Why the U.S. is and is not at war in Latin America:
What has happened in Rio applies, in varying degrees, throughout Latin America–most notably in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Colombia. Two decades after the collapse of Communism, the region’s Marxist guerrillas have disappeared, only to be replaced by violent drug mafias.
And what Mexico has come to represent:
I asked [the new chief of Rio’s civil police] if the security situation in Rio was calamitous. “Calamitous?” he said. “No. If it was, there would be no way to turn it back…This isn’t Baghdad yet, or Mexico.”
From Jon Lee Anderson’s report on Rio de Janeiro.