A judge in a city on Mexico's Caribbean coast ruled there was insufficient evidence to try pop singer Kalimba on rape charges, ordering him released and ending a case that for weeks generated snickering front-page headlines in the Mexican press.

Kalimba had been accused of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl in a hotel room in Chetumal, in Quintana Roo state, after a night of partying in December. The performer denied the accusations in television interviews. A day after a judge ordered him detained to face the charges, the singer, 28, was arrested in Texas on an immigration infraction and sent to the Yucatan Peninsula.

Kalimba Marichal is a former member of the pop group OV7 and was the voice of Simba in the Latin American version of "The Lion King."

His case was a boon for tabloid headline-writers. The same day that he was arrested in Texas, authorities in Mexico state announced the capture of a suspected hitman in Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl, Damian Ramirez Encinas, also known as "El Kalimba." The tabloid Metro juxtaposed the two arrests with the headline, seen above: "The Original and the Pirated Copy."

But the case also cast attention on Mexico's dysfunctional justice system, as Reuters notes. Kalimba emerged Thursday from the Chetumal jail where he was being held with tears in his eyes, thanking God.

Kalimba was reportedly working on an English-language record in Texas, but the singer hasn't announced it. Watch Kalimba convincingly perform a cover of the Jose Jose classic "El Triste" in a well-known clip, a difficult feat for any vocalist.

— Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: The front-page of the Mexico City tabloid Metro, Jan. 21, 2011. Credit: DJgeo.tumblr.com.

On a street corner waking up for the day Thursday in downtown Mexico City, La Plaza observed a military unit on patrol.

A green Humvee was stationed in front of a convenience store, with several armed soldiers inside. One stood behind a mounted automatic firearm. Two troops in green fatigues and combat vests and carrying long assault rifles were strolling down a street, patrolling in the way police officers normally do in this congested capital.

We don't see this often in Mexico City.

Soldiers are generally only visible when they are being transported in cargo vehicles from government buildings in the city center to large bases in the west and south. None of the large-scale operations -- or wild shootouts -- that have become common elsewhere in Mexico have occurred here, making Mexico City somewhat of a haven from the drug war that has left more than 34,000 dead.

But this week the Mexican military pursued drug-trafficking suspects in operations smack in the middle of the sprawling capital.

Marines raided a hotel and a home in the middle-class districts of Napoles and Del Valle, arresting one suspected member of the Zetas cartel. On Wednesday, army units searched homes in the Iztacalco borough (links in Spanish). Is something changing?

A former U.S. Border Patrol agent says he was fired for expressing his opinions on the drug war in Mexico while on the job.

Bryan Gonzalez, the former agent, alleges in a lawsuit filed last week that he was fired for telling a fellow agent that the drug-related violence in Mexico would end if the United States legalized drugs. He made the comments in April 2009 during a patrol along the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico.

According to the complaint, available here, Gonzalez's remarks prompted an internal affairs investigation at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office in El Paso, which found that he held "personal views that were contrary to the core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication, and esprit de corps."

The suit names his former supervisor and was filed in U.S. District Court in West Texas.

Gonzalez's case, in which he is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union in New Mexico, has been publicized by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group that supports drug legalization. A press officer at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office in El Paso declined to comment on the Gonzalez complaint, citing the pending litigation.

Gonzalez's case could prove "tricky" in court because he was fired one month before his two-year probationary period as an agent was to end, Micah McCoy, a spokesman for the ACLU in New Mexico, said in a telephone interview. Yet the ACLU is convinced Gonzalez's 1st Amendment rights were violated, he said.

"I think it was very clear that he was being fired simply because of the content of his political opinions. There was no misconduct or anything else cited in his termination. It was very explicitly chalked up to opinions that they considered contrary to the core beliefs of the Border Patrol," McCoy said. "Bryan Gonzalez, our plaintiff, would disagree with that strongly. His belief would be that having an opinion is very patriotic."

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Former U.S. Border Patrol agent Bryan Gonzalez, right, at his academy graduation.

