Latin View

The most interesting thing about Argentine Pope Francis may be not just that he’s the first Latin American to head the Vatican, but also that he may become the Church’s biggest champion of interfaith dialogue ever.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s death will most likely mark the beginning of the end of Venezuela’s political clout in Latin America, but his influence inside Venezuela is likely to last for many decades.

Brazil, South America’s biggest country, may become a global economic superstar in the future, but it will have to stop being an inward-looking giant.

Many people are surprised by Rafael Correa’s sweeping victory in last Sunday’s Ecuadorean presidential election, despite his government’s massive corruption scandals and his record of repression against the media and political opponents.

A new study on corruption in Latin America contains some alarming figures — an average of about 20 per cent of the region’s people say they have been asked to pay a bribe by a policeman or another public official in the past year, compared with 5 per cent in the United States and 3 per cent in Canada.

House Republicans don’t seem to get it. After getting pummelled by Hispanic voters in the 2012 election, they now want to create an underclass of 11 million people — mostly Latinos — by denying undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

Argentina has crossed a line by making a sweet deal with Iran to jointly investigate a 1994 terrorist attack against the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which according to Argentine prosecutors and Interpol was masterminded by top Iranian officials.

When President Barack Obama made a brief reference to gun violence in his second-term inauguration speech, he should have mentioned a new map of gun violence — it shows that Washington, DC’s murder rate is almost twice as high as that of violence-ridden Mexico.

It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t: At the end of this month, the 33-country Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) — a two-year-old organization that lists promoting democracy among its top goals — will swear-in Cuban dictator General Raúl Castro as its new chairman.

BUENOS AIRES — Things are not going well for Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — only fourteen months after winning re-election by a landslide, barely a week goes by in which she doesn’t do something that raises questions about her political wisdom and emotional stability.

While Venezuela’s announcement that President Hugo Chávez’s bout with cancer has taken a turn for the worse is making big headlines, there is another development in the Venezuelan drama that has gone almost unnoticed: high-level US-Venezuelan talks preparing for a post-Chávez future may have already started.

Most media lists of the most important events of 2012 are led by headlines such as the re-election of President Barack Obama, the appointment of China’s new leader Xi Jinping, the revolt in Syria, the return to power of Mexico’s ruling PRI party and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s battle with cancer.

Since President Barack Obama has appointed Senator John Kerry as secretary of state to replace Hillary Clinton when he starts his second term next month, you may see a somewhat greater US focus on Latin American affairs.

When Doral made history by becoming the first Florida city to elect a Venezuelan mayor earlier this week, my first reaction was to run to my Twitter page to spread the news alongside a short comment: Gracias, Hugo!

While both the European Union and South America’s Mercosur bloc had condemned the latest round of violence in Gaza before Wednesday’s cease-fire, there was a big difference in their respective statements: One was reasonably balanced; the other was shamefully biased against Israel.

While many of us were focused on the elections in Mexico, Venezuela and the United States in recent months, a dangerous trend has gone almost unnoticed in the region — the slow death of the region’s human rights system.

President Barack Obama’s re-election was a huge victory for Latino voters, one that will transform US presidential elections for the foreseeable future.

Judging from what President Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Axelrod told me in an interview this week, early voting figures show that Latinos nationwide are turning out in larger numbers than in 2008, which is great news for Obama’s reelection bid.

Latin America’s growing media conspiracy We must give credit to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and several of his colleagues in Latin America for doing a masterful public brainwashing job – they have somehow convinced millions of people that there is a huge world capitalist media conspiracy out there, which needs to be urgently crushed through greater government press controls.

The conventional wisdom is that President Hugo Chávez’s victory in Venezuela’s elections will increase his influence in Latin America, and that it may encourage other presidents to seek indefinite reelections.