Year: 2008

NicaraguaPress Releases
COHA

Nicaragua: The Second Coming of Daniel Ortega

Daniel Ortega has never been more possessed by a rip tide than since last year’s November elections projected him into the presidency of his poverty-stricken nation. But the electorate may not have been exactly certain if the man they were choosing to head the nation was or was not a man of Jesus or a passionate opponent of abortion or was prepared to seek out the overwhelming virtues of the private sector, or smoke the peace pipe with Uncle Sam, or give the back of the hand to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. In fact, rather than seeing a newly minted Daniel Ortega, the country seemed to be granted an older, more traditional version of Daniel Ontega, seasoned revolutionary.

It has been over seventeen years since the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) was tellingly voted out of office in Nicaragua. Now, what is the situation with the new FSLN government that rode into power in 2006 with only 39% of the vote, or 2% less than the vote that drove it from power in 1990? Are Nicaraguans witnessing another “revolution” like that when the Sandinistas swept into power in 1979?

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ColombiaPress ReleasesVenezuela
COHA

The Blitz is On

Part I
The Colombia Card is Being Played, with Chávez Scheduled to be Taken to the Cleaner. Meanwhile, Rice heads today to Medellin with Democratic legislators in tow, to win approval of controversial FTA with Bogotá

• A prime weapon in the U.S. inventory to reduce Chávez to size, and build up Colombia’s President Uribe, is a recent government-funded report produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which claims that the South American nation, Colombia, is safely “back from the brink of crisis.” But in terms of its conceptualization and implementation, the contracted document and the campaign surrounding its publication raises serious questions. These include the conservative organization’s objectivity due to its longtime advocacy of Plan Colombia, and its vigorous support of the pending free trade pact with Bogotá.

• The CSIS Colombia project is more about being part of a well-timed public relations campaign than about bona fide research.

• The CSIS report represents an important component in the lobbying effort by Bogotá and the Bush administration to convince Capitol Hill to approve the pending Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, and is based as much on half truths and strategic omissions as it is on value-neutral research.

• If anything, it could be argued that Colombia’s prospects for modernization and stability and its credentials as a voracious foe of regional drug trafficking have at best stagnated, and at worst have suffered grave attrition, under the Uribe administration. The discarding of extradition for demobilized paramilitaries is an example of this.

• Uribe is lionized by State Department, but is a doubly tainted figure

• The Bush administration relates a fading tale to Democrats over Colombia’s demure virtues

Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, on her way to Medellin, Colombia today, leading a delegation of ten Democratic House members, has the mission of rewarding one of Latin America’s most hardline leaders who has had direct links to some of the country’s most prominent right-wing death squad leaders and has indirectly sanctified the possible assassination of prominent labor and human rights leaders, even though U.S. legislators are well aware of the impunity for such crimes that exist.

In spite of multiple legislative delegation that have been ferried to Colombia and several trips of Uribe to Washington, the Congressional leadership remains unconvinced that President Uribe is not the soaring paladin of democracy as the Bush administration tries to present him.

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GuyanaPress ReleasesVenezuela
COHA

All is Not Well in Georgetown: Guyana’s Emerging Hemispheric Role

• Guyana and Venezuela’s longstanding territorial dispute: the “frozen conflict,” which is asleep for now and hopefully forever
• Will Guyana’s Jagdeo become Washington’s new best friend on the continent?

The latest confrontation between Venezuela and Guyana, which indisputably took place on Guyanese territory, has reminded Washington that Guyana exists and that complexities abound for the long troubled nation which is located in one of the South America’s hot spots. The recent clash, which briefly revived the border dispute long bedeviling the two nations’, has pushed Washington into approaching Georgetown in a less cautious, and more engaged, effort in order to gain its friendship at the hoped for expense of Washington’s most determined regional adversary, Hugo Chavez. The recent meeting between Guyanese and American military officials over defense issues may very well put Guyana’s weakened leader, President Bharrat Jagdeo ultimately in an untenable position where he may have to reluctantly pick sides, even though most specialists dismiss the recent Georgetown visit of high U.S. naval officials as nothing more than a coincidence involving a long-scheduled event.

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