlier decision to campaign there and even his route, the state's AVN agency reported. Maduro told supporters in Barinas on 30 March that Capriles was a "little bourgeois who hates us and envies President Chávez," and keen to "start a campaign of violence" from Barinas. "I have proof of what they are planning, and they have decided to enact the first act of violence on Tuesday in Barinas. That is why the little bourgeois decided to come and provoke the people of Barinas and start an electoral campaign" with a "message of hate," El Nacional cited Maduro as saying. Capriles will have to overcome the use the government will make of lingering grief for Chávez, which Maduro compared on 30 March to the Apostles' grief for Jesus Christ when he died. Maduro also presented himself as the moral candidate opposed to the "anti values" bequeathed by capitalism, El Nacional and Globovisión reported. If young girls "prostitute themselves" in Venezuela he said, it was "because they kept giving us, for years and years, the culture of prostitution in...soap operas and television series" from the United States.

Almost 50 reported killed, dead around Mexico

Twelve at least were reported killed or found dead in presumed criminal incidents in Mexico on 25-26 March, including several teenagers and a political activist linked to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Gerardo Israel Facio Huerta, a leader of the Citizens' Networks (Redes Ciudadanas) grouping in the northern state of Durango, was said kidnapped at a roadside restaurant on 24 March and found floating in a canal in the city of Gómez Palacio the next day, Proceso reported on 26 March. Investigations indicated he was stabbed in the neck, Proceso reported. A hot-dog seller died in a hospital in the northern city of Monterrey on 27 March, two days after being shot by his food stand for refusing to pay money local gangsters had demanded, Proceso reported. Thirty-four-year old Enrique Ramírez Rosas had opened his stall a week before. Also on 27 March, unidentified individuals dumped seven rubbish bags containing human remains by a military base in the north-eastern city of Victoria in Tamaulipas; authorities were not yet certain how many bodies the bags contained, Proceso reported. The review reported no less than 10 violent deaths around the country for 26-27 March, and 10 through 27-28 March. A gunman separately shot dead seven people in a bar in the northern city of Chihuahua on the night of 28-29 March, Milenio reported. The daily Excelsior reported that the victims were said to have been shot by a masked man "apparently" wearing a police-type uniform. In the western state of Guerrerro, state prosecutors declared on 29 March that a clandestine grave found on 27 March in the district of Acapulco had "so far" yielded eight bodies, Proceso reported.

Colombian guerrilla chiefs reported killed

Venezuelan authorities reported the death at an unspecified date of a member of Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN), a man dubbed The Butcher - El Carnicero - possibly in fighting between ELN guerrillas over a missing drug shipment, the Colombian broadcaster Caracol reported on 27 March. The guerrilla, Hermes Contreras Sánchez, was reportedly killed in the state of Zulia near Colombia. He was sought by Interpol on a range of charges relating to drug trafficking, insurrection and terrorism; Colombian authorities linked him to attacks on civilian targets and infrastructures in the Norte de Santander department. Troops killed two other members of the ELN including a captain dubbed Homero or Omar, in undated fighting in the district of la Sierra in the south-western Cauca department, El Espectador reported on 29 March. Another guerrilla captain confirmed as dead was a fighter of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dubbed Arturo Rojas, killed in fighting in December 2012 but found only recently. Arturo Rojas was identified as a deputy-head of Front 63 of the FARC, and thought responsible for shooting dead four police and military hostages held by the FARC in November 2011, El Espectador reported on 28 March. Separately FARC negotiators issued a communiqué in Cuba, where talks are being held with the government, dismissing as "naive" the idea that the FARC would abandon arms without reforms to the Colombian polity. Colombia's chief negotiator stressed on one occasion at least in 2012 that peace talks were unrelated to the FARC's political and economic agenda. The FARC communiqué stated it was "not at all realistic" to suppose there would be a "stable peace" in Colombia without changes to the "economic model," Caracol reported on 27 March. The communiqué also indicated the FARC's reluctance to accept terms for ending the conflict that included imprisonment for FARC members involved in such activities as kidnapping, drug trafficking and extortion. Was it "naiveté or cynicism - perhaps both," the text asked, when "they tell us, an unconditional rendition of guerrillas, handover of arms, submission to [state] policies, all in exchange for two or three posts in Congress," or temporary positions for guerrilla chieftains as a "Work or Health minister...even a few years in jail for the insurgency's main leaders." Nevertheless the FARC expressed satisfaction at progress made so far in talks, in the same or another communiqué issued in Havana, Caracol reported on 26 March.

