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I’m under the impression that every time Caribbean and Latin American countries meet with the President of the United States of America it’s to ask for something or complain about things. Almost always it’s to blame the United States for our past, present and future problems. I don’t think that’s completely fair. We mustn’t forget that Latin America had universities before the United States created Harvard or William & Mary, which were the first universities in that country. We can’t forget that on this continent, as well as the world over, at least until 1750 all Americans were more or...

Manuel Zelaya, the president of Honduras ousted in a coup, is attempting to fly home from Washington and reclaim his office, sparking clashes between his supporters and the security forces which have led to at least one death. At least one person was killed and several were injured as soldiers opened fire and let off tear gas rounds after at least 10,000 supporters of the Leftist leader descended on the airport outside the capital, Tegucigalpa. As his supporters mobbed the airport, soldiers were deployed en masse. Violent confrontations then erupted along the perimeter fence. As demonstrators tried to rip down...

WASHINGTON — It took the Obama administration eight days to figure out whether Iranians being gunned down for protesting a fraudulent election and demanding basic civil liberties deserved to be acknowledged by the president of the United States. It took the O-Team less than eight hours to side with Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega over the ouster of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. As we now have come to expect, Mr. Obama got it wrong again, but this time, nobody noticed. The U.S. news media, preoccupied with the sudden demise of Michael Jackson, ignored the event...

It was the coup heard around the world. No sooner had the Honduran military overthrown the country’s leftist president, Manuel Zelaya, than the international community erupted in outrage. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the military’s intervention, and called for Zelaya to return to power. The World Bank is temporarily suspending loans to Honduras. Venezuela and Ecuador have threatened military retaliation if their embassies or staff members are harmed. Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez has even threatened war, warning that “I’ll do everything possible to overthrow” the transition government. Even President Obama has joined the international chorus denouncing the coup as...

Hondurans have united like never before and have stood up to the world to protect and defend their democracy no matter what. Today I saw a large group of brave men and women stand side by side yelling, singing, dancing, cheering, clapping, and making their voice be heard all over the world. The big peaceful manifestation that Hondurans put up this morning in Tegucigalpa’s Central Park in support of their new Constitutional Government has set an example to the world, that even though it is a small and one of the poorest countries in the world, it will not fall...

June 30, 2009, 1:00 p.m. The Honduran Counter-CoupBy the Editors At first blush, the news from Honduras sounds like a sad return to Latin America’s past: A democratically elected president has been exiled by the military. But make no mistake: The Honduran soldiers who escorted Pres. Manuel Zelaya from his home on Sunday were acting to protect their country’s democracy, not to trample it. Moreover, they had the full support of the Honduran Supreme Court, which had rejected Zelaya’s bid to hold a referendum on “constitutional reform.� The proposed referendum, illegal without an act of Congress, aimed to launch...

BOGOTA – The regime that ousted Manuel Zelaya in Honduras claimed Tuesday that the deposed president allowed tons of cocaine to be flown into the Central American country on its way to the United States. "Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds ... and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking," its foreign minister, Enrique Ortez, told CNN en Espanol. "We have proof of all of this. Neighboring governments have it. The DEA has it," he added. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Rusty Payne in...

RIO DE JANEIRO - Strong U.S. support for ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has sharply reduced the chances that the military coup there could reignite ideological tensions in Latin America or encourage similar moves against other leftist governments.... U.S. President Barack Obama joined Latin American leaders on Monday in condemning the coup as illegal, marking a contrast to 2002 when Washington went against the regional consensus by initially welcoming a coup attempt against Chavez himself... Rather than signaling a warning for leftist Latin American governments about pushing constitutional changes too far, the Honduran coup is an example of the risks...

During the past 3 1/2 years, my country has lived through a sad satire of governance. Influenced by the No. 1 promoter of 21st-century socialism, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, our ex-president, Manuel Zelaya, took us down the road of social divide, propaganda and the absolute void of checks and balances with one end in mind: to stay in power indefinitely... Running a campaign disguised as promoting change for the people and true direct participation of the masses, Zelaya started to promote this project with all his might. The judicial branch deemed this project illegal, as did our electoral tribunal and...

The arrest and deportation of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya by the country's military Sunday was wrong and should be reversed. Quite possibly, it will be: Facing the united condemnation of governments in the Americas, and under heavy pressure from the United States -- on which Honduras depends for aid, free trade and remittances from workers -- those who deposed Mr. Zelaya may not hold out for long. If their goal is, as they declare, to defend the country's democracy, they will have a better chance of doing so if they allow the president to return... The Obama administration, however, shouldn't...