Mourners this week have been streaming into the cathedral in the Mexican city of San Cristobal de las Casas to say farewell to Samuel Ruiz Garcia, the Roman Catholic bishop who championed indigenous rights.

Ruiz died Monday at a hospital in Mexico City. He was 86 and had retired. Read about Ruiz's life and work in The Times' obituary.

For many Catholic Maya and residents of the southern state of Chiapas, Ruiz was known simply as "tatic," or "father" in the Tzotzil Maya dialect. Until his retirement, he served as bishop in San Cristobal de las Casas, the spiritual and political center of Maya life in the mountainous and tropical southeastern state of Chiapas.

After the Zapatista uprising erupted there in 1994, he mediated between the rebels and federal government and was accused by conservative voices of siding with the Zapatistas. He was sometimes called Bishop of the Poor or Red Bishop.

Ruiz's ecclesiastical work grew out of the liberation theology movement that swept Latin America after the Second Vatican Council, which he attended. He attempted to fend off rising Protestant movements among the Maya by adapting Roman Catholic practices to local customs, such as relying more heavily on male lay workers because married men with children often command more respect than celibate priests.

The bells of the San Cristobal de las Casas cathedral began calling at dawn Wednesday for the funeral Mass. Mostly indigenous mourners gathered on the esplanade before the cathedral, many with lighted candles and praying. Ruiz will be buried in a crypt beneath the church's main altar.

Watch these two video reports from El Universal, in Spanish, on farewells to Samuel Ruiz.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Bishop Samuel Ruiz walks with villagers to attend Mass in the Chiapas town of Benito Juarez in 1997. Credit: Pascual Gorriz / Associated Press

For the second time since taking office, President Obama eased restrictions on travel by Americans to Cuba. The relaxed rules are scheduled to take effect by the end of this week.

The policy change announced Friday will, according to the White House, promote "people-to-people contact; support civil society in Cuba; enhance the free flow of information to, from, and among the Cuban people; and help promote their independence from Cuban authorities."

The changes allow students, academics and religious organizations to more freely request a trip to Cuba, as well as "specific licensing for a greater scope of journalistic activities." In addition, people in the U.S. are now allowed to send up to $500 in remittances to Cuba every three months, or a maximum of $2000 a year. In 2009, the Obama administration eased restrictions to allow Cuban Americans to visit relatives on the island.

Here's the White House announcement and the Cuba entry policy page at the U.S. State Department.

Obama relaxed rules that were imposed by his predecessor, George W. Bush. Bush had tightened travel rules liberalized by his predecessor, Bill Clinton, a swinging policy in consecutive U.S. governments over an issue that has confounded American interests for more than 50 years. Cuba is only 90 miles from the coast of Florida yet remains one of only a handful of Communist countries in the world.

But for how long?

A gradual string of market economy reforms have taken effect on the island. Small businesses are popping up. More tourists are arriving. A few weeks ago, a large cruise liner took port in Havana to much fanfare. More U.S. airports will be making flights available. Before, only Los Angeles, Miami and New York were allowed to originate flights destined for Cuba.

The Cuban government hailed the new travel changes as a positive step in a statement, but said they did not go far enough to ease economic pressure generated by the long U.S. trade embargo (link in Spanish).

Cuba, governed by President Raul Castro, brother to former Communist leader Fidel Castro, is mired in corruption, according to a recent Wikileak disclosure. The country also faces widespread criticism for its human rights record, despite the release last year of a group of political dissidents who were released to exile in Spain.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Tourists ride on a double-decker bus along Havana's shorefront 'Malecon' boulevard, November 2010. Credit: Reuters

An artificial-intelligence model generated by a university researcher in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, projects that 5,000 people will be killed in the violent border city this year. The same model projected at the start of 2010 that 3,000 would be killed in the greater Juarez area, a figure that eventually reached 3,111 -- about a 94% accuracy rate.

It may seem far-fetched to make such long-term projections on a fluid criminal conflict such as the drug war in Juarez. Researcher Alberto Ochoa, in an interview with La Plaza on Monday, said his model is based on methods that mimic biology-based, or "bioinspired," patterns. Barring a "radical change" in Ciudad Juarez -- where the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels are battling over the drug-trafficking route across the U.S. border into El Paso, Texas -- his projection foresees a figure of roughly 5,000 dead.

