JUAN CARLOS CHAVEZ

La posibilidad de que los gobiernos de Cuba y Brasil alcancen un acuerdo que abriría las puertas al envío de 6,000 médicos cubanos a ciertas áreas del territorio brasileño que carecen de atención generó una fuerte polémica en ese país sudamericano y cuestionamientos sobre el nivel de preparación de los profesionales que se gradúan en la isla.

“Brasil quiere traer escoria”, dijo Florentino Cardoso, presidente de la Asociación Médica Brasileña. “Desafío a cualquiera a demostrar la excelencia de la medicina cubana. Médicos que se graduaron allí y estudiaron cuatro años , tienen que estudiar otros dos años más pero con el fin de ejercer la profesión en su propio país”.

El tema fue abordado en una audiencia entre miembros de la Comisión de Relaciones Exteriores de la Cámara de Diputados y representantes de gremios y sindicatos médicos de Brasil.

La discusión tomó fuerza dos semanas después de que el canciller brasileño, ... Read More

PAULA MOURA and LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO

Brazil’s borders are so vast, and the terrain so inhospitable, that attempting to secure them has seemed a virtually impossible task.

But Brazil’s rapidly expanding economy has made the country a magnet for illegal immigration, drug smuggling and other illicit activities, and now the country has announced its own border protection program.

Called the Sistema Integrado de Monitoramento de Fronteiras and known by its Portuguese acronym, Sisfron, it is intended to act as a virtual border shield along a frontier that stretches more than 10,000 miles and is shared with 10 other countries.

The sheer size of the terrain that will be covered makes this one of the most ambitious defense programs ever put in place in Brazil. Brazil is now picking supplies for the vast project, which is expected to take up to 10 years to finish, according to UPI. Dozens of companies are involved in getting the project up and running; ... Read More

By John Paul Rathbone

One sign of how Brazilian foreign policy has changed subtly under Dilma Rousseff – and become less aggravating to the US – can be seen in the Brazilian president’s response to the death of Hugo Chávez.

Ms Rousseff declared three days of mourning following the death on March 5 of Venezuela’s president and led a minute’s silence live on national television.

“We recognise a great leader, an irreparable loss and above all a friend of Brazil,” she said of the socialist leader, adding carefully that “on many occasions, the Brazilian government did not agree” with his policies.

Since assuming office in 2011, Ms Rousseff, a technocratic manager, has taken a more restrained approach to foreign policy than her predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the charismatic former trade unionist who often publicly embraced Mr Chávez.

While Mr Lula da Silva liked to travel the world and make front-page news, Ms Rousseff has focused more ... Read More

NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

Now that Venezuela’s larger-than-life Hugo Chávez has vanished from the political landscape, what does the future hold for South America? Though Venezuela is only a medium-sized country, Chávez was able to skillfully realign geopolitical fault lines through shrewd use of oil largesse and petro populism. It is unlikely, though, that uncharismatic Chávez successor Nicolás Maduro, who only won his country’s recent presidential election by the slightest of margins, will be as successful as his mentor in maintaining Venezuela’s carefully crafted system of regional alliances. As Venezuela fades, Brazil will naturally assume a greater leadership role, thus paving the path for a somewhat unusual three-way contest between the two South American countries and the United States. Just what form, precisely, is such competition likely to take and where are new geopolitical rivalries going to be most acutely felt? For answers, look to Brazil “buffer state” Uruguay, a country rife with ... Read More

BY CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER

How’s your wife? It depends — compared to whom?

That’s a frequent dialogue among witty Spaniards. I imagine that women could respond the same way. We husbands fare badly when compared with Brad Pitt, much better if contrasted with Eduardo Gómez, the super-ugly doorman’s father in the comedy series Nobody Can Live Here on Spanish TV.

The same happens with countries and regions. To understand where we stand, we have to know where the others are and at what pace we move.

All this becomes relevant apropos the recent report on the most successful countries in Latin America. According to the news, the three wealthiest economies in Latin America are Chile, Panama (which has been growing at the rate of 8 percent for almost a decade) and Uruguay.