In days, 50 killed, found dead around Mexico

"At least" 18 were reported killed or found dead in presumed criminal incidents around Mexico on 24-25 March, these including five killed in a shootout between police and criminals in the north-western state of Sinaloa and an official of the state judiciary of Oaxaca, shot dead on 25 March as she emerged from a car. Victims also included three thought executed a month before, whose decomposing bodies were found on 25 March buried south of Chilpancingo in the western state of Guerrero, Proceso reported. On 22 March gunmen shot dead seven people including two Federal policemen in an eatery in Ciudad Altamirano in the western state of Guerrero, Proceso reported. The review observed that the targets of the attack may have been soldiers in civilian clothes eating in the restaurant that day, though reports did not clarify if any were among reported fatalities or the six injured of whom three were Federal policemen. The bodies of seven executed men were found on 23 March in Uruapan in the western of state of Michoacán. They were sitting in a row of plastic chairs placed at a crossroads, blindfolded and with hands tied, and later identified as window cleaners and farm workers, Milenio reported on 25 March. A deputy-governor of Michoacán asked media not to "magnify" what he termed an "isolated" incident related to drug trafficking, Proceso reported. Jesús Reyna García was cited as saying that while the state cannot assure the security of all Mexicans, people would not think ill of Michoacán - one of its more crime-ridden states - if the media did not highlight the incident, Proceso reported. Federal policemen killed five suspected gangsters in a shootout on 23 March in the district of Huatusco in Veracruz, responding to gunfire it was said, Proceso reported. In the south-central district of Xochitepec south of Cuernavaca, gunmen shot dead four men and a 15-year-old girl by a street stand. One of the victims was said to have run into a nearby building, but was followed and shot there, Proceso reported. The mayor of San Juan Mixtepec in Oaxaca and his bodyguard were gunned down while driving near that district early on 24 March, Proceso reported. Authorities' immediate "line of investigations" was not stated but Proceso observed the district had a recent history of land disputes with neighbouring Santo Domingo Yosoñama, which in one case led some 200 gunmen said to be from Santo Domingo, to have launched an assault on San Juan in January 2013. Other, isolated killings were reported around Mexico through 22-25 March, taking crime's presumed death toll to at least 50.

Armed residents warn will shoot criminals in Tabasco

The self-styled United People Against Crime (Pueblo Unido Contra la Delincuencia), one of several "self-defence" militias people have formed around Mexico to confront crime, reportedly claimed responsibility for shooting dead five suspected drug dealers on 21 March, and vowed to continue to "cleanse" districts in the east-coast state of Tabasco of street dealers, kidnappers and rapists. The group issued written warnings to the "poisoners of society" on large sheets hung in public - a practice favoured by drug cartels - in the districts of Villahermosa and Cárdenas, specifying it would continue to execute suspects if drug dealing continued on the streets and police allegedly continued to back the Zetas, one of Mexico's most violent cartels, Proceso reported. "We are not playing with you," one of the sheets reportedly read, "this beautiful state belongs to the people and is for the people not for criminals and corrupt policemen who work in league with this scum." According to Proceso, the chief prosecutor of Tabasco Fernando Valenzuela recognized the group's existence in Tabasco on 20 February. In a separate incident on 23 March locals in the district of Texcoco outside the capital almost lynched a suspected thief and fought police trying to free him, damaging a police car, La Crónica de Hoy reported. Residents of the locality of Tequesquinahuac gave the 20-year-old suspect a beating before police could take him away.

Colombian state continues to strike at crime

As Colombian police rounded up criminals over several days in and around the city of Medellín, police operations netted 60 or so suspected criminals and collaborators of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in operations carried in several departments of Colombia. Twenty eight including four policemen were held in several districts of the east-coast department of Chocó, suspected of involvement in activities including gang membership, kidnapping and drug trafficking, the broadcaster Caracol reported on 23 March. Police linked the detained to two criminal gangs the Urabeños and Renacer; they were caught at an unspecified date in the districts of Quibdó, Tadó, Istmina, Bahía Solano and Yuto. In southern Colombia, authorities held 31 suspected collaborators of the FARC and the other guerrilla force ELN, and may charge them in relation to such activities as terrorism, kidnapping, extortion and sedition, Caracol reported on 23 March. The detained included seemingly ordinary individuals like taxi drivers, shopkeepers and a town councillor, police said; they were held in the localities of Sandoná, Ancuyá la Florida and Yacuanquer in the department of Nariño. The daily El Colombiano observed separately on 24 March that in five days - 18-22 March - the city of Medellín "felt" the impact of the presence of the National Police chief and his senior staff as they led police operations against criminals around the city. Crime was reportedly reduced by a third and Medellín enjoyed a day, 21 March, "when bullets were not heard." In total 419 crime suspects were detained El Colombiano stated, adding that police operations continued even though police generals had now left the city. In western department of Tolima, two soldiers and a FARC guerrilla were reported to have died in undated gunfights in rural localities of the district of Rioblanco, located between Bogotá and Cali. One guerrilla surrendered, Caracol reported an army spokesman General Luis Eduardo Vargas as saying on 23 March.

Mexican leader sees results of anti-crime strategy in a year

Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto said in Rome on 20 March that a year was needed before Mexicans could see the incipient results of his government's anti-crime strategy, even as reports indicated crime-related deaths remained high since he took over in December 2012. A "balance" could be made in a year, he said speaking at the Mexican embassy, and "favourable results, a palpable reduction" in violence and murders expected, though he added this did not mean an end to violence that has killed some 70,000 since 2006, when the previous government began to wage war on drug cartels. Peña Nieto said his government's security plan included the entire national territory while considering its regional variations, Europa Press reported, citing the Mexican daily El Universal. The Peña government's anti-crime plan includes dividing Mexico into five security regions, and consultations between state governors and the armed forces, currently involved in fighting crime, El Universal has reported. A recent Mexican interior ministry report indicated that average monthly deaths from criminal incidents were equivalent to those of 2009, three years into the war begun by the then president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, Proceso reported on 14 March. Calderón was much criticized for "militarizing" law enforcement and often blamed for the thousands of deaths his government's policy was said to have provoked directly and indirectly. Yet the interior ministry recently reported that the average monthly homicides rate in the first three months of the Peña government stood at 1,052, compared to 879 for the first year of the Calderón presidency. It was not immediately clear if the comparison was with a similar three-month period or a year. A ministry report issued on 8 March counted 3,157 victims of homicides from December 2012 to, presumably, the end of February 2013. As reports indicate murder rates differ across the country, and violence shifts from one zone to another in response to policing. The Public Security chief for the south-western state of Oaxaca declared on 20 March for example that reported homicides in Oaxaca fell 29 per cent from March 2012 to March 2013, and kidnappings 30 per cent. Marco Tulio López Escamilla said Oaxaca had become one of the country's safer states, in spite of sitting between two particularly crime-ridden states, Guerrero and Veracruz, Milenio reported. Likewise the head of the US Northern Command, General Charles Jacoby, was reported as telling the House Armed Services Committee that drug violence had fallen in northern Mexico and shifted toward the country's interior states, Proceso reported on 20 March.