"This technique is nothing new," Ochoa said from the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez, where he is a researcher at the Center for Social Investigations. "It's not the most accurate model but it is based heavily on reality."

"It's not Excel," the researcher added, referring to the commonly used software program. "The model has to be fed, values have to be adjusted. It's complicated."

By differing measures, Juarez ranks as the most violent city in Mexico, most violent in the Western Hemisphere, or even the most violent in the world, the local newspaper El Diario reported earlier this month (link in Spanish). Juarez, with a current population of 1.3 million, has lost more than 230,000 residents in an "exodus" from the daily barrage of drug-related killings, kidnappings and extortion operations.

"And no one does nothing," Ochoa said. "It's going to get worse."

The 3,111 figure of deaths in Juarez in 2010 is used among local news outlets, citing figures from the Juarez morgue, and includes homicides in the greater Juarez area. Within Juarez city limits, the federal government's recently released homicide database says 2,738 people died there in 2010.

On Sunday in Juarez, gunmen opened fire on a group of young people playing soccer at a new government-built field, killing seven, authorities said (links in Spanish).

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: A funeral procession for some of the victims of a January 2010 attack that left 15 young people dead in Ciudad Juarez. Credit: Jesus Alcazar / European Pressphoto Agency

Boys, Girls, and Gender-Neutral?

A prominent samba dance school in Brazil has decided to make it so, generating questions over the reaches of rights for gay, lesbian and transgender people -- even in the simple act of using a toilet.

Unidos da Tijuca, one of the top samba schools in Rio de Janeiro, established separate bathrooms for gay and transgender people at new facilities it inaugurated on Jan. 8. Rio, considered one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world, is preparing for the massive Carnival festival happening in early March.

Media reports in Brazil said that at least one other samba school in Rio already has such "gender-neutral" restrooms. Use of the new third bathrooms at Unidos da Tijuca -- which was named champion of Carnival last year -- is optional, the school maintains.

But with the annual pre-Easter party fast approaching, the new bathrooms have generated a debate among Brazil's gay community over whether third bathrooms help or hinder LGBT rights. Some argue the separate toilets create a "safe space" for gay people, while others say they resemble past practices of segregation among Brazilian blacks and whites.

Claudio Nascimento, head of the Rio state council on LGBT rights, called the toilets "Carnival apartheid" (links in Portuguese, with automated translation to English). The separate bathrooms "go beyond common sense and encourage homophobia," Nascimento said.

Karina Kara, identified as a transvestite at Unidos da Tijuca, told the Globo news network that the new toilets offer haven. "There are things that we want to do in a men's room, or female, and don't feel comfortable," Kara said. "A gay bathroom will be wonderful, because we will be able to do what we want."

Yet voices persist that the gender-neutral bathrooms amount to discrimination against gays. "This can only be a thing from strongly biased men," said Katyla Valverde, identified as a transvestite, according to O Dia.

Homophobia remains a pressing issue in Brazil, where killings of gays have shot up 62% since 2009, noted Agence France-Presse. For Globo's video report on the toilets controversy, in Portuguese, watch here.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: A Unidos da Tijuca dancer performs during Carnival in 2010 in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: MadeinBrazil.typepad.com

UPDATE: News outlets in Mexico were reporting Thursday evening that Kalimba has been detained by U.S. immigration authorities in Texas. Details were not immediately available.

A Mexican judge in the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo on Wednesday ordered the arrest of pop singer Kalimba on charges that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl in a hotel room in December.

Authorities in the tourism-heavy state have alerted the attorney general in Mexico City, where Kalimba lives, that an arrest warrant has been issued for him, and law enforcement authorities in other states have also been notified (link in Spanish).

Since the allegations surfaced late last month, the case has snowballed in typical gossip fashion, mixing sex, celebrity and race.