Argentina is relegated to fourth place, a fact perhaps explained by its lack of transparency. The government of Cristina Kirchner adulterates the rate of inflation ... Read More

BY JOSE OROZCO

Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro accused billionaire Lorenzo Mendoza, the owner of the nation’s largest privately-held company, of exacerbating the worst shortages in at least four years and fueling inflation.

Empresas Polar SA, which produces everything from beer to rice, has cut output to make the economic situation worse, Maduro said yesterday, resuming a conflict with a company often rebuked by former leader Hugo Chavez.

“We have many signs that Polar has been cutting production and hiding products, pretending that nothing is happening, to create shortages of products such as pre-cooked corn flour,” Maduro said on state television. Corn flour is used to make arepas, or patties, a breakfast staple in the South American nation.

Venezuela’s scarcity index, which measures the amount of goods that are out of stock in the market, rose to 21.3 percent last month, the highest since the central bank started tracking the measure in April 2009. As shortages mount, ... Read More

Some believe the Latin American socialism of the 21st century is heading for a dead end. Growing debt and trade deficits are putting pressure on regimes there – does this mean the end of an ideology?

Growing economic problems in Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia are putting pressure on Latin America’s left-populist governments. In the struggle for power, competition has broken out among socialism, Peronism and liberalism. But some believe all three are in decline.

The fight for “21st century socialism,” as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez put it, is particularly marked in the deceased statesman’s country. That Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has refused to recognize the victory of Chavez’ successor, Nicolás Maduro, who won disputed elections in April, is one sign.

Last week a fistfight broke out in Venezuelan parliament between Chavistas and the opposition. Meanwhile, Capriles is challenging the election results in Venezuela’s high court.

Ideological decline

Virgílio Arraes, a professor of contemporary history ... Read More

WASHINGTON — Keeping a keen eye south of the border, the Obama administration is intensifying its engagement with Latin America, hosting leaders from a pair of presidents at the White House and sending Vice President Joe Biden to visit two others.

Peru’s President Ollanta Humala and Chile’s President Sebastian Pinera will travel to Washington in June to meet with President Barack Obama, the White House said Wednesday. And next week, Biden will make stops in Brazil and Colombia, plus the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago.

Dovetailing on Obama’s trip last week to Mexico and Costa Rica, the visits reflect the administration’s desire to show the U.S. relationship with its neighbors to the south is about much more than drugs, crime and illegal immigration. The need for closer economic ties topped Obama’s agenda during the three-day trip.

“All told, we will have the most active stretch of high-level engagement on Latin America in ... Read More

BY RAYMOND COLITT & RANDALL WOODS

Latin America’s two largest nations are vying for economic and diplomatic clout as their candidates face off as finalists to head the World Trade Organization.

The WTO is scheduled to name by May 8 the first director- general from Latin America in its 18-year history. It will choose between Roberto Azevedo, Brazil (BZGDGDP4)’s representative to the Geneva-based group, and Herminio Blanco, a former Mexico trade minister who led the nation’s negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. and Canada. The winner will replace the outgoing WTO chief, France’s Pascal Lamy, in September.

The race is a contest for diplomatic prowess as Mexico draws on its faster growth and more open economy to fortify its candidate, said Michael Shifter, president of Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. Analysts polled by Bloomberg forecast Mexico will outgrow its southern peer for the third straight year in 2013, reversing a trend that allowed Brazil to pull ahead as ... Read More

BY NICK MIROFF & WILLIAM BOOTH

MEXICO CITY — It has been 75 years since President Lázaro Cárdenas seized the country’s foreign-dominated petroleum industry and placed every drop of oil under the everlasting domain of the Mexican people.

But while it once was a source of national pride, the state-run monopoly he created — known as Pemex — has become a dinosaur, sapped by debt, sagging output and dated technology. The Mexican government siphons off the company’s revenue to cover about one-third of the federal budget, leaving insufficient funds for what has become a critical task: finding more oil.

Mexico remains the third-largest source of foreign oil for the United States after Canada and Saudi Arabia. But the country’s easy-pump crude is quickly running dry, and the company lacks the technology and know-how to drill for the vast stores of tougher-to-reach deposits that are thought to exist beneath Mexico’s deserts and seas.

