Showing posts with label latin america. Show all posts
Showing posts with label latin america. Show all posts

Thursday, March 08, 2007



Burning Bush
Nabor Goulart / AP


This is unacceptable. Bush is visiting Latin America and they burn him in effigy wearing that shade of lipstick? Come on, Bush is more of a pale pink kind of guy and we need Condi Rice down there immediately to set the record straight. She can point to her shirt collar and demand a retraction. Oh, and she can get some cute shoes down there too.

Friday, February 23, 2007



Latin American Citizens Are Politically Sophisticated


In a Washington Post hit piece out on Hugo Chavez today, the virtues of free market capitalism and trade agreements were extolled while Chavez was painted negatively. He deserves it in many areas. He has an authoritarian streak that I find quite disturbing.
However, this article, probably endorsed by the US chamber of commerce, and the ghost of United fruit did have a moment of truth mixed in with the pro coporate agenda.

Although Chávez frequently travels to foreign capitals to lambaste Washington, it's not so clear that Latin Americans favor the Venezuelan president's prescriptions, even if their governments are happy to accept his aid. According to a recent survey of 20,200 people in 18 countries by Latinobarómetro, a Chilean polling firm, most Latin Americans lumped Chávez with Fidel Castro and President Bush as bad leaders, citing Brazil's Lula and Chile's Bachelet as the best. And most of those polled classified themselves as political moderates .

In Latin America, they distrust Bush and Chavez. Today I am a latin american too. Much of the time, the rest of the world has a more nuanced approach to politics than here in the US of A. You don't have to choose A or B. You can dislike authoritarian Chavez at the same time you don't trust authoritarian Bush. Our two party system has set up this mindset that there are only two options and you have to embrace one of the two, which of course is a falsity.

Viva Latin America!