Published in The Miami Herald
February 25, 2010
It happened in Cancún where 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries were meeting. At a private lunch, the group witnessed an unseemly encounter between Alvaro Uribe and Hugo Chávez. Speaking off the record as is customary in these gatherings, Uribe called on Chávez to end Venezuela’s hindrance of trade [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
February 11, 2010
Until June 30, Spain holds the presidency of the European Union. Madrid has always taken the lead on Cuba, and so it has been since the Socialists won the 2004 election. Under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain prodded the EU to lift sanctions imposed after the Black Spring of [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
January 28, 2010
Politics is swirling everywhere. Such are the ways of democracies, especially when oppositions come alive and defeat or threaten incumbents.
On Jan. 17, Chileans elected Sebastián Piñera their president, the first time in 52 years that a conservative won at the polls. It’s tempting to cast his victory as Right [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
January 3, 2010
Cuba’s problems can’t be addressed under the leadership’s passé reformism. Raúl Castro is neither Gorbachev nor Deng Xiaoping, both of whom thought outside the box while in power. He is stuck in the old mold of market socialism: a tinker here, a nudge there, even though Europe’s 1989 should [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
December 17, 2009
Nicaragua is nearing the brink. In 2006 Daniel Ortega campaigned in sheep’s clothing but freed his inner wolf once inaugurated. He joined ALBA, Venezuela’s alliance of autocrats, traveled to Iran, Cuba, Libya and Algeria and used then-U.S. Ambassador Paul Trivelli as a punching bag. The Sandinista machinery of clientelism, [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
December 3, 2009
Along the Jersey side on the Hudson River, New York City stands vibrant if now forever scarred. Between 1892 and 1954, 12 million immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island, where a must-see museum renders tribute to their hopes and the country that blessed them.
Union City welcomed immigrants [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
November 5, 2009
The Obama administration may be going down a dead end. In an Oct. 13 meeting with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Obama said: “Tell Raúl that if he doesn’t take steps, I won’t be able to go further.” A few days later the Spanish foreign minister met [...]
Published by The Miami Herald
October 22, 2009
On Sunday, The Miami Herald’s ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, wrote about me. His thoughtful column gave due consideration to my personal story and the spy charges levied against me — not by the U.S. government but by a small clique on the blogosphere. What saddens me is that the column [...]
Published by The Miami Herald
October 8, 2009
The United States and Cuba are taking baby steps toward each other. Since President Obama called for a “new beginning,” his administration has allowed unlimited family travel and remittances, resumed migration talks, proposed direct-mail service and given its blessing to the concert by Colombian pop star Juanes. In the [...]
Published by The Miami Herald
September 10, 2009
Miami is an immigrant city. Heartland Americans often come here full of excitement. “So near and yet so foreign,” said a 1940s promotion by the Cuban Tourist Commission to attract American tourists. Not a bad motto for today’s Miami.
What heartland Americans would not find at all foreign are Miami’s [...]
Published by The Miami Herald
August 27, 2009
It’s been two months since the coup in Honduras. The Arias plan — issued by the Costa Rican president — calls for Manuel Zelaya’s return with diminished powers and an amnesty for all parties in the events before June 28 and since then. Hondurans and foreigners brandish powerful legal [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
July 30, 2009
I don’t know what else to call it. If a president is awakened by soldiers pointing their weapons in his face, what is it if not a coup? Still, Manuel Zelaya’s removal on June 28 can’t be treated as if it were a return to the 1970s when brutal [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
July 2, 2009
On June 24, five Cuban dissidents received the annual Democracy Award given by the National Endowment for Democracy. José Daniel Ferrer, Iván Hernández and Librado Linares are serving long prison terms for their peaceful opposition. Imprisoned for 17 years, Jorge Luis García, known as Antúnez, was released in 2007. [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
June 18, 2009
Politics is hardly ever boring. Central American countries — Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua — are experiencing significant changes. Granted, these aren’t necessarily for the better — but still.
Nicaragua and Honduras have joined Hugo Chávez’s trade bloc, ALBA, and his subsidized oil program, Petrocaribe. Daniel Ortega [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
June 5, 2009
Cuba isn’t back. On Wednesday, the OAS General Assembly repealed the 1962 resolution that had excluded the Cuban government from its ranks. It also established a path for reintegration: Havana needs to take the initiative and open a dialogue that would be conducted according to OAS “practices, purposes and [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
May 21, 2009
Is the Comandante back in the saddle? Yes, most say. Yet, that’s also the easiest and simplest answer when Cuban politics is neither. Fidel Castro has never been first among equals. His photograph always appeared larger than anyone else’s in the Cuban Communist Party’s politburo. In the mid-1990s, Castro [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
May 7, 2009
“It’s like we invited you over for dinner, you walked in and the people that invited you were half drunk and throwing bottles at each other.” That’s Bill Clinton’s description of the U.S.-Cuba relationship to The Economist early in his second term.
Amid the 1962 Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
April 9, 2009
Cuba and Venezuela have often crossed paths. In the early 1960s, Havana abetted armed groups against democratically elected Venezuelan governments. Meddling in Venezuela’s affairs, in part, determined Cuba’s 1962 suspension from the Organization of American States. Caracas and Havana stood at irreconcilable odds afterward.
By the early 1970s, Cuba’s foreign [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
March 26, 2009
Change is coming in U.S. Cuba policy. How much — whether the president will simply go back to the Clinton administration’s or, instead, step outside the box — is not yet clear. The recent Omnibus Appropriations Act inches along in the right direction but falls well short of what [...]
Published in The Miami Herald
February 26, 2009
While few countries are as important to the United States, Mexico is unlikely to get the Obama administration’s undivided attention.
In 1994, the U.S.-Mexico relationship found a new footing in the North American Free Trade Agreement. By the mid-1980s, the Mexican economy and political system had dead-ended. Political and business [...]