Yesterday Global Financial Integrity released a new report, “Mexico: Illicit Financial Flows, Macroeconomic Imbalances, and the Underground Economy,” which provides an in-depth look at flows of illicit money from Mexico. The study finds that nearly $1 trillion in illicit capital left Mexico from 1970-2010, averaging about $50 billion a year this past decade. Illicit outflows have increased over time – in 1970 only $3 billion of illicit money left the country per year – and experienced particularly large upswings during macroeconomic crises. These flows decreased by more than 50 percent as a share of exports, though this is largely because exports overall increased dramatically as Mexico transformed from a relatively closed to open economy. Read more »

During Monday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney put forth his plan for dealing with illegal immigration: self-deportation. Here is how the exchange went:

Debate Moderator Adam Smith: Governor Romney there’s one thing I am confused about, you say you don’t want to round people up and deport them but you also say that they would have to go back to their home countries, and then apply for citizenship. So if you don’t deport them, how do you send them home? Read more »

This is a guest post by Natalie Kitroeff, a research associate here at the Council on Foreign Relations who works with me in the Latin America program.

Without fanfare, or so much as a public arrest, this weekend Guatemala took another historic step toward justice for a genocidal civil war that took the lives of more than 200,000 innocent, mostly indigenous civilians. Just a week after losing his diplomatic immunity, General (Ret) Efraín Ríos Montt was ordered to testify in court about his role in abuses that occurred between 1982 to 1983, when he was de facto President of Guatemala. If judge Patricia Flores decides there is enough evidence to proceed to trial, Ríos Montt will be prosecuted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity (including 626 massacres of civilians in Chimaltenango, Quiché, Huehuetenango and Baja Verapaz). Read more »

It is campaign season in Mexico, and aside from security issues, front-runners Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the PRD are focusing on poverty and inequality. Both criticize the past two PAN governments for not improving the lot of Mexico’s poor, and for perpetuating if not exacerbating an uneven playing field that benefits the few and not the many. In a recent campaign stop in the Southern state of Veracruz, Peña Nieto came down hard on the PAN, saying “[the PRI] knows what Mexico hasn’t achieved in the past decade. We haven’t forgotten that more people are poor, that we haven’t had the economic growth that creates jobs that the public demands.” Read more »

Though fewer in number than in 2011, the two Presidential elections on the docket for 2012 will make up for it in terms of their importance in the region.

The first will happen in July in Mexico. Leaders of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) are already talking about not only winning Los Pinos, the Mexican White House, but taking the “carro completo” – gaining a majority in the House and Senate. Read more »

2012 will be a year to watch Latin America’s rising role on the multilateral stage.  The hints of Latin America’s growing stature were already there in 2011. In November, International Monetary Fund (IMF) head Christine Lagarde toured the region, meeting with Brazil, Mexico and Peru to ask for help (and extra funds) to stabilize Europe and the eurozone. But 2012 will be the real stage, as both Mexico and Brazil – the region’s largest economies – take the reins. Read more »