La Secretaría General de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) ha iniciado la coordinación del proyecto “América Latina ante la Segunda Administración Bush”.  

Como parte de este  proyecto, la Secretaría General de FLACSO ofrece otro canal de información con un resumen noticioso semanal sobre lo que se publica acerca de América Latina en algunos de los principales diarios de los Estados Unidos.  Esto permitirá identificar   cuales son los temas que despiertan mayor  interés en Estados Unidos sobre la región latinoamericana y su tratamiento en la prensa estadounidense.  Las noticias han sido clasificadas bajo las categorías de:
 

MIGRACIÓN
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FREE PRESCHOOL WILL HELP LATINOS AND US
Opinion
The Christian Science Monitor
August 21, 2006
By Alexandra Starr

NEW YORK – We generally think of kindergarten as a time of possibilities and fresh starts. But kids don't begin their formal education on equal footing: When they arrive at the schoolhouse door, poor and minority students often lag behind their peers by as much as 18 months. The imperative of reducing this achievement gap has convinced state leaders to invest in toddlers' education. Over half of governors increased spending on pre-K last year. Three states - Oklahoma, Florida, and Georgia - offer free preschool to 4-year-olds, and policymakers in Arizona, Virginia, and Illinois are considering universal programs.

While California voters voted down a proposition that would have provided free preschool to 4-year-olds earlier this year, the state is set to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to provide early education to poor children, the group likely to profit most from high quality programs.

In order to deliver on the promise of pre-K, states will need to aggressively reach out to the fastest-growing part of our population: Latino children. Only 40 percent of Latino 3- to 5-year-olds attend preschool, compared with approximately 60 percent of both African-American and white children. Ironically, Latinos are particularly in need of early intervention: They often live in poverty, their parents generally have low levels of education, and in recently arrived immigrant families, children's exposure to English can be minimal.

Our country's future is tied to the success of young Latinos. By 2025 Hispanics will account for almost a fifth of US residents. Whether these kids are able to land high-skill jobs as adults won't just affect their quality of life, but also whether our country can afford retirement programs for the aging (and predominately white) baby-boomer generation.

U.S. WORK VISAS ARE OUT OF REACH FOR MANY
The Miami Herald
Aug. 23, 2006

MEXICO CITY - Jesús Rojas wanted no part of the arduous trek across the Sonora desert and no part of life underground in the United States, working in the shadow of the law.

So when a nephew in his central Mexican town of Guanajuato introduced him to a recruiter for an American landscaping company that would sponsor him legally, the 52-year-old handyman jumped at the chance.

"I was one of the lucky ones," said Rojas, who ended up mowing lawns in Delaware every summer for five years. "I had a connection. That's the hardest part."

Congress has adjourned for the month of August without reaching an immigration deal. Republicans in the House of Representatives are holding hearings around the nation to build support for their border-security-first approach, which calls for stopping illegal immigrants at the border. No resolution in Congress is expected this election year.

POLÍTICA INTERNA
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COLOMBIA'S COCA SURVIVES U.S. PLAN TO UPROOT IT
The New York Times
August 19, 2006
Luca Zanetti for The New York Times
Although U.S. efforts to eradicate coca have made inroads, farmers like Jhon Freddy Romero aren't worried.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia - The latest chapter in America's long war on drugs - a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia's coca crop - has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged.

The effort, begun in 2000 and known as Plan Colombia, had a specific goal of halving this country's coca crop in five years. That has not happened. Instead, drug policy experts say, coca, the essential ingredient for cocaine, has been redistributed to smaller and harder-to-reach plots, adding to the cost and difficulty of the drug war.

Bush administration officials say that coca farmers are on the run, and that the leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries who feed on drug profits are weaker than ever. That has made Colombia, Washington's closest ally in a tumultuous region, more stable, they say. They argue that the plan has scored important successes, like a spike in the price of cocaine last year.

But that claim was disputed by a wide range of drug policy experts, and some politicians are questioning the drug war's results as well as its assumptions.

The plan seemed simple enough. "The closer we can attack to the source, the greater the likelihood of halting the flow of drugs altogether," a State Department report said soon after Plan Colombia began. "If we destroy crops or force them to remain unharvested, no drugs will enter the system."
Yet recent data show the following results:

DESPITE POLITICAL CHANGES, CUBANS STILL LEAVING ISLAND
The Miami Herald
Aug. 17, 2006

Fidel Castro's decision to cede power temporarily to his younger brother stunned the world, but it has not deterred undocumented Cuban migrants from leaving for the United States.

