The Americas News: News and Headlines from Canada, South America & More - The Washington Post

Mexico's leading presidential candidate is handsome, popular and still a mystery

Nick Miroff, William Booth — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:30:00 EST

In his campaign for president, Mexico’s handsome front-runner, Enrique Peña Nieto, looks down from towering billboards with a movie-star smile. “Tu me conoces,” he says. You know me.

But the fact is, many don’t.

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‘Total barbarity’ as Mexican cartel dumps 49 torsos along highway

Nick Miroff — Sun, 13 May 2012 19:00:00 EST

MEXICO CITY — The headless torsos of 43 men and six women were found early Sunday along a highway between the U.S. border and the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, the latest in an escalating series of horrific mass killings among warring drug gangs here.

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In Mexico, a celebration of the mother cult

William Booth — Sat, 12 May 2012 11:10:00 EST

MEXICO CITY — Everybody loves mothers, but Mexicans? Maybe more so.

In the annual celebration of the mother cult, Mexico is especially devout, and every year on May 10 (they don’t move the date around to fall on a Sunday), the entire nation stops what it is doing in the afternoon and eats some serious lunch with Mom.

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Sat, 12 May 2012 11:10:00 EST

Tomas Borge Martinez, Sandinista movement’s last surviving founder, dies at 81

Filadelfo Aleman, Marjorie Miller — Tue, 1 May 2012 22:57:14 EST

Tomas Borge Martinez, the last surviving founder of the Sandinista guerrilla movement that overthrew Nicaragua’s U.S.-
backed right-wing dictatorship in 1979 and replaced it with a leftist system criticized for its own repressive measures, died April 30 in Managua. He was 81.

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Seizure of Repsol affiliate in Argentina stuns oil markets

Juan Forero — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 07:55:00 EST

BOGOTA, Colombia — With oil prices rising fast, nationalist governments in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia have squeezed multinational energy firms over the past decade, taking a greater stake in projects and jacking up taxes and royalties.

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Cartagena’s night life spelled trouble for Secret Service

William Booth — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:13:00 EST

Whatever really happened here in the neon bordellos, salsa clubs and king-size beds at the Hotel Caribe — between the male Secret Service officers and their new female friends — one thing is apparent: The agents were in the right place to get into trouble.

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Radical left at crossroads in Latin America

Juan Forero — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 19:14:00 EST

BOGOTA, Colombia — Quite suddenly, whether intentional or not, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner became the standard-bearer of populist nationalism in Latin America when her country seized a Spanish oil company last week.

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