Andres Oppenheimer

A US congressional proposal aimed at expelling Argentina’s populist-leftist government from the G-20 group of the world’s leading economies faces an uncertain future, not the least because it lacks significant support from unexpected quarters — conservative Cuban-American Republican lawmakers.

MEXICO CITY — Polls show that centre-left opposition leader Enrique Peña Nieto is likely to easily win the July 1 presidential elections and put an end to 12 years of centre-right governments, but after several days in this country I haven’t found anybody who is really excited about his widely expected victory.

Bad news for Brazil; its magic moment as the world’s most promising emerging market in the eyes of international economic elites is waning, and is being replaced by a wave of gloomy forecasts.

Four years after Latin America made headlines by becoming a world leader in giving out free laptops to millions of schoolchildren — an idea that has since been embraced by more than 20 African, Asian and Eastern European countries — the first results are in, and they give some reasons for hope.

When I asked Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos about the ongoing US-Latin American spat over Cuba’s absence in the 33-country Summit of the Americas that he will host in Cartagena this weekend, he gave an answer that many civil rights advocates find troublesome.

On the 30th anniversary of Argentina’s ill-fated invasion of the Falklands/Malvinas islands, one thing seems clear: Argentina’s government is pursuing the worst possible course to recover the British-controlled South Atlantic islands.

Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Cuba will not produce much change, but everybody — the Pope, the Cuban military regime, dissidents and Cuban exiles — can claim a semblance of victory from the high-profile event.

When President Barack Obama welcomes Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff at the White House on April 9, both leaders will say that their countries’ bilateral ties are better than ever, and growing steadily.

The presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile did a smart thing the other day, which could save Latin America a lot of time, money and insufferable speeches in the future: they held the region’s first virtual summit.

When I asked Guatemala’s new President Otto Perez Molina whether Central America is rapidly becoming a lawless place run by armed bands, much like Somalia, he shook his head and responded that any comparison with the African country is “exaggerated.”

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s admission that he will undergo new cancer surgery raises a whole set of new questions about the viability of his narcissist-Leninist “revolution” both at home and throughout Latin America.

Bogota, Colombia— The US State Department wasn’t terribly smart when it rejected a demand by Latin American populist leaders that Cuba be invited to an April 14 summit of President Barack Obama with 33 hemispheric leaders in Colombia.

Latin America rarely comes up as a major issue in US presidential races, but this time it will; there are growing signs that Iran’s rising presence in the region will become a contentious election topic.

A kind word of advice for Republican hopeful Mitt Romney: Don’t read too much into your impressive victory among Hispanic voters in Tuesday’s Florida primary.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Barack Obama talked about the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, but didn’t say a word about a war that is taking place next door, and that is killing more people than the others: the drug-related war in Mexico and Central America.

Republican hopeful Mitt Romney will have two big problems if, as expected, he clinches the Republican nomination for the November election: his business background and Hispanic voters.

It’s hard to believe that this would happen today in a largely democratic region, but the beginning of 2012 finds much of Latin America suffering the worst wave of press censorship since the rightist military dictatorships of the 1970s.

Every year brings about changes, but 2012 is likely to be an especially eventful one in the Americas: there will be elections in the United States, Mexico and Venezuela, as well as other news events that could change the political map in the region.

Contrary to what most headlines suggested, and to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s claim that it’s the most important thing to have happened in Latin America in the past 100 years, the new group of 33 Latin American and Caribbean states created at a Dec 3 summit in Venezuela will hardly make it into history books.

In sharp contrast to the gloom surrounding US and European economic news, a new United Nations report has good news for Latin America; it says that poverty levels in the region have dropped to their lowest levels in 20 years, and will continue falling in 2012.