The U.S. idea of a drug war in Latin America has ranged from eliminating the only source of income for small coca farmers to asking military to play a law enforcement role.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Honduras on March 6 with a double mission: to quell talk of drug legalization and reinforce the U.S.-sponsored drug war in Central America, and to bolster the presidency of Porfirio Lobo.
The Honduran government issued a statement that during the one-hour closed-door conversation between Biden and Lobo, the vice president “reiterated the U.S. commitment to intensify aid to the government and people of Honduras, and exalted the efforts undertaken and implemented over the past two years by President Lobo.”
With its muddy roads, humble huts, and constant military patrols, Bajo Aguán, Honduras feels a long way away from the slick polish of the recurring UN climate negotiations in the world’s capital cities. Yet the bloody struggle going on there strikes at the heart of global climate politics, illustrating how market schemes designed to “offset” carbon emissions play out when they encounter the complicated reality on the ground.
“The people believe that they will prosper with the arrival of the World Cup, but the truth is that they will be brutally repressed,” warns Roberto Morales, advisor to Socialist Liberty Party Representative Marcelo Freixo. The agreements between the Brazilian government and the Federate International Football Association (FIFA) restrict merchandise sales around the stadiums and ban vendors from coming within two kilometers of the events.
Widely hailed as the most consequential revolution in 20th century Latin America, the Cuban revolution has permeated all aspects of Cuban life. Though countless analyses evaluate just how thoroughly the revolution has transformed Cuba over the past 50 years, few rival Samuel Farber’s work Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment. Simultaneously informative and critical, Farber’s book offers a comprehensive, if self-admittedly biased, evaluation of the changes in Cuba’s society, economy, and government. Farber assesses the past and current Cuban political and economic systems while also proposing possible improvements.
U.S. relations with Latin American countries, from Venezuela to Colombia, run the gamut.
The United States deserves some of the blame for the human-rights disaster that Honduras has become.
After President Ollanta Humala’s state visit to Venezuela Jan 7, and despite some adverse reactions to the visit in Peru, Humala announced that the two countries have “succeeded in turning away from the bilateral politics of the past in which nothing major had been accomplished in diplomatic, commercial and cultural relations.”
As per tradition in Latin American politics, election season means vicious personal attacks against individuals running for office. In Peru, the 2011 campaign season saw Ollanta Humala of the Peruvian Nationalist Party attacked for his friendship with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, as well as for the legacy of his brother Antauro, currently in prison for leading a failed uprising in January 2005 that left several police officers dead in the Andean town of Andahuaylas.
Libertarians and atheists have some commendable stances — but for the wrong reasons.