Free Republic

Even before the two hundred bullet-pierced corpses had time to stiffen, a whole crowd of “experts” showed up in all major newspapers and TV channels of three continents to tell a gullible audience that the recent murders in São Paulo and Santos, Brazil, were caused by poverty. Yes, extreme poverty bought thousands of Uzis and AK-47s and tons of ammunition, bribed hundreds of police officers and politicians, paid for the services of terrorist trainers from Spain, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. The very leader of the rebellion, Marcos “Marcola” Camacho, admitted that the operation was prepared in close association to the...

It's somehow funny how international press has fell into this new leftist show in Latin America: that Lula (Brazil) and Evo (Bolivia) are now 'enemies'. Read this excerpt from MSNBC news: Presidents to meet over gas crisis in Bolivia - Financial Times - MSNBC.com: "A person familiar with the situation said relations between Brazil and Bolivia remained 'very complicated' but efforts were being made at all levels to reach a negotiated settlement. 'The big question here is regional energy security,' the person said. '[The move] makes no sense from Bolivia's point of view. [Bolivia] has shot itself in the foot.'"...

Communism is not dead in Latin America. In fact, the dominoes are falling south of the border, but no one seems to be noticing. “It’s a new day. Communism is dead. It’s even dead in Cuba.” So declared Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May 2002. “I hate to say it,” she continued, “it’s dead.” The senator’s proclamation was a surprise, no doubt, to Fidel Castro, whose regime was (and is) alive and as Red as ever. It also must have come as welcome news to the people of Cuba, still suffering, after nearly half...

When the U.S. was attacked by Al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, Brazil’s president at the time, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, immediately invoked the Rio Treaty – a pillar of the Inter-American system upon which the Organization of American States was founded. It has a simple and important premise: if any member country in the Americas is attacked militarily by an outside force, that constitutes an attack on all member states. Brazil stood firmly by the United States after the 9/11 attacks. But times have changed. President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim is now attempting to remove...

Even by its own standards, Latin American electoral politics has been throwing up some surprises of late. Lucio Gutierrez, a retired leftwing soldier who led a coup two and a half years ago, won the first round of presidential elections in Ecuador on Sunday. Next Sunday, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former lathe operator and rabble-rousing trades unionist, known as "Lula", is poised to win Brazil's presidential elections in a landslide. Earlier this year Evo Morales, a peasant farmer who represents the growers of coca leaf, narrowly missed the Bolivian presidency. "You couldn't make this stuff up," says Michael...

"Richard Nixon famously remarked, ‘As goes Brazil, so goes Latin America,’" recalled Brazilian political activist Gerald Brant in the May issue of Brazzil. Under the reign of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — commonly called "Lula" — Brazil is fulfilling "Fidel Castro’s wildest revolutionary ambitions … right under the nose of the Bush administration," Brant warns. According to Brant, "anti-American sentiment has grown so high in Brazil that President Bush received a lower approval rating among Brazilians than Saddam Hussein...." While there are many sound reasons for opposing the war in Iraq, Brazilian public opinion appears to be following...

While Washington’s attention is focused on the Middle East, communism and communist terrorism are threatening America's security in Latin America, where another Axis of Evil is spreading its tentacles throughout the region. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is getting credit from the Internatinal Monetary Fund and Wall Street's useful idiots for following the orthodox economic policies of former president Fernando Cardoso while plunging his nation into communism and allying himself with Fidel Castro and Castro's puppet in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. So radical is the regime under Lula that the Rio de Janeiro city council recently declared President Bush...