In a historic first, Josefina Vazquez Mota was chosen on Sunday to be the presidential candidate for Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN). Vazquez Mota’s primary win makes her the first woman in Mexico’s history to be chosen to run for president by one of the country’s three main parties. The road to Los Pinos, the Mexican equivalent of the White House, will be a difficult one. The lineup is now set. Currently leading in the polls is Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) candidate Pena Nieto. With the PRI party, however, comes …
Appearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on January 31, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James R. Clapper warned that the “2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. shows that some Iranian officials—probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the U.S. in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.” In October, U.S. officials accused Iran of plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington with hired assassins from a Mexican …
Beneath the President’s bully pulpit in the House of Representatives last night must be a very thick carpet under which Barack Obama managed to sweep a great number of inconvenient facts and issues in the Americas. When it came to our Hemisphere, north and south, he told us not to worry. A single sentence sufficed to sweep every issue under the carpet: “Our ties to the Americas are deeper.” No need to worry about the Americas, right? Wrong! For starters, we ought to ask why the Obama Administration currently has …
Cuban citizen Wilman Villar Mendoza, age 31, belonged to small dissident group, the Cuban Patriotic Union. He reportedly joined it in the summer of 2011 in eastern Cuba. On November 12, Villar participated in one of the numerous protest actions that spring up here and there around the island. Villar was arrested by Cuban authorities on charges of “disrespecting authority” and “resisting arrest.” Within days he was tried and sentenced to four years in prison. The regime treated him as a common criminal, its customary way of dismissing dissent. Villar …
Friends of improved relations with Cuba argue that citizen contact, people-to-people interaction, and lifting current impediments to travel and trade will pave the way for an improved U.S.–Cuba relationship and greater mutual understanding. Yet if the climate for change is as favorable as they suggest, in a moment of heightened international tensions and growing fear regarding Iran’s rush to a nuclear weapon, why do the Castro brothers choose to host Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with grand fanfare as part of his recent four-nation tour in Latin America? Why does its …
They call themselves “las Damas de Blanco” (“the Ladies in White”). They are a prominent group of courageous Cuban women, many of them wives of political prisoners. They have fought not just for the rights of the unjustly imprisoned but for the rights of all the Cuban people to have a voice in the way their country is governed. Their tactics are entirely peaceful: They take to the streets of Havana and Santiago de Cuba each Sunday and silently march in protest against human rights violations of the Castro regime …
Daniel Ortega—sporting pink campaign colors rather than the combative red and black of the Sandinista Front (FSLN) and dressed in a business suit, or guaybera, rather than olive drab fatigues—ushers in a modified and somewhat softer era of tyranny as he begins a second consecutive and unconstitutional term as president of Nicaragua. While the revolutionary, combative fervor of the Marxist-Leninist FSLN has largely gone the way of the Cold War, it has been replaced with a cynical, pseudo-democratic, and self-perpetuating grip on executive power. On January 10, as Ortega again …
As he readied for the visit of a close ally, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez undertook a cabinet shuffle in the fashion of the defunct Soviet politburo. Before Christmas, he announced a pending reassignment of his Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, Vice President Elias Jaua, and Interior Minister Tareck El-Assami to state governor candidate status. He elevated Congressman Diosdado Cabello, an influential former soldier, to head the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV. On January 6, Chavez named Henry de Jesus Rangel Silva, former director of Venezuela’s …
In an infamous and vulgar U.N. speech delivered in September 2006, Venezuela’s populist authoritarian President Hugo Chavez likened President George W. Bush to “the devil.” On December 20, Chavez lashed out at President Barack Obama after the U.S. President opined on the worsening situation in Venezuela. “Mr. Obama decided to attack us,” Chavez cried. “Now you want to win votes by attacking Venezuela. Don’t be irresponsible. You are a clown, a clown. Leave us in peace.” Chavez added that he considered President Obama to be an “embarrassment.” Chavez’s outburst followed …
On learning of the death of Kim Jong-il, Cuban authorities immediately declared three days of official mourning. Their action underscored longstanding ties of intimacy between two of the world’s most oppressive, most anti-American regimes. The death of North Korea’s tyrant also evoked a feeling that the Cuba of Fidel Castro, age 85, and reigning leader Raul Castro, age 80, will soon be overtaken by the passage of time, ushering in fresh and similar regime uncertainties. Independent-minded Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez sees deep parallels: “genealogy has been more determinate than ballot …
