Last week, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro took to the opinion pages of The New York Times to counter the bad press his government has received for its crackdown on widespread protests over the past two months. He the international media of having “distorted the reality” of Venezuela by portraying the protests as peaceful and the country’s democracy as “deficient.” Yet the steps he’s taken to respond to the protests at home have shown that the...

Voters in El Salvador will go to the polls on Sunday to choose a new president from two decidedly opposite ends of the political spectrum. Former guerrilla and current Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, of the hard-line wing of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), is facing off against San Salvador Mayor Norman Quijano of the pro-U.S. opposition Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party. As if the stakes were not high enough already - for the Salvadoran people and...

The late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez was known for having started and spread what is called the Bolivarian revolution, a kind of anti-American, dictatorial type of socialism. His success in spreading his revolution and his influence in the region would not have been so successful without the support of the moderate-left countries of Latin America as well as the ALBA block made up of Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia. In my I pointed out the role that countries in the region have...

Legal challenges to the close 14 April presidential election and the government’s reluctance to commit to a full review cast a shadow over the sustainability of the new administration in an already deeply polarised Venezuela.

As the facts behind Nicolás Maduro's fabricated electoral "victory" on April 14 are disclosed, his legitimacy and ability to govern will be decimated. Reams of confidential official documents obtained from Venezuelan sources reveal the existence of a sophisticated political machine - developed and managed by Cuban advisors - that gives chavista party bosses an unfair advantage in mobilizing their voters and manipulating election results. This complex system was created in...

A majority of Venezuelans has voted for change and now has no choice but to resist a regime that can hold on to power only with violence. Is the election in Venezuela over? Apparently not. The self-declared winner, Nicolás Maduro, is behaving very much like a man who knows he lost on April 14. In resorting to violence and brute force to silence the opposition's demand for an honest recount, Maduro has signed the death warrant for chavismo's legitimacy. Numerous videos of soldiers...

There is a new deal brewing between Argentina and Iran in order to improve relations between the two counties which have been on shaky ground ever since the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in 1992 and the Jewish community headquarters (AMIA) in 1994. Though Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, was widely believed to have perpetrated these two attacks no individual has ever been brought to justice. However, Argentina issued arrest warrants and orders of extradition for several high officers in the Iranian...

A couple of hours ago, Mexico’s Supreme Court accepted an appeal from Florence Cassez, a Frenchwoman, to free her from prison. Parts of the court hearing were carried live on television, a sign of how the case had become a lightning rod in Mexico. Cassez, 38, spent the past seven years in jail, accused of being part of the Zodiacos kidnapping gang. The imminent freeing of Cassez enraged those kidnapped by the Zodiacos, and victims’ rights advocates, too. One of the...

From prison, General Raúl Baduel denounces that "under a democratic cloak," chavismo is creating "a fascist post-modern dictatorship." Former Venezuelan minister of defense, Raul Baduel, is considered a political prisoner despite the fact that Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, is godfather to his 6-year-old daughter. In his 37-square meter cell in the Ramo Verde military prison in Los Teques, located thirty kilometers from Caracas, he is about to reach the...

In recent months the government of Argentina has launched a new political and public relations campaign aimed at putting pressure on Great Britain to negotiate the future of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands. The islands constitute an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean 300 miles from the Argentinean coast. These islands have been ruled by Great Britain since 1833 except for a short period in April 1982 after the Argentinean navy invaded and conquered the islands. Argentina has continued to...