My Fantasy News Organization

Sheer “citizen journalism,” though it has its place, is insufficient to the demands of a new way of doing journalism. It has also so far proven to be largely untenable economically. Corporate journalism is too consolidated and shareholder concerns have robbed it of its mission. At this point ad-driven lust for the “local” is a [...]

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Generation C

The Universidad Central “Marta Abeu” de las Villas in Cuba is known by the nickname “Che University.” It is a bastion of true believers, dedicated to the revitalization of The Revolution. Believers they may be, but they are a new generation. Across Latin America and in fact the world, communism is hip again. And Cuba’s [...]

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Resurgence of Leftism in Latin America

Last year, I queried a host of “news” magazines on a story regarding the resurgence of leftism in Latin America. (See below.) Well, needless to say, since it wasn’t Iraq, it wasn’t news. In March I saw this op-ed in the New York Times on–wait for it…–the resurgence of leftism in Latin America. Man, you [...]

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BLOGGING IN CENTRAL AMERICA

I was about to publish a big sloshy foam of generalities regarding the need for Central America to blog when I decided to do a bit of research before I declaimed. Sure enough, there are quite a number of blogs in the region.
Here is my incipient list.
CENTAM BLOGS
Guatemala
Directorio de Blogs Guatemaltecos from Guat360
El Salvador
Ayvevos Blogs
Brevespacio
Honduras
Opiniones [...]

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The Gangs of El Salvador

(A version of this story originally appeared in Newsweek.)
“Did Weaz tell you about Bullet?” Eddie asked, leaning back in the twilight of one of San Salvador’s ten thousand run-down patios. “He died. He got shot. By a rival gang.”
Gang shootings are common in once war-torn El Salvador. But what makes Bullet’s [...]

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Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

Has there been a resurgence of Peru’s homegrown Marxist nutjobs, the Shining Path?
The Peruvian army recently captured the number #2 honcho of the remaining guerillas, Jaime Zuniga. But while Peruvian leaders may characterize this as the “last stand” of the Shining Path, evidence suggests it may not be. With virtually nothing done on the economic [...]

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The Evangelical Wave in Latin America – An Internal Revolution

In Latin America the big movement these days is not oligarch vs. communist or state religion vs. liberation theology but rather evangelical vs. Catholic. The evangelical movement is huge and continues to gain ground in Central America.
In Central America as a whole, the percentage of Protestants is on average 16%, up from virtually nothing 20 [...]

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Centam Corruption Makes a Comeback in the Executive

Thanks to the short-sighted fixation on the Middle East by the Bush administration those creeps among our neighbors to the south who thrive in darkness have found an increasing amount of darkness in which to thrive.
It’s an Enron-style Wild On episode featuring practically every Central American leader past and present:
In late October, an association of [...]

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Post-Historical Guatemala

Guatemala is a country of left-overs – left-over cultures, left-over churches and temples, left-over wars, houses and stores made out of discarded billboards, scavenged packing crates and sheet metal, governments made of discarded ideologies. A trash heap of a country where every spot touched by human hands sprouts a deadly, ineradicable mold. It [...]

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El Salvador in the End-Time

The one thing that everyone in El Salvador told me – the professor, the ex-mara, the former guerilla – everyone but the very rich and the hardcore ideologues on the left, is that everyone wants to leave. That El Salvador is unfixable, and unworthy of being fixed. That everything of value has been [...]

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