Mexican cartels now have a 'sophisticated farm-to-arm supply chain' for the US heroin trade

Business Insider: The heroin crisis in the US is worsening as the use of heroin surpasses that of cocaine and meth, and we know where a lot of the product is coming from.

Mexican drug cartels have taken over much of the heroin market in the US, smuggling an estimated 225,000 pounds over the border last year, The Washington Post reports.

Mexico’s Four Economies Reflect Regional Differences, Challenges

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: Mexico is a country of contrasts, its geography varying from deserts to jungles, mountains to beaches. Such differences extend to the economic characteristics of Mexico’s four regions: the manufacturing north, the agrarian north-central, the service-based central and the energy-producing south (Chart 1).

Such economic specialization has contributed to significantly different levels of development—evident in persistent and often worsening disparities in standards of living. Read more.

Parents of 43 Missing Mexican Students Question 2nd Positive ID of Remains

Latin American Herald Tribune: The spokesman for the parents of 43 trainee teachers who went missing nearly a year ago in southern Mexico on Thursday called into question the latest positive identification of human remains by a laboratory in Austria, saying there is insufficient “certainty” that they are those of one of the students.

The extent of the genetic match between one of the burned samples that Mexican authorities say was found in a trash dump and the DNA of teacher trainee Jhosivani Guerrero de la Cruz’s mother is “very low,” said the spokesman, Felipe de la Cruz. Read more.

Old Cartels Never Really Die…

FSN News: Despite recurrent pronouncements of death by some U.S. and Mexican officials, high-profile organized crime groups continue operating and shedding blood south of the border. Tijuana, where control of both the local and export drug business is the prize of contention, figures once again as a significant flashpoint of violence.

Violent rivalries were on public display this past week as at least five so-called narcomantas, or narco banners, were placed in highly visible spots in the Baja California border city of an estimated 1.6 million people.

THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE: The US Military and the Myth that Humanity is Predisposed to Violence

Editor's Note: This is an important read that is relevant to the Americas Program's critique of US funding and training in Latin America and the downward spiral of violence this causes. 

Other Worlds: We have this tragic misperception that humanity is predisposed to violence.

The truth is that humanity is predisposed to peace. The default position for humanity is that of conscientious objector to war and violence.

Mexican Government Cuts 2016 Budget by $13 Billion amid Slumping Oil Prices

Latin American Herald Tribune: The government is cutting the 2016 budget by 221 billion pesos ($13.12 billion) to maintain economic stability amid a challenging global situation, Mexican Finance and Public Credit Secretary Luis Videgaray said.

“The spending planned in the budget for the year 2016 reflects a reduction of 221 billion pesos ($13.12 billion), that is 1.15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) less than in the planned spending for last year,” Videgaray told Congress.

'El Chapo' Guzman escape: Mexican prison officials charged

BBC: Four Mexican officials have been charged with aiding the escape of the notorious drugs lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman from a maximum security prison.

Two are members of Mexico's secret service who were based at the prison. The others were control room employees who should have monitored his cell.