Latinamerica

Gregory Mevs leaped from his armored silver Toyota SUV and marched past the guards and mango trees into what serves these days as the center of the Haitian government. He was ready to dispense a million gallons of fuel to the earthquake-ravaged capital. But the paperwork was not in order. He needed the Haitian prime minister's signature. Ten minutes later, he had it. Mevs can do that. He has the prime minister's ear. He hobnobs with people like Bill Clinton, George Soros and the chief executives of the world's largest corporations.

Every afternoon the clouds pile up on the high ridges above this collapsed city and the breeze descends with a tell-tale earthy smell. The rain usually waits until dark, when short but spectacular bursts deluge random bits of the capital and unleash torrents of rock and gray mud. The rainy season is bearing down, and Haiti is not ready. Three months after the earthquake killed more than 200,000 people, more than 2.1 million Haitians are still living in tents and under tarps, many on dangerous hillsides and tidal flats.

The death toll from the Mexican government's three-year war on drug cartels is far higher than previously reported -- more than 22,000, according to news reports published Tuesday that cited confidential government figures. The figure is significantly higher than tallies assembled by Mexican media. They estimate that more than 18,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against drug-trafficking groups after taking office in December 2006. The unofficial media tallies have often been cited by foreign news outlets, including The Times.

Leaders of countries in the eastern Caribbean told Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Friday that the international anti-drug crackdown in Mexico has forced traffickers into the waters around their islands, adding to the region's crime and security woes. To stem the increase, Caribbean nations are seeking expanded security assistance from the United States, particularly for combating drug trafficking, and leaders said they would like to see a greater American focus on the region.

One of Mexico's top drug lords, a fugitive for years, has given a clandestine interview to a Mexican magazine in which he says he would contemplate suicide rather than be taken alive. Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada says he lives "in panic" of being imprisoned but that if he were eliminated, there would be little impact on the flourishing narcotics trade. The report appears in Sunday's edition of Proceso, Mexico's leading news weekly, and was excerpted on the magazine's website. The author is Julio Scherer Garcia, the magazine's founder and first editor, who is also known for a series of books on drug traffickers.

The young marine received the highest military honors that the Mexican state could offer. Killed during a raid that ended the life of a notorious drug lord, the marine was buried a hero, ushered to his grave by an honor guard of commandos in camouflage, his mother awarded a folded flag. Hours later, the grieving mother, the marine's sister, his brother and an aunt were mowed down by gunmen in a revenge attack that sent a chilling message to the Mexican military combating drug traffickers.

The beat cop quickly discovered why the three men at the entrance to the storage yard had bolted as he pulled up in his patrol car. Inside the walled enclosure he saw 3 tons of cocaine and a large-scale processing lab, evidence of Ecuador's growing importance as a trafficking hub for illegal drugs. The mid-December raid in this port city's Bastion Popular industrial zone capped a record year for Ecuador's counter-narcotics police. They seized 63 tons of cocaine, twice as much as in 2008, and destroyed seven drug-processing laboratories, up from two. Guayaquil's sprawling port and maze of estuaries and waterways have become a favored staging area for drug shipments to the U.S. and Europe.

A 4-year-old girl goes missing from her bedroom, and her well-to-do parents and two nannies fall under suspicion. Then, nine days later, the girl's decomposing body is discovered in her own bed, even though the home supposedly has been sealed off by police. The state prosecutor first declares the death a homicide, but stokes confusion by saying that the child, who suffered developmental disabilities, may have asphyxiated by accident. After he releases the suspects, political opponents clamor for his ouster.

One of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history rocked Chile on Saturday, killing more than 300 people, toppling buildings and freeways, and setting off sirens thousands of miles away as governments scrambled to protect coastal residents from the ensuing tsunami. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet declared parts of the country "catastrophe zones" in the wake of the magnitude 8.8 quake, which was centered offshore, about 70 miles north of the port city of Concepcion. With images of Haiti's devastation from an earthquake last month still fresh, the world woke up to a new disaster and fears of another catastrophic toll.