U.S. government officials in South Florida said Wednesday that Cuban migrants have continued to leave the island since July 31 when Castro made his surprising announcement that he was turning over control to Raúl Castro while he recovers from surgery for an undefined "intestinal crisis."

Twenty Cuban migrants landed on Marco Island off South Florida's west coast Tuesday, perhaps an indication migrant smugglers may be steering away from the Florida Keys and South Florida's east coast, possibly because of stepped up U.S. patrols in those areas. Border Patrol officials said it was too soon to say migrants had found a new route.

Petty Officer James Judge, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman in Miami, said Wednesday that at least 55 people had been interdicted and repatriated to Cuba since Aug. 1.

AS CASTRO HEALS, CUBA'S PEOPLE SMUGGLERS GET BACK TO BUSINESS
The Christian Science Monitor
August 18, 2006

MIAMI - The arrival of 20 Cubans at Florida's posh Marco Island earlier this week suggests that not all residents of the communist nation are prepared to wait quietly in their homeland to see what happens to the ailing Fidel Castro.

But analysts say their arrival does not suggest the beginning of a mass exodus of refugees such as in 1980 and 1994. Instead, it signals the resumption of one of Miami's hottest illicit businesses - alien smuggling.

"This is just back to business as usual," says José Basulto, a Bay of Pigs veteran and founder of the group Brothers to the Rescue, which helped direct lifesaving aid to Cuban rafters in the early 1990s.

Rather than risk slow death by dehydration on tire-tube rafts, refugees in recent years have opted instead to pay smugglers from $8,000 to $10,000 per person for a spot on what refugees hope will be a fast boat to freedom.

Recent reports that Mr. Castro was undergoing surgery and had named his brother, Raúl, as his successor brought a temporary halt to the smuggling.

CASTRO'S FEELING WELL, HIS BIG BROTHER SAYS
The Miami Herald
Aug. 20, 2006

HAVANA - Ramón Castro, the older brother of leader Fidel Castro, said Saturday that his sibling is steadily improving after intestinal surgery that has left their younger brother Raúl temporarily in charge of the country.

"He's much better," Ramón said of Fidel. "He works savagely and that has a cost."

Ramón Castro, who turns 82 in October, is a lifelong farmer who has stayed out of national politics. He indicated he had not yet read his brother Raúl's interview with the Communist Party newspaper Granma, which was published Friday and constituted his first public comments since assuming provisional power July 31.

The eldest Castro brother, who bears a striking resemblance to 80-year-old Fidel with his Romanesque profile and white beard, spoke at the international airport awaiting the arrival of Florida cattleman John Parke Wright IV, with whom he has formed a strong friendship during the American's frequent visits to the island.

CLASH LOOMS ON TITLES TO PROPERTIES IN CUBA
The Miami Herald
Aug. 20, 2006

HOME SWEET... HUH?: Jose Paneda, a Cuban-American in Miami, hopes someday to reclaim this family home in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. The building currently houses the National Center for Sex Education, run by Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela.

Lourdes Sampedro Pañeda remembers the grand marble entrance, the tiled interior courtyard with splashing fountain and the gracious staircase of her beloved childhood home in Vedado, an upscale section of Havana.

Sampedro Pañeda's sister, a nun, had an opportunity to see the old Havana homestead a few years ago. The marble had been stripped, not a tile was left in the courtyard, but the emotional draw remained -- even if the faded mansion now goes by a new name: the National Center for Sex Education, an institute run by Raúl Castro's daughter, Mariela.

WARY CUBANS SAY THEY'RE READY TO `ADAPT'
The Miami Herald
Aug. 20, 2006

HAVANA - Within hours of watching a brittle-looking Fidel Castro confined to a hospital bed, Cubans began using a new catchword around this tropical city, where attitudes are often as shifty as the sea breeze.

Adaptarse -- adapting to Cuba's new normal after 47 years of strong Castro rule -- was suddenly the most common word uttered by a wide range of Havana residents.

Cubans have long used code words and even signs to hint at sensitive topics in this tightly controlled society. They "resolve" some of their needs on the illegal black market, refer to prostitutes as "jockeys" and touch imaginary beards when referring to Castro.

