In response to an escalation of violence -- including three shootings in a 24-hour period last month and an increase in arrests of gang members with guns -- Santa Ana police have launched a three-day operation targeting gang members and encouraging residents to report crime in a 2-square-mile area southwest of the Civic Center, writes the L.A. Times' Tony Barboza.

Although crime in this city of 350,000 has fallen in recent years, the latest increase has centered in several neighborhoods of mobile home parks, apartments and single-family homes in the city's core, eliciting fears that those gains could be eroding.

Although aggravated assaults, which include shootings and stabbings, have gone down since last year, police said, homicides are up, with 18 so far this year compared with 11 by this time last year. More than half the killings were gang-related.

This is the latest of many crackdowns against gangs -- many of them black or Latino -- in California. Here's a report on a push against Latino gang violence in San Clemente -- another part of Orange County.

Click here to read the full dispatch about the gang crackdown in Santa Ana.

Click here for a recent Opinion column by Rocky Delgadillo, the Los Angeles city attorney, on how combating L.A.'s gang problems is a global, not local, challenge.

For all posts on gangs, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The United States and Mexico made hard going of it against Central American opposition Wednesday night but came away with World Cup qualifying victories over Guatemala and Honduras, respectively, writes Grahame L. Jones.

A 69th-minute headed goal by Carlos Bocanegra off a DaMarcus Beasley corner kick earned the U.S. a 1-0 win, its first in Guatemala in more than 20 years and only its second ever. It was Bocanegra's 10th goal for the national team.

Mexico, meanwhile, gave former England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson a 2-1 victory in his first game in charge, but it was anything but easy and only because of the skill and finishing ability of veteran Pavel Pardo.

In front of a packed Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, with the crowd including the presidents of both countries, Honduras took the lead in the 35th minute, very much against the run of play, when Julio Cesar Leon struck a free kick off the underside of the crossbar and into the net.

Read about both matches in full here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The Mexican cement manufacturer Cemex is planning to appeal to the World Bank after Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez seized its operations in the country as part of his plan to nationalize the business.

The BBC reports this morning that Cemex, which yesterday expressed its deep displeasure at Chavez's move, claims that the move is illegal.

Government officials, with the backing of the National Guard, took over the firm's factories on Monday after 60 days of talks ended without agreement.

Cemex now intends to go to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, arguing that the move was a "flagrant violation" of the country's constitution.

The firm said it was offered $650m for its local operations -- a sum that "significantly" undervalued the business. It had wanted $1.3bn (£697m)

"The Venezuelan government actions highlight a lack of respect for the principles of international law and the treaties relating to reciprocal protection of investments," said the fir.

Read the full BBC dispatch here.

For more on Venezuela, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Think they don't take soccer seriously in Brazil?

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was apparently beside himself with anger after Brazil's 3-0 thrashing at the hands of arch-rival Argentina in Beijing.

Witnesses told O Globo that Lula, in a closed-door meeting, labeled  the Olympic defeat a "humiliation,'' and was fuming.

"I've never been so angry in all my life,'' Lula, a devoted soccer fan, reportedly said. "I saw a team that didn't show any will to win. … It's shameful to lose this way to Argentina.''

The front page of O Globo's sports section was designed as a funeral notice, announcing the  "passing'' of the national soccer squad, (five-time World Cup champion),  saying, "Please do not send flowers.''

— Marcelo Soares in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Patrick J. McDonnell in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Photo: Brazil's Lula at the opening of the Beijing Olympics. (Reuters)

In 2004, a fire at a disco in Buenos Aires left 194 people dead and brought down the city government at the time. The blaze broke out after someone set off flares inside the Cromagnon Republic nightclub.

Now, 4 years later, the trial against the venue's owner and the rock band that were playing at the time of the disaster has begun.

The venue's owner, Omar Chaban, and members of the Los Callejeros rock group, who were playing that night, face trial and prison terms ranging from eight to 20 years if convicted, writes the BBC.

