She drinks tequila, smokes pot, and is worshipped by perhaps two million throughout Mexico. Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, is showing some wear from her years of hard living: instead of the angelic likening usually afforded to saints, her depiction is a hooded skeleton, often accompanied by a globe and scythe. The message of her […]
President Hugo Chávez is a fan of some books, and an opponent of others. In April of last year he made a very public presentation of Eduardo Galleano’s Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, gifting it to President Barack Obama at the Summit of the Americas. On the […]
Can Brazil find its proper role in the long term efforts to rebuild Haiti and send it along a path to peace and prosperity
Despite the odds, people are still being rescued from the rubble in Haiti. Yesterday 69-year-old Ena Zizi was extracted from the collapsed National Cathedral in Port-au-Prince. She told the AP: “I talked only to my boss, God. And I didn’t need any more humans.” Javier Vázquez, who first reached Zizi, recalls, “I felt her grab […]
The Venezuelan government finally blinked when it came to financial pressures by devaluing its currency on January 8th. The rate of the Bolivar Fuerte had been pegged at 2.15 to the dollar and is now 2.6 for essential supplies and 4.3 for luxury goods. Last week the value of the dollar on the parallel market […]
When disaster struck in Haiti this week with a massive earthquake that devastated the capital, Brazil was given an opportunity to step up to the plate and show its international leadership. In reality, Brazil has been working in Haiti for nearly five years, since June 2004. The Brazilian army heads the UN peacekeeping forces, as […]
Brazil’s Cash Assistance Program to Reduce Poverty For centuries Brazil promised prosperity amidst the constant plague of poverty and inequality. Forty years ago, the country’s military dictatorship managed to achieve the perplexing “Brazilian miracle” in economic growth, averaging 11 percent a year between 1968 to 1973, in part by concentrating income and deepening poverty to […]
Since the 1980s, the Brazilian government has offered amnesty to illegal immigrants in four different campaigns, benefiting tens of thousands of foreigners living in Brazil. The latest campaign began in July 2009 by presidential decree, and though it officially ended at the close of 2009, some cases are still pending. Until now, 41,816 foreigners received […]
Some say that Venezuelan democracy is under assault, with Hugo Chávez and his cronies consolidating power. The populace may vote, but there is strong pressure to support the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PVUV in Spanish), and a penalty for those who support the opposition (e.g. being black-listed from government jobs). On the other hand, […]
Finally after seven months of a senate hold on his ambassadorial confirmation, veteran diplomat Thomas Shannon goes to Brasilia to smooth out the rougher edges of U.S.-Brazil relations and steer these two nations toward greater cooperation on such pending issues as energy and climate change, bilateral commerce, the Iran nuclear program, the G-20 deliberations, and […]
In a recent article on Project Syndicate, Jorge Castañeda equates President Calderón’s war on drugs to President Bush’s invasion of Iraq. He argues: “Just like Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Mexico’s drug war was a war of choice. It was a war that Calderón should not have declared, that cannot be won, and that is doing […]
Scanning the FPB site a few days back, I couldn’t help peeking at the Global Film Blog. In his last post Sean Patrick Murphy deemed “Sin Nombre” the best film he has reviewed over the past year. I just happened to watch it over the holidays, and I can’t think of an equal. The flick […]
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