June 03, 2009
The OAS lifts the 1962 suspension....
February 27, 2009
I've been feeling kind of homesick for Brazil lately. Certainly part of it is the shitty cold weather that has been just hanging around for so long this year. Part of it is the last week being the lead up...
September 17, 2008
So I tagged this under Latin America for fun, or maybe in solidarity with McCain, who has a little trouble remembering who are his friends and who are his enemies, and what continent they are from: We wanted to give...
September 02, 2008
No, not here sillies. Brazil: Brazilian intelligence chiefs have been suspended from duty amid allegations that their agency tapped the phones of top officials, politicians and judges. ... "The rule of law has been broken, the credibility of our democratic...
July 02, 2008
She was kidnapped several years ago during her campaign for the presidency of Colombia. She and others were rescued from the FARC by the Colombian military....
April 20, 2008
According to exit polls, 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party is about to come to an end....
April 15, 2008
That's a huge amount of "black gold", lots more (lots and lots and lots more) than exists in US reserves: A deep-water exploration area could contain as much as 33 billion barrels of oil, an amount that would nearly triple...
February 19, 2008
I don't have anything to say about Fidel saying he won't stand for re-election. He already pulled the switcheroo when he did the transfer to Raul. Not much will change rapidly, especially not US foreign policy. Unless multiple Fidel heads...
October 30, 2007
The beauty of ugly, via Neatorama....
October 05, 2007
Deaths from amoebas are in the news, garnering attention because of public health concerns, and their possible relation to climate change. While in the last few years, if anyone had mentioned amoebas to me, I would have thought about intestinal...
September 24, 2007
The title is, To my teacher, with affection: Yeah, I know I've been slacking on the blogging, but I still have time to read Neatorama....
August 30, 2007
Nicaragua's restrictive abortion laws are again in the news, this time with regard to a case of a nine year old girl who was raped and impregnated by an older cousin (article in Spanish). At this point, the judicial authorities...
August 25, 2007
...much discussed, at minimum. Regardless, it's Friday night, y hasta los muertos queiren ballar!...
August 24, 2007
With his super commie powers! The national metabolism will never be the same! Moved by claims that it will help the metabolism and productivity of his fellow citizens, President Hugo Chávez said clocks would be moved forward by half an...
August 20, 2007
Dean has been upgraded to a category five storm, and is boiling straight toward the Yucatan. Everyone is talking about the resorts, but I think about all the rural folks just inland, making their subsistence living on farming their milpas,...
August 18, 2007
...nice weather...to dive, to swimming... ...name it, and I go......
June 19, 2007
Given what the Cuban revolution has become, sometimes it's hard to remember what it once represented. In the 1950s, the struggle against Batista's oppression mobilized many to action. One of them was Vilma Espin, who later became the wife of...
June 17, 2007
Wow. Do you think she could be a little more condescending? Just maybe? Maria Carvajal walks the sweltering streets of Tijuana, Mexico, clutching a photo of her mentally disabled son, who she says went missing after being deported more than...
June 12, 2007
The Sao Paulo Pride Parade may have reached 3 million participants!...
May 14, 2007
At least you can if you are the Pope (emphasis mine): Pope Benedict XVI blamed Marxism and unbridled capitalism for Latin America's problems on Sunday, and urged bishops to mold a new generation of Roman Catholic leaders in politics to...
April 21, 2007
The story begins: The sound of crackling explosions entered through the glassless window of Maiza Madeira's home, a hollow-brick shanty wedged deep within the narrow, twisting alleyways of this city's largest hillside slum. She lifted her chin to acknowledge the...
March 11, 2007
Os gringos se afinvam na folia. HT....
March 10, 2007
Click the photo for more....
February 24, 2007
Really, what could I come up with that would top that?...
February 17, 2007
Or so Hugo Chavez might find out. Entering a supermarket here is a bizarre experience. Shelves are fully stocked with Scotch whiskey, Argentine wines and imported cheeses like brie and Camembert, but basic staples like black beans and desirable cuts...
December 19, 2006
...about commie professors: A psychology professor at Florida International University, Alvarez faces up to five years in prison for conspiracy to become an unregistered foreign agent. Elsa Alvarez, who also worked at the university, faces up to three years in...
December 10, 2006
Good riddance: Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew Chile's democratically elected Marxist president in a bloody coup and ruled the Andean nation for 17 years, died Sunday, dashing hopes of victims of his regime's abuses that he would be brought to...
December 02, 2006
"...even though we want him to go."...
November 28, 2006
Ah yes, Tom Tancredo. Helluva way to solidify the Republican base in Miami. Rep. Tom Tancredo, the leader of the anti-illegal immigration faction in the U.S. House, spent a recent weekend at The Breakers in Palm Beach. Ninety miles to...
November 27, 2006
November 05, 2006
Gomes dos Santos is the first South American to win the New York Marathon! Ole ole ole olaaaa.... Brasil.... Brasil.....!!!...
November 04, 2006
A post on Portuguese that echoes my feelings to a T: I really enjoyed this article by Larry Rohter (showing once again that when writes about travel or cultural issues in Brazil he's much better than writing about politics) about...