Che Guevara was a cowardly murderer, and those walking around the US with his stinking, bearded countenance adorning their apparel are ignorant fools.I can understand why he is a hero in Latin America, where the rich dump all over the poor and call it capitalism and democracy. But here in America--the most egalitarian and upwardly mobile society in the world--the most famous t-shirt salesman in the world is a mark of ignorance.A Che logo screams "I am blissfully ignorant of history and I despise the capitalist freedom that brought me this gucci bag and these $200 Raybans." Capitalism Is Dead!...

Well that was not his exact words but in essence when blaming the USA the buck stops with the resident (not a typo do not consider him eligible to be president). Anyway wheres the "Love" he was supposed to bring from his fellow Dictators to America? Military Coup Detat in Honduras; Chavez Blames US for Involvement Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was arrested by soldiers earlier on Sunday, is in Costa Rica and has asked for asylum, CNN's Spanish-language channel reported, citing the Costa Rican government. Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, had provoked a political crisis after...

Those promises remain largely unfulfilled. Corruption has dogged his government with several officials accused of taking kickbacks. He doubled the minimum wage but most businesses have refused to pay it, saying they can't afford it amid a global financial crisis. And violence has surged, rising 25 percent from 2007 to 2008 to make Honduras one of Latin America's deadliest countries. [snip] His government declared it had the right to monitor phone conversations, though officials say they stopped tapping after a month because of the public outcry. Zelaya has been embroiled in disputes with media outlets, accusing them of criticizing his...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - More than a dozen soldiers arrested President Manuel Zelaya and disarmed his security guards after surrounding his residence before dawn Sunday, his private secretary said. Protesters called it a coup and flocked to the presidential palace as local news media reported that Zelaya was sent into exile. The chief executive was detained shortly before voting was to begin on a constitutional referendum the president had insisted on holding even though the Supreme Court ruled it illegal and everyone from the military to Congress and members of his own party opposed it. Zelaya was taken into military...

Iran's growing influence in Latin America is a "potential risk" to the region, the newly-appointed head of the US Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser has warned. Fraser, who on Thursday takes charge of US military operations in 31 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, expressed "real concern" about the Islamic Republic's links with "extremist organizations" in the region. "The real concern is not a nation-to-nation interaction, it is the connection that Iran has with extremist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and the potential risk that that could bring to this region," Fraser told journalists ahead of taking up the...

A poor, agrarian, landlocked country in South America with a nearly 100 percent Christian population is hardly the place one would expect to become a hotbed of Islamic extremism in the Western Hemisphere. But a recent report by the Open Source Center (OSC) of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it's so. There are only 1,000 Muslims in Bolivia, a country of 9.7 million people, but the connection between some of the community’s religious leaders and Iran — as well as with fundamentalist factions in the Palestinian territories — has U.S. officials and terror experts keeping a...

Augusto Pinochet--Some Perspective By Humberto Fontova Tuesday, June 9, 2009 To read the mainstream media you’d think that in Sept. 1973 Augusto Pinochet’s villainous henchmen, while twirling their pointy black mustaches and snickering maliciously, overthrew a Chilean “president” (Salvador Allende) somewhere on the order of Jimmy Carter. Then these ghouls lined up 3,000 harmless sociology professors and innocent leftist parliamentarians and shot them—for the sheer heck of it. The real story, as you might imagine, is a tad more complicated—despite the media and academia’s Black Legend regarding Chile.

There are two Latin Americas. The first is a region of widespread poverty, crime, and corruption, where drug gangs wreak havoc and left-wing populists rail against Uncle Sam. This is the Latin America that generates sensational and provocative headlines — the Latin America of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, the most-wanted drug baron in Mexico (who checks in at #701 on the latest Forbes list of the world’s richest people), and Hugo Chávez, the thuggish Venezuelan president who has formed an alliance with Iran and aided Colombian narcoterrorists. It is a Latin America that seems overrun with violence and paralyzed by...

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is trying to ease long-standing resentment of U.S. policies in Latin America by attending events this week that highlight Washington's awkward history with the region...

