Nine months after a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, more than a billion dollars in reconstruction aid still hasn’t reached the country.

Mary Anastasia O’Grady takes Jeffery Golodberg to task over his interview with Fidel Castro. Much hilarity (or, at least, poor analysis) ensues.

From me over at PoliBlog:  Mono Jojoy Killed

Via the BBC:  Drill reaches trapped men in Chile mine. The good news:  the rescue bore hole has reached the miners. The bad news:  it will take another 6 weeks to make the make the it large to use to rescue the miners.

Fidel Castro is back in the public eye, but he’s singing a slightly different tune now.

Via the BBC:  click.

Elation at discovering 33 miners still alive after over two weeks of looking for them is giving way to the reality that it will take roughly 4 months to get them out.

Via the BBC:  Bodies hung from bridge in Cuernavaca, Mexico The four men had been decapitated and mutilated before being hung by their ankles from the bridge outside Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos. This appears to be linked to a contest for control of the Beltran Leyva cartel. The piece has this map showing [...]

Colombia’s Constitutional Court has struck down a US basing rights deal.

Remember when dealing with the utterances of Hugo Chávez that you should take them with a grain of salt (or twelve).

Colombia has sworn in a new president. And so begins the Santos era as the Uribe era heads for the history books.

Since 9/11 there has been a steady trickle of stories about jihadists hooking up with Latin American drug cartels and the like. Here is a guide of story points that can help you identify when such a story is almost certainly bogus.

Abigail Poe and Adam Isacson have gone through the UNODC’s 2009 coca data and produced a nice summary for those interested in such things.

Via the BBC:  Mexico challenges Arizona’s immigration law: The Mexican government submitted arguments as a “friend of the court”, or amicus curiae, meaning it is not a party to the case, but is offering a legal opinion which it believes has bearing on it. It is in support of a case brought by a group [...]

Santos kinda won.

Via the BBC:  Hugo Chavez sings about Hillary Clinton. The improvised tune began with the lines, "I’m not loved by Hillary Clinton… and I don’t love her either". Video at the link above.

As expected, the result from today’s elections in Colombia is a run-off next month.  What was not expected is that Santos came very close to winning outright in the first round and that he had roughly twice the votes of Mockus.  From the National Registry: Trying to find an additional 3.5% for Santos will be [...]

The last in the series (which is a good thing, since the polls close in less than twenty minutes from the time of posting). Really, unless the polling has been radically wrong by all the pollsters for weeks, none of the rest of the field (i.e., another other than Santos or Mockus) has any chance [...]

Colombians are currently participating in the process to elect their next president (until 5pm local time this afternoon).  One of the front-runners in the process, and a likely candidate in the second round, is Green Party (Partido Verde) candidate, Antanas Mockus.  Mockus is the son of Lithuanian immigrants and is a former mathematics professor  and [...]

Some links to go along with my two previous posts regarding the elections tomorrow: Via the  Miami Herald:  Social media breathe life into Colombian presidential election. Via the CFR:  Colombia: Moving Beyond ‘Narco-Democracy’. Via the CSM:  Philosopher Antanas Mockus rattles Colombia election. Via the AP:  In Colombia, brainy outsider and Uribe torchbearer vie for presidency

This is the second in a series on Colombia’s presidential elections (cross-posted to PoliBlog).  The first covered candidate Juan Manuel Santos. The election this Sunday is the first step in replacing the sitting President, Álavro Uribe.  Uribe is one of the longest serving President in Colombian history and the first since Rafael Núñez in the [...]

This post is the first in a series leading up to Sunday’s presidential elections in Colombia (Cross-post to PoliBlog).  The ballot can be viewed here. Juan Manuel Santos is one of the two front-runners in this weekend’s Colombian presidential elections.  He is the former Defense Minister from the Uribe administration and is the nominee of [...]

The ballot for this Sunday’s election is here:  click.

NPR has a nice little piece (both audio and in text) regarding presidential candidate Antanas Mockus:  click. I will be doing a series of posts on the election, the first round of which is this Sunday, shortly.

The comment thread on my piece on Tom Friedman’s authoritarian fantasies regarding China prompt me to point out some very basic data on China that often get ignored in general discussions of the country and its economy. Yes, it is true that China has had remarkable growth in its economy in recent years.  Indeed, in [...]

Ok, since there was some confusion generated by some of my previous posts on the drug war, let’s start to simply look at some basic information so that we can perhaps, over time, establish some foundational issues from which discussion can be held. My general position, so that it is clear, is that we are [...]

It’s been roughly four months since the massive earthquake that struck Haiti and, predictably, the story has slipped from the headlines. Among the other things you may have missed is the fact that a United Nations Commission headed by former President Clinton is now effectively in control of the country: On April 15, the Haitian [...]

Here I am writing primarily about cocaine, although everything in this post can be applied to heroin as well.  It should be understood that both are plant-based drugs.  Cocaine’s most fundamental ingredient is the coca leaf, which grows almost exclusively in the Andean region of South America.  Heroin comes from the opium poppy, which grows [...]

To build on my recent post on the drug war (as well as to a broader enterprise on this subject), I took a look at the 2009 World Drug Report to check out the stats on the street price of cocaine.  This is a key metric, as one of the stated goals of US anti-drug [...]

I would highly recommend the following essay by Oscar Casares from the Austin Chronicle:  Holiday of Cinco de Mayo is minor event in Mexico.  If anything, it underscores how Cinco de Mayo is probably a bigger deal in the United States than it is in Mexico (although granted, it is more in terms of eating [...]

And I mean way down south… I am keeping my Colombia-blogging mostly contained to PoliBlog, but I thought I would bring attention to the following NYT piece on the presidential elections:  A Maverick Upends Colombian Politics. Given that the US spends a rather remarkable amount of money in Colombia (because of the drug war), it [...]

