Riot police fired tear gas in Caracas to block about 1,000 people protesting the latest moves by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to consolidate his power. The demonstrators said a blacklist of opposition candidates and a series of socialist decrees were destroying what's left of democracy, according to Times wire reports.

The BBC reports this morning that the supreme court has upheld the ban imposed by anti-corruption officials though no candidates concerned have been convicted of any crime.

"Protesters say the ban reflects a further concentration of power in the hands of President Hugo Chavez."

"Most of the candidates represent opposition parties."

There are less than four months to go now until regional and local elections, which could prove a key test for President Chavez and his socialist revolution, says the BBC's James Ingham from Caracas.

Click here for more posts on Venezuela.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The execution of Jose Medellin on Tuesday evening in Texas drew little immediate public protest, despite the Mexican government's attempt to intervene and postpone the execution of the convicted rapist and murderer.

"Mexicans struggling with increasingly gruesome crimes at home gave the most muted reactions in recent memory to the execution of one of their own citizens in Texas."

"With Mexican news dominated by the kidnap-killing of 14-year-old Fernando Marti, the execution of Mexican Jose Medellin for the 1993 rape-murder of two girls in Texas appears to have sparked far less outrage than people here have shown in previous death penalty cases," reports the Dallas Morning News today.

Although Medellin's case had provoked demonstrations in recent days in the border cities of Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa, the protests that the American Embassy predicted would arise outside their offices on Mexico City's Reforma avenue never materialized. Last week, the Embassy had issued a warning to U.S. citizens to avoid the anticipated demonstrations, saying that Mexican activists could use the occasion "to incite anti-U.S. sentiment in general."

A small group of Medellin's family in Nuevo Laredo did protest his execution Tuesday night.

"A large black bow and a banner that read "No to the death penalty ... may God forgive you," hung from an iron fence in the front of the house where Medellin lived until moving to the United States at the age of 3." Dallas Morning News.

Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department said it sent a note of protest to the U.S. State Department about the case.

-- Deborah Bonello and Reed Johnson in Mexico City

Photo: An empty bench outside the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on Tuesday night at 6 p.m. -- the scheduled time of Jose Medellin's execution in Texas. The protests predicted by the Embassy over Medellin's execution never materialized. The execution was postponed a few hours and Medellin was pronounced dead at 9:57 p.m. local time. Credit: Deborah Bonello / Los Angeles Times

As Mexico wrestles with soaring inflation and interest rates, falling oil production and shrinking remittances (money sent home by Mexicans working in the U.S.), President Felipe Calderon on Wednesday announced a shake-up at the Economic Ministry.

Secretary of the Economy Eduardo Sojo is being replaced by Gerardo Ruiz Mateo, Calderon's former chief of staff and a close political ally.

Ruiz Mateo, an industrial engineer by training, is a former auto parts executive and ex-president of a major business trade group.

Calderon said Ruiz Mateo's private-sector experience would aid him in his new Cabinet post because "he has lived and suffered the condition of businesses in Mexico and he's been on the other side of the counter."

Click here for the details on Calderon's shakeup.

For more posts on Mexico, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Illegal immigration continues to cause political waves in California.

Long Beach businessman Randal Hernandez has become the fourth member of the state community colleges board to step down in the year since the panel angered Republican lawmakers by endorsing legislation giving illegal immigrants access to student financial aid, reports Patrick McGreevy.

Just two days before Hernandez's reappointment was to be heard by the Senate Rules Committee, and having been warned by Republicans that his appointment was in trouble, Hernandez notified Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday that he was withdrawing his application to serve another term.

The 17-member California Community Colleges Board of Governors angered Republican lawmakers when it voted to support state legislation by Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) that would have allowed illegal immigrants, under certain conditions, to qualify for student financial aid and community college fee waivers.

Read more about the stepping-down of Randal Hernandez here.

For more on immigration, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Jose Ernesto Medellin (pictured), a Mexican national convicted of the 1993 rape and murder of two Texas girls, was executed Tuesday night in Texas after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a reprieve, writes Reed Johnson.

