America Security News.- President Barack Obama and Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto, right, leave a joint news conference in Mexico City, Mexico, Thursday, May 2, 2013. Credit to AP Photo

Last week, Mr. Obama returned to capitals in Latin America with a vastly different message. Relationships with countries racked by drug violence and organized crime should focus more on economic development and less on the endless battles against drug traffickers and organized crime capos that have left few clear victors. The countries, Mexico in particular, need to set their own course on security, with the United States playing more of a backing role.READ WHOLE ARTICLE HERE

The Americas Post - Free Chinese delivery now includes medical aid. Photo Credit: Xinhua News

Doctors and nurses deployed by the dozen from a Chinese navy hospital ship in Jamaica Tuesday, as part of a humanitarian mission to portray China’s growing military as a responsible global power.

China’s 584 foot Peace Ark carries over 100 medical volunteers offering free surgery, CAT scans, eye care and other procedures.

Launched three years ago, the floating hospital is making its second foreign trip, according to the Chinese Embassy.  This voyage is around the Caribbean, where the United States has historically been the largest investment source and military partner.

Dubbed “Harmonious Mission,” the operation aims to soften the image of China’s 2.3 million-member military and improve ties with other nations’ armed forces.

“It’s trying to use military powers in ways that are reassuring and not threatening,” said David M. Lampton, who directs the China studies program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “The Chinese have a strategy of simultaneously growing their hard power but using it in a soft way that’s reassuring and therefore doesn’t build a coalition of enemies against it.”

The Peace Ark already made a stop in Cuba and after Jamaica will proceed to Trinidad and Tobago.

Chinese navy Lt. Cmdr. Chen Yong Peng, whose team is working at a clinic in the Jamaican capital of Kingston, explained that this mission allows military personnel to build relationships with regional authorities and has nothing to do with countering U.S. influence.

“Our team of medical staff is doing all kinds of surgeries and operations, nearly everything except organ transplants,” he said through a translator. “China has had a long history of relations with Jamaica and other places in the Caribbean.”

Hundreds of Jamaicans lined up for hours beneath a blazing sun outside the clinic in Kingston’s gritty Olympic Gardens area.

Medical diplomacy is a time-honored practice in Latin America, especially by Cuba’s communist government, which sends thousands of doctors to provide free care in poor neighboring countries each year.  Venezuela is also financing many of these missions.

Earlier this year, an 894-foot U.S. Navy hospital ship made a similar visit to Jamaica as part of a five-month goodwill mission to nine countries in the Caribbean and Latin America.

The Americas Post - Jamaican soldiers frisk for weapons at a checkpoint. Photo credit: AP

Times are changing for many islands across the Caribbean, where escalating arms races between criminal gangs are turning previously peaceful neighborhoods into free-fire zones.

The two-island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, with a population of 50,000 people, has tallied 31 homicides already in 2011, marking their deadliest year on record. Gangs with names like Killer Mafia Soldiers and Tek Life are blamed by police for the increase in violence.

Usually out of the sight of tourists, revenge shootings by heavily armed gangmembers are now common in the Caribbean, according to a new U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime report on global homicides.

Politicians across the Caribbean are under pressure to attack the problem. In Trinidad and Tobago, located off Venezuela’s coast on a major drug shipment route, the government has declared a state of emergency, imposed nightly curfews and given police and the military wide authority for conducting search and seizure.

So far the violence has had little effect on Caribbean tourism, which relies on about 6 million American visitors each year. Many stay at all-inclusive resorts, and few venture into poverty-stricken slums where the violence is concentrated.

Drug traffickers have driven up crime rates with firearms and narcotics whose street value exceeds the size of the Caribbean’s entire legal economy.

Although with miles of isolated coastline the islands remain ideal for drug shipments, the U.N. crime office reports Caribbean drug seizures actually diminished 71 percent between 1997 and 2009, as traffic shifted to Central American routes.   According to the agency, the increase in violence is the result of fierce competition between criminal groups fighting over their share of the shrinking drug smuggling market.

Caribbean experts are concerned about the growing culture of violence on the islands, where almost 70 percent of homicides are now committed with firearms.

“Until fairly recently, we had an innocence about ourselves in the Caribbean, but that’s been lost. This thing is a Pandora’s Box and I’m not sure you can ever close it again,” said  Caribbean Drug & Alcohol Research Institute director Marcus Day, in St. Lucia.

Jamaica, with roughly 3 million people and hit hard by drugs and extortion  for years, had 1,428 killings in 2010.   In comparison Chicago, a city with almost the same population, reported 435 homicides last year.

U.N. crime office statistics show homicide rates increasing by nearly 100% in numerous Caribbean countries since 1995.  In St. Kitts and Nevis, slayings have increased by a factor of six since 2002, when there were just five murders.

The Americas Post- Guzman suspended for 30 days by FIFA

The president of the Dominican Soccer Association, Osiris Guzman, has been suspended for 30 days by the FIFA Ethics Commission, in relation to a potential bribery case.

On August 11, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) initiated proceedings against 16 managers of the Caribbean Soccer Union who were suspected of taking US$40,000 in bribes in return for their support of Mohamed Bin Hammam’s bid to become president of that organization.

During his suspension, Guzman is prohibited from all soccer related activities, whether administrative or athletic.

In the same case FIFA has suspended Frank Pickering (British Virgin Islands) for 18 months, Horace Burrell (Jamaica) for six months, and Ian Hypolite (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) for 30 days.

Additionally, fines of 300 Swiss francs were imposed upon directors Aubrey Liburd (British Virgin Islands) and Hillaren Frederick (U.S. Virgin Islands).  Anthony Johnson (St. Kitts & Nevis) received a public rebuke from FIFA.

David Hinds (Barbados), Mark Bob Forde (Barbados), Richard Groden (Trinidad & Tobago), Yves Jean-Bart (Haiti) y Horace Reid (Jamaica), received warnings as well.

SEE ALL INFORMATION OF TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO HERE