Even before Hugo Chavez revealed he is battling cancer, his political star was on the wane in Latin America. More and more, voters in the region have simply realized that class warfare, polarization, and centralization of power are not prescriptions for economic growth and political stability. (As a case in point, Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, a one-time Chavez acolyte, couldn't run away fast enough from the Venezuelan leader during his recent successful campaign - even if he had no qualms about taking Chavez's cash.)

Still, the fading appeal of the Chavista model is of cold comfort to those still suffering under radical populist rule elsewhere in the region. Specifically, in Ecuador, Rafael Correa continues to trample democratic institutions, although regrettably nowhere to be found is any expression of concern by the Obama administration.

In late July, in a "trial" that lasted less than a day, a cowed Ecuadorean judge sentenced prominent newspaper columnist Emilio Palacio and three of the directors of his newspaper, El Universo, to three years in prison and fined them $40 million for publishing a column critical of Correa last February.

The defendants said they will appeal -- but so did Correa. He says he wants the full $80 million in damages he requested when he filed his defamation suit.

"We're making history, my friends, we won't retreat," he said after the verdict. "There's no room for magnanimity in the face of such miserable humanity."

Even as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and every major international media defense organization denounced the verdict, nary a word of concern has been expressed by the Obama administration.

Intimidating the media and using the judicial system to quash freedom of freedom expression are hallmarks of Chavismo, ones that Correa has embraced with relish. He has sued, fined, and seized control of numerous outlets since his rise to power in 2007. Where the government once owned one media outlet, under Correa it now controls 19 television and radio stations and newspapers.

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The Peruvian presidential election is over now that Keiko Fujimori has conceded defeat to Ollanta Humala, but it is clear that the country is very divided. The United States faces a period of "wait and see" regarding the winner and it is anyone's guess how he will perform: either as a force for good for Peru and for the region, or as a once and future advocate of leftist populism who erodes democracy now that he has won the presidency. This is not a small matter because U.S. interests (and those of Colombia, Brazil, and Chile) are best served by a Peru that continues to play the role that it did under Garcia as a strong advocate for free markets and free trade and one that continues to improve in terms of democracy and good governance.

Barely more than half the voters have chosen a former military official who was involved in a coup, is accused of committing human rights violations, and until his political fortunes demanded it, was a strong ally of Hugo Chavez who had planned to take Peru down the path that Chavez has forced Venezuela upon for the last ten years.

Humala had been defeated in 2006 by the pro-U.S. and pro-business Alan Garcia but Humala figured out that President Lula Da Silva of Brazil had the right approach: a leftist who promotes free market economics, trade and warmer relations with the United States, at least on international economic issues, has a better chance of being elected, not to mention helping his countrymen and not becoming a pariah like Venezuela.

Those voters who chose Humala were many of the poor and indigenous who have not seen much gain during the good times that the Garcia administration oversaw; they've also chafed at the lack of progress in combating corruption. Humala also had the support of some of those who are better off who, following the lead of intellectual and novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and former president Alejandro Toledo, voted against the daughter of a man who was corrupt and who committed human rights violations against civilians in his attempts to wipe out the Maoist Shining Path terrorist insurgents. To be sure, many poor and indigenous voted for Keiko Fujimori precisely because they remember fondly the efforts of her father to combat the Shining Path; and of course she got the majority of the votes of the middle and upper classes who don't want a new government to squelch growth and investment. Those would be the people who spent the last couple of days taking their money out of Peru before Humala takes it from them, as they suspect he will do.

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Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos met today with President Obama at the White House to end an impasse blocking adoption of a trade agreement first concluded in November of 2006. The Colombian government has agreed to rewrite parts of their labor law to U.S. specifications.

The resolution came after mounting calls for movement from Capitol Hill. House Republicans had been particularly vocal about the need to advance the pending Colombia and Panama agreements alongside the South Korean accord after years of delay. Of late, though, the calls had grown bipartisan. On Monday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) published a joint op-ed in the Wall Street Journal describing the Colombia pact as an important spur to employment:

Each day we fail to act costs American jobs and sales-and sends them elsewhere.