And now there's no more sensitive subject than the island's future under an ailing Castro or his anointed successor and younger brother, Defense Minister Raúl Castro.

Enter adaptarse, a word that acknowledges the potential changes but says little about how the speaker might consider those very changes.

ARGENTINA'S DICTATORSHIP STANDS TRIAL
The New York Times
August 20, 2006

LA PLATA, Argentina, Aug. 14 - The horrific events under a military dictatorship - murders, kidnappings, torture, rapes, the abduction and sale of infants - had gone unpunished for nearly 30 years. But last year Argentina's Supreme Court overturned a pair of amnesty laws, and now the trials of military and police officials accused of human rights violations are finally under way.

In late June, the first trial, involving a police commissioner general named Miguel Etchecolatz, began here in the capital of Buenos Aires Province, less than an hour's drive from the capital. With cameras rolling and winter light streaming through stained-glass windows in a belle époque ballroom at City Hall, witness after witness has told how Mr. Etchecolatz and the forces under his command ordered, supervised and then covered up kidnappings and torture sessions.

Nora Formiga, for instance, was 27 when security forces abducted her and two friends in 1977. Her family was eventually told she had fled abroad, and it was only in 2002 that DNA tests proved that a body found in an unmarked grave here was hers.

POLL: ORTEGA LEADS IN NICARAGUA
The Miami Herald
Aug. 21, 2006

MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, whose socialist government was a major antagonist of the United States in the 1980s, topped all presidential contenders in a poll released Monday.

Ortega, who led the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 and fought the U.S.-backed Contra rebels as Nicaragua's president from 1985-1990, had 32 percent support in a survey by M&R Consultores published in the Nicaraguan daily newspaper La Prensa and broadcast by TV Canal 2.

He would need only 35 percent of the vote to win the presidency without a runoff if he tops the second-place finisher by at least 5 percentage points. In a tighter race, 40 percent is needed to win outright.

Second in the poll with 25 percent was former banker Eduardo Montealegre, of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, a faction that broke away from the ruling Constitutional Liberal Party.

About 20 percent of voters surveyed planned to vote for candidate Edmundo Jarquin, who stepped in as candidate of a breakaway Sandinista party when its initial candidate, Herty Lewites, died.

HAITIAN GANG LEADER DEFIES PRESIDENT
The Miami Herald
Aug. 21, 2006

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The leader of a major gang on Monday defied Haitian President Rene Preval's orders to disarm, saying his followers would give up their weapons only if U.N. peacekeepers stop conducting raids in the slums.

Earlier this month, Preval told gang members suspected of being behind a surge of kidnappings and attacks in this impoverished Caribbean nation that they must disarm or face being killed. Gang leader Amaral Duclona's refusal comply sets up one of the biggest challenges to Preval since he became president in May.

Duclona said he and his men in the Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil had planned to disarm on Monday but reconsidered because of what he called deadly raids by U.N. troops.

"As long as (U.N. troops) keep attacking, we are not going to lay down our weapons," Duclona told reporters in the seaside slum, sitting on a red motor scooter.

A military official denied that U.N. troops were launching unprovoked attacks in Cite Soleil, a densely populated shantytown lined with bullet-pocked concrete homes, burned-out cars and mounds of trash.

COMMUNIST LEADERS FAIL TO ATTRACT YOUNGER CUBANS
The Miami Herald
Aug. 21, 2006

PASSING TIME: Youngsters hang out in Havana recently. Studies found that 60 percent of Cuba's unemployed are young people, and they are losing interest in education.

As a 24-year-old Havana potato vendor who makes $10 a month -- double if he finds side jobs -- Ricardo doesn't have anything against communism or Fidel Castro.

He would just like some extra money to replace his shabby tennis shoes or even buy a car. A diabetic who appreciates Cuba's free healthcare, he says that even with the boost to his $6-a-month wage from last year, his income just isn't enough.

"The only bad thing here is the salary system . . . With capitalism, we'd have to work harder to pay for everything. I'd have to pay for my medicine," he said before adding, "I'd like the same system, but I just want to earn more."

VENEZUELA STRENGTHENS ITS RELATIONSHIPS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The New York Times
August 21, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 20 - Venezuela has long cultivated ties with Middle Eastern governments, finding common ground in trying to keep oil prices high, but its recent engagement of Iran has become a defining element in its effort to build an alliance to curb American influence in developing countries.