Fixing the company, ... Read More

BY SIMON ROMERO

MARECHAL RONDON BASE, Brazil — Maj. José Maria Ferreira smiled as he listed the threats to human survival in the canopied jungle enveloping this remote military outpost in the Brazilian Amazon.

He started with the piranhas, which lurk in rivers, and the pit vipers like the feared bushmaster, the Western Hemisphere’s longest venomous snake. Then he moved on to the silent creatures, including the formiga-cabo-verde, called the bullet ant in English and found in colonies at the base of trees. Its sting, according to victims, hurts about as much as being shot and lasts for a good 24 hours.

Widening his grin, Major Ferreira then described leishmaniasis, the flesh-eating disease caused by sand-fly bites, the mosquito-borne fevers like malaria and dengue and, finally, rhabdomyolysis, a condition brought on by extremely strenuous exercise. It leads to kidney damage and the breakdown of skeletal muscle tissue; victims can identify its onset when their urine ... Read More

BY RAUL LOTITTO

CARACAS – With the death of Hugo Chávez, Chávismo has lost its supremacy in Venezuela. It does not matter that so-called Chávistas still control Venezuela’s parliament, 17 of 23 provincial governments, and all key state institutions, including the judiciary. Nor does it matter that Chávez’s handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, has already assumed the presidency. All of the signs point to the decline of Chávismo and to the end of Venezuela’s role as Latin America’s populist core.

Between last October’s presidential election and the one held last month, Chávismo lost almost 700,000 votes to Henrique Capriles’ Democratic Unity Roundtable – a shift that many, including Chávistas, attribute to “Maduro not being Chávez.” This was the first presidential election in Venezuela that resulted in an almost even split among voters (and the outcome itself remains hotly contested). If Venezuela continues along this path, Chávismo could not only lose its majority; it could collapse altogether.

... Read More

BY VINCENT BEVINS

After 2 1/2 years of renovations, Rio’s legendary Maracana soccer stadium reopened to much fanfare in late April. Brazilian legends including Ronaldo played in a test match before an audience composed mostly of the workers who rebuilt the 78,000-capacity temple to futebol that will be the flagship venue for next year’s World Cup.

The launch was deemed a success — and allowed officials to breathe a sigh of relief before they begin to worry again about Brazil’s preparations for two of the world’s biggest sporting events, the World Cup in 2014 and the Rio Olympics in 2016.

In the last month, a worker died during construction of a stadium in Sao Paulo, and two other stadiums, including Maracana, missed a deadline set by the international soccer organization, FIFA, to be ready for June’s Confederations Cup tournament.

The problems have been exacerbated by security issues that came to the fore when an American tourist was ... Read More

BY LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO

In Rio de Janeiro, tourists are drawn to Copacabana for its wide beach and foliage-covered cliffs. But a month ago, not far from the tourist hub, an American woman and her French male companion were abducted. She was brutally gang-raped; he was beaten.

Perhaps what was most shocking to Brazilians, though, was the age of one of the alleged accomplices: He was barely in his teens.

“Why? That’s what you ask yourself,” says Sylvia Rumpoldt, who is walking with a friend at dusk by the sea in Rio. “It’s horrible. It’s criminal energy.”

Her friend, Maria de Paula, agrees. What’s happening with children in Brazil is barbaric, she says.

Crime in the South American nation has been in the headlines recently, especially as it prepares to host two major sporting events — the World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016.

But a recent spate of attacks by minors has kicked ... Read More

BY VINCENT BEVINS

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Shortly before Venezuela’s presidential election, former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recorded a video supporting Nicolas Maduro, saying he had “stood out brilliantly in the struggle” for a more democratic Latin America.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who was endorsed by Lula in 2010, kept silent on the ultimately victorious candidacy of Maduro, the hand-chosen heir of the late leftist Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez.

The difference in demeanor between the two Brazilian presidents was not surprising to Rousseff watchers. Since assuming office at the start of 2011, she has taken a much more muted approach to foreign policy than Lula, avoiding the type of activism that often annoyed the United States.

Rousseff, 65, “has a more subtle style,” said Gregory Weeks, a professor of Latin American politics at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. “Even if they agree on most things, she considers this to be a more effective way of getting what she wants, ... Read More

BY ANDREA JARAMILLO

Colombia’s foreign debt rating was raised to the second-lowest investment grade by Standard & Poor’s as economic growth increased tax revenue and peace talks with rebels boosted investor confidence.