October 24, 2006
When I lived in Brazil, I always bought a calendar/agenda/planner thingy from the anarchists. It was the best calendar I ever had, with everything I needed and nothing I didn't. It also came in fun colors with a sturdy cardboard...
October 08, 2006
The US government speculates that Fidel has terminal cancer....
October 02, 2006
Even though some had predicted that Lula would win in the first round, he will face Alkman in a runoff. His administration has been plagued by scandal, but has delivered in ways the voters approve of. There's an old saying...
September 20, 2006
"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush, who addressed the world body during its annual meeting Tuesday. "And it smells of sulfur still today."...
September 15, 2006
It turns out they provided us with the (newly discovered) first writing in the hemisphere....
September 05, 2006
As expected, the Federal Electoral Tribunal declared Calderon the winner of the Mexican presidential election. Lopez Obrador said that he won't accept the result, and he has millions of supporters behind him. The US press hasn't been covering this very...
August 19, 2006
There has been virtually no impact on the drug supply in the US, six years and $4.7 billion later. Yet recent data show the following results:¶As much coca is cultivated today in Colombia as was grown at the start of...
August 01, 2006
It's like wildfire. The news about Fidel's 'temporary" handover of power to Raul, and subsequent lack of information, is fanning the flames of speculation. I'm inclined to think this is very serious, and not temporary, given the time frame (several...
July 31, 2006
It's supposedly temporary while Fidel has surgery. Cuban President Fidel Castro was undergoing intestinal surgery and provisionally handed over power in the Communist island nation to his brother Raul, according to a statement read on Cuban television Monday night.Castro will...
July 29, 2006
I love to joke about Hugo Chavez. "Oh those wacky commies! They say the funniest things!" But I don't buy it, and it's generally a laugh or wince kind of situation as he tries to stick his finger in the...
July 25, 2006
Always good for the crazy sound bite: Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday he had forged a strategic alliance to stand up to U.S. imperialism with fellow maverick Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. "Our countries must keep their hands at the...
June 29, 2006
Fidel Castro's niece (Raul's daughter) is campaigning for an end to homophobia in Cuba. To that end, she championed a telenovela with a bisexual storyline, and is now advocating for free surgery and hormone therapy for transsexuals. Castro said many...
May 15, 2006
President Bush told President Vicente Fox of Mexico that the use of National Guard troops would only be temporary. Say, until November maybe?...
May 05, 2006
Archeologists outsmarted tomb raiders to unearth a major Maya Indian royal burial site in the Guatemalan jungle, discovering jade jewelry and a jaguar pelt from more than 1,500 years ago....
May 02, 2006
So, yeah, Evo Morales got up to some nationalization hijinks. The US has been ignoring Latin America for awhile now. I think old Evo's found a formula to get our attention, eh? A chip off the old bloque bolivariano....
April 10, 2006
Binky is away for the week, and I'm trying to think through the fog that is my brain after grading tests for 16 hours straight yesterday. Posting is light. On the other hand, Binky (away) reported in that she saw...
March 30, 2006
That's what it looks like where the Rio Negro meets the Rio Solimões, one clear and dark, the other cloudy and light. Right here. The NYT has a travel story up about Manaus. It talks about cupuaçu, a fruit that...
March 15, 2006
...they can hire me and pay me for my professional services by appointment and contract, not show up unannounced at my office hours, pump me for incriminating information and harass my students. Sheriff Lee Baca said Friday that his deputies...
February 26, 2006
A story in the NYT about family, housing, and local ordinances. It turns out that "pro-family" actually meant "like-us-waspy-suburbanites." For decades, the family has been at the center of America's culture wars. Often, the quarrelers break into predictable camps. The...
January 16, 2006
Chile elected a new president yesterday, their first woman president, and one whose history gives her a very interesting position from which to govern. On the down side, she has never held elected office before - though she has held...
January 12, 2006
In Chile. According to both the candidate of the Left and the Right. Michelle Bachelet is a pediatrician and a Socialist, while Sebastián Piñera is a billionaire businessman and a conservative. They may agree on little as the opposing candidates...
January 11, 2006
Fujimori must be confused to think it's a good idea to register to run for President while in jail in Chile after having hidden out in Japan for five years because in his home country of Peru they want to...
December 18, 2005
Have you ever had a really busy time in your life, where nothing but your own problems have concerned you? And you live in a nice place, and you have good neighbors, for the most part. But the ones who...
November 29, 2005
I know that many people are obsessed with Fitzmas and who knew what when and how could Karl Rove and Scooter and Novak and whether Woodward has come full circle from outsider to insider with matching bookend presidential scandals and...
November 20, 2005
This is the kind of thing that made me kiss the hard sciences goodbye. See Hugo sing. Wearing a broad-rimmed sombrero, Chavez sang Mexican ballads with a mariachi band before thousands of his supporters at the end of a march...
November 16, 2005
The CIA says that Fidel has Parkinson's disease and that in the next few years he may reach the point where he has trouble governing. The CIA has concluded that Cuban President Fidel Castro suffers from Parkinson's disease and...
September 27, 2005
Quietly, without breaking through the noise surrounding hurricanes and war protests, some good news from Chile. Today, on Chile's 195th birthday, the Pinochet Constitution is now merely part of the miserable history of his horrid rule: In a highly symbolic...