CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – Despite a number of significant steps to increase security along the U.S.-Mexican border in recent years, violence along the frontier is growing as Mexican drug cartels increase their involvement in human and drug smuggling into the United States. Meanwhile, a Bush administration initiative to provide significant law enforcement aid to Mexico is stalled in Congress amid old questions about the best way to fight the drug war. Since 2001, the Bush administration has increased the number of border patrol agents from 9,000 to 15,000, with another 3,000 to be added by the time Bush leaves office. [...]
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The death of FARC commander Raúl Reyes is being seen here as a significant turning point in Colombia’s internal armed conflict with Latin America’s oldest insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. While the killing of Reyes on Ecuadorian soil has sparked a diplomatic crisis between Colombia and its neighbors, it is the impact of his death on the country’s conflict that will be noted in the annals of Colombian history. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe was elected to power with a mandate to crush the rebels. For the last six years, the government’s counterinsurgency campaign, bankrolled largely [...]
The line of those waiting patiently for the demise of Fidel Castro was a long one. For nearly 50 years the queue included foreign exiles, eager businessmen, American politicians, and numerous Cuban dissidents. Yet when the moment finally arrived late last month, it wasn’t nearly the historic, providential occasion most had envisioned. Rather than go out with a bang — which very nearly happened at the height of the Cold War — Castro chose instead to slip quietly from view, the world’s most infamous, and recently bedridden, autocrat leaving his followers with nothing but the vague plea that he wished [...]
