Mexico

COMMENTARY

One of the most popular, and most ridiculous, social media discussions of the past year is the big Capitalism-versus-Socialism Debate. Thanks to President Trump’s right-wing demonization of socialism, and Bernie Sanders’ left-wing demonization of capitalism, folks in America – and in Latin America, thanks to Sanders’ recent kudos to Cuba – have decided it’s an either-or issue.

It’s not, of course. The best societies are always a hybrid of free wealth production and fair wealth redistribution. And the coronavirus pandemic, from São Paulo to Seattle, may finally affirm that commonsense reality across our absurdly polarized hemisphere.

COMMENTARY

I hope American men paid attention to what Mexican women did this week. And I hope it made them realize American women have reason to do the same.

COMMENTARY

Reparations are a big – and valid – debate today. Should the U.S. compensate African Americans for centuries of slavery? Should France pony up for the billions of dollars it extorted from Haiti in the 19th century?

Yes and yes, by the way. But recent events remind me we should add another historical world power to the reparations roster: Spain.

2019 was a busy year for Port Tampa Bay. Florida’s largest port set a record for cruise passengers and welcomed cargo ships from Asia.

CEO Paul Anderson said direct service to Shanghai, Singapore and other Asian ports has been a priority since he was hired in 2012. The service’s launch coincided with a trade war between the Trump Administration and China, which included tariffs and prolonged negotiations on a bilateral trade agreement.  

COMMENTARY

When I read this week that President Trump and House Democrats had agreed on a new and improved North American Free Trade Agreement – now called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA – I recalled an afternoon 28 years ago when a ticked-off corporate honcho jabbed his finger in my ribs.

COMMENTARY

Even by the satanic standards of all the clerical sexual abuse cases the world has learned of, this one is especially evil.

COMMENTARY

Usually the only thing more narrow-minded than a right-wing American wading into Latin American politics is a left-wing American wading into Latin American politics.

Which brings us to U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When left-wing Bolivian President Evo Morales resigned this week and went into exile in Mexico, the left-wing New York congresswoman tweeted he was the victim of a coup – of a “violent power grab.”

COMMENTARY

I'm profoundly sad to say I’m not surprised – horrified, but hardly surprised – by Tuesday’s brutal massacre of innocent women and children by drug cartel gunmen on a road in northern Mexico.

I’ve been watching Mexico’s savage narco-insurgency escalate for three decades. When I wrote a cover story for TIME about its horrors eight years ago, I naively assumed it couldn’t get worse. Hombre, I could not have been more wrong.  Even infants were among the nine people murdered in Tuesday's ambush. There is no bottom to the gangland homicide plague south of the border, which keeps reaching record numbers.