The first e-mail went out within hours of the Jan. 12 earthquake, calling together some of Haiti's most prominent architects, engineers and urban planners. The next day, 50 people showed up at a house in the hillside suburb of Petionville and went to work. They have met every day since, gathering around a table in a courtyard under the shade of a spreading almond tree. Their goal is simple. It is also audacious. They want to plan a new Haiti. And not just new buildings. A new economy, a new political culture, a new way of thinking.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates voiced support Thursday for a U.S. free trade agreement with Colombia, a treaty considered a critical reward for one of Washington's strongest allies in the region. The proposed agreement, first signed during the George W. Bush administration, has long been supported by U.S. businesses but opposed by labor and human rights groups because of Bogota's history of harsh intolerance of labor activism. Defense Department officials have favored the pact as a way to reward Colombia for its successful effort at beating back drug trafficking and the country's insurgency.

In launching an international agenda of outreach to young people, First Lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday addressed students at a Jesuit college in Mexico with emotional remarks that were part confessional, part call to action. Obama, a Princeton alumna with a Harvard law degree, told students that she entered college "filled with self-doubt."

First Lady Michelle Obama arrived in Mexico City on Tuesday night after making a surprise detour to Haiti during her much-touted first official solo trip abroad. Obama stopped off at the impoverished Caribbean island nation to view the devastation left by a catastrophic earthquake Jan. 12. She was accompanied in Haiti by Jill Biden, the vice president's wife, before flying on her own to Mexico's capital for scheduled events Wednesday and Thursday. The trip to Haiti was not made public until the two women landed there because of concerns about security and crowd control, a White House official said.

A chaotic shootout Wednesday on a hotel-lined boulevard in the beach resort city of Acapulco left as many as six people dead, Mexican authorities said. Federal police officers patrolling the area came under fire after they heard gunshots and saw attackers shooting at two men in a car, authorities said. The gunmen also shot at other vehicles as they tried to flee, riddling dozens of cars with bullet holes. The victims included a woman and her 8-year-old daughter. No tourists appeared to have been killed.

The death toll from the Mexican government's three-year war on drug cartels is far higher than previously reported -- more than 22,000, according to news reports published Tuesday that cited confidential government figures. The figure is significantly higher than tallies assembled by Mexican media. They estimate that more than 18,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against drug-trafficking groups after taking office in December 2006. The unofficial media tallies have often been cited by foreign news outlets, including The Times.

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia, and Sao Paulo, Brazil -- A Brazilian court has convicted a rancher in the 2005 killing a U.S.-born nun, Dorothy Stang, in the third trial that the co-mastermind of her murder has faced. After 15 hours of deliberations, a jury found Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura guilty of planning the killing of Stang, 73. At the time of her death from six gunshots at close range, she was living among landless peasants in remote Para state in the Amazon River basin. Authorities have long alleged that De Moura, now 39, plotted Stang's murder because she blocked him and other ranchers from taking over land that had been set aside for the poor for sustainable development.

When Raul Mondesi left baseball after 13 seasons as a major league outfielder, he returned to his dusty, overcrowded and impoverished hometown determined to make a difference. And both of the Dominican Republic's main political parties were only too happy to assist, with one helping him twice win election to the country's national Chamber of Deputies and another luring him away to run for mayor of the country's sixth-largest city. That's made the former Dodger and 1994 National League Rookie of the Year something of a rising electoral star here, though for reasons that have little to do with his politics.

A mighty earthquake rocked the small, impoverished island nation of Haiti on Tuesday, collapsing a hospital, the presidential palace and other buildings, triggering massive panic and claiming an as-yet uncounted number of lives -- perhaps thousands. Screams for help emanated from felled buildings, and chaos reigned. One diplomat called the quake a "catastrophe" in one of the countries least equipped to handle it. As night fell on the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million, reports emerged of extensive destruction; homes and buildings a shambles; trapped, seriously injured victims; and residents sleeping in streets.

A 4-year-old girl goes missing from her bedroom, and her well-to-do parents and two nannies fall under suspicion. Then, nine days later, the girl's decomposing body is discovered in her own bed, even though the home supposedly has been sealed off by police. The state prosecutor first declares the death a homicide, but stokes confusion by saying that the child, who suffered developmental disabilities, may have asphyxiated by accident. After he releases the suspects, political opponents clamor for his ouster.

Relief organizations on Saturday began to move Haitians from tent camps that are in danger of flooding to new camps on the perimeter of the city, part of a larger plan to decentralize the population after January's devastating earthquake. After a heavy rain the night before, buses carried 62 people from a bedraggled camp on a defunct golf course to a barren field 10 miles northwest of the city. Aid workers helped Romaine Vincent Donal, 44, load her belongings in wheelbarrows.