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La Prensa (Managua, Nicaragua) 5/7/09 (Full translation of speech by Oscar Arias, President of Costa Rica, at the Summit of the Americas meeting in Trinidad & Tobago on April 18, 2009) “I have the impression that every time Caribbean and Latin American countries get together with the president of the United States of America it is to ask for things or to demand something. Almost always it’s to blame the United States for our past, present and future ills. I don’t believe that is at all just. We cannot forget that Latin America had universities before the United States created...

Tehran, May 3, IRNA – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will pay official visits to three Latin American countries at the end of this week. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in an interview with TV channel 2 said the president is scheduled to visit Brazil, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Mottaki said President Ahmadinejad's visit to Brasilia would be a new chapter of mutual ties after 17 years, which began by last year visit of Brazilian FM to Tehran and his Iranian counterpart reciprocal visit late March, 2009. He added that President's visit to Brazil, considering potentials of both countries and ties upon mutual respect...

A Mexican defender caused outrage by coughing and spitting in the face of a Chilean opponent after growing tired of swine flu jibes.   Chivas' Hector Reynoso also emptied his nose on Sebastian Penco after allegedly being called a leper by the Everton Vina del Mar forward.  The Mexicans were in Chile for a tie in the Copa Libertadores - Latin America's equivalent of the Champions League - and had reported discrimination from locals when they went out shopping in the run-up to the match.   Reynoso, 28, said: 'In the market place, people got out of our way,...

Nicaraguans fall to 'crazy sickness' Evangelical Rev. Kenneth Bushey says the outbreak of a mysterious disease in a remote part of Nicaragua is the work of the devil By TIM ROGERS BILWI, Nicaragua -- A mysterious illness that's driving some indigenous Nicaraguans to hysteria has authorities scrambling to find answers. No one is entirely sure why the so-called grisi siknis -- the Miskito term for ''crazy sickness'' -- has returned to this port town on Nicaragua's northern Caribbean coast, but it has residents on edge. More than 80 cases have been reported here in the past two months, including...

LIMA -- Public health authorities of South American countries took precautionary measures to fend off a possible pandemic after a deadly swine flu virus claimed dozens of lives in Mexico and infected at least 11 people in the United States. In Peru, experts with the Health Ministry said the ministry had initiated a nationwide precautionary plan to deal with potential threats, though no suspicious cases have been reported so far in the country. The Chilean Health Ministry expressed concern over the situation and drafted a contingency plan for epidemic prevention. It also ordered a public health alert that included health...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wasn't the first to discover the book he gave to President Obama last week in an attempt to ease diplomatic tensions — college students in the U.S. have been turning its pages for years. The 317-page "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" has been identified on the syllabi of at least 20 U.S. colleges and universities since 2003, and it's been taught for decades on American campuses. The virulently anti-American book tells how for 500 years Europe and then the U.S. exploited Latin America, leaving it impoverished and governed...

  Regift, Please! What to make of the book that Chavez gave Obama? Alvaro Vargas Llosa,  The New Republic  Published: April 22, 2009 Image courtesy of Amazon.com WASHINGTON--Hugo Chavez's gift to President Obama at the recent Summit of the Americas--a copy of Eduardo Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America"--has many people wondering what the fuss is about.     A decade ago, I and the other two co-authors of the "Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot" devoted a chapter to refuting the historical and ideological fallacies contained in Galeano's tract, which we called the "idiot's bible." Everything that has happened in...

At the Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a book written by a US-hating Marxist. It has shot to #2 on Amazon.From the LA Times: According to reports, the Chavez-Obama exchange, the book offered by the Venezuelan leader was in Spanish, a language the U.S. president does not read. Why Chavez didn't give him an English version is anyone's guess.Maybe because the little tinpot dictator is too stupid to realize we speak English up here...Forget that crap sandwich between two covers that dictator Hugo Chavez pressed into the accepting hands of President Obama. It's nothing but a...

How much will President Obama’s handshake with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez cost the U.S.? Despite Chavez’ bombastic rhetoric about his socialist revolution, the reality is that Venezuela is going broke. While the president’s overtures to Chavez at the recent Summit of the Americas have been greeted ecstatically by many in the media, there has been little attention as to why Chavez may so desperately crave rapprochement. (And guess what? It appears to have nothing to do with Obama’s politics.) What has also been absent from press coverage is any perspective on just how our relations with Venezuela became so frosty in...