Mexico is fighting back at an Arizona crackdown aimed at illegal aliens. Mexico’s government is warning its citizens about travel to Arizona because of a tough new immigration law there. The travel alert from the Foreign Relations Department urges Mexicans in Arizona to “act with prudence and respect the framework of local laws.” It says [...]

I was able to find the exact text of the plebiscite that Manuel “Mel” Zelaya wanted to proffer to the citizens of Honduras this past Sunday. The text and a photo of the ballot that was to be used can be found here. The odd thing, and a fact that hasn’t made it into a [...]

The events in Honduras today have been some of the more dramatic in recent Latin American (and especially Central American) politics. The events are certainly of relevance to the democratic evolution of Honduras. Dave Schuler asked that I post a few comments given my academic focus on Latin America. If anyone is interested in the [...]

Via the BBC: Farc ‘co-ordinator’ held in Spain Spanish police say they have arrested the representative of the left-wing Colombian rebel group Farc in Spain. Maria Remedios Garcia Albert, a Spanish national, was detained near Madrid, as part of a joint operation by the Spanish and Colombian authorities. [...] It is claimed that Ms Garcia [...]

The daring rescue of Ingrid Betancourt from FARC terrorists misused the Red Cross symbol in violation of the Geneva Conventions. A member of the military mission that tricked Colombian rebels into freeing 15 hostages wore the insignia of the International Red Cross during the operation, President Alvaro Uribe said Wednesday. Mr. Uribe said his government [...]

Íngrid Betancourt Pulecio was freed yesterday in a daring rescue by the Colombian National Army after more than five years of captivity by FARC narco-terrorists. [S]he and 14 other hostages — including three U.S. military contractors held since 2003 — were airlifted to freedom in an audaciously “perfect” operation involving military spies who tricked the [...]

James Cason, the U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, has achieved rock star status in that country. Literally. [H]e learned the obscure Paraguayan Guaraní language, recorded a music album of indigenous folk songs and sold 1,000 tickets to a concert in a downtown theater. Now, in the final year of his four-decade diplomatic career, Cason has suddenly [...]

Absolut Vodka has got some ‘splainin’ to do: Laura Martínez found the ad in the print edition of Quién magazine in Mexico City and it’s going viral. Jim Hoft has picked it up, calling it an “Absolut-ly Outrageous Ad,” Pierre Legrand profanely calls for a boycott, and Brian Ledbetter goes with “Absolut-ly Insulting.” Michelle Malkin [...]

Here’s a follow-up to a story I noted yesterday: (via the BBC), Ecuadorean death report confirmed Colombia has confirmed that an Ecuadorean was killed when its troops attacked a rebel camp inside the neighbouring state three weeks ago. Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos said his body was taken to Colombia after the raid along with [...]

Via the LAT: Peru sees cocaine making a comeback Peru’s cocaine industry, the world’s largest and most violent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, is again on the upswing. Plots of coca bushes, whose leaves yield cocaine, have increased by about one-third since 1999, to about 127,000 acres, according to Peruvian and United Nations [...]

Via the BBC: Ecuador warns Colombia over raid Ecuador President Rafael Correa has warned of diplomatic tension if an Ecuadorean is found among the victims of a Colombian raid inside Ecuador. Mr Correa said Ecuador would not forgive the murder of Franklin Aisalia, if he had indeed died during the raid on Farc rebels inside [...]

Fidel Castro has finally resigned the presidency of Cuba. Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he will not return to lead the country as president or commander-in-chief, retiring as head of state 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution. Castro, 81, who has not appeared in public for almost [...]

Via the BBC: Castro ‘well enough for election’ The health of Cuban President Fidel Castro is good enough for him to be a candidate in next month’s parliamentary elections, his brother Raul has said. Which raises the question: apart from breathing, how healthy is “enough” to run, given that he won’t have to campaign or [...]

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez will have to make do with the powers he currently has after voters narrowly rejected two packages of constitutional amendments proposed by Chávez and the Chavista-dominated national legislature: Venezuelan voters narrowly rejected a constitutional referendum that would have bolstered President Hugo Chavez’s embrace of socialism and granted an indefinite extension of [...]

In light of the recent flap over whether the United States should issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, USA Today helpfully notes that Mexico requires proof of legal residency before issuing licenses. Which, I’m sure, is a real inconvenience for all those gringos headed south of the border to take jobs from hard-working Mexicans. Photo: [...]

Glenn Reynolds wonders, “WHY IS THE WORLD MORE CONCERNED with Musharraf’s coup than with Hugo Chavez’s emerging dicatatorship? Because enemies of the United States, like Chavez, get a pass.” Tom Maguire responds, reasonably enough, “because Pakistan has nuclear weapons and harbors (willingly or otherwise) the remnants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. What’s that compared [...]

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is dead. Unless he’s not. Val Prieto had a flurry of updates yesterday reporting Castro’s death, with imminent announcements expected. Half the political blogosphere linked the post and his server couldn’t handle the strain. In a Communist plot, no announcement was forthcoming. Meanwhile, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton got into the act [...]

Duncan Hunter is warning about the threats posed by Iran and Venezuela, according to two separate UPI reports. “As a regional neighbor of the United States, Venezuela is increasingly threatening stability in the Western Hemisphere. The country’s leadership is determined to move the country away from democracy and toward socialism; maintains close relations with Cuba [...]

GWU economics professor Robert Dunn argues that the flood of illegal immigration from Mexico will stop of its own accord because a sharp decline in the birth rate is cutting the supply of out-of-work Mexican teenagers. More interesting still is his explanation for the trend: Better education and improved job opportunities for women mean that [...]