In a visit late last month to Tehran by President Hugo Chávez and his oil minister, Rafael Ramírez, the two countries agreed to produce jointly nearly a dozen products, including crude oil and medicines. In a further sign that their ties have taken on a new dimension, the two countries are speaking in a more unified voice in their criticism of Israel and the United States.

The strengthening of ties has turned Iran into Venezuela's closest ally outside Latin America, adding clout to Mr. Chávez's efforts within OPEC to increase revenue through output limits by oil-exporting countries. Venezuela has also become the most vociferous defender of Iran's nuclear program at a time when Iran feels increasingly isolated.

HAITIAN GANG LEADER TO PRÉVAL: WE WILL NOT LAY DOWN WEAPONS
The Miami Herald
Aug. 22, 2006

PORT-AU-PRINCE - A major gang leader on Monday defied Haitian President René Préval's orders to disarm, saying his followers would give up their weapons if U.N. peacekeepers stop conducting raids in the slums.

Earlier this month, Préval told gang members suspected of being behind a surge of kidnappings and attacks that they must disarm or face death. Gang leader Amaral Duclona's refusal to comply sets up one of the biggest challenges to Préval since he became president in May.

GANG RECONSIDERED

Duclona said he and his men in the Port-au-Prince slum of Cité Soleil had planned to disarm on Monday but reconsidered because of what he called deadly raids by U.N. troops.

CLOSE VOTE IN CHIAPAS SPURS 2 MEXICAN VICTORY PARTIES
The Miami Herald
Aug. 22, 2006

TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico - (AP) -- Mexico, mired for nearly two months in a presidential election dispute, woke up Monday to a disputed governor's vote in the country's poorest state.

In Sunday's Chiapas state race, the candidate backed by President Vicente Fox's party, José Antonio Aguilar Bodegas, vowed to contest the vote if he loses to the main leftist party.

Meanwhile, supporters of leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador have clogged the heart of Mexico City with protest camps to demand a recount of the July 2 presidential election.

Incoming Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, of López Obrador's Democratic Revolution Party, said Sunday that party officials had accepted a proposal from the city government to allow traffic to pass through the five-mile blockade at several points.

Preliminary results in southern Chiapas state showed little more than 2,000 votes separating the two gubernatorial candidates in Chiapas.

With 94 percent of 4,761 polling places counted, Juan Sabines of the Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, was leading with 48.39 percent, or 517,129 votes.

BET ON DICTATORSHIP
Opinion
The Miami Herald
Aug. 23, 2006
By Jaime Suchlicki

Fidel Castro is fighting his last battle -- one that he cannot win. He will not elude death. Cuba is witnessing the end of the Fidelista era and the beginning of a Raúlista one. Power has passed into the hands of the younger brother. Succession now seems irreversible.

Questions remain: What can Raúl hope to accomplish within the existing sociopolitical and economic context? More important, what options in domestic and foreign affairs are open to Cuba's new leaders? What are the chances that they will be unable or unwilling to exercise any major options at all? Will they fear upsetting the multilevel balance of interests upon which a new government will depend?

Raúl faces significant challenges: a nonproductive economy highly dependent on Venezuela and other foreign sources; popular unhappiness; the need to maintain order and discipline among the population; and the need to increase productivity. Raúl is critically dependent on the military. Lacking his brother's charisma, he will also need the support of key party leaders and technocrats within the government bureaucracy.

BRAZIL VOTERS JADED BY RULING PARTY'S CORRUPTION
The Christian Science Monitor
August 23, 2006

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - When Brazil's Workers' Party (PT) won a historic presidential election four years ago, millions of people took to the streets to herald what the winning candidate memorably declared "the triumph of hope over fear."

But now, with the PT having shown itself to be every bit as corrupt as their predecessors, Brazilians feel they are left with little choice in the Oct. 1 vote.

"If you ask me which of the candidates have the qualities I am looking for then I'd say none of them," says small business owner José Carlos Vieira, summing up the helplessness felt by many of Brazil's 126 million voters. "We don't have much of a choice. Today we have to vote for the least awful of the candidates."

Yet at least some voters are trying to make a statement, threatening to vote for fringe candidates. Others, however, say the answer is to vote for no one and to annul their votes in protest.

CHÁVEZ TO EXPAND TRADE WITH CHINA
The Miami Herald
Aug. 23, 2006

BEIJING - Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez says China will expand cooperation in oil exploration and help his country build a fiber-optic communications network under agreements due to be signed this week in Beijing.

