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n the international arena, the new president, Dilma Roussef, has pulled back from Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva's many excesses (indifference to human rights abuses, support for Iran and its nuclear program, and rhetorical anti-Americanism) during his last year in office, and may even have a present for Obama.

South America is booming, as India and China swallow up its exports of iron, copper, soybeans, coffee, coal, oil, wheat, poultry, beef, and sugar. Its foreign trade and investment patterns are diversified and dynamic. With a few minor exceptions, migration is internal to the region, and a modus vivendi has been reached with the drug trade, mainly coca leaf and cocaine in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Moreover, relations with the US, while important, are no longer paramount. South American governments can afford to disagree with the US, and often do. They have just elected a new president of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), whose headquarters are being built in Quito, Ecuador. As its name suggests, Unasur's main raison d'être is to exclude Canada, the US, and Mexico (in contrast to the Organisation of American States).

None of this holds true for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands – mainly the Dominican Republic, but eventually Cuba, too, and, in its own way, Haiti. These are not mineral-rich or bountiful agricultural nations: some coffee and bananas here, a little sugar and beef there, but nothing with which to sustain a boom. While Mexico is America's second-largest supplier of oil, this represents only 9 per cent of its total exports. Instead, these countries export low-value-added manufactured goods (Mexico does more, of course), and live off remittances, tourism, and drug-transshipment profits. All of this is overwhelmingly concentrated on the US: that is where the migrants are, where the towels and pajamas are shipped, where the tourists come from, and where the drugs are bought. For these countries, including Mexico, stable, close, and productive relations with America are essential.

more than 80 percent of the primary flow of the cocaine trafficked to the United States first transited through the Central American corridor in 2012.

Guatemala’s weak public institutions, pervasive corruption, and porous ports and borders to move illicit products, persons, and bulk cash.

Improved law enforcement efforts in Colombia and Mexico, among other factors, led to an increasing volume of precursor chemicals transiting Guatemala.

After years of watching his influence in Latin America slip away, Mr. Obama suddenly turned the tables this week by declaring a sweeping détente with Cuba, opening the way for a major repositioning of the United States in the region.

Washington’s isolation of Cuba has long been a defining fixture of Latin American politics, something that has united governments across the region, regardless of their ideologies. Even some of Washington’s close allies in the Americas have rallied to Cuba’s side.

“We never thought we would see this moment,” said Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who chided the Obama administration last year over the National Security Agency’s surveillance of her and her top aides. She called the deal with Cuba “a moment which marks a change in civilization.”

Russia To Build Spy Base in Nicaragua

The deal between Moscow and Managua, which will also involve the sale of 50 Russian T-72 tanks, comes as President Putin’s regime ramps up the pressure on Nato in eastern Europe.

Nicaragua’s leftist President Daniel Ortega was once the bete noire of the White House.

Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force (ABDF) The mission of the Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force is to defend Antigua and Barbuda’s territorial integrity and sovereignty to include, aid to the civil authority, fisheries protection, drug interdiction

Due to the involvement of the ONDCP and ABDF in drug interdictions, both entities work in partnership to ensure that our borders remain relatively safe from infiltration by drugs traffickers and those who engage in illegal activities.

Although RPFAB have numerous units within the force the ONDCP is mainly in partnership with the Intelligence Unit, the Drug Squad and the Police prosecution department.

Construction of Nicaragua Canal Threatens Indigenous Lives and Livelihoods

In June 2013, Nicaraguan officials approved a $50 billion (US) deal with a Hong Kong firm to oversee the construction of a 278-kilometer long canal. The HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company’s proposed project would attempt to link the Pacific to the Caribbean, allowing the passage of container ships
too large for passage through the Panama Canal.

The construction of the canal promises environmental abuses and human rights violations as the proposed route cuts through the land of multiple Indigenous territories on Nicara- gua’s coasts and within its mainland. Thousands of people are expected to be impacted with many being forcibly displaced, primarily including the Kriol and Indigenous Rama people,
in a clear violation of Indigenous autonomy laws in Nicaragua and international human rights documents.

