More on the Americas
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
ECATEPEC, Mexico — As the country is driven deeper into despair, their industry coasts to success.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — The leafy green parks of Mexico City's elegant Polanco neighborhood have their politically comforting statues.
By Daniel Hernandez and Cecilia Sanchez, Los Angeles Times
ISLA HOLBOX, Mexico — Separated from the Yucatan Peninsula by a lagoon, this pristine island has streets of sand, iguanas that roam...
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
BOGOTA, Colombia — Among the many thorny issues to be hammered out in peace talks beginning Wednesday in Oslo between Colombia's...
By Richard Marosi and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
SAN DIEGO — A woman claiming to be the daughter of the world's most wanted drug trafficker was arrested at the San Ysidro port of...
By Cindy Chang, Los Angeles Times
Gang violence in Central America has led to a startling increase in the number of children who make the dangerous journey across the Mexican...
By Richard Marosi and Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
The fatal shooting of a teenager suspected of throwing rocks at U.S. Border Patrol agents has prompted strong condemnations from Mexican...
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — A leading human rights group contends that the Mexican government under outgoing President Felipe Calderon has...
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — He was called the Executioner, a founding member and top leader of the vicious Zetas paramilitary force.
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his supporters on Monday celebrated his reelection, while many in the...
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY— The Mexican navy on Monday announced the capture of an alleged field commander of the Zetas crime organization whom it...
By Chris Kraul and Mery Mogollon, Los Angeles Times
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez apparently won reelection by a convincing margin Sunday, with allegiance among...
By Matthew Teague, Los Angeles Times
ELDORADO DOS CARAJAS, Brazil — At 4 in the afternoon on April 17, 1996, a 13-year-old girl with blond hair climbed onto a truck...
By Chris Kraul and Mery Mogollon, Los Angeles Times
CARACAS, Venezuela — Jesus Ramirez is taking no chances. He and his wife bought several pounds of fish and beef at the Mercal state-...
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Cuba’s best-known blogger was arrested Thursday to keep her from covering a sensitive criminal trial involving the...
By Chris Kraul and Mery Mogollon, Los Angeles Times
CARACAS, Venezuela — In choosing between incumbent Hugo Chavez and challenger Henrique Capriles in Sunday's presidential election,...
By Chris Kraul and Mery Mogollon, Los Angeles Times
CARACAS, Venezuela — In a driving rainstorm before tens of thousands of flag-waving red-shirted supporters gathered in downtown...
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
TRUJILLO, Colombia — The 11,000 coffee bushes clinging to the steep slopes of his 10-acre farm represent nothing less than a miracle...
By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times
A U.S. pilot program designed to deport illegal immigrants by flying them to Mexico City will operate for only two months this year and...
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities working closely with their U.S. counterparts scored big in the fight against drug cartels with the...
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — No one knows exactly why Aleph Jimenez Dominguez, an Ensenada activist, disappeared last week. In Mexico, people...
By Tracy Wilkinson and Cecilia Sanchez, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Mexicans took to the streets Wednesday to protest a proposed law that is aimed at modernizing rules in the workplace and...
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
BOGOTA, Colombia — Venezuelan police on Tuesday captured Colombia's most wanted fugitive, the notorious Daniel "El Loco" Barrera,...
By Vincent Bevins, Los Angeles Times
SAO PAULO — Melanito Biyouha tries to remember the languages she's heard today at her restaurant in Sao Paulo's African corner.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
TAPACHULA, Mexico — With the first light of day, a team of investigators using shovels and brushes begins picking through the red dirt...
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Under a banner declaring "ours is a question of dignity," defeated presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador...
By Vincent Bevins, Los Angeles Times
SANTA RITA DO SAPUCAI, Brazil — Muscular young men in red jumpsuits hunch over a set of matching stationary bicycles, sweating and...
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Authorities have captured the top leader of the Gulf cartel, a potentially fatal blow to one of Mexico's major drug-...
By Kristina Jovanovski, Los Angeles Times
TORONTO — The suspect in a fatal shooting at a Montreal political rally for a Quebec separatist party probably acted alone, police...
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — The first time Mexico's star Olympic diver Paola Espinosa met her Chinese coach, it was more than language that put them...
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
BOGOTA, Colombia — Prospects for an end to more than four decades of armed rebellion in Colombia inched closer to reality Tuesday as...
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
MARGARITA ISLAND, Venezuela — On a campaign visit here last month, presidential candidate Henrique Capriles ran through the streets of...
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
LOS TEQUES, Venezuela — As he and his partner drove at dusk through a warren of metal and concrete-block shacks that's a haven for car...
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Outgoing President Felipe Calderon told Mexicans in his final state of the union address Monday that although their...
