In an unusual and dramatic protest against lax gun control laws in the US, relatives of victims of drug-related violence in Mexico destroyed a .357 Magnum pistol and an AK-47 assault rifle in Houston's Guadalupe Plaza Park on Aug. 27 and buried the remains in cement. The protesters were part of a Caravan for Peace that started a month-long tour of the US in San Diego on Aug. 12 to raise awareness of the US role in a "drug war" that has cost some 50,000 lives in Mexico since the beginning of 2007. The tour is to end in Washington, DC on Sept. 12.

A group of Mexican federal police agents attacked a US embassy car at around 8 am on Aug. 24 in the state of Morelos just of south of Mexico City, near the Mexico City-Cuernavaca highway. The police agents shot a number of times at the car, lightly wounding two US officials who were traveling with a member of the Mexican Navy to a nearby Navy training installation. The embassy car had diplomatic license plates, while the federal police were reportedly traveling in four unmarked vehicles.

According to two members of the US Congress, Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Henry Waxman (D-CA), there is evidence that the US-based retail giant Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., didn't take legally required steps to prevent money laundering and tax evasion through its Mexican subsidiary, Wal-Mart de México. The allegation appears in an Aug. 14 letter the lawmakers wrote to Wal-Mart Stores CEO Michael Duke complaining that the company has failed to cooperate with their investigation of a $24 million bribery scandal that emerged in April.

According to an Aug. 4 report in the Wall Street Journal, the US Attorney's Office in Los Angeles is investigating possible money laundering by Chinese-Mexican pharmaceutical entrepreneur Zhenli Ye Gon in the middle 2000s through the Las Vegas Sands Corp. casino company. The company, whose CEO and largest shareholder is US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to the Republican Party, reportedly failed to tell the authorities about suspicious money transfers by Ye Gon until the publication of a newspaper article about him in 2007. Adelson himself is apparently not being investigated at this point.

Brazil on Aug. 8 announced the mobilization of nearly 9,000 military troops to its borders with four neighboring countries as part of an operation aimed at interrupting narco-trafficking networks. Army, navy and air force personnel are being deployed along the frontiers with Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay, the Defense Ministry said in announcing the mobilization, which has been carried out as an annual exercise since 2007. "One of our objectives is to control the airspace which is being used for illegal activities such as the drug trade and other contraband," said Brigade Commander Jose Geraldo Ferreira. The operation, code-named Agata 5, will last 30 days and bring F-5 fighter jets to the skies above the border zones. It will also involve sending troops to Brazil's Amazon region to crack down on outlaw gold mining. (BrazzilMag, Bernama, UPI, AP, Aug. 8)

Erikson Vargas AKA "Sebastian"—purported leader of the Medellín-based crime syndicate Oficina de Envigado—was captured by Colombian National Police on Aug. 8. in Copacabana, a town just outside the country's second-largest city. Police said one of Sebastian's bodyguards was killed when police stormed his hideout. President Juan Manuel Santos praised the arrest as a "super-blow" against organized crime and promised a "gold medal to the police" for the capture. (Colombia Reports, BBC News, Aug. 8) That same day, Luis Fernando Jaramillo Arroyave AKA "Nano"—a top commander of Los Urabeños paramilitary group—was extradited to the US on drug trafficking charges. Nano, also said to have founded Los Paisas paramilitary group, was captured in Medellín in February 2011 and later sentenced nine months on charges of murder, drug trafficking and conspiracy. (Colombia Reports, Aug. 8)

The US government has determined that Bolivia now has fewer coca plantations but it is producing more cocaine because traffickers are using a more "efficient" process known as the "Colombian method," according to an interview with a diplomat in La Paz daily Pagina Siete. Said John Creamer, outgoing charge d'affaires at the US diplomatic mission in La Paz: "That is the paradox in Bolivia. There are fewer coca plantations in the past three years, but there's more production of cocaine." Creamer said that using the new process, producers "can obtain more cocaine with lesser quantities of coca leaves." He also warned of the "resowing" of eradicated coca fields. The Bolivian government boasts that it reduced coca leaf production for three consecutive years from 2009 to 2011, but according to UN figures overall coca production increased from 25,400 hectares in 2006 when Evo Morales took power to 31,000 hectares in 2010 (the last year for which the UN has data). Bolivian law allows the legal cultivation of just 12,000 hectares of coca for traditional purposes.