Eleven countries have declared days of mourning for deceased Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Iran, Nicaragua, Peru, and Uruguay

Venezuela suffered 16,072 homicides in 2012, according to numbers recognized by then-Vice President Nicolás Maduro. This is 1,980 more than the 2011 figure; the opposition calculates a homicide rate of 56 per 100,000 people. Observatorio Venezolana de Violencia, an NGO, estimated 21,600 homicides last year, for a rate of 73 per 100,000.

Brazilian aerospace company Embraer, together with U.S. joint-venture partner Sierra Nevada Corporation, has been awarded a $427 million U.S. Air Force contract to provide Super Tucano light air support aircraft, maintenance and training to the Afghan air force.

Through a program that will spend US$3.9 billion through 2017, Brazil and France are to produce “five submarines, one of them nuclear-propelled; 50 helicopters; a military shipyard; and a naval base, all with French technology,” EFE reports.

On March 3, it took 1,500 police and 200 Navy sharpshooters 25 minutes to take over the Complexo do Caju favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, part of the state government’s ongoing favela “pacification program.”

In Brazil there has been a land conflict-related murder on average every 12 days since the beginning of 2007. 32 rural activists were killed in 2012, a 10 percent increase over 2011. While that number is not low, attempted murders are even more common, and death threats occur on average almost every day, with 347 in 2011 alone.

Newly released documents reveal that Brazil’s military regime gave Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet US$115 million in aid in the first years after the 1973 coup that brought him to power.

After operating for a total of 50,000 hours, the Colombian Air Force’s U.S.-donated Helicopter Academy flight simulator has trained more than 4,000 pilots. Of those trained, 157 are from Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Peru and Panama.

While the number of murders in Medellín, Colombia dropped 24% in 2012, the number of intra-city displacements and threats has dramatically increased. 9,941 people in 2012 had to flee their homes, an increase of 1,507 from 2011, according to the municipal ombudsman.

According to the Colombian NGO Somos Defensores, violence against the country’s human rights defenders increased by 66% from 2011 to 2012. In 2012 alone, 357 human rights defenders working in Colombia were attacked or received death threats from armed criminal groups. Of those, 69 were killed.

In the first three months of Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, 100 police from the three levels of government and the military have been murdered. In February alone, Mexico experienced 944 executions related to organized crime, or 34 per day, estimates the daily newpaper Milenio. When compared with January of this year, February shows an increase of 3 homicides every 24 hours.

The Mexican government estimated that related violence has left about 70,000 people dead since ex-President Calderón went on the offensive against organized crime groups.

The most recent estimate by the Mexican government puts the number of missing/disappeared persons since the beginning of ex-President Felipe Calderón’s administration (December 2006) at 26,122. That includes more than 20,000 ongoing official investigations, but 5,206 have yet to be verified.

11,000 migrants were kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico in 2012, according to the national human rights ombudsman.

According to the International Press Institute and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, 55 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 2006 for reasons related to their profession.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s plan to launch a new National Gendarmerie police force entails hiring 10,000 member officers by the end of the year. They are reportedly to come from the Army and Navy.

56.5 percent of 1,200 Salvadorans surveyed by LPG Datos said that El Salvador’s citizen security situation was “bad” or “very bad.” This is down from 64 percent in 2011. 83.7 percent said the same about the cost of living.

Thanks to WOLA Intern Elizabeth Glusman for contributing research assistance to this post.

• “In the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War, the U.S. has militarized the battle against the traffickers, spending more than $20 billion in the past decade,” reports the Associated Press. “At any given moment, 4,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Latin America and as many as four U.S. Navy ships are plying the Caribbean and Pacific coastlines of Central America. U.S. pilots clocked more than 46,400 hours in 2011 flying anti-drug missions.”

• The Colombian government reported that landmines and unexploded munitions killed 25 civilians and injured 94 more between January and June 2012.

• As of August 2012, the Human Rights Unit of Colombia’s attorney general’s office had obtained convictions for less than 10% of 1,727 cases of extrajudicial killings, most committed between 2004 and 2008, involving more than 3,000 victims.

• Although murders of trade unionists are down in Colombia from a decade ago, threats against unionists continue to be widespread, with 539 cases in 2011 and 255 between January and September 15, 2012.

• Bogotá, Colombia’s homicide rate hit its lowest point in 30 years, with 16.92 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2012.

• The number of homicides in Mexico in 2012 fell to “somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000,” down from a record high of 27,000 in 2011, according to a new report by the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

• At the same time, the number of drug-related homicides in Mexico has remained essentially the same, at more than 12,000 people according to the latest Mexican media tallies, which is roughly the same number as 2010 and 2011.

• In 2012, 591 inmates died and 1,132 were injured in violent incidents in Venezuelan prisons.

• Every year since 2010, Venezuela has had at least one prison tragedy in which 50 or more people have been killed or seriously injured. The most recent riot left over 60 people dead and 120 injured from the Uribana prison.

• Two Brazilian companies share a 60 percent stake in Harpia, a company that will develop drones in Brazil. The third company, with 40 percent ownership, is Israel’s Elbit Systems, which has sold drones to Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and perhaps other Latin American countries.

• “Some economists think the annual inflation rate could rise as high as 30% this year” in Argentina, the BBC reports.

• An 84-year-old priest in Caldas became the third Catholic priest murdered in a three-week period in Colombia.

