Bogotá bomb attack raises serious questions

On 15 May President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed that a bomb attack in Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, was an assassination attempt against a former interior & justice minister, Fernando Londoño Hoyos.

Morales wrestles with an old pledge

A “different” situation to Argentina. This was the line of the Spanish government in relation to the Bolivian takeover of a subsidiary of Spain’s electricity company, Red Eléctrica Española (REE) last week [WR-12-17]. While the move by the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) government of President Evo Morales caused jitters among foreign investors, it comes amid other mixed signals regarding the future of the nationalisation process – a fundamental tenet of the 2009 plurinational constitution.

“We are not seeing a trend” - IMF

Even as Argentina’s congress approved the state takeover of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) on 3 May, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) rebuffed concerns about a new wave of nationalisations in Latin America. "It's a very diverse region, and we would not call what we are seeing, you know, a trend. And I think it's important to know that the region overall has enjoyed high levels of FDI in recent years” , spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters.

The Summit of the Americas and drug legalisation

The VI Summit of the Americas, held on 14-15 April in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, has been written off by a number of commentators as a failure because it did not reach agreement on matters that were not on the agenda: the legalisation or decriminalisation of drugs; Cuba’s admission; and Argentina’s wish for hemisphere-wide endorsement of its stand on the Falkland/Malvinas sovereignty dispute. Disagreement was real enough, and it resulted in no final declaration being issued. The perception of failure, though, was largely due to misrepresentation of one non-agenda item: drug policy.

The Calderón years: an assessment

As Mexico gears up for presidential elections in July, things are not looking good for President Felipe Calderón and his ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). The traditional Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which ruled Mexico for 71 years until its historic defeat in 2000, is set to make a remarkable comeback. The political resurgence of the PRI is a damning assessment of the Calderón years.

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