The Americas Archive

MANTA, Ecuador — A decade ago, this was just another obscure, humid, Pacific coast fishing town, with a third-rate airport and a problem with narcotrafficking. Today, the city is a regular stop for cruise ships, boasts a first-rate airport and is a key outpost in the United States’ war on drugs. But the eight-year-old U.S. anti-drug presence here has both put Manta on the map and made the city a center of controversy. The local U.S. anti-narcotrafficking facility “is a pretext for expansionism,” charges attorney Miguel Moran, who believes that Washington and U.S. corporations want to control the region’s natural […]

The visit to the United States earlier this month of Pope Benedict XVI, the spiritual leader of more than 60 million Americans, was a whirlwind affair. In between meetings with President Bush, a stopover at the Pope John Paul II cultural center, a meeting with a Jewish community group in New York and a visit to ground zero, Benedict also managed to slip in three masses and a handful of addresses to various ecumenical bodies. While the trip lasted just four days, precious little was left undone. Judging by his schedule, American domestic issues were clearly high atop the Pope’s […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The arrest of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s cousin and political ally, Mario Uribe, on charges of conspiring with the country’s paramilitary groups, brings the country’s so-called “para-politics” scandal closer to the president’s inner circle. Mario Uribe’s arrest on April 22 and the ever-growing domestic scandal that links politicians with outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups is being seen as the most serious crisis facing President Uribe since he first came to power in 2002. A former senator who co-founded the Democratic Colombia Party with the president, Mario Uribe is one of the most prominent politicians engulfed in the scandal […]

When Colombia bombed a guerrilla camp in Ecuador last month, igniting one of Latin America’s worst diplomatic spats in recent history and nearly sparking a regional war, the leaders at the center of the dispute each emerged with a most unexpected political reward: a boost in their domestic support. Recent opinion polls in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela illustrate that the nationalist stands taken by leaders of the three countries paid off for each of them politically. “All three leaders occupied different roles and all of them are satisfied,” said Juan Gabriel Valdés, former minister of foreign relations in Chile. Colombian […]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he will decide by late 2008 or early 2009 whether France will fully rejoin the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It is one of the more important issues left unresolved at the recently concluded Bucharest Summit, where Sarkozy proclaimed: “I reaffirm here France’s determination to pursue the process of renovating its relations with NATO.” Gen. Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s military structure in 1966 in protest over American dominance of the Atlantic Alliance. And more than 40 years later, the issue of American influence over European security remains a fundamental stumbling block to […]

Energy independence has emerged as a popular rallying cry in this U.S. election year. Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls all at some stage have advocated energy independence, which they define as freeing the American oil consumer from the tyranny of importing petroleum from foreign countries, especially the Middle East. While convenient to advocate in an age of sound bite politics, energy independence is in fact not possible to secure in the United States in the foreseeable future, and is of doubtful utility in any country that might be in a position to achieve it. A combination of rising oil prices […]

It doesn’t take an economist to notice the rumblings of historic change pushing close to the surface. Demand for oil is growing faster than supplies, so oil prices are moving to dizzying new highs every few days, threatening to transform the world. If this trend continues, much will have to change, not just in America, but everywhere. Americans use far more oil than anyone else, but China and India and the rest of the planet need fuel to pull their populations out of poverty. Every day that demand increases without a corresponding increase in supply. Economic pressure builds, making the […]

As the value of the dollar continues to decline relative to other currencies, some of those most affected don’t even live in the United States. Instead, they are citizens of developing countries who receive remitted dollars from family and friends working abroad. For them, the weakening dollar is particularly crippling because it either converts into less local currency or, for those in countries with pegged currencies, can’t keep up with local inflation. It’s a situation roughly similar to American travelers in Europe discovering that it now costs $4.77 for a Big Mac, whereas a year and a half ago the […]

PAPAL VISIT — As the American media lavish attention on Pope Benedict XVI´s visit to the United States, the other part of his itinerary has rated hardly a mention. On Friday, the 81-year-old pontiff will address the U.N. General Assembly in New York. To the Vatican, the pope’s pronouncement to the world from the platform of the United Nations ranks as high in importance as his “pastoral” visit to Catholic America. The pope´s U.N. speech is a historic event in his papacy — a statement of how he sees the world. In reality, the pope’s trip is a triple header. […]

MEXICO CITY — Muckraking journalist Lydia Cacho initially thought hit men working for narcotics trafficking gangs were going to kill her when she was apprehended outside of her Cancún office in December 2005. But the unidentified gunmen were actually police officers, who immediately transported her more than 900 miles to a prison cell in Puebla city, where she was jailed on defamation charges. The cops allegedly taunted and assaulted her during the overnight trip, threatening her life and sticking a gun in her mouth. Their two-car convoy stopped while passing the Campeche Sound, Cacho says, and one of the gunmen […]

TRAVELS WITH JOE — Sen. Joe Lieberman told Italian guests at a recent American Embassy dinner in Rome that Barack Obama would, in his view, be the Democratic presidential candidate, but that John McCain would win the November presidential election. Embassy staffers speculated to one guest that if McCain does get the White House, Lieberman would be his Secretary of Defense. Lieberman made a side trip to Rome while traveling with McCain in Europe and the Middle East. He said he had met Vatican officials and discussed Iraq. Pope Benedict XVI is deeply concerned over the plight of Iraq’s Christians […]

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Brazil’s culture minister recently triggered an upheaval in his country’s blogosphere with remarks that reeked to many of Internet utopianism. Speaking at a debate on new technologies in Rio, Gilberto Gil said he “absolutely” believes expanded Internet access could reduce crime in Brazil’s violence-ridden slums, or favelas. He went on to tell a story about a young man and woman from favelas controlled by rival drug gangs who were able to meet and fall in love thanks to the Internet, despite ongoing violence that otherwise would have kept them isolated. In the favelas, Gil said, young […]

HONG KONG — As Beijing cracks down on protestors in Tibet in the run up to the Olympics, adherents of Falun Gong — a banned religious movement that draws from Buddhism and Taoism — are also facing the heavy hand of the Communist regime. Falun Gong members claim Chinese authorities are stepping up their crackdown on the group, branded an “evil cult” by Beijing, by using Olympic security as an “excuse.” In early March, the U.S.-based Falun Dafa Information Center announced that 1,878 practitioners from 29 provinces had been arrested since January 2008 and that cash rewards of up to […]