Mexican president Felipe Calderón has been advising the US on how to fight the influence of leftist Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, according to a secret Oct. 23, 2009 US embassy cable that was made public by WikiLeaks on Dec. 2, 2010. During a meeting on Oct. 19, 2009 with US national intelligence director Dennis Blair, Calderón "emphasized that...Hugo Chávez is active everywhere, including Mexico," the embassy reported. "Calderon also commented that he is particularly concerned about Venezuela's relations with Iran, and that the Iranian embassy in Mexico is very active."

The US government hopes to develop a closer relationship with the Mexican military as a result of Mexico's "war on drugs" and international humanitarian operations, according to US diplomatic cables obtained by the WikiLeaks group and posted on Dec. 2 by the Spanish daily El País. The cables also show that US and Mexican officials know the "drug war" itself is going badly, despite their public expressions of optimism.

About 5,000 activists marched in front of the US Army's Fort Benning base in Columbus, Georgia, on Nov. 20 in the 20th annual protest against the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). The school trains Latin American soldiers; SOA Watch, which sponsors the protests, says SOA graduates are among the region's most notorious human rights violators.

Some 500 Honduran soldiers and police agents reportedly occupied the regional office of the National Agrarian Institute (INA) in Sinaloa community, Tocoa municipality, Colón department, on the morning of Nov. 23. Apparently the security forces were searching for arms in the office, which is located in northern Honduras' Lower Aguán Valley, the site of protracted and often violent disputes over land ownership. The INA is a semi-autonomous government agency charged with implementing agrarian reform; no arms were found in the office.

In a Nov. 26 newspaper column, former Cuban president Fidel Castro Ruz announced that the Cuban government was sending "a contingent of the Henry Reeves Brigade, composed of 300 doctors, nurses and healthcare technicians" to Haiti to help fight a cholera epidemic there. This will bring the number of Cuban professionals in Haiti to about 1,265. Cuban personnel are treating almost 40% of the cholera victims, according to Castro.

Thousands of Haitians took to the streets shortly after the polling places closed at 4 pm on Nov. 28 to protest what they said were delays, confusion, irregularities, violence and outright fraud in presidential and legislative elections that day. In Port-au-Prince, Pétionville, Carrefour, Petit-Goâve, Saint-Marc, Gonaïves and Jérémie, protesters demanded the annulment of the election, sometimes storming polling places and throwing ballots in the street.

Protests shake Hinche, shut down Cap-Haïtien
Large, militant protests against the presence of United Nations troops in Haiti broke out on Nov. 15 in Hinche in the Central Plateau and Cap-Haïtien on the northern coast. The protesters demanded the withdrawal of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a Brazilian-led multinational force with more than 13,000 soldiers, police agents and staffers that has occupied Haiti since June 2004. Many Haitians blame MINUSTAH for an outbreak of cholera in October that by Nov. 18 had already caused more than 1,100 deaths.

On Nov. 9 the Cuban Communist Party released a draft economic program for discussion in preparation for the party's Sixth Congress in mid-April 2011. The 32-page "Draft Economic-Social Policy Guidelines" is the latest move in plans by President Raúl Castro for a major restructuring of the Cuban economy, following the announcement in September of a program to lay off some 500,000 workers and absorb most of them in an expansion of private enterprises.