Just two days after US President Barack Hussein Obama shared a controversial and landmark handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a study analyzing the flowering alliance between the increasingly anti-Western Latin America and the virulently anti-Israel Iran. The study was conducted at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), a non-governmental organization dedicated to Israeli intelligence and terrorism issues. According to the study, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using anti-Western Hugo Chavez as a springboard into several Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and...

Port of Spain, Trinidad (LifeNews.com) -- International pro-abortion advocates from Planned Parenthood appear to have been unable to promote abortion at the recent Summit of the Americas meeting. Leading pro-life advocates were concerned they would team up with Obama officials to promote abortion using coded phrases.Marie Smith, the director of the Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues, previously told LifeNews.com that International Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion organizations might insert pro-abortion language into the Summit's Declaration of Commitment.Abortion advocates regularly work to get phrases like "reproductive health" and "reproductive rights" into UN and international documents and then later construe those terms...

One wonders whether President Obama, for all the soaring rhetoric, grasps why certain nations really do hate us. Does he think a Grozny, Darfur, Rwanda, Serbia, or Tibet happen in reaction to US global sinful conduct? Does he appreciate why hot spots like Cyprus, Taiwan, or Georgia, do not boil over—or under what conditions they might? Does he really believe that in the pre-Bush era we all got long (cf. his al-Arabiya interview); then Bush’s strutting, unilateralism, and preemption, presto, caused anti-Americanism?Take Iran. It wants to be the preeminent regional power in the Middle East, and win for the Persian...

RIO DE JANEIRO, April 20 (RIA Novosti) - Latin American countries showed a growing interest in purchasing Russian-made weaponry during a recent arms show in Brazil, an official from Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said. Latin America Aero and Defense (LAAD) is the largest and most important biennial event for the Armed Forces and defense industries of Latin American countries. This year it was held on April 14-18 in Rio de Janeiro. "The countries of the region showed an increased interest in Russian aircraft and helicopters, armored vehicles, technical means for military training, and other military equipment including air defense...

The English translation of the book Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave to President Obama on Saturday has become a sensational seller on the Internet, jumping to No. 2 on Amazon's sales list by noon Sunday, after being No. 54,295 just a day earlier. "Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina," or "Open Veins of Latin America," by Eduardo Galeano describes centuries of invasions and other attempts to influence Latin American affairs by outside powers, including the United States. Mr. Chavez handed the Spanish-language version of the book to Mr. Obama after the American president spoke at a Saturday-morning meeting of leaders...

Head of body of 34 regional American countries asks for communist island to be readmitted, 50 years after expulsion Major moves were made to bring Cuba in from the cold today as José Miguel Insulza, Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), said he would ask the body to reinstate the membership of the communist island almost 50 years after it was ousted. The historic announcement came as 34 regional heads of state, including US President Barack Obama, arrived at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. The meeting is the first time Mr Obama will come...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A day before embarking on a trip to Latin America, President Obama described his planned talks with Latin American leaders as discussions among equals.

President Obama plans to take his message of partnership to Latin America and the Caribbean this week, but he will face a group of leaders far less forgiving than their European counterparts were about the United States' central role in the global financial crisis. Over the past five years, the region has posted the fastest economic growth rates in the world, lifting millions of Latin Americans out of poverty. Now, those gains are threatened by a downturn that, as Inter-American Development Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno said, "is the hemisphere's first economic crisis not made in Latin America." At the...

The global financial crisis will dominate the agenda at this week's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, which also serves as U.S. President Barack Obama's coming-out party in the region. After eight years of George W. Bush, there is excitement among the 33 heads of state and government, most of whom are meeting Mr. Obama for the first time, as well as hope for a new era of civility and co-operation. While Latin America hasn't been as badly affected by the recession as Canada, the United States and Europe, the region needs renewed investments and capital loans. “Latin America's financial...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will try to establish a cooperative new relationship with Latin America this week, but U.S. resistance to change on highly symbolic issues like Cuba and immigration could undercut the effort, analysts said. Obama travels to Mexico on Thursday for his first visit to the region as president and heads to Trinidad and Tobago on Friday for the Fifth Summit of the Americas. As he did at the G20 summit of major economic powers in London this month, the president plans to emphasize listening to regional leaders and working on shared goals. "With all that...

The conviction Tuesday of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori on human rights charges – including authorizing murder and kidnapping – has been hailed by some as a milestone for justice in Latin America. Mr. Fujimori, who ruled Peru throughout the 1990s, is the first democratically elected leader in the region found guilty, in his own country, of human rights abuses. But the conviction is also an important moment for national healing in Peru, says Efrain Gonzales, the vice rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima. While about one third of the country still supports the former leader,...