Read the whole BBC dispatch on the Cromagnon Republic nightclub trial here.

For more on Argentina, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

**edited at 3:17 Mexico City time. The tradedy happened in 2004, not 1994.

Last week's condemnation of the miniskirt by the Mexican Catholic Church has enraged some Mexican women, who say the church's statement that women should wear less provocative clothing makes it easier to justify rape and other forms of violence against them.

Last week's statement, which advised women not to get into "spicy" conversations with men if they wanted to avoid rape and violence, said:

If you want to avoid sexual aggression ... do not use provocative clothing ... watch your glances ... don't be alone with a man, even if you know him ... don't permit spicy chats or jokes ... look for help when you suspect bad intentions.

Women protested in front of the cathedral in Mexico City's Zocalo over the weekend — wearing miniskirts of course — and the statement has been lambasted by newspaper columnists and women's rights activists.

Guadalupe Loaeza, a renowned Mexican social commentator, said she worries the priest's statements will be taken seriously and make it acceptable to blame the victim.

"It gives rapists permission to say, 'Well, she had on a miniskirt,' " Loaeza said. "What the church says has credibility — that's why this type of statement is so dangerous."

Click here for the full Associated Press report.

For more on Mexico, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

We reported yesterday that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had seized the plants and offices of Mexican cement group Cemex in Venezuela as part of his continuing nationalization program.

This morning, the L.A. Times' Marla Dickerson's update reports that:

"Cemex executives Tuesday declined to comment apart from a news release acknowledging the government takeover of its Venezuelan facilities. But Mexico's ambassador to Venezuela, Mario Chacon, made his displeasure clear. Chavez's hard line with Cemex, one of Mexico's most admired companies, has irritated the conservative administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

""As a government we respect Venezuela's decision, but we are obligated to look out for the interests of our companies," Chacon said. "We believe there has been discriminatory treatment against Cemex and we don't understand why.""

Read the whole dispatch on Venezuela vs. Cemex here.

For more on Venezuela, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

"He has shared everything for most of his scuffled life, from twin beds to sofa cushions to last bites."

"It only made sense, then, that when he stunningly won an Olympic gold medal in freestyle wrestling Tuesday, the Los Angeles-born son of undocumented Mexican immigrants would also share," writes Bill Plaschke.

"Leaders in five opposition-controlled states proclaimed a general strike Tuesday, paralyzing a broad swath of this deeply divided Andean nation," reports the L.A. Times' Patrick J. McDonnell.

"Clashes broke out in the eastern city of Santa Cruz, epicenter of the opposition, where anti-government protesters fought with loyalists of leftist President Evo Morales. Police fired tear gas to disperse rival groups, which exchanged fusillades of sticks and stones.

"Pro-strike activists blocked roads, and schools, shops, airports and private vehicular traffic were largely shut down in five of Bolivia's nine states, including Santa Cruz. The states are seeking greater autonomy and a bigger share of royalties from the extraction of gas and petroleum, which are drilled mostly in regions controlled by the opposition.

"The strike marks an escalation of the political crisis that has divided the country into two camps: for and against Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president."

Read the rest of McDonnell's dispatch from Bolivia here.

For more on Bolivia in general, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Guillermo Pérez is to take home the first gold medal for Mexico from the Olympics in Beijing this year, after winning a four-round taekwondo match against Gabriel Mercedes of the Dominican Republic.

"Perez won a decision over Dominica's Yulis Gabriel Mercedes by scoring early. Mercedes was unable to come back until just seconds before the bell, when he connected with a back kick.

"The two went into overtime, but neither scored. The judges declared Perez the winner," writes the Associated Press.

The win for Pérez, who according to the Mexico City newspaper El Universal is inspired by martial arts film-star Bruce Lee, is prompting celebrations across Mexico, which until today has had a rather lackluster performance at the Olympics. Pérez is the first Mexican man to win gold at an Olympics since 1984.

