Countries around the world are frantically searching for their citizens in Haiti, but this week's events have been particularly hard on Brazil, which had a big footprint in the country before the quake. At least 14 Brazilian troops were killed in the quake with four more still missing. Brazil is the leader and largest troop contributor to the UN's MINUSTAH peacekeeping force. The famous Brazilian doctor Zilda Arns Neumann -- sometimes called Brazil's Mother Teresa -- was also killed.

But Brazil has also been on the frontlines of the response. In a telling sign of the priority the country is giving the disaster, Brazilian defense minister Nelson Jobim is on the ground in Haiti with a delegation to assess the situation and devise a recovery strategy. President da Silva has been in communication with President Obama and former President Clinton to coordinate the aid effort. The Brazilian government has pledged $15 million in aid and its military cargo planes are flying in supplies. Additionally, Foreign Minsiter Ceslo Anorim is arguing that MINUSTAH's mandate be expanded to assist with the recovery effort.    

With the already rickety Haitian state essentially dealt a knockout punch this week, the country is going to need an unprecedented level of international assistance in the years to come. The United States is understandably taking the lead in the immediate rescue effort, but given its nation-building commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan and history of frequently occupying Haiti, the U.S. may not be the best candidate for the long-term stabilization effort. 

Brazil, on the other hand, is already involved Haitian security, and as others on this site have written,  has been increasingly looking to act as a global player. The Haitian crisis is an opportunity for the rising superpower to take a leadership role in regional security. And lord knows Haiti will need the help.   

Early this evening, a massive earthquake rocked Haiti, the United States' island neighbor to the south and, by far, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. The earthquake measured a 7.0 on the Richter scale and occurred close to the densely populated capital of Port-au-Prince. Initial reports indicate massive building damage, including to hospitals and water and electricity plants. Casualties are expected to number in the thousands. The United States and other nations have started to deploy emergency aid; U.N. envoys Paul Farmer and former president Bill Clinton are rallying aid as well.  

We'll know more tomorrow. In the meantime, aid organizations accepting donations to help Haiti include: the American Red Cross; the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund; Mercy Corps; Partners In Heath; and UNICEF. 

Update:  Mark Goldberg at U.N. Dispatch flags a worrying story. The earthquake has reportedly destroyed the U.N. peacekeeping mission's headquarters in Haiti; the U.N. keeps around 7000 troops in the country. Mark worries about the U.N. peacekeepers' capacity to act as first responders. The quake has also destroyed at least part of the country's presidential palace.

Also: the L.A. Times has a good list of Twitter users to follow in Haiti. Electricity, landline, and cell phone service appears to be out in much of the country. 

The tone of U.S.-Cuban relations have taken a number of turns for the worse in recent days. The largest of these may be the arrest of an American contractor for distributing laptops on the island. Christopher Sabatini explains the significance of this for U.S. policy on Foreign Policy today: 

Ultimately, though, last month's arrest of the USAID contractor demonstrates the ineffectiveness of Obama's much-heralded April announcement of opening up telecommunications with Cuba. In his speech, Obama called for a change in U.S. policy, allowing private companies to develop direct contacts with the Cuban people. It sounded nice, but unfortunately something got lost in the translation from presidential directive to governmental regulation to reality.

The final regulations that resulted and were released in September did little to advance any of Obama's lofty rhetoric. The sale or construction of telecommunications infrastructure to Cuba by U.S companies -- necessary to allow the famously antiquated island to have digital contact with the rest of the world -- is forbidden. Instead, what is allowed are donations, something Cuba already permits.

Simply put, Obama's plan is not enough to unleash the initiative and potential of private businesses to open up the island.

Also this week, Cuba bitterly protested their inclusion on a list of countries whose citizens will receive increased scrutiny when traveling into the United States in the wake of the Christmas bombing attempt.

The chances of  rapproachement also took  a hit from the U.S. side with the resignations of Senators Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan. Dodd, in particular, was an outspoken advocate of easing the embargo.