So, 1,091 days after the Bush administration submitted the Colombia FTA to Congress, the Obama administration has found a path to move forward. The plaudits for this move have been rolling in since it was announced yesterday. Not only does the Colombia FTA offer its own array of benefits, but the move has the potential to unblock U.S. trade policy more broadly. To lever the administration into action on the pending FTAs, Republicans had linked the passage of the Korean FTA, renewal of trade adjustment assistance programs, trade preference programs, and even confirmation of a new commerce secretary. It is not clear that all of the timing issues have been worked out between House Republicans and the White House, but the agreement with Colombia significantly enhances prospects for movement on a trade agenda this summer.

Lest there be excessive rejoicing, though, it is worth keeping in mind that passage of the three agreements would partially complete the trade agenda of 2007, and there was a cost to the dithering. The pending FTAs offered benefits in two important dimensions: access to the markets for American exporters and stronger diplomatic ties. On the economic front, this access was originally set to grant American businesses and farmers preferential access to the Korean and Colombian markets, ahead of global competitors. Now, there is a scramble just to keep U.S. exporters on an even footing. While the agreements were stymied by domestic political fights in the United States, our partner countries reached other agreements to open their markets to the world. A prime motivation for the mid-summer deadline on passing the Korea-U.S. FTA is the looming passage into force of Korea's FTA with the European Union.

On the diplomatic front, the FTAs were meant to send a signal of friendship and allegiance. While the partner countries certainly welcome passage now, that signal has been somewhat diminished by years of slapping them around through public criticism.

There is a pending, post-2007 trade agenda out there. The eternal but deeply-troubled global trade talks (the Doha Round) are in desperate need of American leadership. The WTO's director-general, Pascal Lamy, sounded the alarm to members last week:

Now is the time for all of you, and in particular those among you who bear the largest responsibility in the system, to reflect on the consequences of failure ... to think about the consequences of the non-Round to the multilateral trading system which we have so patiently built over the last 70 years. It is the time to think hard about multilateralism, which your leaders, yourselves and myself preach at every occasion. In politics, as in life, there is always a moment when intentions and reality face the test of truth. We are nearly there today.

Then there are the Bush-launched, Obama-embraced talks to expand the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). A number of the participants in those talks are earnestly shooting for a conclusion this November, when the United States hosts the APEC meetings in Hawaii. This seems implausible, since the administration has not yet broached the question of trade negotiating authority for those talks with the Congress. And if labor and human rights issues with Colombia stirred controversy, wait until we start discussing Vietnam, a TPP participant.

The biggest question surrounding this week's breakthrough on the Colombia FTA is where it leaves relations between the White House and the American labor movement, which has been the most outspoken opponent of recent trade agreements. The administration made some inroads with labor through its reworking of the Korea-U.S. FTA at the end of last year. That won the support of the United Auto Workers, though that support did not extend beyond Korea. The AFL-CIO has remained opposed to all of the pending FTAs. Yesterday, it released a statement:

We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has signaled that it will move forward to submit the proposed U.S.-Colombia Trade Agreement to Congress for a vote in the near future ... on the basis of the information provided to us at this time, we remain strongly opposed to the Colombia trade agreement.

It remains to be seen whether this opposition will be vigorous or muted. The Obama administration will also need to decide whether, on trade issues, it has now cast its lot with a coalition of pro-trade Republicans and internationalist Democrats, or whether it has pushed its labor allies as far as it dares.

Those are questions for another day, though. Today, Presidents Obama and Santos had cause to celebrate.

Last October, Ambassador Roger Noriega, former Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere during the George W. Bush Administration, exposed Hugo Chávez's efforts to aid and abet Iran's illegal nuclear weapons program, including its efforts to obtain strategic minerals such as uranium and to evade international sanctions.

