Word: latinities
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...Latin America, New Year's Eve is a more important celebration than Christmas. It is the one night when families make certain they're together. In Venezuela's most beloved poem, "The Grapes of Time," by Andres Eloy Blanco, an expatriate in Madrid weepily laments that he's not toasting midnight back in Caracas with his mother. That made it all the more emotional last week when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in his new role as mediator between the Colombian government and Colombia's fierce Marxist guerrillas, raised hopes that three of the rebels' hundreds of civilian hostages would...
Worse, it left the Colombian peace process looking as tangled as the jungle where waiting Venezuelan helicopters were supposed to retrieve the hostages. Nearby in Villavicencio, Colombia, south of Bogota, observers from France, Switzerland and six Latin American countries, as well as celebrity onlookers like American film director Oliver Stone, packed their bags and left shaking their heads. As he departed, Stone, who has a penchant for things guerrilla, said, "Shame on Colombia," referring to what was widely seen as meddling by President Uribe that may have helped sink the release operation...
Standing up to the FARC has made the conservative Uribe a widely popular President, with both Colombians and the Bush Administration, which counts Uribe as its closest Latin American ally. But Uribe didn't exactly help matters late Monday when, as observers still held out hope that the FARC might come through, he seemed to break his own promise to stay clear of the process and arrived in Villavicencio with stunning news. Colombian government intelligence, he said, suggests that 3-year-old Emmanuel was released two years ago to a foster family. Whether that's true or not, Uribe left...
...real=life bloodshed has not damaged the posthumous popularity of the entertainers. Sales of Elizalde and Gomez records have rocketed since their deaths. This month, they were both nominated for 2008 Latin Grammys, which will be awarded in February...
...spending $4 billion on Russian fighter planes, Kalashnikovs and perhaps even submarines. Then it was Brazil, in August announcing a 53% increase in its military budget for 2008, the biggest such increase in more than a decade. The competition is still in the early stages but when two of Latin America's nouveau riche oil powers start splashing out on weapons, alarm bells ring over an arms race...