Article examines the progress that Latin America has made in reducing poverty and creating more optimism and hope about improvements in the future. Author compares and contrasts the situation in the United States, and recommends taking lessons from Lain America to restore the American dream. Counter-conventional thinking.
This article does not make for easy reading. Anyone who has landed at this Rio de Janeiro airport has the same visual reaction: how awesome the environmental problem is. In view of the upcoming Olympics it is an especially dangerous situation.
The Republican platform on Latin America can be read here. While party platforms seldom have decisive effect on foreign policy, this one suggests returning US-Latin American relations to a Cold War framework. The document also has an educational value, which is perhaps more important.
Two prominent Venezuelan writers portray the disaster that makes Venezuela the sick man of Latin America. Moisés Naím and Francisco Toro: “Riots and looting have become commonplace, as hungry people vent their despair while the revolutionary elite lives in luxury, pausing now and then to order recruits to fire more tear gas into crowds desperate for food.”