Documentary evidence now suggests that Hugo Chavez's junior partner in Ecuador, Rafael Correa, is apparently forging his own dangerous alliance with the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime, raising troubling questions about whether Iran continues to expand its global efforts to obtain uranium and other strategic minerals that are critical to Teheran's rogue nuclear program.

According to sensitive official documents provided to me by  knowledgeable sources in Ecuador and other countries and published here for the first time, Iran and Ecuador have concluded a $30 million deal to conduct joint mining projects in Ecuador that appears to lay the groundwork for future extractive activities. The deal, which was apparently finalized in December 2009, "expresses the interest of the President of the Republic [of Ecuador] and the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum to boost closer and mutually beneficial relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran on a variety of fronts, among them mining and geology."

The deal calls for the establishment of a jointly run Chemical-Geotechnical-Metallurgical Research Center in Ecuador [Laboratorio Químico-Geotécnico-Metalurgico] and "to jointly implement a comprehensive study and topographic and cartographic analysis of [Ecuadorean territory]."

What is most concerning about developing Ecuadorean-Iranian ties in the mining sector is that, like Venezuela, Ecuador is known to possess deposits of uranium. In August 2009, Russia and Ecuador signed a nuclear agreement that included joint geological research and development of uranium fields, as well as building nuclear power plants and research reactors. In March 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency also unveiled plans to help Ecuador explore for uranium and study the possibility of developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

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Though plagued by heart trouble, former president Néstor Kirchner's death Wednesday (October 27) caught Argentines and foreign observers by surprise. As his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was serving out the remainder of her four-year term as president, he was positioning himself to run again next October. Theoretically, she would bide her time to run once more after he left office in 2015, thus keeping the administration of South America's second largest country in family hands.

Now such a scheme -- if ever plausible -- is in disarray. Besides who might prevail in the 2011 elections, the question is whether Néstor Kirchner's departure marks a turning point. Will Argentines cling to the model of powerful paternalistic presidencies that Kirchner and populist role model Juan Perón represented, or opt for a more institutional, accountable type of government? For the moment, the latter does not seem to be a viable option.

For one thing, Kirchner gained popularity by bringing Argentina back from a crisis that impacted a lot of people. Taking over from interim President Eduardo Duhalde in 2003, his confrontational leadership style guided Argentina out of an economic collapse that had devastated the ranks of its middle class. Kirchner angered foreign creditors by paying pennies on the dollar for Argentina's debts. Yet he put the economy on a growth track, aided by the inspired retention of economy minister Roberto Lavagna, a devalued peso, and rising commodity prices.

He elevated concerns for human rights in pursuing unresolved cases from the era of Argentina's military dictatorship. And when his wife was elected to succeed him as president, he helped her make difficult policy decisions and maintain unity within his party's normally unruly coalition.

Despite factions and splits, Kirchner's peronist Justicialist party is alive and well. Its patronage system of national and provincial party chiefs, union bosses, and special interest groups is the dominant political archetype. Welfare payments to the unemployed, some of it reportedly distributed through groups linked to the militant piqueteros movement, helped assure political loyalty among the poor, even as it encouraged a culture of corruption and favor trafficking.

Not all that Kirchner did was popular, however. Following Argentina's financial recovery, he ditched his economy minister and implemented policies spurring inflation that currently outstrips Argentina's 9 percent growth rate. Both Kirchners frequently circumvented lawmakers and ruled by decree. In 2008, they aggravated farmers with plans to raise taxes on grain exports and had to back off after months of protests. Subsequently, agricultural producers began working with lawmakers to rollback existing tariffs -- which got easier when the Kirchners lost their majority in congress.

Currently in lame duck status, re-election prospects for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner depend on her ability to show she can govern on her own. If she departs very much from her husband's themes, she may lose the backing of her party's faithful. Also, voters will be looking to see if she can run her coalition or if the party and union bosses have the upper hand. Whether or not she succeeds in presenting a fresh vision of the future, the campaign may still be about her husband's legacy.