Chávez kicked off his visit to China early today. The government has released no details on whom Chávez will meet but says he is to receive an official welcome Thursday at Beijing's Great Hall of the People, the seat of China's parliament.

Chávez has forged strong ties with Beijing since taking office in 1999.

He said last week that he will buy Chinese-made tankers and seal an oil exploration deal.

According to the Bolivarian News Agency, Venezuela has also struck a $1.22 billion deal with China to build 20,000 homes during the next two years in the South American country. At least 75 percent of the project will be financed by Chinese capital.

FOX CRITICIZES 'EXTREMIST' POLITICS
The Miami Herald
Aug. 23, 2006

MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox said Tuesday that Mexicans do not support "extremist" and "messianic" politics, a thinly veiled slap at a leftist candidate who has launched street blockades to press for a full recount of last month's presidential election.

Fox's comments came a day after he told foreign journalists that his ruling-party ally Felipe Calderon was the "clear winner" of the disputed July 2 vote - his strongest statement yet about the political crisis that has gripped Mexico for weeks.

Supporters of leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have snarled the capital since for weeks with round-the-clock protest camps, blocking streets and launching demonstrations to protest what they claim was electoral fraud that gave Calderon a narrow lead in official vote tallies.

"What we Mexicans want is stability, order and harmony," Fox said Tuesday. "Society rejects extremist solutions, and messianic or apocalyptic visions that belong to the political culture of the past."

Analysts have frequently used the term "messianic" to describe Lopez Obrador, citing his followers' fervent devotion and the leftist's belief in his own personal sense of mission.

INDIGENOUS INFLUENCE ON POLITICS OFFENDS BOLIVIA'S WHITE MINORITY
The Miami Herald
Aug. 23, 2006

TAMBO ACACHILA, Bolivia - The sun-browned, indigenous farmers of this village have survived in the dry moonscape of Bolivia's highlands by sharing what little they've grown in the rocky soil.

When one family is starving, the mayor walks the village's dusty streets collecting potatoes, prickly pear and coca leaf to help out. When a neighbor dies, everyone pitches in to pay for a funeral in the town's sad little cemetery. When a decision is to be reached, the sides are argued until everyone agrees.

The age-old system has kept thousands of similar towns alive for centuries. Now, President Evo Morales, who became Bolivia's first indigenous head of state last January, is holding up those values of common ownership and consensus decision-making as a model for this impoverished country -- and angering its white minority, which accuses him of playing racial politics in his self-proclaimed indigenous revolution.

RELACIONES BILATERALES
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CUBA POLICY REDUX
OUR OPINION: NEW CHANGES ENCOURAGE LEGAL, FAMILY-FRIENDLY IMMIGRATION
The Miami Herald
Aug. 17, 2006

Amid the uncertainty about Cuba's future, there is good news for Cubans wishing to emigrate here. U.S. policy changes announced last week will hasten the arrival of family members petitioned by U.S. relatives, make it easier for Cuban doctors abroad to immigrate to the United States and provide anxious relatives information about Cubans interdicted at sea.

Altogether the family- friendly tweaks will encourage legal immigration, hopefully detering those who would attempt risky sea crossings or other illegal routes into the United States. This is all good.

What doesn't change are the U.S.-Cuba migration accords or the wet-foot/dry-foot policy in effect since 1995. Under the accords, the United States issues at least 20,000 visas yearly to Cubans wishing to come here. Cuba, in turn, accepts Cubans who are interdicted at sea and repatriated by the U.S. Coast Guard under the wet-foot part of the policy.

The new policy should dramatically reduce backlogs for Cuban family petitions. Currently, for example, a U.S. resident petitioning to bring a spouse or child from Cuba would have to wait seven years for an available visa. A U.S. citizen would wait nine years to bring an adult child. The changes will make more of the yearly visas available for family petitions, and those visas will be processed more quickly.

U.S. OFFICIALS ARREST SUSPECT IN TOP MEXICAN DRUG GANG
The New York Times
August 17, 2006

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 16 - Federal drug enforcement agents, aided by the United States Coast Guard, arrested a man they said was a top figure in one of Mexico's most notorious drug gangs on a fishing boat off Baja California on Wednesday.