Thanks largely to the Castro brothers' increasingly bellicose anti-Obama rhetoric, a parade of recent articles. But how much of the honeymoon was just hype. I suspect that blogger Fidel's early praise of Obama's election led many to think that there was more potential for change than there actually was. (After all, Ahmadinejad once said nice things about Obama, as well.)

Now that it's fairly clear the Castro's have little intention of enacting political or economic reform, and, John Kerry notwithstanding, there's little congressional momentum to normalize relations for their own sake, Obama is left with relatively few options for changing the policy beyond relatively unconrtoversial steps like lifting the travel ban for Cuban-Americans, and moral-support gestures like agreeing to be interviewed by Cuban bloggers.  

Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect anything more.

Mexico City became the second North American capital and the first ever Latin American city to legalize gay marriage today: 

The bill passed the capital's local assembly 39-20 to the cheers of supporters who yelled, "Yes, we could! Yes, we could!"

Leftist Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of the Democratic Revolution Party is widely expected to sign the measure into law.

The bill calls for changing the definition of marriage in the city's civil code. Marriage is currently defined as the union of a man and a woman. The new definition will be "the free uniting of two people."

In recent years, Mexican politics have increasingly been defined by the kind of social and cultural disputes that the U.S. has long wrestled with. Alexis Okeowo profiled the country's ongoing abortion war for FP last week.

It's not clear what Hillary Clinton was aiming for exactly last Friday, when she warned Latin American countries "that if people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them." If she expected South American leaders to suddenly about-face, she got it really really wrong.

Clinton carefully avoided mentioning Brazil when she listed countries such as Venezuela and Bolivia accepting Iranian overtures. Given Brazilian President Lula's recent high-profile meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it's hard to believe they weren't being alluded to. The only response has been from Lula's special advisor for international affairs, Marco Aurélio Garcia, who said "It was not a message for Brazil. If it was, it was the wrong message."

But actions speak louder than words, Clinton's assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, is in Brazil now, and has not been granted a meeting with Lula or his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Celso Amorim. He is pictured above meeting with Garcia instead.

The ham-handed "warning," combines with regional anger at the US accepting (with weak caveats) the results of the Honduran election -- Brazil and other Latin American leaders are still saying Zelaya must be reinstated -- and ill-will towards the American bases in Colombia.

In the context of Honduras, Clinton's pedantic explanation of democracy in her speech --

we do worry about leaders who get elected and get elected fairly and freely and legitimately, but then, upon being elected, begin to undermine the constitutional and democratic order, the private sector, the rights of people to be free from harassment, depression, to be able to participate fully in their societies"

-- is offensive, and does nothing to reverse the feeling that the U.S. only notices the region as its backyard. Not a great way to woo allies.

In that vein, Valenzuela is scheduled to be similarly rebuffed when he goes to Argentina tomorrow. While as a victim of Iranian sponsored terrorism the country won't be bonding with Ahmadinejad, the administration seems annoyed at Washington's stance in the region, and officials are whispering to the press that Obama has not lived up to the change he promised.

EVARISTO SA/AFP/Getty Images

This weekend, Honduran citizens voted Porfirio Lobo president, months after a coup ousted Manuel Zelaya. Here, Foreign Policy contributor and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Otto J. Reich replies to criticism of his FP article on the coup.

How does one rebut so many errors and distortions as those in Christopher Sabatini and Daniel Altshuler's response ("Calling a Coup a Coup," from Nov. 2) to my Foreign Policy article on Honduras ("Honduras is an Opportunity," from Oct. 27). Let us deal with just some of them.

By my count, Sabatini and Altshuler (hereafter, "SA") repeat the term "coup" 11 times, an incantation designed to cast a spell over the reader. But no matter how many times the liberal duo recite the mantra to misidentify the events that removed Manuel Zelaya from office, it was not a coup. Since the entire letter is based on that false premise, its conclusions are equally false.

SA accuse me of "ideological revisionism," for saying the U.S. should recognize the transitional government that is based on Honduran law, while they insist on calling a constitutional removal of a law-breaking president by a unanimous vote of a nation's Supreme Court, a "coup." Curiously, SA dismiss the Supreme Court action by citing two obscure U.S. academics' papers which portend to rebut a U.S. Law Library of Congress report that supported the legality of Zelaya's ouster. Is that ideological on their part, or just plain confused?

The ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, had violated several articles of the Honduran Constitution (as documented in the aforementioned Supreme Court decision), and therefore according to Honduran law (not my opinion) he was no longer president of Honduras when he was deported (the deportation was not legal, but it occurred after the legal removal from office). Further evidence that Zelaya's removal was not a coup was the ratification of his removal by a nearly unanimous vote of the Honduran Congress. SA gloss over Zelaya's violations of the law and focus instead on his subsequent -- and inexcusable -- deportation.

SA claim that "Reich vigorously defended Micheletti's assumption of power as the victory of the rule of law and a stand against Latin American leftists." False. I not only did not defend (or condemn) Micheletti, I mention Micheletti only once in my article, in passing, acknowledging that he replaced Zelaya. This is only one example of the paucity of facts in SA's article. I am not sure whose article they were rebutting, but I don't think it was mine. Their allegations are directed at "conservatives," "Micheletti apologists," and others -- people I know did not write my FP article.

Attacking "conservatives" put SA in a bind. They charge that "U.S. conservatives have argued that Barack Obama's administration should recognize the Nov. 29 elections in Honduras as a way out of the political crisis." Actually, it is not only U.S. conservatives, but also the Obama administration that has come to that conclusion, as evidenced in the agreement brokered by Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon in late October. It was Zelaya who renounced the agreement just days after he had signed it. Shannon then said the U.S. would recognize the winner of the Nov. 29 elections as the legitimate head of the next Honduran government.

In their letter to FP, SA praise the U.S.-brokered accord as follows: "[Most] importantly, the prospective settlement sets the stage for internationally recognized elections that will transfer power to a new president and help the country move forward." I agree. And contrary to SA's implication, I support that accord and think it is the best way out of the current crisis. I would hope that Zelaya's retreat from it has not caused SA to reverse course.

Although most of their letter can be dismissed as confused and self-contradictory, Sabatini-Altshuler's ideological motivation in attacking "U.S. conservatives'" position on the Honduras electoral crisis (as embodied by me, I assume) is serious. In concluding, SA claim that the "conservative" posture on Honduras they have attacked in their letter "would have mirrored the United States' foreign-policy blunders in Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, the United States supported façade democracies -- deadly authoritarian regimes that held civilian elections to legitimize their rule -- to pursue questionable geopolitical aims. This position cheapened elections and weakened nascent democracies."

This not only reveals a clear leftist ideological direction by SA, but also a revisionism resulting in crass historical distortion. This is a contemptible and ignorant slap at Ronald Reagan, the president in "the 1980s," under whom unprecedented progress was made in hemispheric democracy. When Reagan took office in 1981, a majority of Latin Americans lived under military dictatorships. When the conservative Reagan left office eight years later, the situation had been reversed: An overwhelming majority of our neighboring countries had transitioned to democracy after long and brutal dictatorships, such as Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Chile. Which of those governments were "façade regimes," as in SA's accusation? Which were U.S. policy blunders? In which of those countries did the U.S. weaken "nascent democracy"?

As someone who worked for Ronald Reagan for those eight years, I can attest that democratic progress was no accident. It was the result of a policy designed and implemented to bring freedom and democracy to our hemisphere. That two American liberals attempt to re-write history and thus demean the U.S. role in the advance of freedom in this region, imperfect as it was but one that came at a high cost in lives and treasure, is an obvious illustration of the moral bankruptcy of American liberalism today.

But SA are not satisfied with running down their country: Their despicable and rude anti-Reagan screed reaches another ridiculous nadir with the statement that those (1980s) U.S. policies were based on "the pursuit of questionable geopolitical aims." Really? What aims were those? The main geopolitical aim of Ronald Reagan, as I remember, was the defeat of communism. The policy succeeded. And with it came an unprecedented global spread of freedom, human rights and prosperity. By whose standards was this policy "questionable?" I do recall it was questionable to the Kremlin, many western Marxist "intellectuals," and most Third World socialist despots and guerrilla leaders. It was not questionable to the hundreds of millions of people of Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union whom it helped to liberate from oppression. We now know they supported Reagan. As did the other hundreds of millions people who benefitted from the end of the Cold War and from the ensuing prosperity resulting from the "peace dividend".

