MEXICO

U.S. Group Secures Debt Swap From U.S. Bank: Conservation International announced that it had secured a debt-for-nature swap from a U.S. bank, Signet Bank. Marianne Guerin-McManus, the group’s conservation finance director, said that Conservation International had used $246,000 from the U.S. Agency for International Development to buy back close to half a million dollars of Mexican debt held in French francs by Signet Bank. The Mexican government agreed to redeem the debt for $336,500 in pesos to go toward conservation and development projects in the Selva Lacandona rain forest in the southern state of Chiapas.