Tepoztlán, Mexico
Singing in the raid: Mexican soldiers who raided a drug cartel’s Christmas party last week were surprised to discover that a popular Grammy-winning performer was the night’s entertainment. Texas-based accordionist Ramón Ayala and his band were playing for members of the Beltrán-Leyva cartel when troops burst in. The ensuing shootout left three gunmen dead. Eleven suspected cartel members were arrested and a cache of automatic rifles was seized. Ayala, who has released more than 100 albums and has won two Latin Grammys, was held for questioning but released because authorities said they had no grounds to hold him. Ayala declined to comment.
Santiago, Chile
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Swing to the right: Wealthy businessman Sebastián Piñera is poised to become Chile’s next president after taking the plurality of the vote in last week’s first-round election. Piñera, whose business interests include a media company and an airline, campaigned on a platform of increased prosperity and law and order. He ran for the presidency four years ago against the hugely popular Michelle Bachelet and lost. But Bachelet is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term, and her chosen center-left successor, former President Eduardo Frei, has failed to generate much excitement. If Piñera prevails against Frei in the second round of voting next month, he will become the first conservative leader in Chile since the end of the Pinochet era.
Buenos Aires
‘Dirty war’ trial: A former naval officer accused of involvement
in the murder of dozens of dissidents during Argentina’s “dirty war” in the 1970s and ’80s has finally gone on trial. Alfredo Astiz, known as “the Blond Angel of Death,” is accused of infiltrating the human-rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and of complicity in the kidnapping and murder of several of its members. He also has been accused in the murders of Dagmar Ingrid Hagelin, a 17-year-old Swedish citizen, and two French nuns, Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet—crimes for which he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a French court in 1990. Astiz was captured by the British during the 1982 Falklands War, but was repatriated to Argentina despite Swedish and French requests for his extradition.
