María Corina Machado has written an open letter to Fidel Castro that has shaken cyberspace. I must have received 300 copies since it began to circulate through the Internet. It doesn’t go unread.
Guatemalan general Otto Pérez Molina began his presidency with a bold and intelligent proposal: We need to examine the possibility of totally decriminalizing drug consumption. He does not say that that’s the path to follow, but he does recommend that it be considered.
Stepping on a cockroach nest only prompts the surviving insects to look for other hiding places. I heard this simile from Volker Lehr, a well-known figure in Germany on communications and marketing, apropos the war on drug trafficking. The pressure on the drug cartels has generated a form of crime that’s as profitable as the sale of cocaine but a lot simpler and hard to combat — extortion.
Another Jan. 1 passed. What’s happening in Cuba 53 years after the communist dictatorship was imposed? Some important things. Fidel, now 85, distanced from power by his age and his chronic ailments, no longer commands. He has some moments of lucidity amid a spreading fog of senility like the one that affects his two older siblings, Angelita (89) and Ramón (87), still alive but demented.
It was like a fairy tale. In December 1989, Vaclav Havel suddenly became president of Czechoslovakia. In a few weeks, the Czech writer went from the most absolute indefensibility to the pinnacle of power. In mid-November, the political police still continued to beat up dissidents, and the Communist Party still held the reins of social control.
Aesop returns to Europe riding a crisis. To explain the euro mess, caused by a humongous public debt incurred by the banks, experts resort to a Greek storyteller from the Sixth Century B.C. Nobody really knows if he existed, although some say that he was a slave of African origin.
Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister-elect, has a reputation for being flexible and tolerant. He has said that he will meet as soon as possible with all the parliamentary forces in the country to look for common ground that will allow them to quickly overcome the economic crisis. The Socialists are not his enemies, but his adversaries. He will try to forge some sort of consensus with them.
Daniel Ortega won the elections in Nicaragua, and cheated. Both.
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