Jorge Castañeda

Latin populists are surging again.

Immigration has returned to center stage in the U.S. for wrong but not unreasonable motives. The law (S.B. 1070) signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in April has set off an explosion of condemnations, justifications, and demonstrations. This brouhaha has brought the issue back to the fore, leading thousands to muse about, hope for, or decry the possibility of comprehensive reform. It is long overdue.

Cuba is at a critical turning point.

How to move Mexico into the future.

Obama is alone in the middle.

An upstart could become president.

Obama must split Caracas from Cuba.

North America must take a stand.

The OAS Is for Democracies Only.

The summit exposed Castro's peers in Latin America, not Obama, as the real innocents abroad.

Two of Cuba's star politicians seem to have been a part of a conspiracy or a coup to overthrow Raúl Castro

He used every instrument of the state and every trick in the book to stack the deck against his opponents.

Mexico is no failed state, but on several fronts the government may be losing ground rather than gaining.

It's true that many Latin countries are now governed by the left, but few subscribe to the Cuban model.

To the myriad foreign challenges Barack Obama will have to confront upon taking office we may have to add a complex conundrum next door in Latin America. On three fronts that have posed serious problems for the United States before, there is a growing and worrisome democratic challenge in the hemisphere—and no one knows quite how to handle it.The first problem is Nicaragua, where the Sandinista Front rigged and stole municipal elections in such an egregious fashion Nov. 9 that even the old...

Over the past few weeks, some silly ideas have circulated on the impact of the financial crisis on Latin America. The most dangerous was that Latin American would be largely impervious to a debacle which was, as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva imprudently phrased it, "Bush's crisis." Leaders ranging from Mexico's Felipe Calderón on the center-right to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez on the extreme left all claimed, for different reasons, that orthodox macro-economic policies,...

Over the past few weeks, some silly ideas have circulated on the impact of the financial crisis on Latin America. The most dangerous was that Latin America would be largely impervious to a debacle that was, as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva imprudently phrased it, "Bush's crisis." Leaders ranging from Mexico's Felipe Calderón on the center-right to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez on the extreme left all claimed, for different reasons, that orthodox macroeconomic policies, recent...

Despite its achievements, Chile remains strangely reluctant to give advice or act as a model for others.

Russia's push into the region could force others into an arms race that no one wants or can afford.

At a recent meeting in Hanoi of a new global outfit called the Emerging Markets Forum, a group that is positioning itself as an emerging-economy, though business-oriented, alternative to Davos, participants were exposed to a fascinating perspective on the Vietnamese experiment.

Speculators may be assuming that Israel and the United States will 'take out' Iranian nuclear facilities.

With the death of its leader, the band faces extinction. It would be high time. They've degenerated into criminals.

He is betting that he can improve living standards while also keeping the lid on political dissent.

For Cuba and all Latin America, it is unacceptable for Raúl Castro to follow a China model.

A key question is whether electoral rights should be treated the same way as better-known human rights.

To much of the world, Obama is not black but dark-skinned, like anyone of the poorer two thirds of the planet.

Hugo Chávez tried to overturn the results of Venezuela's recent vote but was rebuffed by the military.

The high price of oil is about the only thing Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has got going for him.

The people trained to use the technology could use it for nefarious purposes. It has happened before.

Che's ideology outlived him—to devastating effect.