After being summoned by the Attorney General's Office, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she would appear before authorities despite being "sentenced without a single piece of evidence." Machado added that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has used all the power of the State to "incite hatred" against her. "We support a change within the boundaries of the Constitution. We will move towards democracy. Once again, we have...

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski claimed on Thursday that a court's decision to put on trial the leader of opposition Voluntad Popular (People's Will) party, Leopoldo López, and students Christian Holdack and Marco Aurelio Coello was hatched by the government. "We saw it yesterday (Wednesday), and the country must reflect about it: justice (in Venezuela) is rotten; it is a dead loss," the opposition leader noted. Capriles opposition leader...

It was a well-publicised event: Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez had previously announced he was prepared to risk and march through the streets of Caracas. On Tuesday he voluntarily handed himself over to police but not before urging tens of thousands of anti-government protesters to remain firm. “Don’t leave the streets…we must take up our right to but we must do it peacefully. Brother, I ask you and every Venezuelan who wants change…we must inform ourselves,...

During the Heritage Foundation's recent event Insecurity in Honduras and the Upcoming Elections: What's at Stake for Central America, panelists Ambassador Roger Noriega of Vision Americas, Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson Center, and Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society laid out their concerns about the upcoming electoral processes in Honduras and El Salvador. Ambassador Noriega pointed to a "new strain" of Latin American populism that seeks the...

SANTIAGO, Dominican Republic. - Leaders of political parties, social activists, and community leaders said an awakening of the people and the democratic unification of the opposition forces will defeat former President Leonel Fernandez's intentions of keeping the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) in power for more than 40 consecutive years. It is for this reason that political scientist Peter Catrain has called on citizens to mobilize, in a joint action, to address what he described as the...

The Supreme Court of Justice of Mexico has issued this Wednesday “immediate and absolute” freedom of French Florence Cassez, who was convicted in this country to 60 years in prison for kidnapping and other crimes, a case that caused tensions with France. The decision was approved by a majority of votes by the first Chamber of the Court, who modified an original draft resolution calling for the return of the case to a criminal court for irregularities during the judicial...

Yale economics professor and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo has become a legal headache for the United States. Zedillo has been accused of perpetrating the 1997 Acteal massacre when he was president by relatives of the victims. Plaintiffs are demanding $50 million in damages. The infamous Acteal massacre was a political and religious assassination of 47 Maya Indian women and children in the hamlet of Acteal, Chiapas. Even after the alleged culprits spent 10 years in prison, it is...

Reporters Without Borders is alarmed at the growing controversy surrounding Mexico’s federal election on 1 July. Right up to the eve of election day, the campaign was marked by numerous attacks on journalists and also on observers, bloggers and campaigners for electoral transparency such as members of the #YoSoy132 collective. Much of the violence has been attributed to supporters of the three main candidates, starting with backers of the man who has been proclaimed the winner, Enrique...

US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, rejected Tuesday budget cuts to programs aimed at promoting democracy in Venezuela and Cuba, which were proposed by the US Department of State. "The sharp cut in democracy funds for Cuba and Venezuela sends a wrong message to the internal opposition in these countries," Ros-Lehtinen said during a hearing at the House Foreign Affairs Committee to review the budget of the US Department of...

NGO Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) reported on a backlash in Venezuela's governance. "Alarming laws approved by the outgoing National Assembly (Enabling Law, Law on Defense of Political Sovereignty and National Self-Determination, among others) violate the country's own obligations to advocate democracy and human rights." In a press release, the NGO urged the civil society and governments to answer to "concerning laws" recently approved in Venezuela, "so...