The Thanksgiving Week Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

Welcome to the Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean. If you would like your posts included in next week’s Carnival, please email me: faustaw2 “at” gmail “dot” com.

Today’s big story: Venezuela holds the state governor elections, and Chavez’s candidates lost in Caracas, Zulia, Miranda

The opposition’s wins today are a blow to Chavez’s drive to centralize control of the oil-exporting country. While the president remains popular among poor voters, accelerating inflation, rising crime and a plunge in oil prices have caused voters to question his socialist political agenda.

Last year voters rejected his proposal to eliminate presidential term limits, and opposition parties expect Chavez to try make a second run at changing rules that will force him to step down in 2013.
…
Today’s wins for the opposition in a handful of the country’s most populous states and its largest city set the stage for increased conflict with the president. Opposition parties have been marginalized since Chavez’s coalition nearly swept regional elections in 2004 and won almost every seat in the National Assembly in 2005.

During the election campaign this year, Chavez threatened to suspend funding for development projects where opposition candidates win.

Why did he lose Caracas? Crime:

Ledezma said he’ll make crime reduction a priority as mayor of greater Caracas. Caracas’s homicide rate jumped to 130 per 100,000 people last year, a 47 percent increase from 2005, according to government data compiled by the Central University of Venezuela’s Center for Peace.

Chavez lost the most populous states (link in Spanish).

Analysis by Venezuela News and Views, The Devil’s Excrement, Simon Romero, and Juan Forero. Update, also Hugo Chavez’s XXI century socialist revolution on the wane

I’ll be talking about this in today’s podcast at 10AM Eastern. You can listen to the podcast here.

LATIN AMERICA
Flux in Latin America Affects Russia’s Diplomacy

ARGENTINA
NUCLEAR AGREEMENT SIGNED BETWEEN ALGERIA AND ARGENTINA

BOLIVIA
Bolivian president says he won’t let DEA come back

BRAZIL
Elhefnawy: The Next Wave of Nuclear Proliferation

Brazilian Gay Groups Launch Multiple Lawsuits to Silence Christian Opposition
Flurry of Lawsuits is Attempt to Prevent Criticism of Homosexual Movement

The Amazon’s indigenous people
The other Brazil: The mixed blessings of the simple life led by indigenous people deep in the forest

COLOMBIA
Tumbling pyramids
A state of emergency is declared after swindled investors take to the streets

CUBA
Yoendreis Márquez Moya, Cuban Political Prisoner of the Week, 11/23/08

Against forgetting