Federal officials said the man, Francisco Javier Arellano Félix, 37, was one of the last remaining ring leaders of the Arellano Félix gang. The group, based in Tijuana, is charged in several killings, including that of a Roman Catholic cardinal.

In a federal indictment unsealed in 2003, Mr. Arellano Félix was charged with importing and distributing drugs in the United States. The arrest on Wednesday riveted Mexico, a nation long weary of intransigent drug violence. It was expected to deal a blow to the gang, though the authorities acknowledged that associates were probably waiting to take Mr. Arellano Félix's place.

Michael Braun, an assistant administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said at a news conference in Washington that Mr. Arellano Félix was "one of the 45 most notorious, most wanted drug traffickers in the world."

The power of the Arellano Félix gang - a family cartel that was the model for the one in the film "Traffic" - has waned since its two most powerful brothers were removed, one imprisoned and one killed. At the same time, smaller, more efficient gangs have risen around Mexico.

U.S. ARRESTS MEXICAN CARTEL LEADER OFF BAJA COAST
The Washington Post
August 17, 2006

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 16 -- The U.S. Coast Guard and Drug Enforcement Administration have arrested the kingpin of a Mexican drug cartel blamed for 20 murders, the trafficking of billions of dollars of cocaine and marijuana, and the construction of a high-tech, half-mile narcotics tunnel that connected Tijuana with the United States, authorities announced Wednesday.

Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, 36, was nabbed about 15 miles off the coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula Monday morning as he and two of the cartel's alleged assassins were deep-sea fishing on a U.S.-registered pleasure boat called the Dock Holiday, law enforcement officials said.

"We've taken the head off the snake," Michael Braun, chief of operations for the DEA, said at a news conference in Washington. "This guy happens to be . . . one of the 45 most notorious, most wanted drug traffickers in the world."

Braun said DEA agents discovered Arellano Felix's fishing plans, and the Coast Guard cutter Monsoon intercepted the 43-foot boat in international waters, arresting Arellano Felix and 11 others, including three juveniles. While declining to release details of the action, Braun characterized it as "part of a very long, very complex undercover operation that was backstopped by highly technical means and support."

U.S. DRUG AGREEMENT WITH VENEZUELA STALLS again
The Miami Herald
Aug. 18, 2006

CARACAS - It was supposed to signal improving relations between Venezuela and the United States. Instead, an attempt to resume bilateral cooperation on anti-drug matters -- halted last year by Venezuela -- has come to illustrate just how far away the two countries remain.

Both sides say the wording of a document detailing the cooperation is ready. And in late June, the head of Venezuela's counter-drug office, Luis Correa, announced he would be signing it in the presence of U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield on July 8.

The U.S. Embassy said, however, that Brownfield was not notified of any such signing. What's more, while Correa has described the document as a new agreement, U.S. officials say there's nothing new about the agreement and instead describe it as an "addendum" to a 1978 agreement on counter-drug cooperation.

Correa later corrected himself and declared that the signing would take place "at any moment."

The United States is still waiting for the invitation.

RAÚL CASTRO HINTS AT READINESS FOR DIALOGUE WITH WASHINGTON
The Miami Herald
Aug. 19, 2006

In his first public comments as Cuba's acting president, Raúl Castro hinted Friday that he is ready for dialogue with Washington. His words were typical Havana rhetoric, but they bolstered speculation nevertheless about a post-Fidel turn to pragmatism.

"The thrust is very largely on relations with the United States," said Brian Latell, a former top CIA analyst and Raúl biographer. "It's very firm, but at the same time it's highly nuanced. This may be the beginning of Raúl asserting his own distinct form of authority."

Others discounted the words as a message for dialogue. "It's the same dance to an old song," prominent Cuban dissident Vladimiro Roca said by telephone from Havana.

Raúl Castro's statements, disclosed during an interview published in the Communist Party's Granma newspaper, also focused on defensive-military readiness, issues that some Cuba watchers took as a stern warning to the island's 11 million people not to cause trouble.

