Haitian President Michel Martelly announced a Presidential Advisory Council for Economic Growth and Investment this week. It’s got big international names – Bill Clinton, Wyclef Jean, Mohamed Yunus, to name a few – and a big mandate to harness international investment for destitute, earthquake-racked Haiti. So why isn’t it …
Latin America
U.S. Drug Czar Responds to Global Spin: Legalization Is No “Silver Bullet”
In my Aug. 30 post, I posed two questions about the speech Mexican President Felipe Calderon gave on Aug. 26, a day after the massacre of 52 innocent people in a Monterrey casino set afire by drug-cartel gangsters. The first question: was Calderon, fed up with America’s “insatiable” demand for drugs, in effect telling the U.S. to …
Mexico’s Narco-Epiphany: Is Calderón Suggesting the U.S. Legalize Drugs?
The central statistic of Mexico’s violent drug war – 40,000 gangland murders in the past five years – is repeated so often it almost fails to alarm us anymore. But what happened last Thursday, Aug. 25, in the northern business capital of Monterrey – 52 innocent people massacred after gangsters set fire to a casino, presumably …
Mourning Monterrey: Drug Mafias Darken Mexico’s “Lighthouse”
It’s getting harder and harder to remember the Monterrey, Mexico, I first visited in 1990. Not because I’m 21 years older, but because the city now seems frighteningly darker. Monterrey in those days, on the eve of NAFTA, wasn’t just Mexico’s new business capital. It was the country’s window to the developed world – a …
Dilma Goes After Brazil’s Corruptos – Is the Rest of Latin America Following?
Brazilians sardonically refer to their often corrupt public bureaucracy as O Trem de Alegria, or The Joy Train. I’ve written about a number of the train’s happy passengers over the years, including the mayor of a small working-class town near Rio de Janeiro who jobbed the system so brazenly that he earned a $264,000 annual salary …
Cristina Fernández a Safe Bet to Continue As Argentina’s Leader – But Not Latin America’s
Like most Latin America correspondents, I’ve marked my calendar for October 23: Argentina’s presidential election. Then again, maybe I can just watch NFL games that day, since the race actually seems to have been all but decided last Sunday, Aug. 14. Argentina held its first (and compulsory) open primary voting; but since most …
Is the U.S. the Western Hemisphere’s New Banana Republic?
Forget The Change-Up. The best body-swapping story these days doesn’t star Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds; it features Uncle Sam and Latin America.
The U.S. was once the responsible (albeit imperious) adult among the two, the superpower whose politics and finances were managed more reasonably and rationally. Latin America was …
The Alan Gross Affair: The U.S. and Cuba Begin Their Dysfunctional Diplomatic Dance
Corrected Aug. 10 2011
Now that Cuba’s highest court has upheld the 15-year prison sentence for U.S. development worker Alan Gross, the key question is whether President Raúl Castro will free him as a humanitarian gesture. Castro has hinted he’s willing to do that. But there are other important questions to consider: Does Castro …
A Year After the Chilean Mine Collapse: Miners, and Their Nation, Still Finding Their Way
When 33 Chilean miners were rescued last year after spending 70 days trapped deep underground, the scenes of those laborers standing as equals with their billionaire President, Sebastián Piñera, seemed to inspire a national resolution: to improve Chile’s historically lousy treatment of its workers. Despite being one of Latin …
Mexico’s Free Speech Fracas: For Once It’s Easy to Defend the Church
Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church isn’t an institution that progressives usually rush to defend. Its leadership is about as obscurantist as they come, and its history – including the disgraced Legionaries of Christ and their late pedophile leader, the Rev. Marcial Maciel – is checkered at best. But if you advocate free speech, …
The Real Cancer Behind the Ill Health of Two Dictators
Earlier this week, the German tabloid Bild published an exclusive: Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan, was said to be in convalescence following surgery in a hospital in Hamburg. Without disclosing its sources, the tabloid claimed Nazarbayev underwent a procedure to his prostate — what likely could be treatment for …
Guatemala’s Kaibiles: A Notorious Commando Unit Wrapped Up in Central America’s Drug War
In Guatemala’s northern Petén department, May 14, 2011, felt a lot like December 6, 1982. In May, on the Los Cocos ranch near La Libertad, 27 campesinos were slaughtered and decapitated by henchmen of a bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartel, the Zetas – whose ranks include former Guatemalan army commandos known as Los Kaibiles. …
The Murder of Facundo Cabral: Death Squads Still Roam Latin America
After this past weekend, it seems even more fitting that Guatemala was the site of last month’s high-level international pow-wow on how dangerous Central America has gotten. Just before dawn on Saturday, July 9, celebrated Argentine folk singer Facundo Cabral was murdered by gunmen as he rode from his Guatemala City hotel to the …