Global News Journal

from Reuters Investigates:

Dive in, the water’s fine

Special reports are the best of the best from Reuters, and this is the place to find them. We'll be featuring investigative stories, in-depth profiles and long-form narrative stories here.

Reuters has a global Enteprise Reporting team with editors in New York, London and Singapore, drawing on the work of some 2,900 journalists in 200 bureaus around the world.

To kick it off, take a look at this story from Frank Jack Daniel in Caracas. Venezuelans will elect a new parliament on Sunday and the opposition is hoping to make a dent in President Hugo Chavez's power.

Chavez has dominated politics for more than a decade -- as one opposition figure put it: "In Venezuela, you have to win elections like David beat Goliath." FULL STORY

We'll have more on Latin America tomorrow with a profile of Dilma Rousseff, the frontrunner in Brazil's presidential elections.

China’s Long March into Latin America

A $16 billion oil deal between China and Venezuela signed this week illustrates Beijing’s growing economic might and political influence in Latin America.

Trade between the region and China has swelled from $10 billion in 2000 to more than $102 billion in 2008.

Latin American leaders — not just leftists like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez but also moderates such as Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — have beaten a path to Beijing and Chinese officials are frequent visitors in return.

China is gobbling up Latin American commodities from soy to iron ore and at the same time eyeing a market of 500 million people while growth in its traditional trade partners remains flat.

And increasingly, China is a source of financing and investment in a continent that the United States has traditionally considered its backyard.

“It is important to recognise the Chinese engagement is significant and is having a significant effect,” R. Evan Ellis of the Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies in Washington said at a presentation at London’s Canning House. “Latin American politics and economics are coming of age and the region is looking to a number of players, not just the United States.”

Former U.S. President George W. Bush’s government is widely seen as having paid too little attention to Latin America during its eight years in power. Some U.S. politicians have raised the alarm about communist China’s intentions, warning that it poses a security threat. So should the United States be afraid?

Honduras crisis unleashes media wars

TEGUCIGALPA – When ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya made a symbolic (and brief) return to his homeland on Friday, what could have been a potentially dangerous situation turned out to be a show for live television — a far cry from the bloody coups of the past in Latin America.

Even as he walked toward the border in sight of Honduran security forces waiting to arrest him, Zelaya, in his trademark cowboy hat, took a call from CNN’s Spanish language channel and conducted a long interview with the broadcaster.

The de facto leader of Honduras, Roberto Micheletti, dismissed the scene as a media circus, “irresponsible, ill conceived and not very serious.”

Micheletti’s interim government has been using the media, too.

State television has been repeatedly playing rousing music over pictures of pro-Micheletti marches and slogans urging Hondurans to “Hold Firm” for peace and democracy. One of the most frequently played pieces is the stirring theme music from the 1980s movie about U.S. Navy fighter pilots, “Top Gun.”

Periodically, authorities cut transmission on all cable channels and broadcast announcements about curfews on local TV stations. Uniformed police officers are hosting news programs. 

At the time when Zelaya was staging his symbolic come-back on the border, state TV stations were showing a meeting of an electoral committee and a demonstration by Hondurans waving blue and white flags and holding placards (some in English) praising Micheletti and denouncing Zelaya.

Sometimes admiration comes from unlikely places

Barack Obama’s American admirers are not the only ones who compare former U.S. President John F. Kennedy to the current U.S. leader. Leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a vociferous critic of the United States, also invokes the charismatic late president when he talks about Obama, who, like Kennedy 48 years earlier, was a young senator when he was elected to the White House.

Chavez brought up Kennedy again this week, as he railed against Washington over the coup in Honduras, which many observers have called an unwelcome reminder of the ousters of Latin American leftists during the Cold War — waged partly under Kennedy.

Obama must “stop dithering” and prove that he is not supporting the coup, Chavez thundered during “Alo Presidente,” his weekly television show.  ”I want to remember President Kennedy,” Chavez said, during the seven-hour broadcast.

“U.S. imperialism killed him, and I hope it does not kill   Obama, because Obama is in the same shirt of 11 rods, a shirt of 11 rods,” Chavez said, using a Spanish idiom referring to a situation too large for someone to handle.

 Chavez has been no fan of recent U.S. leaders. He repeatedly called George W. Bush “the devil.” And he has said he fears Obama has the “stench” of his predecessor, whom he accused of backing a brief coup against him in 2002.

But Kennedy is Chavez’s favorite U.S. president and the fiery ex-paratrooper has reminisced about his childhood admiration for the slain leader, despite his anti-Communism and backing of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which sought to oust Chavez’s mentor, Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Novelist Vargas Llosa stirs up left and right in Latin America

The Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who in his youth was a champion of the Latin American left and later evolved into an outspoken conservative, has been caught up in a struggle between two presidents camped out on opposite ends of the political spectrum — Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Peru’s Alan Garcia.

The two presidents frequently trade barbs as Chavez positions himself as the leader of the left in Latin America who favors nationalizing companies, while Garcia presents himself as the polar opposite who has won the support of conservatives by vigorously defending free enterprise, signing free trade deals, and strengthening ties to the United States.

On Thursday, Garcia jumped on Chavez after Vargas Llosa was delayed for more than an hour while passing through immigration in Caracas, where authorities told him that because he was a foreigner he was prohibited from making political comments while in Venezuela. “Any attack against free thought and expression is unfortunate, intolerant and anti-democratic,” Garcia said of the delay. Vargas Llosa, who was on his way to speak at a conference hosted by the Cedice think tank that promotes free markets, called the warning an “intimidating gesture” and said “nobody can put limits on free speech.”

Vargas Llosa also defied the prohibition and warned that “Venezuela is getting closer and closer to being a Communist dictatorship and farther and farther away from a liberal democracy.” Venezuela’s state news agency, ABN, focused on Vargas Llosa’s softer comments, running with the headline “Vargas Llosa recognizes that this isn’t a totalitarian country” after the writer said that “If Venezuela were a totalitarian dictatorship we wouldn’t be here.” Chavez has yet to address the Vargas Llosa episode.

Vargas Llosa, who many critics say is one of the finest Latin American novelists ever, has been criticized by his peers for abandoning the left and has never won the Nobel prize. He was once an admirer of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, but later became a sharp critic. He also had a high-profile falling out with Nobel prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was a longtime supporter of Castro. Vargas Llosa and Garcia Marquez were once great friends but came to blows in a famous fight three decades ago that was ostensibly over a woman but was widely believed to be about politics as well.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Edwin Montilva. Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa speaks to the media in Caracas May 28, 2009

(Additional reporting by Frank Jack Daniel and Marco Aquino)