...ntum to inherited wars and the economic crisis, but nonetheless his track record in the Americas is inconsistent at best. Despite Obama’s emphasis on engagement, the United States has experienced ambassadorial dismissals with Venezuela, Mexico, Bolivia and Ecuador. Several incidents, such as the Argentine seizure of US military equipment from a cargo plane this February, developed unnecessarily from minor misunderstandings between countries into...
A 2002 anti-Chavez rally, from Wikimedia Commons I’ve been meaning to write about the Venezuelan elections for a while, but I never truly found the incentive to do so until I ended conversing with a group of students with close ties to Venezuela on the eve of the elections. Although most of them do not live there anymore, they spent significant time growing up in the country and hold strong ties to it. As we spoke of tomorrow’s democratic ultim...
photo from Wikimedia Commons The other day, President Obama was “fortunate” enough to receive an unexpected backing: ”I hope this doesn’t harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I’d vote for Obama,” said Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela and staunch anti-American. Though this was an endorsement Obama would have loved to avoid (and accusations from the Republican camps immediately appeared) it was certainly...
...tecs. The mythos surrounding native peoples is deeply entwined with the cultural identities of many South American nations. While the numbers of indigenous communities are small, a million or so in Mexico – a million or so in Venezuela, their impact on countries’ “founding stories” is irreplaceable. In many parts of the Amazon and Tierra del Fuego, some tribes of indigenous people have never encountered Western civilizations. Experts estimate tha...
...city and cooking, and has nearly run out of toilet paper. Generally when a state runs out of toilet paper, that’s when the shit hits the fans. As of yet unable to tap into its own offshore oil reserves and highly dependent on Venezuelan subsidies (especially of oil—they took on average 94,000 free barrels a day in 2008) , the Cuban state is on the brink, especially when one considers that the Venezuelan handouts cannot last forever given the effe...
...rs have largely become the norm. I have written four of my predictions for Latin American politics in the year ahead. It looks to be action-packed, by any measure. Chávez Wins Reelection Amidst Fraud and International Disgust Venezuela holds presidential elections this year as well, pitting incumbent international curmudgeon and “Bolivarian Socialist” Hugo Chávez against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. Radonski is the current gov...
...gallon of gas ever – $3.83 a gallon. The price spike is the result of a witch’s brew of calamities: Increased tensions in the Middle East (you’d think the market would be used to it by now…), a massive explosion at oil giant Venezuela’s largest refinery, a severe fire at a Chevron refinery in California, and Hurricane Isaac, which has briefly frozen almost all oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. High gas prices always hurt middle-income Americ...
...ough. Neither is arguing about who loves Israel more. Nor does effectively ignoring Syria while Russia ups the stakes make a foreign policy. Whatever happened to Cuba, North Korea, Russia, Palestine, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Pakistan, the Euro Zone, China, or Japan? The citizens of the United States need to stop being content with bromides about helping Syria’s rebels or putting more pressure on Iran and put foreign policy back...
...in leftwing leaders have expressed their outrage at the situation. However, the diplomatic responses from Paraguay’s neighbors were often met with cynicism: Argentina and Brazil were especially keen on replacing Paraguay with Venezuela inside Mercosur. On the contrary, the U.S.’s silence on the affair has drawn criticism and some have argued that the coup, through the rise to power of a more conservative Paraguayan government, is an opportunity f...
...sit on anywhere from 90 to 200 billion barrels of oil, 50 to 150 billion metric cubes of natural gas, and large amounts of gold, diamonds, copper, iron ore, and many other strategic resources. By comparison, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela’s oil reserves are measured at around 250 billion barrels. But Greenland is a tricky case. Indeed, if the country wants to be fully independent, it has to generate enough revenues to give up on the annual subsidy o...
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