Latin America over the weekend

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Border crackdown, U.S. slowdown have illegal Mexican migrants giving up sooner
A U.S. crackdown is causing the longest and most significant drop in illegal migration from Mexico since the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials say the U.S. economic downturn, tighter security and a more perilous and expensive journey are persuading many who try to sneak into the U.S. to give up sooner, says the Associated Press.

Workers of our world, legal or not
In Opinion, Tim Rutten writes how scapegoating immigrants instead of reforming immigration is risky business. “Around the world, May 1 is celebrated as International Workers’ Day. For the last two years, Americans have marked the holiday with marches demanding reforms to improve the lot of working people and immigrants, both legal and illegal.”

Made in Mexico: domesticated sunflowers
New evidence confirms that the sunflower was domesticated in Mexico more than 4,600 years ago, researchers say, contrary to the widely held belief that it was converted into a food crop only in the Mississippi Valley, writes Thomas H. Maugh II.

Public outrage helps free kidnapped Tijuana surgeon
The kidnappers who abducted Dr. Fernando Guzmán didn’t plan on triggering a public health crisis. Guzmán -- blindfolded and bleeding from a bullet wound -- was supposed to be just another victim.

But the capture of the surgeon at one of Tijuana’s leading hospitals drew extraordinary attention even during a wave of drug-war violence, writes Richard Marosi.

Protesters again confront Occidental
It’s becoming a ritual for Occidental Petroleum Corp.: the yearly gathering of shareholders and protesters. The setting Friday was a sea-view hotel in Santa Monica where shareholders, eager to hear how record energy prices made this year the Westwood-based company’s most successful, strolled past hazmat-suited activists protesting Occidental’s environmental record in Peru, writes Tiffany Hsu.

Colombian police: Second of drug-trafficking twins captured
Police acting on an informant’s tip captured one of Colombia’s main cocaine traffickers, who was hiding in a tractor-trailer’s secret compartment -- just days after killing his twin brother.

Miguel Angel Mejia, 48, was seized late Thursday at a roadblock in the steamy river town of Honda, about 95 kilometers (60 miles) west of Bogota, said Col. Cesar Pinzon, the head of Colombia’s judicial police, reports the Associated Press.

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New Colombian drug gangs wreak havoc
The killing of a farm leader in Colombia who opposed growing coca suggests the emergence of former right-wing paramilitary fighters, writes Chris Kraul.

In Bolivia, autonomy vote deepens divisions
A bid by Bolivia’s wealthy Santa Cruz province for greater powers and independence is expected to pass, setting the stage for a clash with leftist President Evo Morales, who calls the election an illegal maneuver by wealthy ‘oligarchs’ intent on breaking away from Bolivia and creating a pro-U.S. protectorate in the country’s resource-rich eastern lowlands, writes Patrick McDonnell.

Fugitive financier Robert Vesco is reported to be dead
Robert Vesco, the fugitive U.S. financier wanted in connection with crimes including securities fraud, drug trafficking and bribery, died of lung cancer in Cuba late last year, the New York Times reported in today’s editions, citing people close to him. Read the Reuters report here.

Mexico’s consul general aims for harmony amid conflict
Juan Marcos Gutierrez has spent 16 years in Mexican public service, including as city attorney in Tijuana, federal legislator for Baja California and anti-corruption prosecutor in Mexico City.

But Gutierrez, 38, said his new position as the Mexican consul general in Los Angeles is by far the ‘greatest challenge’ of his career, reports Anna Gorman.

Guillermo del Toro dreams big on ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’
The first comic-book adaptation had five animated creatures, but the follow-up by Mexican director Del Toro is stuffed with more than 30, writes John Horn.

The director’s passion for classic monster movies is of such magnitude that he interrupted editing ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’ to record an audio commentary for a DVD reissue of 1932’s ‘Vampyr.’

De La Hoya stays with the plan in easy win
Lance Pugmire writes that in Oscar De La Hoya’s quest to stay sharp for his September rematch against boxing’s unbeaten, pound-for-pound king, Floyd Mayweather Jr., the ‘Golden Boy’ mounted a sustained attack filled with aggression and scoring left hands to dominate Steve Forbes in front of a capacity hometown crowd of 27,000 at the Home Depot Center’s soccer stadium in Carson.

De La Hoya sets up another big payday
It was a night programmed for predictability, and Oscar De La Hoya stuck with the program.

By jabbing an overmatched and undersized Steve Forbes back into boxing’s ranks of the might-have-beens, De La Hoya accomplished what he was supposed to, writes Bill Dwyre in Sports.