Word: castros
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...free-market, pro-American policies commonly pursued in the region in the 1990s, when much was promised and little was accomplished in terms of raising living standards. The leader of this turn toward populism is Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who has cast himself as the heir to Fidel Castro, using his country's oil bonanza to purchase political influence all over the continent. But in recent months, the Chávez movement has run up against opposition from forces that view it as wrongheaded, militaristic and undemocratic. In Mexico's election, as in Peru's last month, Chávez turned...
That ambivalence provides an opportunity for the U.S. The issues fueling the Chávez movement--poverty, inequality, exclusion, corruption and widespread frustration--haven't gone away. Despite the perorations of populists like Chávez and Castro, Latin America's maladies are not made in Washington but are self-inflicted wounds originating in the predatory élites that control policymaking in places like Buenos Aires, Caracas, Brasília and Mexico City. Those are problems for which Washington has never had the skills or the means to influence. On the whole, the U.S. is better off letting Latin Americans figure...
...first step toward draining the appeal of Chávezism and restoring the U.S.'s image in Latin America would be to unilaterally lift the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. embargo has never worked as a tool to weaken Castro. Instead it has provided him with a wonderful excuse to hide his failures and justify the island's dire poverty and harsh political repression. The embargo is even less effective now that Cuba is so deeply intertwined economically and politically with Venezuela and other countries in the region. Embargoing Cuba without cutting off its ties to other countries is akin...
...Pope's visit. Zapatero's admirers will see it as a sign that the atheist leader is no hypocrite. But on the flight from Rome, when papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls was asked about the absence, he pointed out that on John Paul's visits, even Communist leaders Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega attended Catholic masses out of respect for the Pope. Not necessarily a knockout, but a glancing blow for sure...
...What's more, in Santa Cruz and three other eastern states, voters approved a call to have the new constitution give their state governments greater independence from the central government in the capital, La Paz. Lowlanders like Daniel Castro, spokesman for the Santa Cruz Civic Committee, insist the autonomy drive reflects the need for "a new system in which each state has control over their own economic resources. If I want to change a lightbulb in a public office here I have to send away to La Paz for the funds...