Kalimba was in Chetumal, a city south of Cancun near the border with Belize, on the night of Dec. 18 for a DJ gig at a venue called Buda Bar. He reportedly was accompanied back to his hotel by a manager and two teenage girls who worked at his event as hostesses. At some point early the next morning, alleges one of the girls, age 17,  Kalimba raped her.

Kalimba has maintained in interviews that he did not assault anyone and that the accuser accompanied him to to the airport the next day -- a sign, he says, that anything that happened that night was consensual. Kalimba has not said whether he knew the girls were minors before having them over at his hotel.

Members of the accuser's family, along with the Quintana Roo Atty. Gen. Francisco Alor Quezada, say Kalimba forced the sexual encounter and should face justice. Alor has promised in interviews that Kalimba will face jail time if the allegations are proven. The singer's supporters, meanwhile, have charged on social-networking sites that the two girls who spent the night in his hotel room are out for money and fame.

The case is also drawing attention because Kalimba is afromestizo -- a minority Mexican with dominant African racial heritage in a country where a wide majority of the population is mixed Indian-Spanish. On social-networking sites and in some tabloids, the case has generated jokes and innuendo over Kalimba's race. One tabloid recently used the headline "Se Las Ve Negras!," which can mean he faces a difficult time or is in trouble while also using a word for black or dark, on a cover story on Kalimba's case.

In Mexico, physical difference is often highlighted or mocked in public forums -- a fact many Mexicans say is harmless and not rooted in racism. The jokes often extend into the largest media platforms in the country. In a report last year, The Times' Tracy Wilkinson examined the use of actors in blackface on a popular morning show on the Televisa network during the World Cup in South Africa.

Kalimba Marichal, 28, is a familiar face in Mexican pop. He began working as a child screen actor at a young age, and provided the singing voiceovers for Simba in the Latin American version of Disney's hit film "The Lion King."

He then began performing in a pop group named OV7, alongside his sister M'Balia, and then started a solo career in 2004. Kalimba was born in Mexico City and has a daughter.

The singer's whereabouts were not known Thursday. If charged and convicted of raping a minor, Kalimba would face between 25 and 50 years in prison, according to Quintana Roo state law. The manager with Kalimba during his night at Buda Bar, Gerard Michel Manel Aguilar, is also sought on assault charges.

The singer has defended himself on Twitter, where he's made frequent references to his Christian faith. "Regardless of what happens, thanks to all those who believe the truth," the singer tweeted on Jan. 3. His account has been inactive since the Jan. 4.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Mexican pop singer Kalimba. Credit: Yucatan.com.mx

For the record: A previous version of this post said Kalimba is 27. An earlier version also gave an incorrect headline for a tabloid report.

The death toll keeps rising as the mud is cleared in Brazil. More than 700 people have been reported killed in flash floods and mudslides last week in the state of Rio de Janeiro. More than 14,000 are homeless in one of the worst natural disasters in Brazilian history, officials said.

The stories trickling out of the remote mountainous region hardest hit by the slides are both moving and alarming.

With rescue crews arriving slowly due to poor weather and rugged terrain, survivors are digging out their own dead, and bodies are decomposing rapidly, spreading the smell of death. In Teresopolis, a town hammered by the disaster, a lone dog named Leao, pictured above, has kept watch beside the muddy grave of his owner. Dramatic footage emerged this week of a man rescued after being found buried alive beneath the mud. But many of those affected have not been so fortunate.

In the video report embedded below, a man named Manuel Antonio de Oliveira digs on his own for the bodies of his children and grandson. Rescuers eventually pull out one body, but when night falls, he is left alone with the mud and ruins, until his other loved ones can be recovered the next morning.

President Dilma Rousseff, facing the first major disaster of her government, on Thursday promised swift aid for the region after observing the affected areas from a helicopter. The World Bank has pledged $485 million for rebuilding and future prevention plans.

The slides have once again brought attention to lax safety measures in the poorer areas around metropolitan Rio de Janeiro, where low-income families construct unsafe housing along steep hillsides. The government plans on beefing up a national alert system to warn of future flooding disasters.

