Women’s empowerment and political participation are not only crucial for women: they are essential for effective democratic governance, one which promotes human rights and equity. The same can be said about the importance of boosting youth political participation. The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) invited three young women parliamentarians from Latin America and the Caribbean to join a recent discussion in Salamanca, Spain, on young women’s political participation in the...

Tiny Bolivia, the poorest nation in South America, packs a punch -- or so says President Evo Morales, who welcomed the new year with an announcement: Bolivia is ready to pursue nuclear energy. Morales assured that the country has the necessary raw materials for the quest to be successful, and said nuclear power is a “right for every Bolivian.” “Nuclear energy is not a privilege for developed countries, and others have to be deprived of it,” he said, adding that Bolivia...

Early this year the Argentine prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, disclosed a 500-page document of evidence of Iran’s terrorist networks in Latin America. It included a number of countries, among which were Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, and Uruguay. Iran’s activities in some of these countries are carried out with the direct or indirect support from the local government. For example, in my , I described the role played by the...

Central America constitutes an important strategic area for the United States. As discussed in my recent book “Latin America in the Post-Chavez Era: The Threat to U.S. Security”, legal and institutional collapse in Central America could have very serious consequences for regional and U.S security. Central America has been victim to increasing drug cartel activity as the situation in Colombia and Mexico has turned more complicated for the drug lords. In addition, Central America is...

Four members of the Bolivarian Alliance, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have offered asylum to the National Security Agency (NSA) leaker, Edward Snowden. Snowden is believed to be in Russia where he has repeatedly asked for asylum that has not been conceded by the Russian authorities. Meanwhile, Snowden has not responded to the offer by the four Latin American countries. At the same time that the United States was applying pressure on them not to provide the requested asylum, the...

International organizations have a surprising ability to perpetuate themselves, even when they have lost their raison d'être. This phenomenon may explain the sustained survival of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Founded during the Cold War with the alleged objective of establishing a body that positioned itself somewhere between Western countries and the Communist bloc, the NAM survived the East-West confrontation, becoming an umbrella under which emerging powers like India joined forces...

A police report reveals the meeting of a Brazilian drug lord and the Bolivian government’s second-in-command. Bolivia’s President Evo Morales is proud to encourage the cultivation of coca, the raw material for more than half of the cocaine and crack consumed in Brazil, arguing that its leaves are used to produce tea and traditional medicines. However, the United Nations (UN) estimates that only one-third of the coca planted in the country is necessary to meet this demand. The...

The 42nd General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia on June 4, 2012. Again the coming together of all the nations of the Western Hemisphere was effectively used by the Bolivarian countries to weaken the OAS Democratic Charter and reduce the influence of the United States. As during the Summit of the Americas this past April, Venezuela and its allies in the Bolivarian alliance insisted on the inclusion of Cuba. One after another ALBA country...

One of the most dangerous places in the Western Hemisphere is the city of Warnes, Bolivia, which lies a few kilometers outside the country’s industrial capital of Santa Cruz. There, set back in an open field off a bustling highway, is the new regional defense school of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas, or ALBA-the eight-member economic and geopolitical bloc founded by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro nearly a decade ago. Since its launch last spring,...

The characteristically pompous announcement last week by Ecuador ’s president Rafael Correa that he would boycott the upcoming Summit of the Americas to protest the continued exclusion of the Cuban dictatorship reveals his vain hope of inheriting the mantle of the dying Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chávez. Since assuming office in 2007, Correa has followed Chávez’s playbook, which was inspired by the master tyrant, Fidel Castro. Former Washington Post reporter Douglas...