Latin View

Ecuador: Dictatorship of the 21st Century?

Many people are surprised by Rafael Correa’s sweeping victory in last Sunday’s Ecuadorean presidential election, despite his government’s massive corruption scandals and his record of repression against the media and political opponents.

Latin America’s corruption starts at top

A new study on corruption in Latin America contains some alarming figures — an average of about 20 per cent of the region’s people say they have been asked to pay a bribe by a policeman or another public official in the past year, compared with 5 per cent in the United States and 3 per cent in Canada.

US shouldn’t create underclass of immigrants

House Republicans don’t seem to get it. After getting pummelled by Hispanic voters in the 2012 election, they now want to create an underclass of 11 million people — mostly Latinos — by denying undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

Cristina  Kirchner

Argentina-Iran deal makes a mockery of justice

Argentina has crossed a line by making a sweet deal with Iran to jointly investigate a 1994 terrorist attack against the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which according to Argentine prosecutors and Interpol was masterminded by top Iranian officials.

Let’s put gun violence in focus

When President Barack Obama made a brief reference to gun violence in his second-term inauguration speech, he should have mentioned a new map of gun violence — it shows that Washington, DC’s murder rate is almost twice as high as that of violence-ridden Mexico.

General Raúl Castro

Latin America’s new leader: Raúl Castro

It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t: At the end of this month, the 33-country Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) — a two-year-old organization that lists promoting democracy among its top goals — will swear-in Cuban dictator General Raúl Castro as its new chairman.

Argentina’s leader populist, but no longer popular

BUENOS AIRES — Things are not going well for Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — only fourteen months after winning re-election by a landslide, barely a week goes by in which she doesn’t do something that raises questions about her political wisdom and emotional stability.

Roger Noriega

US, Venezuela may be exploring post-Chávez thaw

While Venezuela’s announcement that President Hugo Chávez’s bout with cancer has taken a turn for the worse is making big headlines, there is another development in the Venezuelan drama that has gone almost unnoticed: high-level US-Venezuelan talks preparing for a post-Chávez future may have already started.

The really important news of 2012

Most media lists of the most important events of 2012 are led by headlines such as the re-election of President Barack Obama, the appointment of China’s new leader Xi Jinping, the revolt in Syria, the return to power of Mexico’s ruling PRI party and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s battle with cancer.

Former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo

South American bloc increasingly anti-Israel

While both the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc had condemned the latest round of violence in Gaza before Wednesday’s cease-fire, there was a big difference in their respective statements: One was reasonably balanced; the other was shamefully biased against Israel.

Early Latino turnout could swing vote

Judging from what President Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Axelrod told me in an interview this week, early voting figures show that Latinos nationwide are turning out in larger numbers than in 2008, which is great news for Obama’s reelection bid.

Latin America’s growing media conspiracy

Latin America’s growing media conspiracy We must give credit to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and several of his colleagues in Latin America for doing a masterful public brainwashing job – they have somehow convinced millions of people that there is a huge world capitalist media conspiracy out there, which needs to be urgently crushed through greater government press controls.

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