The threat of more slides, meanwhile, remains high as summer rainfall continues.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: A dog named Leao keeps watch besides the muddy grave his owner in Teresopolis, a town hard-hit by mudslides in Rio de Janeiro state. Credit: Agence France-Presse

Halfway through his Friday night concert in Mexico's biggest indoor auditorium, the Mexican banda crooner Espinoza Paz lost his black cowboy hat. It either fell off or disappeared in a scrum of fans who scrambled to touch him during one of several times he left the stage to come near.

When it happened, some in the audience nervously sat up. In folklore as in banda music, a vaquero without his vaquero hat is like Samson without his locks.

Paz didn't miss a beat. The singer kept performing, finishing a two-hour show with his shaved head exposed to the lights above. Along the way, he gained two toy gifts, barrages of kisses and hugs, and the singalong adulation of more than 9,000 fans who sold out the stately Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City's Chapultepec Park.

The venue, coveted by any Mexican performer, is also known as the "Colossus on Reforma."

It was a crowning and emotional night for the singer and songwriter, a milestone in Espinoza Paz's fast rise from undocumented farm laborer in California's Central Valley to teen idol of Mexican regional music.

Expect to hear the name more. With immigrants and their children increasingly building fluid lives, north and south, the genre is all but assured to be a hot-selling scene on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border for years to come. Paz -- with his rural roots, rags-to-riches story, and handsome looks -- is its golden boy.

"You know, they say the audiences in Mexico City are the hardest to please," a beaming Paz told the crowds in his unvarnished ranchero voice near the end of his set. "So thank you for believing in me. Thank you for showing up. I thought it was just going to be me and my manager."

Near the stage, throngs of women up from their seats were held back by security guards in business suits. They screeched out Paz's name and reached toward the stage. One lucky lady got a two-song serenade: Paz's grandmother, pictured above.

She coined the phrase "Ni una muerta mas," or "Not one more dead," a clamor of protest against the tide of violent and unsolved deaths of women in Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, the "dying city."

Last week, Susana Chavez became a victim, too. The 36-year-old poet and activist was found dead on Jan. 6, strangled and with her left hand cut off.

Her death marks the latest addition to a grim figure. By Christmas Eve of last year, 978 women had died violently in the Juarez area since the state began recording the figure separately in 1993, reported El Diario de Juarez in late December (link in Spanish). Significantly, at least 300 of those deaths, or just under a third, occurred in 2010 amid skyrocketing bloodshed due to a war between drug cartels.

Others have been kidnapped, "disappeared," or raped in the violence, which often extends outside Juarez to the rest of Chihuahua state, news reports show. Some of the victims have been policewomen, lawyers, or prominent human rights activists. Many received threats.

But this week, after Chavez's remains were identified, a state prosecutor told reporters the woman was not killed in an organized crime hit, but rather died at the hands of three teenage boys after a night of partying. The teens, each 17 years old, have been arrested and questioned, officials said.

"They said they did not know her. They suddenly ran into her, she wanted to keep drinking, so did they, and well it was an unfortunate encounter," said state prosecutor Carlos Manuel Salas (link in Spanish).

When pressed on the question of whether Chavez might have been killed for her past work and poetry bringing attention to violence against women in Juarez, the prosecutor said: "Absolutely not."

In fresh statements on the case on Wednesday, authorities said that Chavez's mother confirmed that her daughter had been drinking the evening before her death. The teens killed her after Chavez told them she was a police officer, authorities said (link in Spanish).

Juarez became internationally known after a yet-unsolved wave of "femicides" or "feminicides" (as the deaths of women are known) peaked in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Last month, a Juarez mother was shot and killed while keeping a lone vigil outside the Chihuahua statehouse over the death of her daughter at the hands of a man freed by judges. In the small town of Guadalupe, the only remaining police officer was kidnapped from her home and has not been heard from since.

Ciudad Juarez is by far the most violent city in Mexico, and by some estimates the most violent in the world, with 3,111 dead in 2010, local reports say, citing government figures. The rival Sinaloa and Juarez cartels are battling over control for the lucrative Juarez drug-trafficking route across the border into El Paso, Texas.

Susana Chavez kept a blog  on which she published poems. One of them, "Sangre," or "Blood," is written from the perspective of a victim.