Fifty or more reported killed, dead around Mexico

The review Proceso counted 30 presumed victims of crime around Mexico for 14 March, including seven gunned down in an eatery in the Caribbean resort of Cancún and 10 that included gunmen killed or found dead in incidents in the north-western state of Sinaloa. The victims of the day included: four gunmen killed by troops in a shootout in the district of Sinaloa de Leyva in Sinaloa, a body found floating in a canal in Navolato in Sinaloa, a body found half-buried in coastal Mazatlán in Sinaloa, and seven shot dead in an eatery in Cancún. These included three trade unionists representing taxi drivers who appeared to be the targets of a gun attack that killed four other customers, Proceso reported. On 15 March police killed two gunmen who opened fire on a patrol on a road between Tala and San Isidro Mazatepec in the western state of Jalisco, while a body was found in Estado de México and three were found dead or killed in shootouts in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, Excelsior reported on 16 March. These were among 19 Proceso counted as victims of crime from late 14 through 15 March. Others were: two found shot in the head in the north-eastern city of Ciudad Victoria, with hands and feet tied and a message by them from the Zetas cartel to the rival Gulf Cartel, three suspects killed in a shootout with police in the east-coast city of Veracruz and a woman shot and killed while travelling on one of the Mexican capital's main roads, the Circuito Interior. Gunmen on a motorbike stopped her car in an apparent ambush or robbery, shortly after she and the car's driver withdrew money from a cash dispenser; the driver was injured in the shooting, Proceso reported. The 19 apparently did not include a suspected gangster shot dead by troops in the western state of Michoacán early on 15 March. The victim, identified as Dionisio Loya Plancarte, a presumed senior member of the cartel Caballeros Templarios, was one of five or more thought killed in a shootout between gunmen and the army in the district of Apatzingán. Authorities had yet to confirm the number and identities of the dead; one or more soldiers may have died, Proceso reported.

Property prices rise in Colombia, "no bubble" yet

Property prices rose 11 per cent in Colombia's main cities in 2012 a sector representative said on 14 March, though he rejected warnings given intermittently including by the Central Bank, that prices were starting to balloon. The head of the real estate sector association Fedelonjas, César Augusto Llano, was reported as saying that day that property prices rose in part for an "outbreak of speculation" but also for dearth of building land in places like Bogotá. While cities like Cali and Medellín witnessed price rises below the national average - eight and nine per cent respectively - prices rose 19 per cent in the northern coastal city of Bucaramanga and 12 per cent in Bogotá, RCN La Radio cited him as saying. Prices were described as having risen "like palm trees" in the port of Cartagena de Indias, a World Heritage Site on Colombia's Caribbean coast. RCN cited a local estate agent Rosario Hernández as saying that prices in Cartagena's historical quarter of Cartagena hovered around 10-12 million Colombian pesos per square metre, or roughly 4,200-5,000 euros depending on sectors. Llano separately told RCN radio on 15 March that Cartagena was now "at an international level" in terms of prices and foreign pensioners were among buyers. He observed a "vertiginous" rise in prices in the most expensive parts of the capital Bogotá, where he said certain "projects" were being offered at "historic" prices of some 14 million pesos or a little under 6,000 euros per square metre. This he attributed to "high liquidity, affluence of resources and insufficient land." But he denied a day earlier that a real-estate bubble was taking shape in Colombia. He said indicators showed "stable behaviour" in the macro-economy and "we do not have excess offer, we do not have have very high credit levels and mortgage credit maintains an ordinary growth," Cali's El País reported.

Venezuelan President fears "plot" against rival

Venezuela's Acting President Nicolás Maduro said on 13 March that the state would assure the security of his electoral rival Henrique Capriles Radonsky ahead of 14 April presidential elections, against unspecified plots being hatched against him by the "extreme Right" or the "Roger Noriega and Otto Reich group in the United States," the government news agency AVN reported. Noriega and Reich are conservative diplomats and were Assistant secretaries of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs between 2002 and 2005, under President George W. Bush. He said "we want him to have all his absolute guarantee and we alert our people and...the world about conspiracies...against the peace and stability" of Venezuela. Maduro said police and security services had been given pertinent instructions, but was not reported to have elaborated about the alleged plot. On 11 March the United States expelled two Venezuelan diplomats, apparently in retaliation for the expulsion on 5 March of two US military attachés from Caracas accused of "engaging in destabilizing manoeuvres" against the regime, Globovisión reported on 12 March. The two states do not have ambassadors with each other. The opposition candidate Capriles in turn apologized on a radio programme on 14 March for any earlier comments he said may have been misinterpreted and offended relatives of the late president Hugo Chávez. He insisted however that "Nicolás has been campaigning since President Hugo Chávez went for treatment." Capriles has repeatedly urged the government not to seek political capital in Venezuelans' grief. He said that meanwhile Venezuelans' problems had "taken a back seat," and urged Maduro to debate about "insecurity, the economy, electricity, water, jobs, transport, health. About problems," El Nacional reported. Maduro he said was "Raul Castro's candidate," and wondered aloud if Venezuelans wanted their resources sent to Cuba, El Universal reported. Cuba has been a recipient of aid from Venezuela under Chávez. Capriles said that Venezuela was being governed by elements Chávez had deemed "incompetent," adding "we have had 100 days of Nicolas's government and look where our country is going."