AN ANTAGONISTIC RELATIONSHIP
The Miami Herald
Aug. 19, 2006

A chronology of some of the attempts to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations:

• Jan. 3, 1961: Washington breaks diplomatic relations with Cuba.
• May 1963: In an interview with ABC News, Fidel Castro says he considers a rapprochement with Washington "possible if the United States government wishes it. In that case . . . we would agree to seek and find a basis" for improved relations.
• Nov. 5, 1963: Advisor McGeorge Bundy briefs President John Kennedy on Castro's invitation to a U.S. official at the United Nations to go to Havana for secret talks. Kennedy agrees.
• Nov. 17, 1963: Kennedy asks French journalist Jean Daniel to tell Castro that he is ready to negotiate normal relations. Kennedy is assassinated five days later.
• Feb. 12, 1964: In an oral message to President Lyndon Johnson, sent through ABC News reporter Lisa Howard, Fidel Castro states "that I seriously hope that Cuba and the United States can eventually respect and negotiate our differences. I believe that there are no areas of contention between us that cannot be discussed and settled within a climate of mutual understanding.

CUBA MOBILIZED FOR A U.S. ATTACK, RAÚL CASTRO SAYS
The New York Times
August 19, 2006

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 18 - Raúl Castro, in his first public comments since temporarily taking over power in Cuba from his ailing brother, said in an interview published Friday that he had mobilized the country's armed forces in the hours after Fidel Castro's illness was announced, to fend off any invasion that might have been planned by Washington.

"We could not rule out the risk of somebody going crazy, or even crazier, within the U.S. government," Raúl Castro, the country's defense minister, said in an interview with the editor of Granma, the Communist Party newspaper.

In remarks that Cuba watchers said did not veer from the party line, Mr. Castro, 75, said that his older brother, who turned 80 last Sunday, was recovering gradually from surgery and that "absolute tranquillity is reigning in the country."

Mr. Castro, speaking from his office at the Defense Ministry, lashed out at President Bush's push for political change in Cuba as "boorish" and "stupid," and said Cubans stood ready to repel any attacks with "rifle in hand."

THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
OPPOSITION CANDIDATE TAKES DISTANCE FROM `EMPIRE'
The Miami Herald
Aug.20.2006

Although his chances of beating authoritarian President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela's Dec. 3 presidential elections are very slim, opposition unity candidate Manuel Rosales launched his campaign last week with an unusually smart slogan: "Ni el imperio, ni el barbudo!" (Neither the [U.S.] empire, nor the [Cuban] bearded one!)

Judging from what Rosales told me in a long telephone interview after he announced his campaign strategy Thursday, the 54-year-old former governor of oil-rich Zulia state will hit Chávez where the Venezuelan comandante is most vulnerable: his penchant for giving away billions of dollars to foreign countries, while nearly half of the Venezuelan people live in poverty.

"We believe a major injustice is being done when a country that is so rich, one of the richest in the world, has a president who goes around the world giving away our wealth while we in Venezuela suffer growing poverty, hunger and unemployment," Rosales told me.

Chávez has given away $38 billion to foreign countries since he took office in 1999, Rosales said, including 100,000 barrels of oil a day in subsidized prices to Cuba.

CHÁVEZ: U.S. SPIES CAPTURED
The Miami Herald
Aug. 20, 2006

CARACAS - President Hugo Chávez said Venezuela has caught four people spying for the U.S. government, but he gave few details and did not announce any retaliatory measures as he did in one case earlier this year.

Speaking at a campaign rally Friday night, Chávez referred to the four after reading aloud a news report about the United States naming a "mission manager" for Cuba and Venezuela to oversee U.S. intelligence efforts for the two countries.

Without offering specifics, Chávez said one woman was caught not long ago while taking photos -- of what it remained unclear -- in the north-central city of Valencia.

"The gringos in intelligence are fools," Chávez told the rally in western Venezuela. "I've caught four of their spies, four, and I've put them back in their hands. Not long ago we caught a very beautiful woman in Valencia, taking photos. Taking photos because they're fools."

VENEZUELA SAYS IT SEIZED 4 SPIES; U.S. EMBASSY DENIES KNOWLEDGE
The New York Times
August 20, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 19 - President Hugo Chávez said that the authorities here had captured four people who were spying for the United States, and he taunted the Bush administration for making Venezuela a target of high-level intelligence scrutiny.

Speaking at a campaign rally on Friday night in western Venezuela, Mr. Chávez, who has made attacks on the United States a staple of his re-election campaign, ridiculed the administration's establishment of a mission manager for intelligence on Venezuela and Cuba. J. Patrick Maher, a longtime veteran of the C.I.A., was named to the post on Friday.

Iran and North Korea are the only other countries assigned such senior intelligence managers, who are not expected to directly oversee intelligence operations or analysis but rather guide these activities on a strategic level.