At her funeral, friend Armine Arjona told El Diario: "She was a great, excellent poet, at a national level among women. She had stopped writing but she had lot of unpublished work, which we will find some way to publish."

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Pink crosses with the phrase "Not one more," symbolizing women killed violently in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Credit: Griterio.org

More than a century ago, an American railroad and fruit magnate named Minor C. Keith unearthed thousands of pre-Hispanic artifacts on a plantation in Costa Rica, then took them to the United States. They were gold and jade pieces, ceramic bowls and anthropomorphic figurines. In 1934, five years after Keith died, the Brooklyn Museum in New York acquired about 5,000 pieces from his collection. Those objects then languished in storage for more than seven decades.

Now, the Brooklyn Museum wants to send the Keith objects back to Costa Rica, but the Central American nation has to come up with the money to pay to move them.

The potential exchange is not characterized by the political and philosophical debates that have pitted Western museums and universities against governments in countries from which archaeologically valuable items have been taken. For example, Peru and Yale University fought for years over artifacts dug up at the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu until a deal on those items was reached in November.

In this case, Costa Rica had made no claims on the Keith objects but responded positively to outreach made by the Brooklyn Museum, stemming from the museum's efforts to minimize and streamline its holdings.

The Brooklyn Museum has told the National Museum of Costa Rica that it would like to return about 4,500 pre-Hispanic artifacts but would like to keep some pieces that are considered more valuable. In Costa Rica, officials said they were open to receiving any artifacts but have no budget to pay for the shipping costs, estimated at $59,000.

It was a hard fall for the formerly high-riding "bishop" of the most famous Santa Muerte "church" in Mexico City, David Romo.

Romo, pictured second from right in the top row of the official photo above, stands charged along with several others with participating in a kidnapping and money-laundering ring. His name is familiar to reporters in Mexico City. Romo founded and led a prominent "sanctuary" dedicated to the Santa Muerte death saint. The skeletal "little white girl" figure, as she is affectionately called, is venerated by drug traffickers in Mexico but also by regular people on the margins of society.

Romo's church has had several name changes over the years; currently it's known as the National Sanctuary for the Angel of the Holy Death. Usually wearing a frock, he spent years at the forefront of the growing cult, giving interviews to foreign reporters (including this blogger) as a self-proclaimed bishop.

With a weekend death toll of more than 30 victims, including 15 who were found decapitated, the Mexican resort city of Acapulco is facing its most gruesome levels of drug-related violence since the start of the drug war in 2006. Authorities in Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located, said that in all 31 people died violently in or around the city on Saturday and Sunday (link in Spanish).

Reports said decapitated bodies were found with messages indicating that the killings were ordered by Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel and Mexico's most-wanted man.

If Sinaloa hit men are indeed active in the Acapulco area, it would suggest a likely escalation in future violence for a city that has seen drug-related killings soar since the death of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the capo who had controlled the valuable trafficking port.

Beltrán Leyva was killed in an operation led by the Mexican navy in December 2009. Like previous deaths or captures of high-profile drug lords, the sudden absence of a criminal figurehead in the region resulted in a scramble for control among splintering or rival groups. (The same phenomenon, for example, occurred in the Tijuana border area after the deaths or captures of capos in the Arellano Felix cartel.)

A Colombian cellphone company belonging to Mexican magnate Carlos Slim's telecom empire has canceled plans to raffle 200 purebred puppies in a customer promotion under pressure by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Comcel, the Colombian division of Slim's America Movil wireless carrier, will raffle debit cards instead for the promotion planned in Bogota, Bloomberg reports. Comcel had been the focus of a PETA campaign aimed at preventing puppies from being handed over to "unprepared guardians."

The promotion had sparked a controversy in Colombia ever since it was announced in late November. Users on Twitter raised protests and demanded that Comcel halt the raffle, although the company said that the puppies were coming from a top-notch shelter, Cachorros de San Luis, and that participants were free to turn down a puppy if they won one (link in Spanish).

