Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has tried to build better relations with his counterpart in Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, who once accused the Colombian president of trying to have him assassinated. But as Mr. Chávez enters election year with stepped up rhetoric aimed at Washington and the opposition at home, Mr. Santos may be caught in the crossfire. One of the primary sources of antagonism between the two nations was Chávez’s alleged links to the Revolutionary...

American law enforcement agencies have significantly built up networks of Mexican informants that have allowed them to secretly infiltrate some of that country’s most powerful and dangerous criminal organizations, according to security officials on both sides of the border. Typically, the officials said, Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants - including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel...

The Presidents of Venezuela and Colombia, Hugo Chavez and Manuel Santos signed an agreement in April that provided for a three month extension on trade preferences that were set to expire. This agreement is the result of several months of efforts to rebuild relations between the two countries. Relations have been tense in light of Chavez’s threats to Colombia including his purchase of arms, his protection and association with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and also...

Who’d have thought it? Less than a year ago the presidents of Venezuela and Colombia were practically at each other’s throats. With the inauguration of Juan Manuel Santos as Colombia’s new leader last August, many assumed things would get worse. How wrong they were. The burgeoning “friendship” between him and Hugo Chávez, practically ideological opposites, just keeps on delivering surprises. Now, Santos is telling the world that the camps of the leftwing...

Mexico today increasingly resembles Colombia 25 years ago. Drug cartels are strengthening rapidly, Mexico's governmental authority and legitimacy are weakening and the people are deeply divided over how to respond to the cartels' challenge to Mexico's civil society. The stakes for the United States were high in Colombia back then, but they are even higher now in Mexico. The drug cartel threat has already rendered broad areas on our side of the border unsafe. The State Department has...

A complaint brought against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez at the International Criminal Court and another complaint against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has legal effects, as opposed to what some experts purport. This is what Asdrúbal Aguiar, former judge at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, thinks. Everything depends on the contents of the materials submitted to the Commission and the Court. "I reckon...

The long-running feud between Venezuela and Colombia escalated into outright hostility this week, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez abruptly severed diplomatic relations between the two South American neighbors. Chávez closed his country's embassy in Bogotá, expelled Colombian diplomats, and accused rival President Alvaro Uribe of attempting to provoke a war. Could it really come to that? Here's a brief guide: (Watch a report about the conflict ) What is this dispute...

The possibility of an imperialist war in the Americas came a step closer on October 30, when Colombia and the United States finalised a 10-year accord. The agreement allows the US to hugely expand its military presence in the Latin American nation. It comes as the US seeks to regain its dominance over Latin America, which has declined over the past decade in the context of a continent-wide rebellion against neoliberalism - spearheaded by the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. To regain...

Reporters Without Borders said today that the last vestiges of independent news were under threat after the de facto government signed a decree yesterday banning “unauthorised” public meetings and giving itself the power to close media “damaging public order” “Three months to the day after the 28 June 2009 coup, basic rights and public freedoms are just empty words in Honduras”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. The coup government was trying...

The first time Hugo Chavez froze relations with Venezuela's second largest commercial partner (Colombia that is, on January 2005), it was due to the capture of one of FARC's leaders Rodrigo Granda, while attending in Caracas one the Bolivarian get-togethers organized by the Venezuelan regime. Granda, a wanted criminal involved in planning and assassinating Cecilia Cubas, daughter of former Paraguayan President Raúl Cubas, had been living in Venezuela and was given citizenship by the...