Mexican troops detain armed locals, held in turn

Mexican troops detained on 10 or 11 March 17 men armed with rifles in the western state of Michoacán who appeared to be members of a local self-defence group, one of several that have emerged around Mexico to fight crime. The men may have been of the "community police" of the locality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, also called La Ruana, and were detained on the road between the nearby districts of Buenavista and Tecalcatepec, Proceso reported. Troops also confiscated their cars, described as quite new. The detainees were to be investigated by the Michoacán Public Ministry or state prosecution service. This and a previous arrest of dozens of locals may have led angry residents of Buenavista to retain a group of soldiers, perhaps 47, for several hours on 12 March. La Crónica de Hoy reported that locals were demanding the release of 51 residents of La Ruana held and suspected of having ties to crime; footage shown on Milenio television showed the locals heckling the troops who remained calm. The Mexican interior ministry announced in a communiqué that day that the defence ministry, Buenavista municipality and the state of Michoacán had agreed to resolve the problems of the arrests and of insecurity in the area, including by boosting military patrols. Separately, a spokesman for the south-central state of Morelos "categorically" rejected on 12 March the incipient formation of a self-defence group in the locality of Temoac in Morelos. The state's Government Secretary Jorge Messeguer Guillén said there was no "risk" such militias would be formed and "the state government will never allow, we say this quite emphatically, never allow armed, community-type police forces to be established in Morelos, with powers the law does not give them," Excelsior reported. Reportedly residents began on 8 March to guard entry points to Temoac, search cars and patrol the streets at night. Excelsior observed that kidnappings had become frequent in this part of the state in the last 20 years. The locals might have misinterpreted an agreement Messeguer said was signed between the Temoac municipality and state authorities whereby residents would assist police with information and patrol their village unarmed.

Dozens reported killed around Mexico

The webpage Valor por Tamaulipas, run by anonymous users and which monitors violent crime in Mexico's north-eastern Tamaulipas state, claimed that 50 people - most of whom may have been gangsters - were killed in gun battles between "armed civilians" in the city of Reynosa on 10 March and later. With these, some 60 were reported to have died in presumed criminal incidents or were found dead around Mexico on 10-12 March. Valor por Tamaulipas rejected the authorities' count of two deaths in the shootout and observed they omitted to count "dozens" of bodies thrown into one or more ditches in the district, Proceso reported on 12 March. The review reported continuing "movements" by armed groups that day. The shootout was attributed to rivalry between factions of the Gulf Cartel in Reynosa. Authorities separately found on 12 March seven bodies - of possible victims of drug cartels - left in clandestine graves in the northern and north-western states of Chihuahua and Sonora, Proceso reported. A spokesman for the Chihuahua state prosecutor's office said police believe the four found buried outside the district of  Rosales in Chihuahua may have been killed by gunmen linked to the Sinaloa Cartel headed by Joaquín Guzmán Loera. He said more bodies may be found. The grave was located after police questioned 11 suspected drug dealers and gunmen, detained in the state at an unspecified date. On 10 March the army arrested four police officers and a traffic policeman of Rosales, these being suspected of having ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, Proceso reported. Also, the police chief of the district of Tarímbaro in the western state of Michoacán was kidnapped on 10 or 11 March, then beaten and shot to death; his body was found elsewhere in Michoacán, Proceso cited the mayor of Tarímbaro as saying. Four people were in turn shot dead in the western resort of Acapulco on 11 March: three in a parked minibus, and another in an Internet café he owned, Proceso reported.

Over 30 reported killed in Medellín

At least 31 were reported killed in Medellín and its environs in what Caracol television termed the "violent weekend" of 8-10 March, although the broadcaster observed the number of deaths may be 34 as two of the victims were pregnant women and another was declared brain-dead. Police attributed the deaths to incidents relating to extortion, gang fights and drug trafficking. Five of the victims were women including a 16-year-old girl killed in Envigado outside the city, Caracol reported. The victims may also have included a 60-year-old man reported beaten to death by neighbours on the night of 9-10 March, after he sought to rape his seven-year-old step-daughter. The girl's mother alerted neighbours when the man returned home drunk and "sought to sexually abuse" the child, El Espectador reported on 10 March. The weekend victims apparently did not include two men reported shot dead in Medellín late on 11 March or early on 12 March; two children were also injured in gang violence in Medellín on 11-12 March, one being a six-year-old boy accidentally shot in the knee, Caracol television reported.

Colombian troops kill, detain FARC guerrillas

The army shot dead two and detained six presumed fighters of Front 33 of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on 11 March, in operations in the district of Convención the Norte de Santander department, north-eastern Colombia, the broadcaster Caracol reported. The two were suspected of having left an unspecified number of car bombs in several localities in that department in preceding days, Caracol reported, citing army declarations. The army shot dead at an unspecified date two other suspected guerrillas in the countryside of the district of Caucasia in the northern Antioquia department, Caracol reported on 11 March. It cited these as among the 10 presumed guerrillas killed by the army in Antioquia since it began its Sword of Honour (Espada de Honor) operations in December 2012. The Defence Ministry reported on 11 March the detention at an unspecified date of a suspected member of the FARC's Southern Block and another fighter's voluntary surrender, both in southern Colombia. The guerrilla who surrendered was identified by his nom de guerre, Pedro, and described as a member of the FARC's Eastern Block; he surrendered to soldiers in the town of San Vicente in the department of Caquetá. The detainee was a suspected member of the FARC's "support networks" in southern Colombia; he was caught in a rural part of the Puerto Caicedo district in Putumayo. In the district of Florencia in Caquetá, troops disposed of a roadside bomb thought placed by the FARC in the locality of Venecia, and separately arrested a man driving with 21 kilograms of unprocessed cocaine paste, in the locality of Santo Domingo in Florencia, the Ministry reported on 11 March.