TV hosts on Televisa's morning show Wednesday showered themselves in confetti and waved the Mexican flag in jubilation over the win for Pérez, who is from the state of Michoacan, as is Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Guillermo Pérez celebrates victory in the 58-kilogram taekwondo event in Beijing. Credit: Marcelo Sayao / EFE

It was sweet revenge for Argentina.

Last year, the Argentine national squad was humiliated 3-0 by Brazil in the Copa America final in Maracaibo.

On Tuesday, Argentina, reigning Olympic champions, turned the tables. The Argentines dispatched their biggest  rival 3-0 in an Olympic semifinal match to move into the finals against powerful Nigeria. This will be a rematch of the 1996 finals in Atlanta, won by Nigeria, 3-2.

Afterward, two superstars and Barcelona ex-teammates — Argentina's Lionel Messi and Brazil's Ronaldinho (now with AC Milan) — embraced on the pitch.

The euphoric Argentina coach, Sergio Batista, declared:

"With these 18 players, I'll go fight in Iraq.''

Here are some local links:

Olé (Argentina); Clarin, Argentina; Lance, Brazil.

-- Andres D'Alessandro in Buenos Aires and Patrick J. McDonnell in Sucre, Bolivia.

Photo: Argentina's Lionel Messi, left, and Brazil's Ronaldinho shake hands Tuesday during their men's semifinal soccer match at Beijing 2008. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno.)

The governor of violence-torn Chihuahua state on Monday urged President Felipe Calderon to revamp his anti-crime strategy after a weekend shooting there killed 13 people, including a baby, reports the L.A. Times' Ken Ellingwood.

Gunmen opened fire Saturday on a family gathering in the northern border state, which has become Mexico's most violent spot amid bloody feuding between drug gangs and a government crackdown on them.

Following the attack, Chihuahua Gov. Jose Reyes Baeza called on federal authorities to improve intelligence gathering, clean up corrupt police forces and review a government offensive that has deployed more than 3,000 troops and federal agents in Chihuahua.

Investigators in Colombia who are unraveling the country's intricate past in a "Justice and Peace" process aimed at understanding the country's paramilitary movement known as the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia are concerned at the extradition of collaborators to the United States -- not for war crimes they have confessed to, but for drugs trafficking charges.

This Washington Post report is based on a four-hour jailhouse interview with Ever Veloza, a former paramilitary who ran death squads in Colombia backed by army officers and prominent politicians. Veloza is now one among two dozen top commanders facing extradition to the United States for cocaine-trafficking charges.

If I get extradited, the Justice and Peace process ends there, because the foot soldiers do not know anything. If I go, then the story of the Self-Defense Forces is incomplete.

More La Plaza Colombia coverage.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The actions of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez once again promise to ruffle feathers as he vowed yesterday to seize the offices and plants of the Mexican cement giant Cemex as part of the process of nationalizing Venezuela's cement industry.

Cemex's Swiss and French rivals Lafarge and Holcim have agreed to hand control of their local subsidiaries to Caracas, reports the BBC, but a a deal with Mexico's Cemex "hasn't been possible," according to Venezuelan Vice-President Ramon Carrizalez.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused foreign cement firms of demanding excessive profits and selling their cement overseas.

Taking them over, he said, would allow his government to make faster progress with plans to end a massive housing shortage.

Earlier this month, Chavez said that he would nationalize Spanish-owned Banco Venezuela, the country's third-largest financial institution.

For more on Venezuela, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The BBC is reporting this morning that the number of new homes and apartments being built in the United States sank to a 17-year low during July, spelling trouble for Latin American migrants living and working in the United States for whom the construction industry is a major source of employment.

Economists have been studying forward-looking information for signs that the U.S. housing slump was past its worst.

However, the Commerce Department data made for grim reading, with the number of construction permits issued - seen as a reliable sign of future activity - down 17.7% on an annual basis.

And the number of new homes being constructed last month was down by 39.2% compared with July 2007.

