Updated 5/31/11
Those of us who cover the developing world deal increasingly today with a new kind of inflation: disaster inflation. I first really noticed it in 1998, while reporting Hurricane Mitch. The storm ravaged Honduras and Central America, but governments felt compelled to inflate the death toll. Even today, the official …
A few years ago I was drinking wine here in Miami with a French friend whose family owns a winery in Burgundy. I poured him something from this hemisphere – it was either a California Cabernet or a Chilean Carménère – and from the look on his face I could tell he thought I was dispensing blood in his glass. Ditto when he tasted it: …
So in the end, the coup crisis that rocked Honduras and the western hemisphere two years ago was apparently all just a big misunderstanding. Everybody just got a little constitutionally crazy, but they’ve ironed it out and former President Manuel Zelaya, whom the Honduran military hauled into exile at gunpoint the morning of June 28, …
This guest post comes from TIME contributor Aaron Nelsen in Santiago
In the tumultuous days since HidroAysén – a joint project of energy companies Endesa and Colbun – won government approval to build five hydroelectric dams in Patagonia, Chief Executive Officer Daniel Fernández has been working furiously to beat back the tide of …
The list of countries that have chosen diplomatic relations with Taiwan over mainland China reads like an exercise in national obscurity. The 23-nation compendium includes Burkina Faso, Tuvalu and Saint Kitts and Nevis, along with Palau, Swaziland and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Nevertheless, the People’s Republic has assiduously …
Does Haitian President-elect Michel Martelly, who is set to be inaugurated on Saturday, May 14, have his own “birthers” to contend with? In recent weeks the former Carnival singer, who won Haiti’s runoff election on March 20 by a landslide, has felt compelled to answer rumors that he has U.S. citizenship – which would effectively …
Where were we when we last discussed the soap opera that is soccer’s governing body (and veritable global behemoth), FIFA? Ah yes, President Sepp Blatter — who, given the power of his position and the popularity of the sport, is arguably as influential as the Pope — claimed he was going to clean up the sport for good if re-elected on …
Something quite unusual happened in Cuba last week. Dissident lawyer Wilfredo Vallín, who last year filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the island’s communist government, was told by its highest court that the suit can proceed. Coincidentally, the news reached veteran Cuba reporter Juan Tamayo in Miami yesterday, April 27 – the …
If you’re wondering why only about a tenth of the more than $10 billion that international donors pledged to Haiti’s reconstruction has actually been disbursed so far, we likely got another reminder on Monday, April 25. Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced that it was delaying certification of results from 19 …
Maybe it’s because it’s Semana Santa, or Holy Week, when everyone in Mexico heads for the beach or their country homes. But the record $1 billion fine levied over the weekend against América Móvil – the mobile telephone giant controlled by the world’s richest man, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim – hasn’t generated the buzz …
Three years ago, just before Raúl Castro was declared his older, ailing brother Fidel’s successor as President of Cuba, the world thought a new generation of leadership would emerge with him. Raúl, then 76, had promised to make Cuba’s sclerotic communist system more open and efficient, and younger, reform-minded apparatchiks …
News that Fidel Castro has resigned from the Central Committee of Cuba’s Communist Party isn’t very surprising — slowed by chronic health problems, the 84-year-old has effectively been out of political life since passing over the reins to his brother Raul in 2006. He now looks more familiar to us in a loose track suit than his once …
Fifty years ago this weekend, the Cuban Revolution had its crystallizing moment: the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion. On April 17, 1961, a small army of 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles stormed Cuba’s southern coast, only to be routed in three days by the forces of the island’s leader, Fidel Castro. It was an embarrassing debacle …
