Blog entries

Mexican President Felipe Calderón arrives in Washington DC today for an official visit with President Obama and U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner.   Calderón’s visit begins with a meeting with leaders of the business community and media on Wednesday, followed by meetings tomorrow with President Obama at the White House and a meeting with … Read more

Un año después de que un terremoto de magnitud 8,8 sacudió a Chile, miles de personas siguen sin vivienda. Más de 30.000 familias quedan viviendo en asentamientos informales. La vivienda digna es un derecho al cual todos los chilenos debemos acceder. Oscar Arias, al recibir el Premio Nobel de la Paz en 1987, transmitió con … Read more

Amidst growing national concern and international coverage of the violence in Mexico, a bit of news on the macroeconomic scale talks wonders of our country’s capabilities to overcome even the biggest obstacles. Last week, Bloomberg ran a story on Mexico being the second economy in Latin America to bounce back from the 2009 recession with … Read more

Cuban President Raúl Castro acknowledged yesterday that the frenetic pace of public sector layoffs in recent months is unsustainable and will be scaled back to help brunt the impact of the cuts. The mass firing of up to 500,000 workers, scheduled to occur by April, are part a major economic restructuring toward greater self-employment, which … Read more

In the early hours of yesterday morning, Chileans marked the one-year anniversary of the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that killed over 500 people, left thousands homeless and caused upwards of $30 billion in damage. President Sebastián Piñera attended the official vigil in the coastal town of Cobquecura, which was the epicenter of last year’s disaster. Former president … Read more

The people-power revolutions that ousted the decades-old autocratic governments of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and are rocking the rest of the  Middle East have prompted Cuba watchers –yet again– to wonder when the last redoubt of Cold War dictatorship in the hemisphere is next.  It isn’t, and we have U.S. … Read more

On Thursday, demonstrators at the Supreme Court in Montevideo protested the criminalization of marijuana possession. Under the slogan, “No más presos por plantar” (No more prisoners for plants) supporters of the Movement for the Liberation of Cannabis protested the arrest of an Uruguayan artisan and of Alicia Castilla, the Argentine author of  Cultura cannabis. Both … Read more

In the 1980’s, the World Commission on the Environment and Development, now called the Brundtland Commission, coined the term “sustainable development” to illustrate the links among economic, social and environmental objectives. Since then, science has added support for the vision expressed by the Commission; holes in the ozone layer and emerging evidence about man-made contributions … Read more

President Felipe Calderón of Mexico announced yesterday that he will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House next Thursday, March 3, amid a recent spike in drug-related violence and increased friction over leaked diplomatic documents. Last week two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) special agents were shot at in San Luis … Read more

From the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. AS/COA Online’s news brief examines the major—as well as some of the overlooked—events and stories occurring across the Americas. Check back every Wednesday for the weekly roundup. Sign up to receive the Weekly Roundup via email. Latin American Leaders React to Gadaffi Protests Reactions to the government crackdown … Read more

A U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks today, dated November 16, 2008, from then-U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, William B. Wood, reveals that former President Alvaro Uribe authorized “clandestine cross-border operations against the FARC in Venezuela, while trying to avoid a repeat of a crisis generated by the capture of FARC official Rodrigo Granda in Caracas … Read more

The most recent wave of drug-fueled gang violence in Acapulco, Mexico killed up to 30 people this weekend, according to Mexican government statements. The fighting began last Friday when a scuffle between competing gangs evolved into a gun battle that left five burned vehicles and seven dead. The shootings then continued Saturday and Sunday, igniting … Read more

In contrast to the looming political fights over spending, healthcare repeal, and immigration, free trade could be a rare case where President Barack Obama will benefit from Republican control of the House of Representatives. After all, the pending Colombia and Panama free-trade agreements (FTAs) were originally negotiated by George W. Bush’s administration and then held … Read more

Hosni Mubarak finalmente ha dejado el gobierno de Egipto luego de treinta años en el poder, obligado por la furia popular. Pero ¿por qué podría importar a un país como Bolivia un hecho como ese, sucedido a miles de kilómetros, al otro lado de mar, en un mundo completamente ajeno a no ser por los … Read more

With the recent trip of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Mexico on January 24, and the even more recent visit of Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the White House on February 4, the past several weeks have seen a lot of high-level engagement on North American issues. In many respects the relationship between … Read more