Venezuela to elect president in April

Venezuelan authorities set 14 April as the date for the country's presidential elections, wherein the socialist Acting President Nicolás Maduro Moros will compete with Henrique Capriles Radonsky a state governor who will represent MUD, the Democratic Unity Table of conservative and liberal parties. Capriles ran for the presidency once and lost to Hugo Chávez in elections on 7 Octobre 2012; he said on 10 April that he realised many viewed his second candidacy as akin to being taken "to the slaughterhouse." But he vowed to "fight for every vote," telling Maduro "I won't leave the way open for you, you are going to have to defeat me with votes...I am going to fight for this country because I carry it in my heart," the broadcaster Globovisión reported. He observed "Maduro is not Chávez" and the late president's "entourage," which he stated many had blamed for "poor results" during the Chávez presidencies, "is the one that wants to govern now. It is that entourage that wants to take power with much fear, and abusing power." Maduro replied the same day, observing at a gathering of Venezuelan Communists that he did not claim to be Chávez but was "a son of Chávez," Venezuelan state television reported. He accused Capriles of throwing a "poisoned dart" at state institutions and the late president with his comments, motivated by "hate," El Universal reported. Capriles said in his press conference that Maduro and his clique "coldly calculated" an election schedule while Chávez was ill - or perhaps even dead - while maintaining Venezuelans ignorant of his state in the weeks following his December surgery in Cuba; Chávez he alleged never signed decrees from his bed as claimed. Capriles said "it is no secret for anyone" that Maduro was in rivalry with the parliamentary Speaker Diosdado Cabello who opponents have said should, constitutionally speaking, have become Acting President.

Colombian guerrillas free two hostages

Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN) freed on 8 March two Germans it had held hostages since November, and was reported to have stated its inclination to free a Canadian mining employee kidnapped in January. The ELN kidnapped the German brothers on 3 November in the north-eastern district of Teorama, though it only confirmed this on 4 February, speculating in a communiqué that they might have been spies as there was no convincing explanation for their presence where they were found. The two were held "in the mountains of Catatumbo" in the Norte de Santander department where they were kidnapped, and were to be flown back to Europe on 9 March, El Tiempo reported. The Canadian hostage Jernoc Wobert was kidnapped in the northern district of Norosí on 18 January alongside five other contractors or employees of the firm Geo Explorer; the five were handed over to Red Cross representatives on 12 February, El Tiempo reported.

Venezuela swears in acting leader, elections called

After heads of state paid their respects on 8 March to Venezuela's late President Hugo Chávez, his designated successor and former vice-president Nicolás Maduro Moros took the oath as Acting President and immediately instructed election authorities to call general elections as the constitution demands, to allow Venezuelans to "know democratically who their President will be." He resigned as vice-president as laws required, and appointed the Science and Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza, son-in-law of the late president, as Executive Vice-President. Maduro asked the National Electoral Council (CNE) to implement "corresponding evaluations" before setting a date for general elections, and urged the opposition to present its candidates, Venezuela's state news agency AVN reported. The opposition politician and governor of the state of Miranda Henrique Capriles Radonsky had earlier objected to Maduro becoming a candidate while remaining Executive Vice-President, calling this an abuse of authority; he observed at a press conference on 8 March that the people would give their opinion at the polls on "how they have used the death of President Hugo Chávez for electoral and propaganda purposes," El Universal reported. An unspecified number of people were heard to have started banging pots and pans - this being one of the forms in which Latin Americans like to protest - on balconies in Caracas, in an apparent and anticipated objection to Maduro's inauguration as Acting President, Spain's ABC reported. Earlier that day some 30 heads of state gathered to pay their respects to the late president, at a ceremony in the Military Academy in Caracas where Chávez's body was on display in a glass casket. The dignitaries included the presidents of Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Cuba, as well as prominent friends and admirers like the former Colombian senator Pilar Córdoba, who wept before the coffin and was comforted by Maduro and the late president's daughter. She has intermittently played the role of an intermediary between Venezuela, Colombia and FARC guerrillas, facilitating the release of certain hostages in Colombia.

