Edward Schumacher-Matos

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MundoAmérica, ,

Ha llegado el momento de que Estados Unidos ratifique el tratado de libre comercio con Colombia. Debe hacerlo por la creación de puestos de trabajo en Estados Unidos y por el notable progreso que implica para los derechos humanos y la democracia en Colombia. Durante casi 40 años, este país suramericano ha librado nuestra guerra contra el narcotráfico, que ha pagado cara en bajas. Sin embargo, no hemos sabido ratificar un simple acuerdo de libre comercio cuatro años después de su negociación. Los colombianos están comenzando a desesperarse, y con razón. «Ha llegado el momento de decir si vamos a proceder con este acuerdo o no», dijo la semana pasada Luis Guillermo Plata, ministro de Industria y Trabajo, después de que Ron Kirk, el representante especial de comercio de Estados Unidos, se negara a especificar, en testimonio ante el Congreso, qué más desea Estados Unidos de Colombia antes de que el gobierno de Obama procure una ratificación.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica

Adults learn that human conflicts are seldom black and white. So the way the international community jumped to punish tiny Honduras for the ouster of its president, without knowing the facts, was foolish.

That some Senate Republicans have been extremist in the other direction borders on galling. Opposing a U.S.-brokered agreement reached a week ago by Hondurans to defuse the crisis, the senators, led by South Carolina's Jim DeMint, have been grandstanding on principles that have little to do with reality, contributing to looming chaos in that Central American country and undermining U.S. policy in the region.

In this, the age of fundamentalist ayatollahs, the knee-jerk cold warriors among the Senate Republicans are no better than the knee-jerk anti-military officials in the Organization of American States.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The tiny country of Honduras is providing a lesson in humility on the frailty of democracy and the limits in making it work. The secretary general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, hasn't listened and may soon lose his job. He deserves to.

Honduras's de facto government has been surprisingly hardheaded in defying the OAS, the Obama administration and most world governments by refusing to allow the return of Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president. The equally hardheaded Zelaya has ignored widespread pleas for patience. Saturday, he set up camp on the Nicaraguan border, across from Honduras, and has threatened to return by force.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

Honduras is guilty of two sins: impatience and size. The rest of the world is committing two more: hubris and hypocrisy.

It is now clear that if the Honduran Supreme Court or Congress had used legal means such as impeachment before asking the army to remove President Manuel Zelaya, we would be calling events there a constitutional crisis rather than a coup d'etat.

This would be especially true if Honduras were a larger country such as Brazil or Pakistan and its court, Congress, attorney general, human rights ombudsman and electoral commission were all saying afterward, as they do in Tegucigalpa, that the army moved legally in alliance with them.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

Mexico is not a failing state, as it has become fashionable to say. What has failed is our "war on drugs." That failure and the drug-related violence wracking Mexico suggest it is time to open a national discussion on legalizing drugs.

About 6,600 Mexicans were killed in fighting involving drug gangs last year, and alarms are going off in this country. The U.S. Joint Forces Command, former drug czar Barry R. McCaffrey, former CIA director Michael V. Hayden, former House speaker Newt Gingrich and any number of analysts have speculated that Mexico is crumbling under pressure from drug gangs.

But "failed state" is the sort of shorthand that Washington has a way of turning into its own reality, the facts be damned.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica

The beginning of the end is setting in for Hugo Chávez.

The authoritarian Venezuelan president is holding a referendum tomorrow on a constitutional change that would allow him to run for president indefinitely. Pollsters say Chávez leads slightly, but the election is mostly irrelevant. Barring an oil miracle, the former army paratrooper is slowly being undone by his economic mismanagement and corruption, like any of a number of populist strongmen before him.

Oil prices may recover somewhat from their current lows of around $40 a barrel, but not soon and not anywhere near the more than $80 a barrel that Chávez needs to stave off a major currency devaluation that would stoke rampaging inflation and food shortages.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

More politically breathtaking than the dramatic rescue of Ingrid Betancourt this week is the unexpected message that the former presidential candidate delivered after six years of captivity in Colombian jungles.

Betancourt, slight but still well-spoken, deftly discredited critics of President Álvaro Uribe's two-pronged approach toward the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Her support for Uribe's carrot-and-stick policies -- beefing up the military while offering to negotiate with the guerrillas -- countered many of her self-proclaimed supporters, including human rights groups, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, leftist lobbyists in Washington and her own mother.

Betancourt was right to speak out. But Uribe will be wrong if he hears a siren song in her message.…  Seguir leyendo »