• U.S. Defense Department “contracts have more than doubled since 2010 in Guatemala, where there is a ban on most State Department-channeled military aid to the army. However, the ban does not apply to Defense Department assistance,” reports the Fellowship of Reconciliation. “The contracts for nearly $14 million in 2012 amount to more than seven times what it was in 2009.”

• Before Venezuela’s February 8 currency devaluation, a Big Mac at McDonalds cost US$16.27 at the official exchange rate.

• Since 1999, Colombia’s child-welfare agency has assisted 5,092 former guerrilla and paramilitary fighters under the age of 18.

• Of 109 alleged human rights abuse cases for which the Mexican government’s ombudsman has recommended action, Mexico’s Defense Secretariat (Ministry) has closed 63 cases – but arrived at only two convictions.

• “For Brazil to keep up with [electricity] demand, two giant dams, just like this one, must go up every year,” said the director of a project to build the 14th-largest dam in the world on an Amazon River tributary.

• Gallup asked Central Americans whether street crime or narcotrafficking should be their government’s priority. A majority said “street crime” in El Salvador (by a 79%-18% margin), Guatemala (64-30), Honduras (57-40), and Panama (43-42). A majority said “narcotrafficking” in Costa Rica (51-41) and Nicaragua (55-35).

• The Western Hemisphere country with the most military personnel per capita is, surprisingly, Uruguay with 744 soldiers, sailors or airmen per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Colombia (633 per 100,000), the United States (505) and Venezuela (416). Brazil (157), Honduras (147) and Guatemala (110) are at the bottom of the list of nations with militaries in the region.

Written with research assistance from WOLA Intern Elizabeth Glusman.

• Since 2005, 168 explosive devices have gone off in Santiago, Chile. There have never been any arrests.

• Cuban dissidents say there are now 90 political prisoners on the island, a number that has doubled in the past nine months.

• Ecuador has spent US$6 billion on its armed forces since 2007, tripling the defense budget between that year and 2012.

• El Salvador spends 10.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product on security, three times what Costa Rica spends, according to a government study.

• Honduras suffered 7,172 homicides in 2012, up from 7,104 in 2011 and 6,239 in 2010. Last year’s homicide rate of 85.5 per 100,000 people was down slightly from 2011 (86.5) because the population increased more quickly than homicides increased.

• Guatemala’s police placed a US$14.2 million order for new uniforms, shoes, boots, sweaters, belts, smoke grenades and munitions.

• During the November 20 - January 20 unilateral cease-fire declared by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, the group’s violent actions were reduced by 87 percent, according to Bogotá’s Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris think tank.

• Landmines laid by guerrillas and other illegal armed groups killed 13 children, and wounded 52 more, in Colombia last year.

• Bolivia’s government says it will spend US$35-40 million on anti-drug activities this year.

• Peru’s government says it will manually eradicate 22,000 hectares of coca in 2013, up from 14,171 hectares last year. In 2011, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime found 64,400 hectares of coca in Peru.

• 54,000 Mexicans signed a petition asking President Obama to take several administrative measures that would limit cross-border gun trafficking into Mexico. None of the suggested measures appeared in the White House’s January 16 proposal.

• One out of every 300 guns circulating in Mexico “is legal and complies with all requirements,” according to Mexico’s Defense Secretariat.

• Of 726 men and 95 women surveyed in Mexico’s federal prison system, 60 percent were serving sentences for drug crimes.

• Standing in for the far more voluble President Hugo Chávez, who continues to convalesce in Cuba, Venezuelan Vice-President Nicolás Maduro gave a ten-minute state-of-the-nation speech on January 15.

• Venezuela gave Nicaragua US$2.56 billion in assistance, much of it oil or energy related, between 2007 and the first half of 2012.

• “In 2010, Brazil spent more than US$350 million on 14 Israeli-made Heron UAVs for surveillance of the Amazon rainforest and border regions,” reports John Otis in GlobalPost.

• Mexico’s Milenio newspaper, which keeps a count of organized crime-related homicides, counted 12,394 such murders in 2012. This is up slightly from 12,284 in 2011 and down from 12,658 in 2010. The newspaper counted 54,069 organized crime-related homicides during the six years when recently departed President Felipe Calderón intensified Mexico’s fight against trafficking organizations.

• In a six-day span between January 3 and January 8, Colombian guerrillas, probably the ELN, bombed the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline twice in Norte de Santander department.

• El Salvador’s coroner’s office recorded 2,641 homicides in 2012, 39% lower than the 4,360 homicides it counted in 2011. The office also recorded a drop in forced disappearances after a March 2012 pact between the country’s principal street gangs (maras).

• Guatemala counted 5,174 homicides in 2012, down 8.9 percent from 2011. It was the third straight year in which homicides fell.

• Colombia’s police counted 14,670 homicides in 2012, the lowest number in 27 years, for a homicide rate of 31 per 100,000 people, down from 70 per 100,000 ten years ago.

• Colombia’s Defense Ministry estimated that the FARC guerrillas now have less than 8,000 members, and the ELN guerrillas have less than 1,500 members.

• Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, recorded 750 homicides in 2012, down from 2,086 in 2011 and 3,116 in 2010.

• Demobilized paramilitary members participating in Colombia’s “Justice and Peace” process have confessed to committing 1,064 massacres, over 25,000 homicides and 3,599 forced disappearances.

• Mexican military courts have convicted 16,460 soldiers for the crime of desertion since 2006.

• Peru’s Interior Ministry has set aside US$32.5 million to improve police presence in the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro Valley (VRAEM) region in Ayacucho department, which is dominated by remnants of the Shining Path guerrilla movement.