The Bush administration’s Cuba policy has reached a dead end, with no hope of success. Its objective is nothing less than to bring down the Castro regime. Or, as then-Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega put it on October 2, 2003: "The President is determined to see the end of the Castro regime and the dismantling of the apparatus that has kept him in office for so long."
As Latin America shifts further left on the political spectrum, U.S. pundits are frantically struggling to artificially partition the continent’s leftist leaders between so-called populist demagogues and sound pragmatists.
For more than 47 years, Washington and the mainstream media have misread Cuban reality. This fallacious view of events on the nearby island continued on July 31 when Fidel Castro (almost 80) entered the hospital and ceded power, temporarily, to his brother Raul, 75. He also named other top Communist Party officials to head major government departments.
When a hotly contested electoral race comes to a close, almost everyone prefers to wake up the next morning knowing who the winner is. But sometimes, such as in the July 2 presidential election in Mexico , the race proves so tight that certifying the outcome requires careful, transparent, and, yes, often slow deliberation. In such cases, taking time can be the best option for democracy.
Mexico’s presidential and congressional elections Sunday will have significant implications in the United States.
President Bush’s plan to deploy National Guard troops along the U.S.-Mexico border conjures the image of a war on immigrants.
As the results of the July 2 presidential elections in Mexico head to the courts, it could be several days or even weeks before the final winner is determined. The current vote counts have given a razor thin advantage to Felipe Calderón of the right-wing National Action Party (PAN), to which incumbent President Vicente Fox belongs. Still, with the margin well under one percent and with irregularities in the vote-counting process being challenged, progressive former Mexico City mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), might conceivably eke out a victory. While U.S. newspapers declare Calderón the winner, Mexican electoral authorities have yet to do so, recognizing the tribunal that is reviewing disputes as the final arbiter for the race.
Bolivian President Evo Morales, during his recent successful campaign, repeatedly described himself as Washington’s “worst nightmare.” Ollanta Humala Tasso, the front-runner at the end of the first round of the Peruvian presidential race, could well be Washington’s next “worst nightmare.” Sharing a political philosophy with Bolivia’s Morales and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Humala promises to move Peru in a very different direction than that followed by outgoing President Alejandro Toledo Manrique.
Lourdes Flores Nano, lawyer, centrist politician, and former legislator, looks set to become the next president of Peru. If her campaign stays on track, she will reverse the neopopulist trend in Latin America, most recently evidenced by the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia. She will also become the first woman elected president of Peru, just months after Michelle Bachelet made similar history in Chile. As with Bachelet in Chile, a Flores Nano victory will signal a major cultural change in Peru.
Costa Rica is famous for sandy beaches and lush rainforests that make it a popular destination for U.S. tourists. But this month the small Central American country is making headlines for something else: a dead-heat election.