"I'm sorry my actions caused you pain. I hope this brings you the closure that you seek," Medellin, 33, told those gathered to watch him die. He was pronounced dead at 9:57 p.m. local time.

Medellin had been scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m., but the sentence was delayed for a few hours while the Supreme Court considered his appeal.

The buildup to Tuesday's execution drew worldwide attention and involved a host of players and institutions beyond the United States and Mexico.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague sided in 2004 with the Mexican government's argument that the United States had violated the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations by failing to inform arrested Mexican nationals of their right to seek help from the Mexican Consulate.

Some foreign policy analysts, including former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow, contend that executing foreign citizens could put U.S. citizens abroad at risk of being convicted and even executed for crimes without having access to U.S. consulates or embassies.

Following Medellin's execution, Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said it sent a note of protest to the State Department about his case, reports the Associated Press.

For more on Medellin's case and execution, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo credit: Texas Department of Criminal Justice via Associated Press

As we reported last week, yesterday saw the beginning of a pilot program in which United States federal authorities invited all immigrants living illegally in the United States to turn themselves in and be granted 90 days to leave the country of their own accord.

Anna Gorman reported that immigration officials said the program, called "Scheduled Departure," was in response to criticism from advocacy groups that have said that early-morning raids by armed agents disrupt families and communities.

"We want to show advocacy groups and community-based organizations that we're open to suggestions and we are open to different approaches," said Jim Hayes, acting director of detention and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Hayes said the program could also cut the agency's detention costs, because the immigrants would otherwise be detained if arrested. It could also help reduce the number of immigrant fugitives on the government's list.

But the Associated Press says this morning that so far only one person has taken Immigration and Customs Enforcement up on the offer, which will run through to Aug. 22 in Santa Ana, San Diego, Chicago, Phoenix and Charlotte, N.C.

But by Tuesday afternoon, only one person -- in Phoenix -- took the offer, according to an ICE official who spoke on condition of anonymity because not all the numbers are in. Officials in the other cities said they had no takers by midafternoon.

"'Are people actually doing it? I really find it hard to believe," said Wendy Chavez, 22, of Anaheim, who took her mother for a citizenship test.

Click here to read more on how ICE's self-deportation pilot program is coming along.

For more immigration posts, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Oscar, above, is 10 years old and his favorite subject at school is math. He wants to be a lawyer when he grows up. Oscar also is HIV-positive, and he lost his parents to complications with the virus two years ago.

He lives in a community of children here at La Casa de la Sal (the House of Salt) in Mexico City. All of the 25 children in the home have been orphaned by HIV and have the virus themselves.

An estimated 2,934 children ages 14 and younger have HIV/AIDS in Mexico, according to Mexico’s national center for the Control and Prevention of Aids (CENSIDA) (link to PDF). Those are just the cases that have been detected, and there is a lack of reliable statistics on the issue.

Oscar and his friends are the lucky ones. La Casa, which has been open for 22 years, gives them access to antiretroviral drugs that may allow the children to live long enough to fulfill their ambitions.

Corrupt police are nothing new in Mexico. However, the latest development in the country -- in which two police officers have been arrested in suspicion of the kidnapping and slaying of the 14-year-old son of a rich businessman -- is a shocking reminder of the levels to which the nation's police work in collusion with the criminal underworld. A third man -- allegedly a civilian -- was also taken into custody in connection with the crime.

"Disheartened by the failures of vaccines and microbicides in blocking HIV transmission, some AIDS researchers are now touting a third possibility: using existing HIV drugs prophylactically," reports The Time's Thomas H. Maugh II.

"By next year, as many as 15,000 people worldwide will be enrolled in trials to test the concept -- more than are enrolled in all vaccine and microbicide trials combined -- according to a report issued Aug. 3 at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. There are seven trials underway or planned."

" 'We need to look for new ways that people can protect themselves,' " said Dr. Lynn Paxton of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who is coordinating the agency's trials. 'Clearly, this is one of the most promising things we have in the pipeline right now.' "

More than 25,000 delegates have descended on Mexico City this week to attend the conference.

