With each passing day, it is getting harder and harder for Hugo Chávez’s remaining political and journalistic allies to defend his policies. Last week, the Venezuelan president announced a significant devaluation of the bolívar, Venezuela’s national currency, thereby making a major inflation problem even worse. “Latin America learned in the 1980s that policies like this do not work,” Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann, who served as Venezuela’s...

Molino de los Arcos is one of the poorest neighbourhoods of San Cristóbal de las Casas, the second largest city in Chiapas and popular with tourists for its colonial beauty. The barrio is ethnically almost entirely indigenous, with Tzotzil Mayan as the dominant language. On Fridays, though, you can hear the slow, monotonous Arab chants of Muslim prayer. In a wooden shack, painted with Arab religious phrases, some twenty Tzotzil Muslim families have established a small place of...

Explosive pits containing dozens of advanced, standard IEDs recently found near the main road to the village of Al-Khiyam in south Lebanon. It is a gross violation of Security Council Resolution 1701, endangering the civilian population and UNIFIL forces operating in the area. The eastern sector of south Lebanon where the explosive pits were found. Overview 1. At 20:00 hours on December 26, 2009, a force belonging to UNIFIL’s Spanish brigade discerned the movement of...

There is a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Latin America in the aftermath of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza -- and the most troublesome part of it is that it's often fueled by racist propaganda in state-sponsored media. Granted, there have long been isolated incidents of anti-Semitism in Latin America, much like in other parts of the world. But now, after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's self-proclaimed "strategic alliance" with Iran's openly anti-Jewish...

Nearly three months after the Mexican army kicked off Operation Chihuahua Together against drug trafficking organizations in Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua, multiple accusations of human rights violations committed by soldiers are surfacing in the press. A hot point of contention is in the Juarez Valley just outside the border city of the same name. Long the stomping ground of drug traffickers and other criminal bands, the rural area bordering the Rio Grande has been the target of...

Reaction to June 2009 Iranian Presidential Election: In June 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez congratulated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re-election, stating that "Ahmadinejad's triumph was a triumph all the way. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad's triumph and through that weaken the government and the Islamic revolution. I know they will not succeed." Nuclear: Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has officially stated that Iran has a legitimate right to...

The decision on whether to change the constitution to enable President Álvaro Uribe to seek a third consecutive term in 2010 will have important consequences for Colombia’s efforts to resolve its armed conflict and tensions with its neighbours. ,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the process of enabling a third presidential term and why the decision on this fundamental issue needs to be accompanied by a recognition that pressing questions of...

Here's one from the Department of We Are The World: Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will address the U.N.'s climate summit in Copenhagen. Say what you will about these two gentlemen-the support for terrorists, the Holocaust denial, the suppression of civil liberties-at least nobody can accuse them of being global warming "deniers." On the contrary, the two leaders, who met in Caracas last month for at least the 11th time, have been nothing if not cooperative when it...

Given the challenges that President Obama faces in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, and elsewhere, the fact that he has thus far neglected Latin America is hardly surprising or scandalous. Obama has committed several unforced errors in the Americas, however, most notably in Honduras, and his relatively weak performance has raised concerns about declining U.S. influence. Obama's Latin America policy has evolved through four stages. During stage one, Obama practiced what...

Thirty years ago with his rise to power and inception of a new radical Shiite Islamic government in oil-rich Iran, the country’s new leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, proclaimed aspirations of exporting his Islamic revolution, and expanding Iran’s power to the four corners of the world. A few weeks ago, a major step was taken in the realization of Khomeini’s dream, when the regime’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received the red-carpet treatment in an official...