Potential rival candidates have a related problem. Playing off Néstor's more unpopular decisions, they might have claimed to be the "anti-Kirchner." That's almost irrelevant now. They too will need to propose a compelling vision. Only the conservative Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri is likely to offer much in the way toward a more accountable, commerce-friendly government. However, he has no national party to help him campaign.

No doubt, Nestor Kirchner's departure creates an opening for a new direction and tone in Argentine politics. It could also be an opportunity for the United States to develop closer ties with Argentina, strained as relations had been under the Kirchners, who were chummy with Venezuelan populist Hugo Chávez. (That said, below the presidential level, ties remained cordial and productive.) Still, it is unclear whether prospective candidates, party leaders, or the electorate are ready for a different discourse.

While Néstor Kirchner may have overplayed his "father knows best" routine, he wielded a deft hand in a crisis and left intact a potent political machine. Maybe Argentines may want less corruption, fewer burdensome taxes, and more say in their government's policies. But achieving that may depend more on an evolution in thinking than a revolution at the ballot box.

Fresh off his creepy public spectacle fondling the remains of South American liberator Simón Bolivar, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez has concocted yet another circus to try and distract the attentions of increasingly suspect voters ahead of legislative elections in September. The current contretemps between Venezuela and Colombia stems from outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's parting salvo at the OAS directing his ambassador to present maps and video evidence of 87 Colombian terrorist camps across the border in Venezuela.

Chavez has reacted in typical fashion: railing about everything -- a Colombian invasion, a U.S. invasion, cutting off oil to the U.S., a 100-years war -- everything except the evidence presented by Colombia. Elsewhere on this website, Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alavarez provided a "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes" rebuttal to Colombia's charges.)

Uribe's move is his going away gift to regional governments who consistently head for the tall grass whenever Colombia requests solidarity and cooperation in combating the narcoterrorist armies that have wrought death and destruction in Colombia for decades. At the same time, by presenting yet again evidence of Chavez's complicity in aiding and abetting Colombian terrorist groups, it leaves his successor Juan Manuel Santos in a position of strength to carry on Colombia's lonely diplomatic offensive to secure regional help against these criminal gangs that rely on the benign neglect, if not outright support (i.e., Venezuela) of Colombia's neighbors to sustain their war against Colombian society.

Yet the notion that the crisis somehow helps Chavez by allowing him to whip up nationalistic sentiment ahead of elections is folly. Venezuelans are about as militaristic as your average Scandinavian, and they assuredly want no part of a war with Colombia -- a trading partner, not to mention a well-armed military -- when the stakes are over whether Chavez is in bed with narcoterrorists.

Besides, what are the Venezuelan people to make of Chavez's self-contradicting rhetoric? On the one hand, he praises the FARC as an "army" that doesn't deserve the terrorist label and is widely suspected of providing them weapons. On the other, he pretends to put his country on a war-footing when evidence is presented that FARC and ELN units are camping out in Venezuela undisturbed. Maybe in Chavez World you can have it both ways, but to everyone else, he reminds no one of Winston Churchill rallying his country to arms.

For its part, the Obama administration has unfortunately been content to remain on the sidelines, issuing a tepid statement of support for Colombia (even though the evidence no doubt resulted from our intelligence cooperation) and calling on "both sides" to ratchet down the rhetoric. Imagine, equating the victim of terrorist violence, and a strategic ally no less, with a facilitator of that violence by telling them BOTH to "tone it down" -- even as Chavez is doing all the shouting.

As much as Chavez's enablers would like it, the sideline is no place for the United States to be on this issue. Other countries in the region have proven either incapable or unwilling to hold Chavez to account, either as he undermines democracy at home or helps rogue regimes abroad like Iran evade international sanctions.

During the Bush administration, a conscious decision was made to avoid a microphone diplomacy war with Chavez and instead allow him to define himself before the international community, without any help from Washington -- which he complied in doing. But the Bush strategy has run its course, and the Obama administration campaign talking point of improving relations is in tatters.

What everyone needs to come to terms with is that, yes, Chavez is a clown, but he's also a dangerous one, just like his Iranian amigo Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Therefore, it's time to get serious about Chavez and his pretentions to be of regional and even global consequence and treat him as the danger to regional peace and security that he is.

