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On June 20, 2009, soldiers set up a military checkpoint in Huamuxtitlan, a small town in the La Montaña region of the state of Guerrero, one of Mexico's many drug-war hot spots. They called a northbound passenger bus to a halt, searched it for drugs and weapons, and detained a passenger named Fausto Valera because he was wearing military-style boots. Perhaps suspecting that he was an insurgent, the soldiers demanded to know where he got the boots. When his answers failed to satisfy them, they placed him under arrest. The incredulous bus driver asked the soldiers to note in his log book that Valera was in their custody. After some complaining, they reluctantly did so.

Dole Food Company and Chiquita Brands International paid a Colombian terrorist organization to perform protection services that included murdering trade unionists, demobilized paramilitary José Gregorio Mongones said in an affidavit released December 6. The testimony is the centerpiece of two civil lawsuits against Chiquita and Dole filed by family members of victims of paramilitary violence in Colombia. Both lawsuits accuse the companies of funding the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (Colombian United Self-Defense Units, or AUC), the country's largest paramilitary organization, formally demobilized in 2006.

In early 2007, around the same time that Colombia’s government awarded thousands of dollars worth of agricultural subsidies to a pair of convicted drug lords, farmers in Boyaca province anxiously awaited their own emergency aid. For Feliciano Zapata, a surprise February frost meant he could harvest nothing from his acres of beans, potatoes and peas. Taking no chances, Zapata hired a camera crew to film the brown and withered crops, keeping the video as evidence of his losses when he and more than 2,200 other affected farmers applied for emergency government support. Four months later, Zapata received about $54. “Even the camera crew cost more than that,” he observed. His wife, who’d also applied for assistance as she’d lost about two acres of her own land, received about $1.50, not enough to cover transportation costs back to the farm.

In a region where leaders' efforts to reform their nations' constitutions dominate the headlines, one political regime is flying under the radar in its efforts to radically overhaul its foundational political charter. On November 16, an assembly in the Dominican Republic overwhelmingly approved the final draft of sweeping reforms for what may become the most reactionary constitution in the Americas. The constitutional reforms are expected to be officially signed into law by President Leonel Fernández in a ceremony in early December.