Why does U.S. Cold War policy appear to be a "blunder" to Sabatini-Altshuler? For the same reason they cannot see why the U.S. should support free elections in Honduras. Historical ignorance and political ideology blinds them.

If all goes according to plan this weekend, the Honduran leaders who ousted President Manuel Zelaya in the face of nearly unanimous international opposition, will hand power to a new government:

The months of turmoil as Zelaya pressed for his reinstatement, the negotiation and U.S. shuttle diplomacy are about to be overtaken by business as usual — Honduran style.

Even many of the poor who supported Zelaya as he aligned himself with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Latin America's new left say they will vote for conservative front-runner Porfirio Lobo, a 61-year-old wealthy businessman who is ahead by double digits in the polls.

"I will vote for the one who can fix this and give us work right now, because those suffering are the poor," said Reina Gomez, 53, a single mother who washes clothes for a living and who supported Zelaya in 2005.

Time's Tim Padgett writes that "the international community is poised to brand the vote illegitimate," but, with the possible exception of Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega, the outrage is likely to be pretty short lived. With a (somewhat) democratically elected leader back in power, most of the countries that condemned Zelaya's removal (and got stuck in the position of advocating for the increasingly erratic leader) will likely quietly resume relations with Honduras's new government after a cooling-off period. 

So what did we learn from all of this? Padgett says the affair shows "how little progress Central America has made since the coups, civil wars, and corruption of the past." This seems a little unfair. During the Cold War era, U.S. or Soviet backing allowed coup governments to simply remain in power, becoming military dictatorships. The international condemnation of the Honduran coup forced the government to quickly hold elections to hand off control to a more legitimate leader. This has been a consistent pattern in recent coups. 

If anything, the Honduras crisisis a demonstration that the United States and international organizations simply don't have as much power to influence a country's internal politics as they commonly assume.

Peru is starting to remind me of a character in a Latin American soap opera. A wife who has grown to hate her husband, Chile, after a near divorce (the 19th century war) followed by decades of perceived slights. She sits at home, stewing and seeing infidelities everywhere (accusations that Chile and Bolivia are making a secret deal, that Chile is preparing for war, that Chile is taking parts of the coastline). She frequently confronts him hysterically, and then they fight. This, of course, doesn't mean he isn't cheating.

If it were really a soap, Chile would obviously have planted spies in the Peruvian military, as the latter's government is alleging. The spy was apparently sending information south about an ongoing border dispute case in the International Court of Justice. As of last count, Peruvian officials were talking about six supposed spies, some of whom are already on the lam; Peruvian president Alan Garcia called Chile a tinpot republic; Chilean President Michelle Bachelet responded to these "offensive" and "pompous" statements with cool denials; in the meantime her minister of foreign relations assured Chile that "derogatory accusations" do not affect them.

As if all this weren't enough, as in any soap opera, there are ambiguous minor characters in both countries: the legislators in Chile who accuse Peru of orchestrating a hostile communication strategy, and the original alleged spy, Víctor Ariza, whose mother cries and threatens to cut off her hands.

The madness doesn't go as far as war, the Peruvian authorities are attempting to avoid accusing Bachelet herself of involvement, and most analysts agree trade relations should continue uninterrupted. It's part of what diplomats there call a two strands approach: political relations on one side, trade on the other.

As interesting as it is, the analysis is thin on what is really going on. There are many serious stakes in all this, after all. Can it really be chalked up to the long-standing rivalry between the two countries dating back to the 1883 War of the Pacific?

One article in an Argentine paper questions the timing of the story -- which broke when Garcia and Bachelet were at a summit together -- and points out that it serves as a distracting and unifying issue for Garcia, at a time when he faces unrest and unpopularity at home. His approval ratings are at 26 percent, dropping to 14 percent in many areas of the country.