"When people give animals as prizes, they usually don't realize that they might be contributing to the animal homelessness crisis by condoning the breeding of pedigree pups," PETA Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch said in a statement.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo credit: Cachorros de San Luis, Colombia

It might be hard to imagine, but the streets of Mexico City these past few days have been more jammed than they normally are with vendors hawking food and cheap gifts. Today, Jan. 6, is Three Kings Day. In Mexico that means the happiest day of the year for boys and girls who wait with giddy anticipation for the "reyes magos" to bring them presents.

And this being Mexico, Three Kings Day is also another healthy excuse to have a big street party.

Consider the scene this week at the Alameda Central, the downtown Mexico City park historians describe as the oldest planned urban green space in the Americas. There are mechanical rides, snack stands, carnival games, and the main draw: enormous stages where children pose for photographs with three live "reyes magos" in elaborate beards and costumes. They're meant to represent the "wise men" who in the Bible followed a star to Bethlehem where the baby Jesus had just been born, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Today, after opening presents, families in Mexico break a traditional rosca de reyes, a circular breadloaf coated in candied fruits.

"It's a beautiful tradition, whether it's here or anywhere else," said Antonia Perez, who watched as her grandchildren played inside huge inflatable spheres floating on pools of water, a popular new "ride" at the Alameda Central reyes magos fair. (Watch original video by La Plaza here.)

It was almost 1:30 a.m. this morning, and kids in sparkly crowns and face-paint were out way past their bedtime with parents in the late-night valley chill, as if they were on a Sunday afternoon stroll.

For almost two weeks since the fair sprung up, the nightly crowds at the Alameda appear endless, waiting in long lines for their photo session with their reyes magos chosen from the 40 stages set up by photographers who were awarded permits to operate in the park. The feria is sensory overload, from the screeching Tilt-a-Whirl rides blasting cumbia and electronic tribal music, to the outrageous reyes magos stages, outfitted with neon lights and (surely unlicensed) replicas of figures from the "Toy Story" franchise.

Here's a little of what it sounds like.

Who says you can't have a good time working for the U.S. Foreign Service? John Herickhoff and Julie Carmann, the blogger couple behind Midwesterner in Mexico, did just that while living and working in Mexico City.

Sadly, work took them next to the Washington metropolitan area, and they're finding the capital of the United States to be a bit, um, lacking in color and nightlife excitement compared to its counterpart in Mexico.

Julie offers her diligent comparison, at Midwesterner in Mexico:

Average Friday Night in Mexico City:

* get online 

* find address for hip new mezcalería/taquería/trendy bar/tasty restaurant in Condesa/Roma dripping with hipsters

* gather together with MBA/Embassy/blogger/other random friends

* head out for fun night

* think to self, 'This is great; I can't believe we get to live here for two years."

My Friday Night Tonight in Arlington, Virginia:

* get online

* find hours of operation for Home Depot

* gather together my documentation for the lamp/faucet/towel rack/toilet paper holder I special ordered

* head to Home Depot

* think to self, "This is great, I can't believe Home Depot is open until 10PM on a Friday."

       * sigh

The whole post is here. And here's a fun read about a night out at the mariachi musician hub in Mexico City, Plaza Garibaldi.

To be fair, there must be something fun to do on a Friday night in the U.S. capital. But whatever that might be, could it possibly compare to the satisfaction of an inexpensive bottle of tequila served with chasers of fresh lime and tomato juice?

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: A traditional bottle-service spread of tequila at a cantina in Plaza Garibaldi. Credit: Midwesterner in Mexico

Joining a widening trend across Latin America, Chile and Paraguay are poised to recognize a Palestinian state based on borders before the 1967 Middle East War, reports in Israel and Latin America said.

In recent weeks, several countries in the region have declared their recognition of a Palestinian state half a world away. Led by the rising global player Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador and Venezuela have all done so, reports the Israeli daily Haaretz.

The move by these governments to recognize a Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders appears to be an uncoordinated response to requests that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has made to Latin American leaders, reports said. "There is no obvious coordination but quite a few Latin American governments are suddenly recognizing the Palestinian state in a very short amount of time," notes the Latin America-focused blog Two Weeks Notice.