Venezuelans comment interim presidency's legality

Constitutional lawyers and opposition politicians pointed out on 7 March that Venezuela's acting president Nicolás Maduro Moros, who many expect will seek election as successor to Hugo Chávez, could not legally and simultaneously be acting president, Vice-President and presidential candidate. Elections were expected within a month but a jurist told the broadcaster Globovisión on 7 March that these may be postponed by days or weeks. Juan Manuel Rafalli told Globovisión that to run for the presidency Maduro would either have to appoint a vice-president or the Supreme Court would have to make a pertinent ruling. It was perhaps unlikely that the court, which had stated nothing so far, would make an obstructive ruling. Certain opposition politicians observed earlier that the parliamentary speaker should legally have taken over the interim presidency with the President's "absolute" absence, and parliament should have convened an extraordinary session. On this the jurist Gerardo Blyde told the daily El Nacional that Article 33 of the constitution permitted the Executive Vice-President to "take charge" of the presidency if the President was no longer in office, interpreting this as distinct from "becoming president," Europa Press reported. He said this meant he remained Vice-President while exercising presidential duties and that pursuant to the Constitution's Article 229 could not also be a candidate. The opposition Table of Democratic Unity (Mesa de Unidad Democrática, MUD) observed separately that election laws prevented Maduro from running for the presidency as an acting rather than an elected president. That law they stated required public servants running for an elected office to resign their positions from the first day of the campaign, Europa Press reported. A member of the MUD secretariat Ramón José Medina said in turn that the opposition agreed elections could be held 45 or 60 days after the presidential demise rather than 30, given conditions, Globovisión and EFE reported on 7 March. Three names Medina cited as possible presidential aspirants for the MUD coalition were Henrique Capriles Radonsky, the candidate who failed to win the presidency in October 2012, the mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma and the legislator María Corina Machado.

Criminal killings continue around Mexico

Some 20-25 people were killed or found dead in presumed criminal incidents in Mexico on 4 March, 12 of them including four policemen, in the north-western state of Sinaloa, Proceso reported. The review counted 30 presumed victims of crime around Mexico for 3-4 March. The policemen were said kidnapped from a security post or office in the district of Rosario in Sinaloa on 4 March and found dead within hours alongside three civilians, the review reported, citing comments from the mayor of Rosario. Victims of the day included two Guatemalans aged 19 and 17 killed in the southern state of Chiapas, and five people killed in the western state of Michoacán. The Guatemalans were found with their throats slit in a bar where they worked near Guatemala's frontier, their employer reportedly said. On 5 March two men were shot dead in the districts of Empalme and Esperanza in the north-western state of Sonora, Milenio reported, and five were killed in Mexico City early that day, Proceso reported. On 4 March, authorities in Estado de México, the state outside the capital, blamed the cartel Familia Michoacana and "independent groups" for a recent surge in crime and killings in the state. Eleven or more deaths were reported in the state over 1-3 March, according to Proceso. The state's response includes boosting coordination between municipal and state police forces in 119 of the state's 125 municipal districts, in the form of a Coordinated State Police (Policía Estatal Coordinada) under a Single Command (Mando Único). The governor of Estado de México Eruviel Ávila Villegas signed a document on 4 March establishing the Single Police Command in 119 municipalities that have accepted a deal that may reduce their policing powers, Proceso reported. Ávila said the plan was intended to "back" the districts, home to 90 per cent of the state's population he stated, and "for that we shall be respectful of their own form, plans and strategies. The intention is to give people more security." The army and Federal Police separately disarmed on 4 or 5 March 80 municipal policemen of the district of Tlaquiltenango in the state of Morelos, following the district police chief's arrest on 3 March for suspected ties to crime, and took over the district's security while the policemen had their backgrounds checked. The mayor of Tlalquiltenango later said only 36 of the policemen were found have legal permits to carry arms, Proceso reported.

Election body confirms Correa's victory in Ecuador polls

Ecuador's electoral authority the CNE confirmed that the sitting President Rafael Correa Delgado was re-elected in general elections held on 17 February, winning 57.1 per cent of all votes cast with all votes counted, Agence France-Presse reported on 4 March. Correa won a little more than 4.9 million of just over 9.467 million votes cast, and his runner-up the banker Guillermo Lasso won a few more than 1.9 million, or 22.7 per cent of votes. The third and fourth candidates in terms of votes were the former president Lucio Gutiérrez with 6.7 per cent of votes and the conservative Mauricio Rodas with 3.9 per cent, the CNE (Consejo Nacional Electoral) indicated on 6 March. Correa would begin new mandate on 24 May. The President's political group, Alianza PAÍS appeared to have won just over 52.3 per cent of votes cast for National Assembly lists according to the CNE's count on 6 March, followed by the Movimiento CREO, the party of Guillermo Lasso and described as liberal, which won 11.42 per cent of votes. The council did not immediately specify what this signified in terms of seats, but PAÍS was expected to win an absolute majority or about 100 of 137 legislative seats, the daily El Ciudadano reported on 6 March.

Venezuela mourns its president

Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez Frías died on 5 March, succumbing to a recurring, aggressive cancer he had fought with resilience and the help of a panoply of often painful treatments including surgeries. He was effectively  hidden from the public following his last surgery in December 2012, confined to hospital beds in Havana then Caracas, while officials urged Venezuelans to pray for the President's recovery. His death was announced by the Executive Vice-President Nicolás Maduro Moros who observed - visibly distressed - that Chávez "put up a hard fight" against cancer for two years. Authorities declared seven days of mourning in Venezuela, while "thousands" came onto the streets in a public display of grief, Europa Press reported. On 6 March his body was taken from hospital to the Military Academy in Caracas where a state ceremony was scheduled for 8 March, attended by heads of state. The presidents of Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay were already in Caracas that day, La Nación reported, while Argentina, Cuba and Chile declared three days of mourning and Bolivia, a week, EFE reported. Latin American leaders promptly expressed sympathy and sadness, perhaps with greater sincerity than elsewhere given the personal relations Chávez forged with many regional politicians and for having become a familiar figure of television and radio across the Hispanic world. Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff said a "great Latin American" had died and one who had been "very generous with all those who needed him on this continent," Europa Press reported on 5 March. El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes described Chávez in a message as "one of the strongest and most popular Latin American leaders" who "changed the...inequality and exclusion" Venezuelans had "suffered before he took power" in 1998, Venezuela's state news agency reported. Vice-President Maduro was expected to become Venezuela's acting leader and elections were to be called within 30 days, Argentina's La Nación reported on 6 March.