In the next nail-biting episode: If Peru presents Chile with proof, how will Chile respond?

ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP/Getty Images

Thankfully, beyond a few muggings, last night's massive Brazilian blackout seems to have caused little lasting damage. But the international coverage of the event is probably a good preview for the Olympic host country's next six years:

Questions remained about what happened and what the fallout would be in Brazil, a nation seen as an ascending economic and political power.

"The image of Brazil, of Rio, is bad enough with all the violence," said 35-year-old graphic designer Paulo Viera, as he sat in a restaurant a block from the sandy arc of Copacabana.

Standing in an open-air restaurant where patrons were drinking quickly warming beer, Viera said he worried about how the outage might look for a city that last month was picked to host the Olympics and will be the showcase city for soccer's World Cup in 2014. "We don't need this to happen. I don't know how it could get worse."

The blackout comes on the heels of a wave of gang fighting in Rio's slums that led to violence fears ahead of the games.

"It's sad to see such a beautiful city with such a precarious infrastructure," 22-year-old law student Igor Fernandes said. "This shouldn't happen in a city that is going to host the Olympic Games."

This is a little unfair. Even Rio's mayor acknowledges that the city has a long way to go in terms of safety and infrastructure before the games, but they do have another six years, and the IOC knew what they were getting when they awarded Brazil the games. 

The problem with developing coutries hosting events like the Olympics is that while the intention is to highlight the enormous progress they've made, they're just as likely to highlight the shortcomings. . Every crime wave or infrastructure failure, or corruption scandal Rio suffers in the next six years will now be covered in the context of whether the city is ready for the games.

Just ask South Africa or Russia. 

The Berlin Wall fell twenty years ago, and the Cold War itself ended soon after, but if you're feeling nostalgic, tune into the Cold War of the Andes: somewhat more farcical and definitely less likely to end in nuclear annihilation, but riveting nonetheless.

With Venezuelan troops lining up on the Colombian border, Peruvian officials' urging fellow South American countries to reduce military spending arms purchasing, in addition to creating a regional security force, is making a lot more sense. Peruvian officials indicated that Brazilian President Lula was receptive to the proposal in a recent meeting, and will be meeting with Colombian and Paraguayan presidents in the next week.

Although the campaign should be seen in light of Peruvian suspicion of neighboring Chile, military spending in many South American countries has increased in recent years. Some estimates place 2008 spending at $60 billion, which would be well over double the amounts spent in 2003. According to American calculations, Brazil, Venezuela, Chile and Colombia account for 80 percent of arms purchases. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also urged caution in purchases, warning against entering a race.

Of course, experts have pointed out in past years that the main concern is probably not war between countries, no matter what Venezuela says, but rather resource related violence. Even Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias of Costa Rica warned against buying more arms, while noting that the region has never been so peaceful.

YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images

When you think about communist propaganda, you might think of Stalin glaring down at you from a wall, happy workers singing in strangely clean factories and well-thumbed copies of Mao's little red book.

But it's the twenty-first century, and even commies must keep up with the times. A dissident faction of Peru's Shining Path -- VRAE -- is now making its case online, with a website and You Tube uploads of revolutionarily inspiring songs. 

The songs performed by a VRAE leader in the Andean musical style of Huayño assure the listener that:

Imperialism will be defeated/socialism will flower the world/ imperialism, mainly genocidal Yankees, sucks the blood of the millions of poor around the world/to combat them, to defeat them, is our task/to annihilate them with our forces is our obligation."

 
But, the political analysis on their website is even better. They tear apart the jailed Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman, labeling him a "revisionist" and a terrorist, and criticize governments such as Nepal, Hamas and Bolivia for practicing pseudo-socialism.

The tract reads like a blast from the past, as if the Amazon fosters active denial of lost battles (many Japanese immigrants in Brazil famously denied their emperor's defeat for nearly a decade). In a shout out to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, they call him the natural leader of socialism, upon whom it is incumbent to lead the armed fight against Yankee imperialism. They urge unity in this:

We must put to one side the narrow nationalism which is very noxious and damaging ... [and which is] parasitically fomented by Yankee imperialism and its lackeys."

