A recent article in The Atlantic extensively documents and details the extent to which Chavez had institutionalized and consolidated his power over the past 14 years, before passing away last month. Intimidation, corruption, manipulation, and outright violence prevented any serious opposition from having a chance at fair representation in recent dubious elections. In 2005, exasperated voters flat out boycotted…
Venezuelan opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, has been questioning the value of ties built by the regime of Hugo Chavez between Venezuela and Cuba over the last fourteen years. Recently, Capriles posed a simple rhetorical question to clarify his hesitations over the value of working so closely with the communist nation, by asking, “If the Cuban…
Chile is the worlds largest producer of copper by far. The next largest producer of copper, the United States, only manages 25% of Chile’s output. All told, Chile produces a third of the world’s copper, and income from Chile’s nationalized mines have come to represent nearly a third of government revenue since President Salvador Allende completed the nationalization…
Uruguay is a tiny nation on the Atlantic sandwiched between a behemoth to the north (Brazil), and Argentina to the south. Argentina has twelve times the population of Uruguay, sitting on a land mass fifteen times larger. And so, the decision last Monday by the government of Cristina Fernández in Argentina to raise taxes on most tourism…
Nicolás Maduro started his political career while driving a bus full time for the Caracas Metro system in the 1980s, when he began unofficially organizing workers of the transportation system. In the 1990s, he helped to found the Movimiento V República (Fifth Republic Movement) as a left-wing, Socialist political party which Hugo Chavez represented in…
In 2009, Hugo Chavez forced the closure of a scientific exhibition touring Venezuela which featured human cadavers called “Bodies Revealed,” calling it a sign of “moral decomposition,” noting that the exhibit was made up of “human bodies,” suggesting that the display of human remains as part of an exhibit was wrong morally. On March the 7th,…
Until March 13th, he was Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, in Argentina. Now known officially as “Pope Francis,” he is the first Pope from Latin America, which is home to approximately 40% of the world’s Catholics. Despite official lip service drily congratulating the Pope on his monumental new role, Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez…
Between 1600, and 1820, the Falkland Islands were been claimed by the Dutch, French, British, Spanish, and finally, the nation which would become Argentina. Due to the ambiguity of peace treaties during those years, multiple nations have often claimed the islands, but the United Kingdom has occupied the islands since 1833. In 1982, the ruling military…
Argentina has a history of wine making stretching back to 1557, when the first vine cuttings were imported during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The first vineyards were planted in Santiago del Estero, and northern Argentina continues to account for the majority of wine production as nearby Mendoza accounts for more than 60% of…
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