Word: cuba
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...today the region "is much more globalized," Shifter notes. "Countries like Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico are more connected internationally." China's trade with Latin America has increased tenfold this decade; meanwhile, countries such as India, Iran and Russia have discovered that other nations apart from the U.S. and Cuba actually exist in this hemisphere...
...Changing policy priorities in Latin America shouldn't be that tall an order. Nor should the more symbolic gestures - like Obama's plans to close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo or lift Bush's draconian restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances to Cuba - which mean a lot in a region where Monroe Doctrine is a dirty term. If Obama demonstrates that he's more interested in helping Haiti with green-energy projects like jatropha-seed oil than he is in making Bolivia eradicate more and more coca bushes, or more committed to steering U.S. aid toward...
...Revolutionary propaganda notwithstanding, the failure of the revolution in Cuba is, at this point, obvious. A dictatorship subservient to the U.S. was replaced by one momentarily subservient to the Soviet Union, and consistently subservient to itself. In a move reminiscent of monarchical succession, Fidel Castro gave up power to none other than his brother Raúl two years ago. Despite the deleterious effects of the economic blockade on the island in place since John F. Kennedy’s administration, the regime’s economic decisions have not created tangible benefits beyond healthcare and literacy. Poverty remains widespread, education...
...Moreover, those leaders in Latin America who cite Cuba as their inspiration seem only to be moved by a similar sense of hypocrisy. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is a case in point. In honor of the 50th anniversary some days ago, he pledged to fly the Cuban flag forever, next to the mausoleum of Simón Bolívar, a key independence fighter of the 1810s. He said: “Cuba is part of this nation, of this union.” But in truth, Chávez’s regime is rooted...
...withered forehead or silvered temple Gardel sang about. But perhaps he was lucky to go, for he was spared the sight of the utmost lack of love his brothers-in-arms, and those who still adulate them, have come to show the world. What marches on in Cuba is thus little more than apocryphal memories in support of hypocrisy...