Read on about how some AIDS researchers want to use existing HIV drugs for prevention.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez aims to set up neighborhood-based militias and increase state control over agriculture under a package of laws enacted by decree on the final day of an 18-month period during which lawmakers had granted him special legislative powers, reports the Associated Press.

Changes in areas as diverse as the military and small business loans were pushed through in 26 laws released Monday in the official gazette.

Critics fumed that Chavez did not consult with major business groups before issuing the decrees, and some warned that the laws would scare off private investment and further weaken private enterprise.

This latest development follows Chavez's announcement last week that he plans to nationalize Spanish-owned Banco Venezuela, the country's third-largest financial institution. Chavez said during an afternoon telecast that he was seizing the bank because its owner, Banco Santander, was planning to sell it anyway.

For more stories on Venezuela, click here.

-- Deborah Bonell in Mexico City

"When Maira Martinez graduated from college in Bogota, she had dreams of being a female Indiana Jones, excavating ancient burial sites and unlocking secrets to Colombia's rich pre-Hispanic past," writes the L.A. Times' Chris Kraul.

"These days, she's sifting through a much more recent, and grisly, past. The 27-year-old forensic anthropologist is a member of one of 12 exhumation teams working to recover and, they hope, identify the remains of thousands of victims of Colombia's civil war."

"Less glamorous than she had imagined, Martinez's role is nonetheless important in Colombia's nascent peace process, in which families are slowly coming forward to seek the truth, and some sort of closure."

"Since April 2006, the investigative teams have exhumed 1,536 bodies, of which 172 have been identified, according to the federal attorney general's office. With an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 victims of right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing rebels missing, she is unlikely to run out of work."

Read on here about Colombia's continuing search for victims of the civil war.

For more stories on Colombia, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Forensic anthropologist Maira Martinez works in a shallow grave near Santa Marta, Colombia. Martinez is a member of a dozen exhumation teams that have fanned out across Colombia to dig up remains of thousands of victims of a decades-long conflict. Credit: Chris Kraul / Los Angeles Times

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy gunned down Saturday outside his boyhood home in Cypress Park had been assigned to guard the most dangerous inmates in the county, including members of the notorious Mexican Mafia gang, authorities said Sunday.

Los Angeles police and sheriff's officials said the prospect that Deputy Juan Abel Escalante was killed because of his work at the jail remained one of three possible motives. Investigators were also considering the possibility that neighborhood gang violence or a personal grudge were behind the killing, report Stuart Pfeifer and Tami Abdollah.

Detectives from LAPD's robbery-homicide division were investigating the killing with the assistance of detectives from the sheriff's homicide division and the jail's gang unit. Sheriff Lee Baca said Escalante's assignment put him in touch with members of the Mexican Mafia, a gang known to direct street crime and violence from behind prison walls.

Read on about the case of Juan Abel Escalante here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Juan Abel Escalante, 27, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, was a father of three with more than two years' service in the department. He was a military veteran who a neighbor said served in Iraq.

Tuesday at 6 p.m., Texas is scheduled to execute Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen, going against an order from the International Court of Justice in the Hague. The ICJ is currently pondering a case brought by the Mexican government challenging death sentences in the United States of 51 Mexican nationals who were denied the right to contact Mexican consular officials after their arrest.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow weighs in on the issue of the executions and argues that if the United States doesn't honor the court's judgment, it may be putting the lives of U.S. citizens at risk in the future.

"Because thousands of U.S. citizens are jailed abroad every year (sometimes for no good reason), anything that diminishes the power of American consuls to assist them in their time of need is cause for concern. Yet current developments in our own nation are threatening the power of American consuls."

"At issue are the cases of 51 Mexican nationals who were arrested, tried and sentenced to death in the United States but were denied consular notification and access. Mexico sought a remedy for these U.S. breaches of the Vienna Convention at the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial arm of the United Nations and the international body that the U.S. and other Vienna Convention signatories had agreed would resolve such disputes. The United States was the strongest proponent of the court at the time of the formation of the United Nations and was the first nation to invoke its jurisdiction related to the Vienna Convention, in a case filed against Iran during the 1980 hostage crisis."

Read on here.