FARC rebels killed, held in Colombia

The Colombian Defence Minister said on 3 March that the army had "neutralised" - killed or detained - in "preceding hours" 21 presumed fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), including eight children or teenagers who were taken from the FARC. Juan Carlos Pinzón Bueno said that in operations against Front 37 of the FARC and a smaller unit in the district of El Bagre in the northern department of Antioquia, troops killed one fighter and arrested three including a guerrilla dubbed Deisy, the niece of a member of the FARC Secretariat, the ministry website reported. Eight minors of unspecified age were among the demobilized - and they may be taken into state care in keeping with precedent - while three other guerrillas were in turn "demobilized" or surrendered. He said that troops separately killed two FARC members and injured two, and two others surrendered, in operations against fronts 48 and 58 of the FARC in the northern department of Antioquia and southern department of Putumayo. Police separately detained at unspecified dates two guerrillas presumed involved in the kidnappings and detentions in past years of policemen, soldiers and politicians. In Soacha west of Bogotá, police caught a man identified as Diego Navarrete Beltrán - Sebastián or LJ - a guerrilla said involved in the capture and detention of hostages that included the former politician Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio in 2003-2008, RCN La Radio reported on 5 March. Police caught another suspected guerrilla in Villavicencio south-east of Bogotá, a man dubbed Elkin, identified as one of the "guards" for captured policemen and soldiers in 2001-4. The authorities separately attributed to the FARC two purported bomb attacks early on 5 March in the naval district of Tumaco in the south-western department of Nariño, which damaged structures but injured nobody. The Defence Minister denounced them as indiscriminate acts of terrorism "intended to hurt the civilian population," El Tiempo reported. One of the bombs was placed by a naval base. FARC and government representatives in Havana were cited as claiming progress on 1 March in their process of talks, initiated in autumn 2012 and intended to end decades of conflict in Colombia. Talks had so far focused on rural land use and access, the broadcaster Caracol reported.

Mexican party amends statutes to help government

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto was the guest of honour at the 21st Ordinary National Assembly of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which approved a reformist agenda intended to assure the PRI's closer cooperation with government's liberalizing agenda. This included removal from party statutes of prohibitions on debating the imposition of VAT on foods and medicines, a move opposed by the Left in Mexico Alongside accepting the principle of private investment in the state-sector oil firm Pemex, these were among the "binding" items removed from the party's "basic documents," which indicated the party's eager support for its own government. The PRI senator Cristina Díaz Salazar said the changes sought to "accompany" Peña Nieto's policies, CNN reported. During and after the 2012 general elections PRI members were intermittently cited as saying that the PRI party and government would remain distinct; yet this is not a party known for dissentions and internal disputes. It contrasts in that sense with the Leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), whose members split from the PRI in the 1980s and which recently split again with the departure of its former leader. The PRI assembly approved an Action Programme (Programa de Acción) that included reducing its National Political Council from 1,200 to 700 members, and its Permanent Political Committee (Comisión Política Permanente) from 200 to 47 members including PRI-run state governors and the President, Proceso reported on 4 March. The assembly voted its support likewise for reforms in areas of taxation, competition and subsidies, while "mechanisms" were approved to ensure PRI members who accede to public office do not deviate from set party lines, La Crónica de Hoy reported. Peña told the 4,200 PRI members that there were "no untouchable interests" in the country; "the only interest I shall protect is the national interest. I shall take the decisions the country's transformation requires. The PRI's success depends on Mexico's success, CNNMéxico reported.

Mexican union boss loses post after arrest

The national teachers' union in Mexico elected a new leader on 28 February after its flamboyant former president Elba Esther Gordillo Morales was detained on 26 February, suspected of stealing union money; the political party she founded appeared to remain neutral meanwhile and stressed the party's autonomy from its founder. The SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación) held its 36th extraordinary session early on 28 February wherein it unanimously voted in the union's secretary-general Antonio Díaz de la Torre as its new president; he was sworn into office that day, Proceso reported. The union reportedly then reversed its opposition to the government's education reforms, which Gordillo had denounced and which may reduce the union's authority over members but also end their entrenched job security. Esther Gordillo's New Alliance (PANAL, Partido Nueva Alianza) party was also apparently distancing itself from its founder, issuing a communiqué on 27 February that stressed its national and autonomous character. The party stated it was "as a political option the property of people, its militants and those who seek a different country," Proceso reported. Gordillo it stated had been a "determining factor" in the party's formation but also in ensuring "New Alliance won autonomy, had its own life and became what it is today: a national party with a structure across the country." PANAL has ten seats in the lower legislative chamber. It refrained from commenting on the arrest, saying it was a judicial decision. The party changed its parliamentary coordinator on 28 February although members said the reshuffle and arrest were just coincidental. Cerda Franco, a former treasurer of the SNTE, became PANAL's new parliamentary coordinator, replacing Lucila Garfilas a former union section head in Estado de México, La Jornada reported on 1 March. Gordillo's estate and assets were meanwhile frozen and judges would later decide if these would be paid to the SNTE or used to pay unspecified damages and costs, La Jornada reported. Police were searching one of her properties on 28 February, an appartment in Mexico City's wealthy Polanco district. La Jornada cited one of Mexico's deputy-prosecutors as saying that two unnnamed individuals were in turn informing investigators of Gordillo's financial transactions, including several involving sums above those for which she had been charged.