By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times
SAN DIEGO — Eduardo Arellano Felix, one of a band of brothers who headed what was once Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking...
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Dismissing arguments that recent elections were rife with fraud, Mexico's electoral tribunal on Friday officially...
By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — In the midst of a violent drug war, President Felipe Calderon fired crooked cops by the hundreds, and hired new ones...
By Rebecca Trounson, Los Angeles Times
California public health officials warned state residents Wednesday against eating Daniella-brand mangoes imported from Mexico, saying...
By Chris Kraul and Mery Mogollon, Los Angeles Times
CARACAS, Venezuela — An early morning explosion and fire at Venezuela's largest refinery killed at least 39 people Saturday and left...
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
ECATEPEC, Mexico — At 14, Jessica Lucero had already lived a hard life. A stint in rehab, dropping out of school, making her way,...
By Chris Kraul and Mery Mogollon, Los Angeles Times
CARACAS, Venezuela — It's prime-time TV in Venezuela and the host is saying that opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles,...
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
BOGOTA, Colombia — President Juan Manuel Santos on Monday night said his government was in "exploratory discussions" to end more...
Times wire services
Cuban activist Oswaldo Paya, who spent decades speaking out against the communist government of Fidel and Raul Castro and became one of...
By Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Sunday's presidential election represents a difficult test for Mexico's wobbly democracy: Can it hold a fraud-free...
By Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — He bears tiny white scars all over his hands from the sea of supporters who grasped at his outstretched arms, clawing to...
By Allyn Gaestel, Los Angeles Times
JACMEL, Haiti — "Vacation to Haiti/It nearly broke my heart."
By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — When Mexico's long-ruling party was ousted by voters 12 years ago, giddy celebrants hailed the event as something like...
By Brian Bennett, Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — After quietly testing Predator drones over the Bahamas for more than 18 months, the Department of Homeland Security plans...
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
CULIACAN, Mexico — The cartel henchman nicknamed "El Loco" was reported behind the latest atrocity in Mexico's ever-more-depraved drug...
By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Pollsters say many Mexicans haven't made a final decision on whom to support in the July 1 presidential election,...
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
CULIACAN, Mexico — For generations, the extended Hernandez family tended fields of marijuana high in Sinaloa's western Sierra Madre...
By Chris Kraul
BOGOTA, Colombia -- A little wild pig named Josefo, abandoned by his mother, helped keep Sgt. Jose Libardo Forero sane.
By Reed Johnson and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
If Carlos Fuentes could have invented the perfect character to star in one of his novels, he might have come up with a protagonist named...
By Richard A. Serrano
COLUMBUS, N.M. — From a small hill at a state park here, the border town of Palomas, Mexico, can be made out through the desert haze....
By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY — Tomas Borge, last living founder of Nicaragua's Sandinista movement and one of its most hard-line enforcers as it...
By Richard Marosi and Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
SAN DIEGO — Alleged drug kingpin Victor Emilio Cazares, among the most wanted trafficking suspects in the United States, has been...
By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times
BOGOTA, Colombia — Honored here on his 80th birthday last week with a congressional medal and dinner with the president, Colombia's...
By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Art Critic
Over at the Getty Villa, a fantastic hybrid sculpture is holding court in a powerful exhibition that explores the ancient Mediterranean...
By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times
MEXICO CITY —Former Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid, who led the country amid economic meltdown and natural disaster in the...
By Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times
Ricardo Legorreta, the architect who introduced Mexican modernism to a global audience and who brought his crisp, brightly colored aesthetic...
By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — Police and federal agents pulled the car over in a suburb north of Denver. An FBI agent showed his badge. The driver...
By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau
High-powered assault weapons illegally purchased under the ATF's Fast and Furious program in Phoenix ended up in a home belonging to the...
By Ken Ellingwood, Richard A. Serrano and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
Last fall's slaying of Mario Gonzalez, the brother of a Mexican state prosecutor, shocked people on both sides of the border. Sensational...
By Richard Marosi and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
Last of four parts
By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau
The claim by senior ATF officials that none of the weapons lost in the botched Fast and Furious sting operation were used in the shooting of...
By Richard A. Serrano, Los Angeles Times
Two days after U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry was killed in December, the top ATF supervisors in Phoenix said in internal emails...
By Richard A. Serrano, Washington Bureau
Congressional investigators probing the controversial "Fast and Furious" anti-gun-trafficking operation on the border with Mexico believe at...
By Alex Renderos and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from San Salvador and Mexico City -- Argentine songwriter and singer Facundo Cabral, an icon of Latin American folk and protest...
By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times
Gilbert "Magú" Luján — a painter, muralist and sculptor whose whimsical, slyly humorous art works, frequently evoking a...