-- Deborah Bonello and Reed Johnson in Mexico City

The New York Times reports from Guatemala on Luis Alberto Jiménez, who was deported from the United States by a hospital in which he was receiving treatment after a car crash with a drunk driver in Florida. Since his arrival in his home country, Jiménez, who sustained a severe traumatic brain injury, has received no medical care or medication. Over the last year, his condition has deteriorated.

"Eight years ago, Mr. Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million," writes Deborah Sontag.

"What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later be declared invalid, Martin Memorial leased an air ambulance for $30,000 and 'forcibly returned him to his home country,' as one hospital administrator described it."

Continue reading here...

While Mexican authorities continued battling their drug trafficking problems, things farther south appear to be taking a turn for the worse.

Suspected drug flights from Venezuela to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola rose 44% over the first three months of the year, U.S. officials say, a surge in activity that some believe was behind Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's expressions of willingness to resume anti-drug cooperation with Washington.

Despite the possible rapprochement with Chavez three years after the leftist leader suspended joint anti-drug efforts, U.S. counter-narcotics officials in Venezuela and the Caribbean say they see no sign of cooperation or of reduced traffic, reports the Times' Chris Kraul.

Read on about Venezuela's drug flights here.

For more posts on the drug trade in the Americas, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Venezuela's foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, right, and Venezuela's interior minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, wave to journalists during an anti-drug summit in the Cartagena, Colombia, on Aug. 1. Fernando Vergara / Associated Press

"Think of it as 'Desperate Housewives' -- make that very desperate -- with butcher knives, vials of poison and bottles of hydrochloric acid. Or an extremely stressed-out 'Lipstick Jungle,' " writes Reed Johnson.

"It's the hit Latin American TV series "Mujeres Asesinas" (Women Assassins), a high-gloss revenge fantasy about the fury of women scorned that has become a major TV hit and a minor pop-culture phenomenon in certain Spanish-speaking parts of this hemisphere. Already, it has run through three seasons in Argentina and is gearing up there for a fourth. It also has scored high ratings and strong critical notices in Colombia and Mexico and seems destined to show up very soon on U.S. television screens."

" 'Many people from the United States and Latin America ask us every day and every week, "When is it coming to Peru?" "When is it coming to Chile?" ' said Alex Balassa, one of the show's executive producers with Pedro Torres, at a screening of the Mexican version of the series' penultimate chapter here last week."

Read on about Mujeres Asesinas here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Actress Leticia Calderón playfully turns the tables on “Mujeres Asesinas” producer Pedro Torres. Televisa S.A. de C.V.

Alleged drug kingpin Ever Villafane Martinez, a Colombian believed to be the main cocaine supplier to an offshoot of Mexico's notorious Sinaloa cartel, was arrested in Mexico City, federal police said Friday.

One of the hemisphere's most wanted fugitives, Villafane Martinez has been on the lam since 2001, when he escaped from a maximum-security lockup in Colombia while awaiting extradition to the United States on narcotics charges, writes Marla Dickerson.

His arrest was a rare piece of good news for President Felipe Calderon in his U.S.-backed war against Mexico's violent drug cartels. Authorities nabbed Villafane Martinez on Wednesday at a home in the Mexican capital's upscale Jardines del Pedregal neighborhood, where he apparently had lived for some time alongside millionaires and captains of industry.

Meanwhile, north of the border two Mexican federal agents were charged Friday with possession of alleged drug money after they were arrested at a West Covina home with more than $500,000, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, reports Richard Marosi.

Carlos Cedano Filippini, 35, the lead agent from the Mexicali office of the Agencia Federal de Investigacion, and Victor Manuel Juarez, 36, were arrested Wednesday as part of an ongoing narcotics investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Read the rest of this story about the arrest of Ever Villafane Martinez here.

To read on about the arrest of the two Mexican federal agents in Los Angeles, click here.

For more posts about the Mexican drug trade, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Guardian writer Ben Whitford takes a swipe today at anti-immigration groups who are trying to tempt the environmental lobby into their camp through a series of ads running in U.S. media that claim illegal immigrants hurt the environment.

Christopher Knight, Times Art Critic, pays a visit to the new Pre-Columbian collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.