Weekly Round Up - Stories from the Americas

Here are four very interesting stories and events that took place last week across the Americas.  Please feel free to send us stories that we might have overlooked that touch on a wide-ranging policy issues affecting constituencies, civil society organizations and businesses with operations and ties to both regions. 

  • The Mexican government continues to express its anger against the US, this time to The Washington Post:

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Thursday that the release of State Department cables criticizing Mexico's anti-drug fight had caused ‘severe damage’ to its relationship with the United States and suggested that tensions had risen so dramatically that he could no longer work with the American ambassador in his country.

  • Spanish newspaper El País published a great article about Dilma Rouseff’s plan to increase up to 45%of the government’s largest social program, ‘Bolsa de Familia’. With this increase, the program will benefit 50 million more Brazilians, working to fulfill her campaign slogan: “A rich country is a country without poverty”. For the full article click here.
  • Jorge Castañeda wrote a provocative piece for Time magazine about Libyan President Gaddafi's friends in Latin America. An excerpt below:

As one might expect, the radical wing of the Latin American left is much more concerned about Gaddafi's survival and U.S. interference than the welfare of the Libyan people. While Gaddafi massacres the latter, Latin American leaders defend him.