THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
MEXICO CITY -- When I asked Mexican President Felipe Calderón about Democratic presumptive presidential candidate Barack Obama's pledge to renegotiate the U.S. free trade agreement with Mexico, I expected him to say that such a move would be catastrophic for Mexico.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Of all the challenges that presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will face to win the November elections, one of the biggest ones will be conquering the Hispanic vote.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Every now and then, you come across some news that makes you think there is a golden future ahead for Latin America -- or at least for part of it.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
While most of us were looking elsewhere, the U.S. Congress passed a 2008 farm bill that could hardly be worse: it subsidizes rich U.S. farmers, hurts most American consumers, poisons the environment, doesn't help alleviate world hunger and harms Latin American and other world food producers.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Bravo! A new study has found widespread fear-mongering and reckless journalism by cable television hosts such as CNN's Lou Dobbs and Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, who have made a career of bashing Hispanic undocumented immigrants and their home countries.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Likely Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, who has never visited Latin America, has done his homework. When I last interviewed him about U.S.-Latin American relations 10 months ago, Obama had trouble naming any head of state south of the U.S. border, and looked like a deer in the headlights when asked about the region's headlines of the day.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Question of the day: Why hasn't 34-country Organization of American States chief José Miguel Insulza called for the regional group's investigation into the thousands of Interpol-verified computer files indicating that Venezuela and Ecuador are actively supporting Colombia's FARC guerrillas?
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his Ecuadorean counterpart Rafael Correa can scream and yell as loud as they want, but the fact is that they have been caught red-handed supporting a terrorist group that is trying to topple the democratically elected government of Colombia.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
When Argentina's President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner won her country's elections last year, I wrote that she was likely to be an improvement over her predecessor and husband Néstor Kirchner. I was wrong.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
The murder of the acting chief of Mexico's federal police amid an unprecedented wave of drug gang attacks on security officials will soon become a major issue in the U.S. presidential candidates' escalating war for Hispanic votes.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
The 84 percent victory of pro-autonomy forces in Sunday's referendum called by Bolivia's wealthy eastern province of Santa Cruz in open defiance of that country's central government has triggered fears of a chain reaction of separatist movements throughout Latin America.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
When I interviewed likely Republican candidate Sen. John McCain last week, I was left with the distinct impression that he is moving steadily backward from his once progressive stand on immigration.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
The way Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales puts it, South America's poorest country is threatened by a U.S.-backed oligarchic movement in the eastern province of Santa Cruz that wants to secede from the rest of the nation through an ''autonomy referendum'' on Sunday.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
BOGOTA, Colombia -- During an extended interview with President Alvaro Uribe last week, I asked him five times whether he will seek to change the constitution and reelect himself for a third term.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Political satirist P.J. O'Rourke wrote a few years ago that Paraguay is a country in the middle of ''nowhere and famous for nothing.'' So why should we care about Paraguay?, I asked one of the leading U.S. experts on Paraguay shortly after Sunday's historic opposition victory that ended 60 years of one-party rule.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Pope Benedict XVI's calls for humane treatment of undocumented immigrants during his trip to the United States got anti-immigration zealots more riled up than usual. Good! I'm beginning to like this pope.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Latin America's biggest problem may not be Venezuela's narcissist-Leninist leader Hugo Chávez nor other populists who are grabbing the headlines, but the region's stagnation in the global race for greater Internet connectivity and knowledge-based economic growth.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
While the world is watching the Obama vs. Clinton race for the Democratic nomination, other well-known Democrats are unofficially campaigning for secretary of state -- and offering big plans for Latin America.
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Despite what most of the media describe as a late-breaking Democratic move to kill the U.S.-Colombia free trade deal, and most Washington analysts' forecasts that the bill is doomed, I'm not that pessimistic.