Antigua and Barbuda is considered a minor transshipment point for narcotics bound for the US and Europe; more significant as an offshore financial center

The U.S. Government has maritime drug law enforcement agreements with all seven of the Eastern Caribbean states. A Protocol to amend and update the maritime agreements was submitted to each country in April 2003. The Protocol would permit hot pursuit of maritime drug traffickers into the territorial waters of an Eastern Caribbean state by U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) law enforcement detachments aboard third country ships (e.g., UK). The Protocol also would permit a law enforcement shiprider from any Regional Security System (RSS) member state (The seven Eastern Caribbean states comprise the RSS.) aboard a USCG or third country vessel to authorize drug law enforcement operations in the territorial waters of any RSS member state. Only Antigua and Barbuda has signed the Protocol. To date, none of these countries has signed the Caribbean Maritime Counterdrug Agreement, which would facilitate cooperation among themselves.

Most Eastern Caribbean officials regard marijuana production and trafficking as serious offenses, although the question of legalization or decriminalization is being discussed in some quarters. The U.S. supports and encourages eradication campaigns as a means to combat marijuana use in the Eastern Caribbean.

The dual-island state serves as a transit point in the international drugs trade and is home to criminal networks operating human trafficking rings.

Antigua and Barbuda was designated by the US State Department in 2013 as being a “Country of Primary Concern” with regards to money laundering. The country’s significant offshore financial sector makes it highly susceptible to the laundering of illicit proceeds from drug trafficking and financial crimes, the State Department noted.

The Royal Antigua and Barbuda Police Force (RABPF) is the primary body responsible for domestic law enforcement and numbers around 600 personnel. It is housed under the Ministry of National Security and Labour.

On Jan. 10, 1978, my father was assassinated by hit men of the Somoza regime. His death meant the end of whatever remained of Nicaragua’s political arena. But it also unleashed an enormous wave of protests nationwide, because the country now saw rebellion as the only way left to end the dictatorship.Four decades later, we have gone through a tortuous cycle of revolution and counterrevolution, civil war and foreign aggression, democratic transition and, now, a return to authoritarianism. History is repeating itself as farce under the regime of Daniel Ortega, the former guerrilla leader who was the elected president from 1985 to 1990 and who returned to power in 2007.

Ironically, when the Sandinista revolution’s leaders were voted out of power in 1990 (allowing my mother, Violeta Chamorro, to become Nicaragua’s president for seven years), it was Mr. Ortega himself who contributed to the establishment of an electoral democracy by conceding defeat, thereby setting the country on course to transfer power peacefully among political parties. However, Mr. Ortega and the next president, Arnoldo Alemán, who later was accused of corruption, arrived at a political compact in 1999 that weakened the trend toward pluralistic democracy by setting up bipartisan control of the electoral system. In 2007, that, too, collapsed when Mr. Ortega, now back in office, took sole control.

In 2008, well-documented fraud marred municipal elections. And in 2011, Mr. Ortega, defying term limits law, was “re-elected” in balloting that was denounced as unconstitutional. He has used the time since to consolidate an institutional dictatorship that concentrates absolute power and that derives political support from an alliance with private business interests and from citizens who benefit from government policies that aid the poor.

ve of Killings

Nicaragua Dispute Over Indigenous Land Erupts in Wa

Thousands of Nicaraguans have moved into the lush tropical rain forests that are home to the country’s nearly 180,000 indigenous Miskito people. The newcomers — called “colonists” by the Miskito — have been lured by the promise of gold and the abundance of lucrative timber. Some of the settlers have also been forced from their lands by drought. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “It’s our territory,” said Isidro Charles, a Miskito farmer who had accompanied one of the decapitated men to the village’s communal lands when men with AK-47s snatched him.

Antiguan ex-president of UN general assembly faces $1m corruption charges

A former president of the United Nations general assembly turned the world body into a “platform for profit” by accepting over $1m in bribes and a trip to New Orleans from a billionaire Chinese real estate mogul and other businesspeople to pave the way for lucrative investments, a prosecutor charged on Tuesday

John Ashe, a former UN ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda who served in the largely ceremonial post from September 2013 to September 2014, faces conspiracy- and bribery-related charges along with five others, including Francis Lorenzo, a deputy UN ambassador from the Dominican Republic who lives in the Bronx.

