“Summit of Exclusion” Backfires on Biden
Jill Clark-Gollub, COHA Assistant Editor/Translator; Alina Duarte, COHA Senior Fellow; John Perry, COHA Senior Fellow “We would definitely have wanted a different Summit of the Americas. The silence of those absent challenges us. So that this does not happen again, I would like to state for the future that the fact of being the host […]
The Summit of the Americas could be Biden’s next foreign policy embarrassment
The grandly named Summit of the Americas is due to be held in Los Angeles next month, if the Biden administration can decide who to invite and what to talk about if they turn up. As things stand, Bolivia, Mexico, Argentina, Honduras and most of the Caribbean states have said they will not attend if […]
Whose embassy?
Under the 1961 Vienna Convention, foreign embassies are ‘inviolable’: the host country’s officials have a ‘special duty’ to protect them and can’t enter without permission. When the Venezuelan embassy in Washington DC was besieged last summer, the National Lawyers Guild said that the US government had flouted the convention by condoning the attacks and protecting […]
The discoverer of the New World
A review of ‘The Invention of Nature’ by Andrea Wulf On 16 July 1799 a revolutionary thinker arrived in Latin America. Unlike most Europeans who had preceded him to the continent, he didn’t believe in slavery and he promoted the rights of indigenous people. He saw mining for gold and silver for the exploitation it […]
Call for President Obama to revoke his Executive Order against Venezuela
Over 120 organisations have signed a letter to President Obama instigated by the Alliance for Global Justice, calling on him to rescind his executive order which imposes sanctions on officials in Venezuela and describes the government of Nicolas Maduro as an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States’. […]
The United States of South America
Creating the USSA was the driving ambition of Latin America’s ‘Liberator’, Simón Bolívar. According to his biographer Marie Arana, it may well have been in London in 1810, in conversations with Francisco de Miranda, that he first conceived of a federal power in the southern continent to match that in the north. He spent the […]
The General in his Labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez
I revisited this novel after reading the new biography of Simon Bolívar by Marie Arana, because after her factual description of what is known about the last weeks of Bolívar’s life, it seemed only appropriate to see them as re-imagined by García Márquez. I would strongly recommend the combination of books for anyone interested in […]
What’s in it for Ecuador?
If Ecuador grants asylum to Edward Snowden, no doubt we’ll hear Rafael Correa being described once more as a ‘tinpot president’, ready to welcome dissidents to Ecuador’s ‘jungly bosom’. If instead Snowden ends up in Venezuela or Cuba, his would-be jailers will move even further onto their moral high ground.
Lessons from Latin America: the case for public investment in housing
A huge Venezuelan housebuilding programme has exceeded its targets, helped reduce poverty and boosted the economy.
Chávez’s legacy of change
From Guardian Weekly letters, 22 March Your editorial and Tariq Ali’s piece on Hugo Chávez (15 March) had a fairness and balance. To understand Chávez’s significance, it is vital to be aware of the role the US has played in Latin America for well over a century, deposing or assassinating elected leaders and carrying out […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on