Yields on benchmark local bonds fell to a record low as S&P lifted Colombia one step to BBB with a stable outlook. The rating is in line with Brazil, Mexico and Peru. Colombia’s peso appreciated 0.1 percent to 1,836.60 per U.S. dollar at the close of trading in Bogota.

“A stronger fiscal profile, growing domestic capital markets, and favorable long-term prospects for GDP growth have strengthened Colombia’s creditworthiness,” S&P credit analyst Joydeep Mukherji wrote in a statement today. “Negotiations between the government and the country’s main guerrilla group could lead to a significant reduction in violence.”

Colombia was given an investment-grade credit rating in 2011 for the first time in a decade as improved security bolstered economic growth and attracted record foreign investment. Congress passed legislation that year known as the ... Read More

BY MARY O’GRADY

Remember all the hype about Cuba drilling for oil in Caribbean waters and American companies missing out on the bonanza because of the U.S. embargo? Well, like all the other Cuban get-rich-quick schemes of the past 50 years, this one seems to have flopped too.

Last week, Florida’s Sun Sentinel reported that “after spending nearly $700 million during a decade, energy companies from around the world have all but abandoned their search for oil in deep waters off the north coast of Cuba near Florida.” Separately, CubaStandard.com reported on Friday that “the shallow-water drilling platform used by Russian oil company OAO Zarubezhneft will leave Cuban waters June 1, to be redeployed to Asia.”

According to the Sun Sentinel story, Jorge Piñon, an oil-industry guru who had been cheering Cuba’s exploration attempts, said “Companies are saying, ‘We cannot spend any more capital on this high-risk exploration. We’d rather go to Brazil; ... Read More

BY JOE LEAHY

In 2010, when 60 Minutes came to Brazil to do a piece on the “World’s Next Economic Superpower”, the US television programme chose Eike Batista as the ambassador for the country.

“You know, in the last 16 years, Brazil has put its act together. This is it. Hello, time for Americans to wake up,” Mr Batista said with trademark brashness.

In retrospect, the discovery by primetime TV of Brazil’s economy should itself have been a sell signal for investors that a long boom in Latin America’s biggest economy, fuelled by high commodity prices and credit, was peaking.

It was also a high-water mark for Mr Batista. In only a few years he had amassed a paper fortune that until last year was estimated by Forbes to be worth about $30bn through the listing of his X group of mostly start-up companies. This year, the bubble surrounding the group burst after his oil and gas explorer, OGX, ... Read More

BY RICHARD ROUSSAEU

Hugo Chavez, who died on March 5, lavished the Venezuelan people with oil earnings for more than a decade. As in so many other Latin American countries, natural resources were used to prop up an economy characterized by a plethora of imbalances and economic contradictions.

Part of Latin America’s problem lies in its generous natural resources endowment – let’s call it the “commodity curse.” The region abounds with natural resources and the current Latin American countries’ economic boom can largely be attributed to the high prices of natural resources and other commodities that they exports. Currently, over 90% of Latin Americans reside in countries that are mostly commodity-dependent exporters. This figure includes Mexico which, despite having achieved remarkable success in diversifying its exports, still depends on oil export to finance the lion’s share of its state budget.

The undulations in the economic development of many Latin American economies are strongly ... Read More

BY MIMI WHITEFIELD

Most Latin American and Caribbean economies survived the Great Recession in relatively good shape. But now as the global slowdown threatens to hang on indefinitely, what is their fate?

The countries of the region will grow faster — at an estimated rate of 3.9 percent over the next five years — than the global economy. “Latin America will gain weight in the world economy,’’ said José Juan Ruiz, chief economist at the Inter-American Development Bank.

But that doesn’t mean Latin American and Caribbean economies will be impervious to sluggish global growth. Commodity prices are expected to fall, and investment is expected to decelerate.

Over the next five years, global growth may be 0.5 percent lower than it was during 2003-2007, the period just before the Great Recession, and that could trigger economic growth in the region that is nearly one full percentage point lower than it was in the five-year period ... Read More