For a fourth year running, the White House narcotics "blacklist" (officially the Presidential Determination on Major Illicit Drug Transit and Drug Producing Countries, released Sept. 14) named Venezuela and Bolivia as nations that have "failed demonstrably" to fight the drug trade, making them ineligible for US aid. Caracas and La Paz struck back angrily to the announcement. "Venezuela deplores the United States government's insistence on undermining bilateral relations by publishing this kind of document, with no respect for the sovereignty and dignity of the Venezuelan people," Venezuela's Foreign Ministry said, accusing Washington of a "permanent line of aggression against independent sovereign governments." Bolivian President Evo Morales said in a speech in the Andean region of Oruro: "The United States has no morality, authority or ethics that would allow it to speak about the war on drugs. Do you know why? Because the biggest market for cocaine and other drugs is the United States. They should tell us by what percentage they have reduced the internal market. The internal market keeps growing and in some states of the United States they're even legalizing the sale of cocaine under medical control." (EFE, Sept. 15)

Mexican naval forces in the oil port of Tampico, Tamaulipas, on Sept. 13 arrested Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez AKA "El Coss"—notorious leader of the Gulf Cartel—along with five cohorts, apparently without resistance. Authorities hailed it as a major blow against the cartel, coming just a week after the arrest of another Gulf kingpin, Mario Cárdenas Guillén AKA "El Gordo" (Fatso), captured by Mexican marines in Altamira, also in Tamaulipas—the brother of Osiel Cárdenas Guillen, who led the cartel until he was detained in 2003.

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos announced Sept. 4 that his government and the FARC guerrilla organization have signed an agreement to start peace negotiations. In a televised speech, Santos said the talks will consist of three phases. In phase one, which has been concluded, "we defined a closed agenda, rules and procedures to move forward," Santos said. The second phase, to begin now, "will be a discussion, without interruptions and without intermediaries, about agreed points to reach the final agreement." The third, post-conflict phase will consist of "the simultaneous implementation of all agreements, with the appropriate safeguards, verification mechanisms and citizen participation." Five points for the talks have been outlined: rural development, guarantees for political participation, an immediate end of the armed conflict, drug trafficking, and victims' rights. Santos said these points "constitute an integral formula for the effective termination of the conflict and to advance the construction of a stable and lasting peace."

The Mexican daily La Jornada reported on Aug. 28 that the two US agents wounded in a shooting incident near Tres Marías in Morelos on Aug. 24 were from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), not the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Citing unidentified "official sources close to the investigation," the newspaper also said the attack was carried out by five vehicles, not four, and that the shooting began after the assailants were able to see the victims close up. The agents were driving a heavily armored US embassy car, a Toyota Land Cruiser, on their way to a Navy training facility, apparently to provide instruction to marines involved in the "war on drugs." According to later reports, the US agents survived only because of the car's armor.

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.