Mexico insists union chief's arrest legal, not political

President Enrique Peña Nieto pledged in a television address on 27 February that the investigation of the activities of detained teaching union boss Elba Esther Gordillo would continue "to its ultimate consequences, always remaining strictly attached to the law" and respecting the "human rights of persons implicated," CNN reported. Gordillo was detained on 26 February and formally charged on 27 with undertaking "operations with illicit resources" and engaging in "organized crime," relating to a range of alleged activities that included syphoning off union funds, money laundering and perhaps tax evasion, CNNMéxico reported. In total four were reported detained and two people were to be charged beside Gordillo, as suspected accomplices of her financial transactions. Peña Nieto said the "process being followed" is "strictly legal" and "responds to evidence of the probable, illicit deviation" and "concealment" of funds belonging to the SNTE, the education-sector union. Those funds he said belonged to teachers not union bosses and "must be used to benefit their workers." The president said his government maintained a "respectful and constant dialogue" with the union's leaders and repeated a "commitment to Mexico's teachers." He said "Mexico's educational transformation is going forward" with the aim of one day providing "quality education for all" in Mexico. The same day Mexico's Prosecutor-General Jesús Murillo Karam told the daily La Crónica de Hoy that he doubted the union would react to the detention with protests seeing as the "investigation seeks to defend the interests of education workers." He said the prosecution had "nothing to do with political questions...these are the axes the president has indicated, which is to fight corruption," La Crónica reported on 28 February. He told the daily that from the day Peña began his presidency in December 2012, he "told me my function was to apply the law."

Mexicans awed, jubilant as union leader held over fraud

It is not every day a top politician is arrested, and certainly not in Mexico. But millions observed and commented on the Internet as one of Mexico's most powerful women and head of the national teachers' union Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, was stopped at an airport on 26 February after a court ordered her detained on theft-related charges. She was suspected among other offences of deviating the equivalent of some USD 200 million of union funds into private accounts. The Prosecutor-General of Mexico Jesús Murillo Karam explained that evening some of the motives and investigations that led to Gordillo's arrest, Excelsior reported. The newspaper cited among alleged offences the appropriation of union funds from 2008 to 2011, spending union funds on luxury shopping in the United States, laundering money through accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein and possible tax evasion as Gordillo had declared taxable revenues inferior to sums found in accounts being investigated. It is unlikely Mexicans were surprised to find that one of their politicians was involved in financial - or any type of - malfaisance. They already suspect and despise many of them as incompetent or crooked, in one way or another and to a lesser or greater degree. The report may have surprised millions who did not realistically envisage the arrest of such a prominent personage, especially by a government of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), traditionally associated with trade unions and clientelism. Esther Gordillo was since 1989 the president of the SNTE (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Educación), the education-sector workers union said to be Latin America's largest, and was thought capable of mobilising a million votes or more. When acceding to her position, she promised the union would never become anyone's "booty" nor would she seek re-election, Excelsior wrote on 27 February. Her union's relations with the PRI soured over the PRI's pledge to reform education when in power. The reforms approved in 2013 and promulgated on 25 February may be said to have reduced union powers and qualified criteria for the recruitment and promotion of public teachers whose positions had become lifelong, hereditary or negotiable sinecures. The union's 1.4 million members including thousands of teachers - entrenched in jobs many said were often less-than-deserved - became an army of clients whose interests Gordillo ostensibly protected in return for wielding the power of their votes. She was rich; Mexicans would on occasions glimpse or read about her lifestyle and travels. Her face became the unashamed setting for layers of make-up and feats of plastic surgery. Dubbed the "Schoolmistress" - La Maestra - she was also known for grammatical bunglings that must have amused many. The review Proceso noted "euphoria" among users of Internet websites like Twitter and Facebook. Excelsior reported more than 540 million comments about the arrest on Twitter by 27 February. The excess, rancour and satisfaction many of these expressed may give an idea of how Mexicans perceive their politicians.

El Salvador launches an anti-gangs court

El Salvador's state prosecution service (Fiscalía) headed by Luis Martínez has merged its homicides unit into a new specialised court that would investigate murders and gang activity, with fewer state prosecutors focusing on the mechanics and organization of gangs seen as the culprits in most murders in El Salvador. The Specialised Homicide Crimes and Anti-gang Unit (Unidad Espcializada de Delitos de Homicidio y Antipandillas) was to begin working on 20 February, using 19 instead of the 25 prosecutors who worked before in the Homicides Unit; that court's former head Óscar Torres was provisionally to head the new unit, El Salvador's El Mundo reported. Torres has been a state prosecutor since 1999 and worked in different areas of the state prosecution service. El Mundo suggested these changes may be in response to the fact that murder investigations in El Salvador generally lead to the Mara street gangs, which police figures indicate to be responsible for 85 per cent of homicides and up to 90 per cent of extortions. It added that many shooting deaths reported in the papers appear to be carefully planned assassinations. The daily cited the prisons authority as estimating at 60,000 the number of gang members in El Salvador, of whom 10,000 were jailed. The Minister of Justice David Munguía Payés separately admitted on 20 February that homicides slightly increased on average in February compared to January, and attributed this to recent vendettas among gangs. Speaking in Sopayango outside the capital, he said he hoped the figure would fall again, adding that the latest rate of 6.7 homicides a day remained 70 per cent lower than in the same period in 2012 before the ceasefire of gangs began in March 2012, El Mundo reported. He said the same day that the state would seek to increase to 60 the 18 districts initially designated sanctuaries from violent crime in cooperation with local gangs, though he said money was needed to do this, La Prensa Gráfica reported.