To no one's surprise, Venezuela's authoritarian president, Hugo Chávez swept to re-election victory on December 3. Chávez clearly intends to turn Latin America and the Caribbean toward authoritarianism and closed markets. To counter those aims, the United States must ratify promised trade ties with allies. It must enhance security cooperation to counter new…

Presidential runoff elections in Ecuador on November 26 appear to have produced a handy victory for radical young economist Rafael Correa over banana magnate Alvaro Noboa. Washington has an interest in a friendly, stable Ecuador, but this outcome may not be conducive to friendship or internal stability. The president-elect has expressed hostility toward U.S.…

When U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President-elect Felipe Calderón meet on November 9, the U.S.-Mexico border will be at the top of their agenda. Their first priority should be shared initiatives that make border communities more safe, secure, and prosperous. This will require substantially reducing the illegal border crossing that fuels criminal…

Former Sandinista comandante Daniel Ortega is back, having won a first-round victory on November 5-his fourth try at the presidency of Nicaragua since free elections were instituted in 1990. His vague promises to curb poverty were enough to beat investment banker Eduardo Montealegre's concrete proposals, thanks to a split opposition, a low victory threshold, and a…

Radical leftist presidential candidate Rafael Correa was favored in opinion polls going into Ecuador's presidential and legislative elections on October 15. In a surprising result, moderate industrialist Alvaro Noboa garnered 27 percent of the vote to Correa's 23 percent, followed by other challengers with counts in the teens and single digits. Noboa and Correa now…

Ten years ago this month, the 24-person Arts America bureau within the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) got the budget ax-condemned as a Cold War relic. Now, the Bush Administration is wisely reviving it as the Global Cultural Initiative, which launched on September 25.   Spending U.S. tax dollars on fluff is never acceptable, but America's security can't…

On August 8, Cuban human rights activist Gustavo Arcos Bergnes succumbed to respiratory and kidney ailments. Suffering years in jail and bad health for peacefully opposing Fidel Castro's dictatorship, Arcos was a tireless, patient crusader for democracy and civil liberties in Cuba. Oddly, Fidel Castro considers himself a hero for holding onto power while…

Fidel Castro is nothing if not a master thespian. His disappearance and purported power shift to his brother Raúl on July 31 is still a mystery. According to Miami Herald columnist Andrés Oppenheimer, it could be a cynical charade to smoke out disloyal underlings or a genuine health crisis, or perhaps the dictator died and the regime needs time to regroup. In any…

Populist nationalism emanating from Venezuela seeks to counter U.S. influence in Latin America, while Chinese deal-making is undermining the region's slow evolution towards market-based economies. At the same time, congressional opponents of the Bush Administration are eager to block trade agreements to hand the President an election-year defeat. But failure to…