Earlier this month the Latin American and Caribbean Community of States (CELAC) held its first summit in Caracas, Venezuela. CELAC, which was created in 2010 excluded both the United States and Canada. It was created with the purpose of deepening regional integration within the Americas in order to form a regional block. However, with the rise of the left in Latin America, extreme and moderate, there is an additional element in the creation of CELAC: the reduction of U.S influence in the...

Two leaders in the peaceful Cuban resistance movement who were released on the week ofDecember 12-18 after being subjected to violent arrests and inhumane prison conditions declared that the Cuban regime is intimidated by the rise and strength of the human rights groups in the island. Jose Daniel Ferrer García (released Dec.12), leader of the umbrella group UMPACU, (Cuban Patriotic Union) in Eastern Cuba, and Angel Moya Acosta (released Dec. 14) who resides in Havana and is the main...

Sebastian Rotella has a story out for ProPublica with the blockbuster headline "Government Says Hezbollah Profits From U.S. Cocaine Market Via Link to Mexican Cartel". Does that mean Hezbollah is running blow across the border on behalf of the cartels? Perhaps to an extent. But it appears based on the story that the main link is more via money laundering than drug smuggling per se. So how does that work? Why would a Mexican drug cartel selling cocain to North America want to...

By In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the possibility of al-Qaeda infiltrating Latin America became a priority for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials. However, the most publicized incidents of radical Islamist activity in Latin America have not been linked to al-Qaeda but instead to the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah, which is ideologically and politically close to Iran. These include the March 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the July...

Over the last several years Hezbollah and its patrons in Iran have greatly expanded their operations in Latin America to the detriment of inter-American security and US strategic interests. Today, Hezbollah is using the Western Hemisphere as a staging ground, fundraising center, and operational base to wage asymmetric warfare against the United States. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and other anti-American governments in the region have facilitated this expansion by rolling out the...

During the earlier part of this November, elections took place in Nicaragua. These elections displayed an element of fraud from the beginning. According to the European Union's electoral mission the vote tally was "opaque and arbitrary". Prior to the election the outcome was almost pre-ordained because, the Ortega-controlled Supreme Court nullified a constitutional provision that limited the President to no more than two terms. The Nicaraguan Supreme Court interpreted this provision...

Mexico’s military and police have committed widespread human rights violations in efforts to combat organized crime, virtually none of which are being adequately investigated, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 212-page report examines the human rights consequences of President Felipe Calderón’s approach to confronting Mexico’s powerful drug cartels. Through in-depth research in five of Mexico’s most violent states, Human Rights Watch found...

The international medical team treating Venezuela ’s cancer-ridden leader Hugo Chávez believe that, absent a radical change in his condition, he is not likely to survive more than six months. According to sources that have provided me privileged information and documents from within the Venezuelan regime for many months, recent tests show that Chávez’s cancer is accelerating and his chances of surviving until the October 2012 presidential elections are worsening. This...

The Justice Department's recent announcement that an Iranian agent attempted to recruit a Mexican drug gang to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States presents an opportunity for the Obama administration finally to draw the line on Iran's growing presence in the Western Hemisphere. As we establish in a paper we co-authored recently for the American Enterprise Institute, "The Mounting Hezbollah Threatin Latin America," over the past several years, Iran, with its...

The, October 23rd presidential elections in Argentina have given a clear advantage to Cristina Kirchner, who was reelected president of Argentina with an overwhelming majority. Kirchner, of the Frente Para la Victoria - the Centre-left wing of the Justicialista (Peronist) Party -took 54 percent of the vote, while her closest rival won 17% percent. This will be Ms. Kirchner’s second term after being preceded by a full four-year term by her late husband, Nestor Kirchner. This means that...