The Americas Archive

Many Hondurans as well as outside observers of the country’s political crisis breathed a sigh of relief when Porfirio Lobo Sosa was sworn in as president on Jan. 27. Lobo’s inauguration took place nearly seven months to the day after the military, backed by influential opposition leaders, forced former President Manuel Zelaya to leave the country. That marked the beginning of a lengthy power struggle between Zelaya and interim President Roberto Michelletti that thrust the small Central American nation into the international spotlight. Lobo’s inauguration definitively answers the question of who will be president of Honduras in 2010, and closes […]

In the 11 years since Hugo Chávez became president of Venezuela, the country has experienced almost constant political and economic drama. The past decade brought a cinematic — and ultimately failed — coup d’état against the president, a national strike that brought the economy to its knees, border disputes complete with tank deployments, and a string of controversial nationalizations of private businesses, to name just a few of the remarkable developments that have marked the Age of Chávez. Despite the stiff competition of years past, though, 2010 is already taking shape as a year of reckoning for the country, the […]

Great NY Times piece on the growing Guatemalan immigrant population in Brooklyn. The story itself is just an update of a very familiar one, but it shows the enduring appeal — as well as the brutal reality — of the American Dream. Every time I see an image of a U.S. Army platoon outpost in Afghanistan, I shudder at the thought of what we’re asking young Americans to live through over there. I had a similar, if not identical, reaction upon reading of a 39-year-old day laborer who hasn’t seen his family in 14 years. It’s also true that this […]

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. — Karl Marx. The results — both positive and negative — of Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim’s tenure during the presidency of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva cannot be explained simply by his or his team’s political will. His initiatives have both been harmed by and benefited from present circumstances, as well as legacies of the past. These factors range from the increasing diffusion […]

So instead of facing Haitian resentment to the U.S. humanitarian intervention, U.S. troops and civil aid workers are finding the mood among Haitians to be, More, please! But reconstruction is, for now, ruled out. Obviously, all reporting out of Haiti is for now anecdotatl, and today’s warm welcome could become tomorrow’s food riot. But it will be interesting to see just how long before one of our nation-building operations generates demands, not for nationhood, but for Statehood. Thomas P.M. Barnett touched on this with regard to Mexico and Cuba. Haiti seems like a viable candidate, too.

I haven’t had a chance to do more than skim through the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (.pdf), despite the fact that Congress Daily helpfully managed to acquire it over the weekend. I have read through some of the early reviews, though, and recommend Robert Farley, Spencer Ackerman and the gang at Information Dissemination for a start. I don’t think anyone who’s been following the military’s operational soul searching and evolution over the past five years will be surprised by anything here. But I’d offer one alternative reading of the degree to which COIN figures prominently in this year’s edition, as […]