Last May, 10 Republican senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her to designate Venezuela as a state sponsor of terrorism. That is precisely the discussion we need to start having about Hugo Chavez.

Chavez has always believed his oil exports to the Untied States operate as a kind of magic talisman, warding off meaningful action against him by the United States. He needs to be disabused of that notion. Targeted sanctions that would begin to reduce U.S. imports of Venezuelan oil would have catastrophic results for his government, and the U.S. could easily find new markets to offset the drop. (The oil markets didn't even blip when Chavez made his latest threat to cut off exports.)

Hugo Chavez has always aspired to be considered a real nemesis by the United States. It's time to accommodate him.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in South America this week participating in the 40th General Assembly of the Organization of American States in Lima, Peru. From there she travels to Ecuador, Colombia, and onto Barbados to meet with Caribbean leaders. The Associated Press says a "crowded agenda" awaits her, but don't expect much in substance to come out of the trip. 

Secretary Clinton has been game, but she is reaping the whirlwind of Obama campaign operatives relentlessly pummeling President Bush for supposedly "ignoring" the countries of the Western Hemisphere. In doing so, they stoked outsized expectations around the region about what would result from an Obama presidency. The fact is not much has resulted and the last thing our neighbors see is anything like a supposed golden era of U.S. engagement with our neighbors.

Indeed, many Latin countries are flaunting their lack of interest in strong ties with the United States. Whether it is the anti-American and anti-democratic agendas pursued by Hugo Chavez and his ilk or Brazil's efforts to carve out a separate role for itself on the global stage by pushing an Iran nuclear deal that the United States rejects or keeping alive the issue of Honduras' ousted president Manuel Zelaya that the Obama administration clearly wants to move past, divergent pursuits are overtaking a commonality of purpose.

Neither is the OAS General Assembly the most accommodating venue for the administration to re-seize the initiative. Rather than a useful platform to address real problems in the hemisphere, such as criminality, corruption, and bolstering democracy, the meeting is more a cacophony of voices airing pet parochial grievances that will only magnify our differences, platitudes aside.

Of course, not all is gloom-and-doom in the region.  There are positive stories -- including Colombia's return from the brink of narco-fueled chaos, Peru's upbeat economic performance, the Central American-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement, and Mexico's desire to cooperate more closely on the war on drugs -- but these initiatives were well in train before the current administration took office.

The administration has its work cut out for it in trying to create momentum in the service of the shared interests we still do have with a number of countries in the Americas. But that will not be created in visits to Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and other precincts currently infatuated with the anti-American fad. Instead, it will come with continuing to work with like-minded governments unabashed about identifying with our vision for the hemisphere of prosperity for all through free peoples and free markets.

Apparently, Americans are not the only ones losing affection for the Obama administration, if recent headlines on hemispheric relations are any indication.

Assorted pundits will no doubt argue that no president could hope to meet the grandiose expectations engendered by Barack Obama's campaign and election. And that would be true, but for the fact that those expectations in this case were raised by his own campaign operatives.  

To the extent that hemispheric relations received any attention in the campaign, the Obama team's themes were consistent: that President Bush had "ignored" the region, cared only about drugs and terrorism, and, most cutting, that he was a unilateralist! President Obama, in contrast, would rebuild our tattered relationships based on mutual respect and multilateralism and defuse tensions with Hugo Chavez and other radical populists.

As it turns out, if events continue on their present course, it might not be too long before many in the region start to see the Bush presidency as a golden era of engagement with the United States. It was only a quirk in the calendar that brought Obama to Trinidad in April 2009 for a Summit of the Americas; since then, not much consideration of the hemisphere, only a seat-of-the-pants response to the crisis in Honduras that impressed no one.

Of course, there is still time to right the listing USS Obama in the Western Hemisphere, but policymakers can't be happy about a looming showdown that threatens to once again embroil the administration in a contentious fight about hemispheric relations.

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