On March 19 Mexico's Finance and Public Credit Secretariat (SHCP) ruled that due to the current economic crisis, exceptions could be made to a law banning foreign governments from owning Mexican banks. The SHCP indicated that the 20-year- old article 13 of the Law of Credit Institutions should be revised. Although the ruling didn't mention any banks by name, the question arose because of the US government's continuing efforts—at a cost of $45 billion since October—to prop up the mammoth US-based Citigroup banking group, which owns Banamex, Mexico's second largest bank.

The National Security Archive (NSA), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit institute, posted declassified US government documents on its website on March 18 that it says show the US government knew US-backed Guatemalan officials were behind the disappearance of thousands of people during Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war.

Former US president Bill Clinton and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Haiti on March 9 along with a large group of private investors for a 24-hour visit they said was aimed at increasing international aid for the country. Supporters of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004) held demonstrations to call for Clinton's help in arranging for Aristide, who has lived in South Africa since being removed from office in February 2004, to return to Haiti.

On March 14 the French government and the government of the French Caribbean department of Martinique signed an accord with the "Feb. 5 Collective" ending a general strike that had paralyzed the department since Feb. 5. The accord, which the parties had agreed to on March 11, meets a principal demand of the strikers: a raise of 200 euros a month (about $253) for low-wage workers, with smaller raises for other workers. Major business owners had agreed earlier to bring down prices on some 400 basic items by 20% one month after stores reopen. Negotiations are to continue until March 27 on 87 additional points, including pensions and water and agricultural issues.

Local human rights groups report that more than 300 families have been displaced from their lands by the Peruvian armed forces' Plan "Excelencia 777," launched earlier this month to take control of Vizcatán zone, considered a stronghold of narco-trafficking and "terrorist" organizations in the Valley of the Apurímac and Ene Rivers (VRAE).

Colombia's state oil company Ecopetrol is set to enter territory inhabited by some of the world's last uncontacted indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon under an agreement reached this week. Ecopetrol signed a deal with Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras, which has a contract to explore in two regions—both inhabited by uncontacted tribes.

In a move apparently aimed at appeasing US Congressional opposition to the free trade agreement, Bogotá has ordered nine palm oil companies to return thousands of acres to displaced Afro-Colombian peasants in Chocó department. The Prosecutor General's office is investigating the firms' operators on accusations of homicide, land theft and forced displacement.

Venezuela's military has taken control of key airports and seaports under the terms of a move approved by the National Assembly a week ago. President Hugo Chávez called the move an effort at "reunifying the motherland, which was in pieces." Critics call it a power grab aimed at undercutting state and local leaders who oppose Chávez's rule.