Teodoro Petkoff is a former leftist revolutionary and Cabinet minister. He is now editor of Tal Cual, a scrappy Caracas-based alternative newspaper. In highly polarized Venezuela, he is perhaps the closest thing to a centrist commentator.
El coronel Chávez ha intentado de todo para provocar a Estados Unidos: insulta a sus dirigentes, nacionaliza empresas, brinda apoyo a las FARC, exporta su “revolución”, estrecha relaciones con Irán, compra grandes cantidades de armamento y realiza maniobras militares con Rusia… Y todo ello sin que haya mayores consecuencias. ¿Qué habría ocurrido si Estados Unidos hubiese aplicado a Cuba la política de indiferencia utilizada con Venezuela? ¿Habría podido mantenerse Fidel Castro 50 años en el poder?
At the January 2008 inauguration of Guatemala's left-wing President Alvaro Colom, Hugo Chávez sent Salvadoran President Antonio Saca a message, or so the story goes here. "Now I've got you surrounded," the Venezuelan strongman supposedly told Mr. Saca.
There's something slightly endearing about the image of Fidel Castro propped up in bed, his face illuminated by his laptop, tapping away missives aimed at his latest plaything — President Obama. Castro blogs the way he speaks — meanderingly.
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chávez, who says he intends to remain in office for decades to come, lost a referendum 14 months ago that would have removed the constitutional limit on his tenure. When he announced another referendum in December, the first polls showed him losing again by a wide margin. Yet, as Sunday's vote approaches, his government is predicting victory -- and some polls show him with a narrow advantage.
In America, 2009 has thus far been dominated by discussions about how best to alleviate a recession that began just over a year ago. But in communist Cuba, 2009 has been dominated by the commemoration of a revolution that helped induce 50 years of economic depression and instability.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which has funded its war against the government with drug trafficking and kidnappings for ransom, has released four hostages: three police officers and a soldier. Two more are to be released in coming days, according to a senior rebel leader, as a gesture of goodwill. But the time for gestures is long past. If the FARC's aim is political credibility, it needs to demonstrate a complete rejection of lawless behavior and release the hundreds of other captives it still holds in the jungle.
In this new era of uncertainty, democratic institutions in Latin America will be put to the test. The effects of the global economic slowdown are already visible in most countries in the region. As Latin America prepares for the new challenge, what is the state of regional democracy?
Barack Obama masks are all the rage as preparations for Brazil's famed Carnival kick into high gear. Not surprisingly, the new president of the United States has become a celebrity in Latin America, just as he has in the rest of the planet.
The administrations of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Vladimir Putin in Russia are enjoying a robust, burgeoning friendship. Though they are separated by 6,000 miles, the two leaders' bond is sealed not only by their similar tastes for repressive authoritarianism, oil expropriations and large arms deals but also by parallel trends of increasing violence and murder on the streets of their cities.
As he took office eight years ago, George W. Bush promised to make relations with Latin America a priority. The president's first foreign trip was to the ranch of Mexican President Vicente Fox, where Mr. Bush expansively promised "to boldly seize the unprecedented opportunity before us." There was no compelling reason for this hemispheric focus, other than the fact that Mr. Bush had been governor of Texas and was more familiar with Latin America than other parts of the world. That may explain why Latin America quickly dropped from the top of the administration's agenda after Sept. 11, 2001.
Now it's time for the U.S. government to move beyond etiquette and face hard facts about Mexico. Mexico is becoming a lawless country. More people died here in drug- related violence last year than were killed in Iraq. The government has been infiltrated by the mafias and drug cartels that it has vowed to combat.
Just over a decade ago, a sea of supporters dressed in red and lining the streets of Caracas celebrated Hugo Chávez's landslide election victory in Venezuela, marking a watershed in the Latin American political landscape and signaling the emergence of the so-called populist left in the region.
When Chávez leaves power in 2012, or sooner, this country's already disjointed institutional, judicial, infrastructural and economic scaffolding will have collapsed. We will be a petroleum-producing country, paradoxically in ruins, toward whose reconstruction enormous
A visit to Havana by a black president ending the US policy of isolation would be as magical as events of 50 years ago
In the Miami-Dade Cuban community in Florida, 65 percent now support the United States restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, according to a Florida International University poll (Miami Herald, Dec. 2). And there is increasing pressure on President-elect Barack Obama from such business interests as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Farm Bureau Federation to work toward "the complete removal of all trade and travel restrictions on Cuba." The Castro brothers' political prisoners were not polled.
Fifty years ago, on Jan. 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and his guerrilla band took over Cuba, a day after its dictator president, Fulgencio Batista, fled the country when the United States withdrew its support. At the time, Mr. Castro, then 32, painted himself as a sort of Jeffersonian democrat, and he was given a ticker-tape parade in New York and spoke at Harvard. It was not until June 6, 1961, when the liberals' darling acknowledged that he had been a Communist since he was 17 years old.
Latin America began 2008 riding a commodities boom, and there were expectations that first-world status was in sight for at least some countries. Better times down south fueled demand for U.S. goods and services and lessened the flow of illegal immigration. An increasingly prosperous Brazil even broke into the ranks of the top 10 U.S. trading partners.
With an economic crash in sight, Venezuela's strongman calls another referendum on his tenure in office
The U.S. embargo against Cuba does little to dislodge the island's government. Instead, it hurts Cuban families. This seems more like cruelty than foreign policy. The Cold War between communism and capitalism ended two decades ago. Why keep fighting that forgotten conflict when it should disappear into history?
RSS|
My Yahoo|
Newsletters|
Widgets|
Mobile|
Alerts|
Twitter
Terms of Service| Privacy Policy| About our ads| Copyright| About The Miami Herald| About the McClatchy Company| Corrections| Contact Us| Advertise
Partners: El Nuevo Herald| Newspaper in Education| WLRN | Miami Herald News| CBS4 WFOR-TV| More
Copyright 2009 Miami Herald Media Co. All rights reserved
Previous