Alec MacGillis shines a light on US gun trafficking to Central America, making the argument that our loose gun regulations are contributing to these countries’ gang violence problem:

Of the $3.7 billion requested by the administration for dealing with the child migrant crisis, a very small percentage of it, about $295 million, goes to addressing root causes of the violence

There’s been a focus in the US and elsewhere in the region on capturing drug kingpins, but I think a lot of people who have looked at this, given the weakness of institutions, including police and law enforcement, including the judiciary, have said that a better approach is to try to reduce the violence connected with local illegal markets, and focus on providing citizen security to the general population. You can’t abandon the attempt to capture major traffickers, but you cannot do that without providing for safer communities and creating greater resilience at the individual and the community level.

No country in Africa, if not the world, has so thoroughly turned itself around in so short a time, and Kagame has shrewdly directed the transformation.

Kagame has made indisputable progress fighting the single greatest ill in Africa: poverty. Rwanda is still very poor — the average Rwandan lives on less than $1.50 a day — but it is a lot less poor than it used to be. Kagame’s government has reduced child mortality by 70 percent; expanded the economy by an average of 8 percent annually over the past five years; and set up a national health-insurance program — which Western experts had said was impossible in a destitute African country.

Progressive in many ways, Kagame has pushed for more women in political office, and today Rwanda has a higher percentage of them in Parliament than any other country. His countless devotees, at home and abroad, say he has also delicately re-engineered Rwandan society to defuse ethnic rivalry, the issue that exploded there in 1994 and that stalks so many African countries, often dragging them into civil war.

Between the 16th and 20th centuries, various European nations set out to conquer the world and take all of its wealth.

Rather than being colonized, Japan became an imperial power in its own right.

uncomfortable position between the French imperial possessions of French Indochina (now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) to the east, and British Burma (now Myanmar) to the west

Significantly, the presidents not only continue to make strides in conflict resolution in Nicaragua, but also have started to place more emphasis on the other focus of civil war--El Salvador.

progress is the result of a combination of changes in the terms of the original equation in the quest for peace

The United States, though, has a legitimate concern to see the Sandinistas fulfill their pledge guaranteeing the safe return of the rebels and their families to Nicaragua from Honduras

A recent issue of the bimonthly Estudos Avançados, a journal associated with the University of São Paulo, sheds light upon the assumptions Brazil brings to the FTAA negotiating table and highlights the lively debate among Brazil's business community, government, and civil society over the merits of the regional trade pact.

the Catholic Church and organized labor groups in Brazil have been the most vocal in their opposition to the agreement; they cite loss of sovereignty and fear that Latin American countries will become subordinate to the interests of the United States. Moreover, some industries in Brazil -- such as the chemicals, electronics, and capital-goods sectors -- also worry that the FTAA could be a losing proposition.

most of the Brazilian business community prefers to forge ahead with the agreement rather than risk losing out on increased commerce in the Americas. Oliveira warns that if Brazil backs out of the negotiations, the United States will simply negotiate bilateral treaties throughout the region, which could pare Brazilian exports and divert foreign investment to other markets. While the far-left wing of the Lula government continues to fight the treaty, Oliveira believes that Lula and the moderates in his party understand that Brazil would pay a high price for isolation.

This new G9 is the core of the too big and unwieldy G20. It is the United States, China, Japan, Germany, France, the U.K., India, Brazil, and Russia. The countries whose combined economic, political, military, demographic, regional and global strengths set them apart from all others. The EU doesn't belong because it doesn't really have a coherent foreign policy. The other members of the G20 are only invited to show up at the meetings because the world is too embarrassed to ask them to stay home.)

Shannon recognizes that he is the U.S.'s first ambassador to Brazil for a new era -- one in which Brazil is no longer principally seen by the United States as a regional power but is instead acknowledged as a major global actor, one in which the U.S.'s relationship with Brazil is no longer the natural axis around which the hemisphere turns and that new axes, such as that between Brazil and China, its number one trade and investment partner, may become even more important. Work on a big Brazil-EU trade deal might -- combined with the United States' limited bandwidth due to domestic and other foreign concerns -- have a similar effect of reducing  U.S. influence on the other big player in the Americas.

many in the United States have yet to come to view Brazil as we do, say, countries like China, India or France... where we expect to have differences, some major, and to nonetheless continuing to work on progress where we can find it.