Chile is Latin America's success story. Per capita income has grown from $4,720 in 1990 to $13,936 in 2007. By leaving unperturbed market-based economic policies instituted in the 1980s, the Concertación, the center-left coalition in power since 1990, led Chile to where it is today. The next frontier is breaking the $20,000 mark in per capita income, which would denote the country's full passage to development.
CUBA
''Global growth is the big story of our times,'' says Fareed Zakaria in his must-read book, The Post-American World. His subtitle -- The Rise of the Rest -- tells the story of why we're at the cusp of a truly global order. Countries all over are growing, a trend that started in Asia but has spread to Central Europe, Latin America and Africa. Why ''the rest'' are rising is a no-brainer: They are expanding the reach of markets at home while increasing exports.
VENEZUELA
Hugo Chávez again overreached. On May 28, a spine-chilling intelligence decree went into effect. After a week of public uproar and the prospect of mass demonstrations, he withdrew the decree.
Ostensibly issued to deflect national-security threats, the decree threatened Venezuelans who refused to act as informants with up to four years in prison, its most egregious assault on civil liberties. Warrantless wiretapping and other forms of surveillance were green-lighted. A community-based network of spies was in the works.THE AMERICAS
Free trade is getting a bum rap everywhere. Long gone is the spirit of the early 1990s when the Americas jointly raised the banner of integration. Held in Miami, the first Summit of the Americas embraced the idea of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). What in 1994 seemed to be a good beginning ultimately went nowhere.
DEMOCRACY
Between April 10-13, 200 Cuban-American students and recently minted professionals gathered at Duke University for the annual meeting of Raíces de Esperanza. Older folks like me also participated in what has become a spring rite of conversations about Cuba. In its fifth year, Roots of Hope is now firmly grounded.
SOUTH AMERICA
On March 1, Colombia's attack on a camp set up in Ecuador by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) triggered the most recent Andean crisis, which Venezuela quickly joined. Troops were mobilized and ambassadors recalled. War drums beat on until March 7. At a Río Group summit, Presidents Leonel Fernández, the host in the Dominican Republic, and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela engineered a détente of sorts. Presidents Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, Rafael...