The former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori was today convicted of kidnapping and murder and sentenced to 25 years in what was described as a landmark ruling for human rights cases in Latin America. A three-judge panel found the 70-year-old guilty of authorising a military death squad during the state's "dirty war" against Maoist rebels in the 1990s. The 15-month trial, held at a special forces police base just outside the capital, Lima, was the first time a democratically elected Latin American leader had been tried on home soil for human rights abuses. "This court declares that the four charges against...

Roman police find sewer children The children were found in sewers close to railway stations Italian police have found more than 100 immigrants, including 24 Afghan children, living in the sewer system beneath railway stations in Rome. The children range in age from 10 to 15 years and are now being looked after by the city's social services. They were found when the railway police followed up reports of children living near the city's stations. The police say they do not speak Italian and broke into the sewers by removing manhole covers. The charity Save the Children Italy says that...

Gays, persecution and lies: the eternal soap opera By alleging “persecution” in the pro-sodomy Brazil, Brazilian gay requests asylum in the pro-sodomy US By Julio SeveroAguinaldo Silva, a writer of soap operas for the Brazilian TV Globo Network, invented in his soap opera “Duas Caras” scenarios where evangelicals are violent, irrational and dangerous against gays. And homosexuals are portrayed as innocent little angels…Faced with this kind of scenarios, any nation would be supposed to grant asylum to the “victims”. The big problem is that the real victims of the soap operas of Aguinaldo Silva — and of TV Globo —...

US Vice President Joe Biden said that the United States would no longer "dictate unilaterally" to Latin America, and that it had entered a new era in the historically troubled relationship. "The time of the United States dictating unilaterally, the time where we only talk and don't listen is over," Biden said in Santiago after holding discussions with a clutch of Latin American leaders at a conference at a Chilean beach resort. Biden's five-day visit to meet leaders in the region, including a second stop in Costa Rica, aimed to pave the way for President Barack Obama, who is set...

The war against the Shining Path rebels, which took nearly 70,000 lives, supposedly ended in 2000. But here in one of the most remote corners of the Andes, the combination of a renewed military campaign, a resurgent rebel faction and a lucrative cocaine trade may be sparking it back to life. The drizzle-shrouded jungle of Vizcatán, a 250-square-mile region in the Apurímac and Ene River Valley, nine hours by four-wheel drive along switchbacks from the Maoist rebels' Andean cradle of Ayacucho, is Peru's largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine. The Shining Path controls a large part of...

SANCKAJAWIRA, Bolivia -- Evo Morales' opponents have figured out one thing as they look ahead to presidential elections this year: To beat Bolivia's first Indian leader, you need to run an Indian. Morales' supporters have come to the same conclusion - and shown no reluctance in attacking an indigenous politician for suggesting he might challenge their champion in elections expected in December. When Victor Hugo Cardenas, a native Aymara like Morales and a former vice president, hinted he would run, the response was brutal: A mob of Aymaras violently evicted Cardenas' family from their house here on Lake Titicaca's shore,...

The strategy of a "diplomatic truce" with the People's Republic of China implemented by President Ma Ying-jeou and his Kuomintang government faces its severest test yet in the wake of the election of leftist television journalist Mauricio Funes as president of El Salvador last weekend. The triumph by Funes, the candidate of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a former revolutionary guerrilla movement, over former National Civic Police director Rodrigo Avila of the far-right ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance) by a 51.3 percent to 48.7 percent margin March 15, ends 20 years of consecutive ARENA. Since winning the race, Funes has...

"He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he's a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality," said Chavez, who heads a group of left-wing Latin American leaders opposed to the U.S. influence in the region.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama was at best an "ignoramus" for saying the socialist leader exported terrorism and obstructed progress in Latin America. "He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he's a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality," said Chavez, who heads a group of left-wing Latin American leaders opposed to the U.S. influence in the region. Chavez said Obama's comments had made him change his mind about sending a new ambassador to Washington, after he...

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said President Barack Obama doesn't seem to know much about what's going on in Latin America. Chavez made the remark in clips of an interview with Al-Jazeera shown late Friday, also saying Brazil's president came away from his recent talks with Obama not entirely pleased.