mohandasgandhi:

Speaking of our brothers and sisters to the south (of the U.S.), various news stories from the last week or so have made me fall in love with Latin American politics all over again. Seriously. We’re right in the middle of another love affair. Here are some of my favorites, and not necessarily because I agree with every single thing mentioned in the articles. (I always have to mention that or people flood me with rage.)

If you haven’t been following the Mexican presidential election or Enrique Peña Nieto, get on it. I don’t want to hear the excuses. It’s an amazing thing to witness. Also:

• Leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean have approved the creation of a new regional bloc that excludes the United States and Canada. But, unlike the Washington-based Organisation of American States, the new group (known by its Spanish initials as Celac) includes Cuba.
• Thanks to increased labor income and public spending, the poverty and inequality levels of Latin America are the lowest they’ve been since 1990, according to a new report by the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Between 1990 and 2010, the region’s poverty rate fell from 48.4 percent to 31.4 percent, with a predicted drop to 30.4 percent by the end of 2011. The indigence (extreme poverty) rate is currently at 12.3 percent.
• Chevron, the second-largest U.S. crude producer after Exxon Mobil, may be fined $84 million by Rio de Janeiro state for environmental damage from an offshore oil spill.
• Argentina widens rights for transsexual police
• In support of Chile’s ongoing student protests, and voicing their own demands, thousands of people took to the streets in more than a dozen cities in Latin America demanding quality public education.
• The Obama administration is turning to Asia for the defining competition of the next century. But if the United States actually wants to win, it’ll need Latin America.
• How the Occupy Movement Came to El Salvador
• In the New Gangland of El Salvador
• Arrests of undocumented migrants trying to cross the southern U.S. border have plummeted to levels not seen since the early 1970s, according to tallies released by the Department of Homeland Security last week, a historic shift that could reshape the debate over immigration reform. The Border Patrol apprehended 327,577 illegal crossers along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2011, which ended Sept. 30, numbers not seen since Richard Nixon was president, and a precipitous drop from the peak in 2000, when 1.6 million unauthorized migrants were caught. “We have reached the point where the balance between Mexicans moving to the United States and those returning to Mexico is essentially zero,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, whose conclusion was shared by many migration experts.
• U.S. lawmakers push for American aid to Mexico based on treating immigrants better.