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...
U.S./CUBA
Despite all the changes of titles and position-shuffling within the ruling circle, Cuba remains a dictatorship. Neither Fidel nor Raúl Castro brooks political opposition or respects civil liberties. Both are threatened by citizens gathering signatures as Oswaldo Payá did, promoting civil society as Martha Beatriz Roque has, defending a democratic Left as the Progressive Arc does or joining Yo No Coopero, a movement of noncooperation with official Cuba.
CUBA
What happened in Havana on Sunday reminded me of Moscow in the early 1980s. After Leonid Brezhnev's passing, two old men -- first, the more open-minded Yuri Andropov, then the mummified Konstantin Chernenko -- ruled the Soviet Union. Not until 1985 did the youthful Mikhail Gorbachev take the Kremlin's reins. The rest is history.
CUBA
Was Eliécer Avila -- one of the students who questioned Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón in a widely circulated video -- arrested on Feb. 9? An independent journalist filed a report to that effect. Though the arrest was never confirmed, the ''news'' moved quickly via e-mail, and some foreign media picked it up. On Monday, Cuban media broadcast a new video of Avila denying his arrest and stating his commitment to build ``a better socialism.''