On Saturday, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera met one-on-one with Abbas in Brazil during the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff as Brazil's first female president. Abbas attended the inauguration in Brasilia to "thank the presidents" that have recognized the Palestinian state, reported the Chilean daily La Tercera (link in Spanish).

Chile is home to a significant population of about 350,000 mostly Christian Palestinians (link in Spanish). Like many of its neighbors, Chile also has a large Jewish community. A Jewish leader in Chile called the decisions to recognize a Palestinian state "imprudent" (link in Spanish).

The Mexican drug cartel La Familia has offered in a public letter to refrain from "any activities" for the first month of 2011 in order to support its claim that the federal authorities, not the cartel, are responsible for violence gripping its home-base state of Michoacan.

The letter purportedly signed by the group began appearing in Michoacan on Saturday night, local news reports said. It starts with a formal new year's greeting, then says La Familia will maintain a "withdrawal" for the first month of 2011 to "keep demonstrating to the authorities, the federal government and especially the people of Michoacan that La Familia Michoacana is not responsible for the criminal acts that the authorities and federal government report in the media."

Federal authorities say La Familia has been severely weakened since an operation in early December that resulted in the death of the cult-like group's spiritual leader, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, or "El Mas Loco."

La Familia often directs messages to "Michoacan society" in public letters or on banners known as narcomantas that are hung over bridges. The messages reflect the group's quasi-populist view of its operations, insisting regularly that the cartel works to protect the people of Michoacan from rival drug-trafficking groups and from the government.

In some sections of the state, the argument appears to have taken hold.

After Moreno's death -- which hasn't been confirmed conclusively because his body was not recovered -- a civilian peace march in the city of Apatzingan turned into an impromptu rally for the slain drug lord, featuring signs expressing support for La Familia in general. In a November letter, the group offered to disband if the federal government could "guarantee" the safety of Michoacan's people.

Last week, the government captured a La Familia cell leader known as "The Mustache." Fran­cis­co Lo­pez Vi­lla­nue­va, authorities said, was formerly a member of the rival drug group the Zetas before switching sides and joining the Michoacan cartel.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Federal police on patrol in the the city of Apatzingan, Michoacan, in western Mexico, Dec. 10, 2010. Credit: Reuters

Economist Dilma Rousseff was sworn in as the first female president of Brazil on New Year's Day, special correspondents report in the Los Angeles Times. Rousseff received the symbolic presidential sash from outgoing leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who left office with a resounding approval rating of 87%.

The transition keeps Lula's Workers' Party in power for at least another four-year term, and speculation remains high that Lula might run for the presidency again in 2014 after a single Rousseff term, or wait out two terms under Rousseff and seek the presidency in 2018. That's assuming, of course, Rousseff has as much success in office as Lula had.

Brazil boomed under Lula, becoming the largest economy in Latin America and shedding millions from the ranks of the poor. Under Lula, Brazil captured the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games, strengthened its oil sector and asserted itself as a rising global force, even playing diplomatic deal-maker with Iran over its nuclear program -- a move that irked the United States.

Representing the U.S., Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton attended Rousseff's inauguration in Brasilia. Brazil-U.S. relations remain "in flux," The Times reported.

Rousseff, 63, is a former Marxist guerrilla who survived torture under Brazil's military dictatorship in the 1970s. She had never held elected office, and won a runoff in October largely because of the backing of her mentor Lula, who campaigned heavily for his former chief of staff. Rousseff remains strongly identified with Lula and his policies, which could help or hinder her early efforts to form an administration, analysts said.

"I will not rest while there are Brazilians who have no food on their tables, while there are desperate families on the streets, while there are poor children abandoned to their own devices," Rousseff said in her inaugural speech.

On Monday, the new president moved quickly to cut government spending and open discussions on privatizing expansion projects at the two airports in Sao Paulo, signaling a "market-friendly tone" on the crucial subject of Brazil's economy.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: President Dilma Rousseff greets supporters after receiving the presidential sash from outgoing leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brasilia, Brazil, on Jan. 1. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency

Update: An earlier version of this post misspelled Sao Paulo.