Mexico City is on high alert this morning as it awaits the arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama, expected here today in his first official visit to Mexico.
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More affordable computers and an expanding broadband network are two of the factors helping to push Internet use in Latin America, according to a survey conducted by Pyramid Research for Google.
The Miami Herald reports that the recent expansion of Internet users in Latin America has been dramatic.
In 2007, for example, Colombia added 5.4 million Internet users, or about 12% of its population of 45 million -- an 80% increase in the number of Colombia's Internet users that year.
Brazil added 7.4 million Internet users in 2007 (17% growth), Mexico more than 2.2 million (an 11% increase) and Venezuela 1.58 million (38% growth).
Read the full report through the link above.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
John Kiriakou, now in the private sector, served as a CIA counter-terrorism official from 1998 to 2004. Today, he writes in Los Angeles Times Opinion about how he thinks Iran is making major diplomatic inroads into Latin America, right under Washington's nose. It's amazing, really. Iran, after all, is regarded by most of the world as an outlaw country. Sanctions are in place on much of its military-industrial complex, and international loan guarantees are virtually impossible to come by. The Iranian economy is in tatters. Even while $100-plus oil was enriching most producers in the region, Iran's low-tech, outdated industry was barely profiting. In fact, 6% of the country's gasoline is imported.
Nevertheless, over the last year, Iran has worked diligently to expand relations with a host of Latin American countries, most of which have populist leaders who harbor a strong distrust of the United States and are looking for a powerful friend to help them rebuff Washington's influence.
Read the rest of "Iran's Latin America push" here.
— Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
The U.S. military has sent a task force to Honduras to help with one of the problems created by the recent disastrous flooding and landslides: a lack of drinkable water.
Joint Task Force Bravo, with troops dispatched from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, put together an emergency filtration system for a community near La Paz. For every three gallons of dirty water, the reverse osmosis system creates a gallon of drinkable water.
"You see them come with just about everything imaginable to fill up with water to take back to their homes," Tech. Sgt. Romano Cedillos from the Phoenix Air National Guard told the American Forces Press Service.
Honduran officials say dozens of residents are dead or missing after the worst flooding in a decade. Thousands of acres of farmland are under water.
-- Tony Perry, in San Diego
Photo: A man in Honduras tries to sweep away flood water from his house. Credit: U.S. Air Force.
Chris Kraul and Patrick J. Mcdonnell report from São Paulo on the growing popularity of Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. "Buoyed by a robust economy and his ability to work with leaders across the ideological spectrum, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has emerged as the chief power broker and mediator in South America.
"Lula's rise has paralleled the decline of U.S. influence in its 'backyard,' analysts say, a result in part of Washington's plummeting global prestige and the Bush administration's unremitting focus on the Middle East.
"A moderate with an unassailable leftist background, Lula has become the point man for healing regional crises such as the current turmoil in Bolivia and the recent escalation of tensions among Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador."
Click here for more about Brazil.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, second from the right, with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Ecuador's Rafael Correa at the meeting in which they talked about regional integration in Manaus, Brazil. Credit: Antonio Lacerda / European Pressphoto Agency
As his popularity has surged and his nation's booming economy has lifted thousands from poverty, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has largely refrained from the angry criticism of the United States that can be heard nearly any day from other South American leaders.
Not this time, reports Joshua Partlow for the Washington Post.
Last week, Lula told the U.N. General Assembly that the "boundless greed" of a few should not be shouldered by all, and on Monday, he said emerging economies had done their best to have "good fiscal policy" and "can't be turned into victims of the casino erected by the American economy."
"This crisis belongs to the American bankers, to the European bankers. It doesn't belong to the Brazilian bankers," Lula said Monday. "It's not fair for Latin American, African and Asian countries to pay for the irresponsibility of sectors of the American financial system."
Earlier this week, Chris Kraul reported from Ecuador on why Latin America should worry about the economic crisis in the United States.
Read the rest of the report from the Washington Post here.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
After being lectured for 20 years about the superiority of the free market, officials in Latin America see no small irony in the effort to bail out the U.S. banking system, writes Chris Kraul from Ecuador.
Latin America has several reasons to worry about the U.S. economic meltdown. Ecuador, for instance, fears the possible loss of duty-free export markets for its coffee, fish and flowers.
People here are also worried the crisis will cut into the $2 billion in annual remittances sent home by Ecuadoreans living in the U.S., and wonder whether the nation's use of the dollar as the national currency, a move made in 2000 to curb inflation, still makes sense.
But there is an undercurrent of schadenfreude when it comes to America's pain. Commentator Boaventura de Sousa Santos scolded the United States for its "ironhanded evangelizing" that free markets, privatization and deregulation were innately more virtuous than "corrupt and efficient" state-run economies.
"Millions were thrown into unemployment, lost their land and labor rights and had to emigrate," the Portuguese-born Santos wrote in an article widely distributed over the Internet.
Read more about how the United States woes are also Latin America's problems.
Click here for more on business.
-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City
Photo: Stock traders negotiate at the Mercantile & Futures Exchange in Sao Paulo, Brazil, last week. Credit: Mauricio Lima / AFP / Getty Images
Salvador Gomez Gochez was 25 when he first came to Los Angeles with $3 in his pocket and painful memories of his Salvadoran homeland torn apart by repression and war, reports Teresa Watanabe.
Working his way up from a parking lot attendant to a manager, he learned English, bought a home, volunteered for a Salvadoran community organization and became a U.S. citizen, grateful to the country he says saved his life.
But Gomez Gochez, now 54, also retained his Salvadoran citizenship. Now, as a dual citizen, he has made the dramatic decision to return to his impoverished hometown in El Salvador and run for mayor after nearly three decades away. His hope: to revive his town's agricultural base with his U.S. contacts and empower the villagers with U.S. practices of participatory democracy.
As international business, travel and communications explode, a growing number of nations are allowing dual citizenship, and more immigrants are claiming it. Some, like Gomez Gochez, aim to use their bilingual and bicultural experiences to infuse their homelands with U.S. values and strengthen bonds between both countries.
But the trend is also stirring some unease.
Read more about Americans with dual citizenship here.
Image: Mario Fuentes poses at outside of Trinity Episcopal Church that hosts his L.A.-based community organization. Fuentes, an immigrant from El Salvador, is a middle-class homeowner, fluent English speaker and labor and community organizer. Credit: Los Angeles Times
A work-site raid at a Palm Springs bakery Wednesday resulted in the arrests of 51 illegal immigrant workers from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala and their current and former supervisors, who allegedly hired the employees in exchange for money, reports Anna Gorman.Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the agency had opened an investigation into Palm Springs Baking Co. based on a tip in 2006 that the business was hiring unauthorized workers. During the investigation, officials said, they discovered that more than 100 of 130 Social Security numbers were invalid or didn't match the names of employees. Many of the Social Security numbers belonged to U.S. citizens or legal workers from California and several other states, as well as to people who had died, according to court papers. About 25 people were using fake numbers, court papers said.
Both the current supervisor, 52-year-old Margarita Avilez Hernandez, and the former manager, 36-year-old Alicia Ramirez, face criminal charges and could get six months in federal prison if convicted.
The arrests were the latest in a string of immigration enforcement actions at work sites nationwide during the past year. Between Sept. 30 and Aug. 30, the agency arrested about 4,700 illegal workers on suspicion of administrative immigration law violations and 1,070 others on criminal charges.
One of the biggest of those raids was on a meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa, in May, in which nearly 400 people were arrested.
Read more about the ICE raid in Palm Springs here.
For more on immigration, click here.
-- Deborah Bonello
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