The earthquake has struck. What we are seeing now is the way in which the pieces are being arranged for the reconstruction of hemispheric order, how the countries are organizing, and the new role that the ex-hegemonic power will play. What is certain is that the global crisis put an end to the United States’ “backyard.”
Buried underneath last week’s hysterical news about the continuing, politically manufactured “debt ceiling crisis,” was an article from a non-U.S. press agency, the French Press Agency, entitled “US unveils sanctions against global organized crime,” It detailed how President Obama had signed an executive order imposing financial and other sanctions on a group of foreign criminal organizations ranging from Russia, Japan and Italy to Mexico.
An epidemic of forced evictions that began shortly after the earthquake is making life even harder for the countless Haitians that remain in displacement camps. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 233,941 Haitians have been evicted from camps, and that 166,000 of the 680,000 people remaining in camps face an ongoing threat of eviction. They say that the “rapid pace of eviction” is causing people to leave the camps even though they have nowhere else to go. Of the more than 180,000 residential buildings destroyed in the earthquake, only 4,100 have been repaired. Only a fraction of the needed temporary shelters have been built.
In Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, a student peace protester is gunned down by the Federal Police. Pictures of the intestines bursting from his ruptured gut make the rounds on the Internet, shocking even the world’s bloodiest city. In Matamoros, Tamaulipas, schools close down after officials receive bomb threats. Newspapers timidly report that the threats “could be [...]
In this speech delivered on March 4, 2011 to the annual meeting of Democrats Abroad in Puerto Vallarta, Americas Program Director Laura Carlsen lays out the history and flaws of Mexico’s increasingly bloody drug war, but also points to solutions and alternatives to escape the spiral of corruption and violence.
The uprising in Ecuador that occurred on September 30 shook the world and sparked a debate about the reason for the unrest. Groups of police and members of the armed forces, disgruntled over a law that, among other aspects, eliminates police bonuses, took to the streets in protest. When President Rafael Correa went out to talk to the police, he was attacked with tear gas and later held captive in the police hospital as police officers continued to attack unarmed citizens.
The arrest of Alan Gross in Cuba last December has proven to be a major headache for the Obama administration. Externally, the arrest jeopardized the notion that the Obama administration could hold the key to improving relations with its neighbor. Internally, the Obama administration has embarked on a thorough review of the government’s democracy promotion [...]
