Each week, the editors at the Foreign Policy Association provide a roundup of their favorite must-read pieces from around the web. This week: Iraq, the Putin Doctrine, Hugo Chavez’s polarizing politics, the weakening two state solution, and much more.
Among the more important questions to surface in the wake of Hugo Chávez’s death on March 5: Will chavismo survive? The answer, usually given in the affirmative, frequently invokes a previous era of Latin American history. For example, a column on the London Review of Book’s website, “Chavez Hasta Siempre,” draws a parallel to Che […]
Brief updates on some of the topics I covered last week: –In Kenya, results of last week’s presidential race point to Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee Alliance Coalition party as the winner. With just a hair over 50% of the vote, Kenyatta would gain the presidency without a runoff election. However his opponent Raila Odinga […]
Now that one of Latin America’s most controversial figures has died, it is interesting to look back at his actions, actions that will reverberate in the western hemisphere for some time to come. This is a short piece (about 52 minutes) that is clearly a love letter from the maker, Cinema Libre Studio. The whole […]
The fragility of democracy has been on full display this week. Distressingly, challenges to freedom and order have occurred literally around the globe. Here is an overview of situations to monitor; all of these stories broke today, Wed. March 6, 2013. Venezuela I would be remiss to not start with the March […]
At a high-level executive meeting in Mexico City on Feb. 13, the conversation turned, as it often does in Latin American circles, into a guessing game on Chavez´ health. Several participants insisted ¨Chavez is dead, we haven´t heard from him or seen him in weeks.¨ My response? The man is too ornery to pass away […]
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador swept into power promising to use the wealth of natural resources in their countries to help address widespread poverty and stabilize the economy. Both improved situations enough to win reelection, but both also seem to have a strong grip on power and willingness to curtail democracy […]
Back in October during Venezuela’s presidential election, the health status of President Hugo Chavez–and its impact on his ability to lead the country–was unclear. Yet the president’s popularity won out and he was awarded another term. Yet it has now been over a month since his last public appearance, after which Chavez underwent cancer surgery. […]
The Economist’s Venezuela correspondent put out an informative video on the succession of the next possible leader in Venezuela, that can be found here. I also encourage everyone to read the last few posts on FPA’s Latin America blog for information on Venezuela as well. The consensus among many experts in the region is that […]
Recently in my own community, one branch of the government has taken to openly violating some enshrined rights under the constitution using their own legislation that clearly violates the rights of the people. The acceptance in using the legal system to remove the rights of citizens that are governed under a constitution were surprisingly permitted. […]
Hugo Chavez should be officially sworn into office on January 10. But with Chavez’s advanced cancer and his recently announced “complications,” it is unclear who will lead the country in 2013. Here is a brief primer. As Tim Padgett recently argued, Venezuela’s Bolivarian constitution provides a “murky map” on matters of incapacity and succession. The […]
Argenzuela — an invented word that has been on the minds and lips of Argentines for the past year; the jokes that Argentina is following an eerily similar path to that of Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela are no longer funny. The fact that the man who almost single-handedly has destroyed the former economic juggernaut of Venezuela […]
At this point, the plight of Venezuelan prisons is internationally known. Jails are severely overcrowded, conditions are horrendous and members of armed gangs kill each other with such frequency that the government actually created a new Prison Ministry to oversee the rights of prisoners. But the most perplexing aspect of the penitentiary system is […]
This week’s election in Venezuela was important for reasons outside of Venezuela itself. The victory of Hugo Chavez with over 80% of the electorate voting and a sizable minority voting against the current President showed that Hugo Chavez does have a great deal of support as well as a strong opposition to his economic model. Outside of […]
Polls closed in Caracas, Venezuela at 1800 October 7. Months of anticipation came down to the following four hours as the National Electoral Commission (CNE) counted ballots. Current president Hugo Chavez won the election with over 7.4 million votes, some 54 percent of the vote. Opposition candidate and first runner up Henrique Capriles Radonski obtained […]