"They selected Jack the Ripper," Mr. Chávez said, referring to Mr. Maher. "Whatever their plan is, we stand ready to defeat it."

Accusations of spying have become commonplace in Venezuela in the past two years, as Mr. Chávez's government grows more explicit in its criticism of the United States, emboldened by climbing oil revenues and a perception that his opponents stand little chance of defeating him in the December election.

TAPE SUGGESTS RAÚL CASTRO ORDERED BROTHERS SHOOTDOWN
The Miami Herald
Aug. 21, 2006

Cuban Defense Minister Raúl Castro discussed plans for the 1996 shootdowns of two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes during a meeting with official journalists just weeks after the event, according to an audio tape obtained by El Nuevo Herald.

In the tape, a voice identified as Raúl's details the planning carried out during a meeting of military officers around Jan. 13, 1996, the day Brothers aircraft allegedly had overflown Havana to drop anti-government leaflets.

"I made it clear that [the decision to shoot] had to be decentralized if we wanted it to be effective, so we gave the power to five generals," the voice says. The Brothers airplanes "were going to escalate this, and we had no other recourse but to make this decision.

NEW U.S. POST UPSETS VENEZUELA
The Miami Herald
Aug. 22, 2006

WASHINGTON - The appointment of a top U.S. intelligence official specifically for Cuba and Venezuela prompted the South American country to say Monday that it will reconsider signing a counter-drug deal with Washington.

The Bush administration announced Friday it would appoint a "mission manager" for the two countries, putting them on equal footing with North Korea and Iran as the only countries with such managers, charged with developing strategies for key hot spots.

The administration has said it has very little knowledge of events in Cuba, describing it as a closed society that keeps a tight lid on information. And it has had frosty relations with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, a Castro ally.

S. FLA. NICARAGUANS FEAR A SANDINISTA VICTORY
The Miami Herald
Aug. 22, 2006

Jessica Martínez and her family watched helplessly in 1985 as the communist Sandinista government in their native Nicaragua confiscated their small clothing factory and rationed their food.

"There was no freedom of expression, and if you didn't get involved in their party, they had the neighbors watch your house and offend you," said Martínez, 51.

Martínez, her husband and their two children fled the Sandinistas, settling in Miami. Seven years ago they returned to their homeland, confident about Nicaragua's future.

Now the family has fled again -- 16 years after Nicaragua's voters kicked out Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and delivered a stunning victory to Violeta Chamorro.

With Ortega's opposition divided and bolstered by a new law that could make it easier for him to win, the perennial candidate is now within reach of the presidency in that country's Nov. 5 elections.

BOLIVIA'S U.S. ENVOY A REBELLIOUS CHOICE
The Miami Herald
Aug. 23, 2006

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Bolivia's unlikely new ambassador to the United States is a career journalist with no previous diplomatic experience and a limited command of English.

Gustavo Guzman told The Associated Press he was dumbfounded when President Evo Morales asked him to represent Bolivia's populist government in Washington.

"I said, 'Evo, my friend, please,'" Guzman recalled - how could Morales think him capable of such a delicate and high-profile position?

"And he answered: 'Did you ever imagine I had the capacity to be president?'"

Guzman, 49, is only the latest unconventional appointment made by Morales, Bolivia's first Indian president. A former maid is justice minister. A coca-farming feminist with little formal education heads the assembly rewriting the constitution. A renowned Quechua-language singer whose voice mimics birdsongs is ambassador to France.

CUBA CRITICIZES U.S. SPYING
The Miami Herald
Aug. 23, 2006

HAVANA - (AP) -- Cuba said Tuesday that the United States hopes to destabilize the communist country and its ally Venezuela through a new spying effort.

"They are moving forward very quickly in their destabilization plans," the Communist Youth daily Juventud Rebelde said.

"The war is very seriously under way in its intent to intervene, alter and destroy the two revolutions that committed the horrible sin of serving as example for an entire continent," the newspaper said.

U.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said Friday that he was creating a "mission manager" for Cuba and Venezuela to oversee the American spy community's efforts to collect and analyze intelligence on the two countries.
Cuba has not had diplomatic relations with the United States for 45 years.

Although Venezuela has relations with the United States and is an important source of the country's petroleum, Washington has increasingly expressed alarm about the South American nation's close ties with Cuba.