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Even though a federal judge blocked key controversial provisions of Arizona's new immigration legislation, one of the harshest anti-immigrant laws ever passed in the United States still went into effect on July 29 in that state. This law, however, didn't come out of thin air. The "zero tolerance" logic behind the law mimics what has already been established by the federal government. Indeed, the confluence of these immigration, military, border, and economic policies in Arizona has not only made it the country’s primary laboratory for draconian immigration policies, but also connects the U.S. border zone to a broader international context of “global apartheid.”

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2010 edition of NACLA Report on the Americas.

On July 1 the Peruvian government notified Father Paul Mc Auley, an environmental activist in the northern Amazon region, that it was rescinding his residency in the country. The order to expel the British priest comes on the heels of his efforts to ensure accountability for the massive June 19 oil spill of PlusPetrol, an Argentine oil company with a safety record equal to that of British Petroleum. This further indicates an unofficial governmental policy in Peru to stifle voices that highlight the social and environmental costs of the country’s resource development agenda.

At a June 5 meeting of coca farmers in Cochabamba, Bolivian president Evo Morales threatened to expel USAID from Bolivia, accusing the U.S. governmental organization of lending financial support to groups that oppose his government. The announcement was made just days after the United States met with Bolivia, as part of ongoing talks aimed at reestablishing full diplomatic relations, after a damaging political dispute in 2008. While in public officials are giving glowing reviews of the progress of the negotiations, reality reveals that reconciliation may still be a long way away, especially as the United States continues to meddle in Bolivian affairs.

On June 22, Jamaican police arrested Christopher “Dudus” Coke in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood of Kingston and immediately delivered him into U.S. custody. Many Jamaicans are hoping that Coke will now reveal the long history of connections between the country’s political leaders, its business elite, and its gunmen in the street. Such revelations are likely to illuminate past actions of the CIA, which helped create one of Jamaica’s most powerful organized crime organizations, the Shower Posse. These links are ever more important as the United States is poised to invest millions of dollars to make the Caribbean its newest front in the drug war, ostensibly fighting some of the same personalities and groups they themselves helped create.