Latin View

It’s no secret that China’s trade with the Americas has soared in recent years, but we are likely to see a major new phenomenon in coming years — an avalanche of Chinese foreign investments.

PANAMA CITY — Latin America’s most strategically-located country is booming, and its current prosperity is expected to accelerate in coming years thanks to a windfall of profits from the Panama Canal’s expansion.

Ecuador’s populist President Rafael Correa has made big headlines with his decision to expel the US ambassador from his country.

One of the most interesting things President Obama told me in a wide-ranging interview last week was something he mentioned almost in passing — that Latin America “is a key to US success.”

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — For a man who prides himself on having taken “unprecedented steps” to try to ease five-decade-old US tensions with Cuba, President Barack Obama did not look eager to make new gestures toward the Cuban military regime when I interviewed him Tuesday.

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — The country that will receive the most attention during President Barack Obama’s ongoing visit to Latin America — other than Libya — will be Brazil, but the place where he will probably have the biggest, and most needed, impact will be Central America.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Venezuelan-backed President Daniel Ortega has only 36 per cent of the vote in the polls, and is facing growing accusations of abuse of power and corruption.

WASHINGTON — Here is an interesting idea that is drawing attention in US foreign policy circles — help Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the Arab world learn some valuable lessons from Latin America’s most successful transitions to democracy.

Colombian Navy soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint after a rebel attack in Lopez de Micay, in the state of Cauca, Colombia, Monday Feb 28, 2011.

As the Obama administration and Congress battle on how to reduce the $1.6 trillion US budget deficit, here’s a politically incorrect idea that could save billions of dollars — cut the waste in the government’s spending on immigration enforcement.

The merger of the New York and Frankfurt stock exchanges to create the world’s biggest stock market made big headlines last week, but there is a lesser-known process in South America that should also draw our attention – the union of the Chilean, Peruvian and Colombian stock exchanges.

On the occasion of the recent anniversary of the earthquake that shook Haiti last year, killing about 300,000 people and destroying thousands of schools and hospitals, I read a statistic that blew my mind – Venezuela has pledged more funds for Haiti’s reconstruction than the United States.

“Will 2011 be the dawn of the Latin American decade?” asked the headline of a Standard & Poor’s webcast that piqued my curiosity last week.

After two years of gradually losing popular support at home and political influence abroad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez could be one of the big winners of a major rise in world oil prices triggered by the Egyptian uprising.

President Barack Obama’s announcement that he will visit Brazil, Chile and El Salvador in March – in what will be his first trip to South America – could result in an improvement in Brazil-US ties following a significant downturn over the past two years.

For the past two years, the Obama administration has managed to keep its Latin American policy largely out of the headlines, focusing its energies on Iraq, Afghanistan and other

There have been big headlines in recent weeks about projections that Brazil will become the world’s fifth-largest economy in five years, and that Latin America in general will become a new global economic star.

Now that 2010 is almost over, it’s time to look at some of the stories that should have made the front pages throughout the Americas, but didn’t.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may have spoken too fast when she denounced the release of about 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks as “an attack on America.”

MEXICO CITY — More than 6,000 environmental officials from throughout the world started a new round of United Nations talks this week in Cancun, hoping to reduce global warming.