As the Pew Hispanic Center's labor report showed in June, the unemployment rate for Hispanics in the U.S. rose to 6.5% in the first quarter of 2008 mainly due to the slump in the construction industry.

For more on immigration, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

The number of kidnappings in Mexico grew by 9.1% in the first five months of the year, according to figures published this week.

The statistics, from the anti-kidnapping branch of the attorney general's office (Procuraduria General de la Republica, PGR, in Spanish), will serve to justify the fear currently gripping the country over insecurity and high crime levels. A march is planned at the end of the month in Mexico City to protest the rising level of crime and public insecurity.

The discovery this month of the bullet-riddled body of a 14-year-old kidnap victim prompted a public outcry in Mexico as kidnappings rise and drug-related violence takes a heavy toll on the civilian population.

Rocky Delgadillo, the Los Angeles city attorney, oversees the enforcement of 57 gang injunctions, including ones against the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. In Opinion today, he talks about how combating Los Angeles gangs is not a local challenge, but an international one.

"The two fastest-growing and most powerful gangs in the world are homegrown products of Los Angeles. The Mara Salvatrucha gang, or MS-13, and the 18th Street gang, known in Central America as Mara 18, sprang up in Pico-Union and the densely populated neighborhoods around MacArthur Park. But unlike many local street gangs, these two were entrepreneurial: They recruited Central American immigrants across the city and then expanded farther -- throughout Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Conservative estimates put MS-13's ranks at 20,000 and 18th Street's at 30,000 worldwide.

"Stopping street gangs is no longer a local matter -- a point driven home to me during a symposium in El Salvador. During the conference, two points of consensus emerged. First, MS-13 and 18th Street have become an international concern -- indeed, even Interpol is now involved in the fight. Second, past strategies to handle these gangs have failed."

Read the full Opinion piece here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Gunshot victims of drug violence in Mexico are being treated in the United States at  tax payers' expense, according to this report from the L.A. Times' Miguel Bustillo.

Using the wounding of deputy police chief Lorenzo de la Torre Torres as an example, Bustillo writes:

"The only hospital within a 280-mile radius to offer state-of-the-art trauma care, Thomason has become an unwilling treatment center of choice for law enforcement officials and others in the vicinity wounded in Mexico's drug turf battles. The violence has killed more than 2,000 people this year, and more than double that number in the 20 months since President Felipe Calderon began deploying 40,000 troops across the country to crack down on narcotics trafficking."

Meanwhile,  in Mexico City, Ken Ellingwood reports that anti-crime activists in Mexico say they have audio proof that the former attorney general of coastal Tabasco state was in league with drug traffickers while in office.

For more on our Mexico Under Siege series, click here.

Click here for more on the drug trade and here for Mexico.

— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

All around Mario Romero's strip-mall travel agency, this immigrant neighborhood was alive with commercial traffic, all of it moving to a clave rhythm clunking from an outdoor speaker. In and out they went on a sunny Monday morning to the IGA food store, or the Gala hair salon, or La Epoca restaurant for a  cafecito, writes Richard Fausset.

But few stopped in to see Romero. His business, Cojimar Express Services, is one of dozens of Miami-area agencies that hold federal licenses to sell plane tickets to Cuba. These days, he said, people are too scared to buy.

"There is no business," he said. "You don't see anybody in here."

Romero, who left the island in 1991, sat at his desk in a crisp linen shirt and stared at a row of empty chairs beneath his black-and-white photos of the Cuban countryside: The banks of the Rio Miel. The fishing boats at Pinar del Rio.

This slowdown, Romero said, was the result of yet another shift in regulations on this side of the Straits of Florida. A state law passed this summer requiring agencies like his to post bonds of as much as $250,000. The state would use the money to open investigations of companies suspected of skirting the rules governing travel to Cuba.

Read more about the slowdown in travel to Cuba here, and for more on Cuba in general, click here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City

Photo: Mario Romero says a new Florida law has frightened off customers of his travel agency, which specializes in trips to visit relatives in Cuba. Credit: David Adame / For The Times