Extra points for their genious use of the word lackey together with Yankee imperialism-- when's the last time you heard that one?

While it's all song and talk -- and assurances of democratic intentions -- on the internet, Peruvian authorities are somewhat concerned about the possibility of the narco-terrorist group recruiting more followers. Leaders from the main Shining Path group, which put down arms a decade ago, are contemplating running for office in upcoming Peruvian elections.

I'm not surprised by conservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer's negative comments about President Obama in an interview with Der Spiegel, but what's his problem with Brazil?

Krauthammer: He is a man of perpetual promise. There used to be a cruel joke that said Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be; Obama is the Brazil of today's politicians. He has obviously achieved nothing. And in the American context, to be the hero of five Norwegian leftists, is not exactly politically positive.

Brazil has "obviously achieved nothing"? The country has pulled off a veritable economic miracle in recent years, maintaining impressive growth rates and accumulating enough cash reserves to become a net creditor, all while expanding social programs. It's weathered the global economic downturn surprisingly well and along with East Asia, seems to be leading the pack in recovery. It's a global leader in investment in alternative energy. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his foreign minsiter Ceslo Amorim have become ubiquitous and influential participants at global summits -- and as my boss recently argued, have shown the Latin American left an alternative to Hugo Chavez's confrontational populism. Brazil recently beat the U.S. for the right to host the 2016 Olympics. (Krauthammer may remember that one.)

I'd say calling someone the "Brazil of politicians" should be a compliment.

I don't quite understand the point of this:

U.S. President Barack Obama asked Spain to pass Cuba a message on the need for democratic reform when he met Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero earlier this month, according to a U.S. official....

"When (Obama) learned that Foreign Minister Moratinos was about to go to Havana, he suggested that Moratinos urge the Castro regime to take steps to reform and improve human rights," the U.S. official said on Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity....

The U.S. request to deliver a message to Cuba was first reported by Spain's El Pais newspaper, which said Obama talked of a potential turning point in the relationship with Havana, but said it was important for Cuba take some steps.

"Have (Moratinos) tell the Cuban authorities we understand that change can't happen overnight, but down the road, when we look back at this time, it should be clear that now is when those changes began," Obama told Zapatero, according to diplomatic sources quoted by El Pais.

 I have a feeling that after half a century, the Castro brothers probably realize that the U.S. doesn't much like the way they run their country and don't need the Spanish foreign minister to tell them. And if Obama has something new to say to the Cuban regime, why can't he say it himself, if not through his own envoy than through a letter.

It sends a pretty strange message that the administration is unwilling to have any direct contact with the Cuban regime, even just to admonish them, but seems to have no problem with other countries doing it. 

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner probably still can't believe she signed a newly minted media law on on Saturday, after a hot-blooded 20 hour debate in the Senate that ended with an early morning street party outside Congress. The law, which passed 44-24 effectively limits media monopolies, replacing an archaic law passed by a military dictatorship government in 1980.

But every fairy-tale has to have an evil monster, in this case the media conglomerate Grupo Clarín, which has fiercely opposed the Kirchner government and which, under the new law's rules, will now have to sell off radio stations and television channels:

"The government is going after the media with all its remaining power," Clarín Editor Ricardo Roa wrote Saturday. "It has rushed through a misleading law that seems to be progressive but in reality only sets us back: it will promote a press that is weaker and more docile."

Clarín, of course, has advocates. They question the one year limit to sell assets that the law imposes, and whether this will not drive prices down, allowing pro-government buyers to snap up the stations.

Offsetting these questions is the glowing support of varied sectors of Argentine society and the international, like United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression Frank La Rue, who called the new law "an example for other countries."

Perhaps the most interesting reaction was that of the opposition leader, Mauricio Macri, mayor of Buenos Aires, whose party has now proposed a law giving them regulation power over the city's cable TV.

History repeats: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Photo: JUAN MABROMAT/AFP