If you were worried that Hugo Chavez's global reach would shrink right along with the oil prices, there good news for your today, as Lebanon inaugurates the Hugo Chavez shawarma spot. The Venezuelan ambassador was on site for the "emotional" opening of the restaurant, replete with great festivity all around.

The restaurant, it seems, is quite patriotic indeed -- decorated with flags and pictures of the Venezuelan president and, nearby as the press release from the Embassy put it (my translation), "instructions of our head of state relating to the fight for the sovereignty of the oppressed people of the world against the pretensions of potential imperialists."

What atmosphere! Add the waiters' red shirts and hats, clothes traditional to Venezuela, and you've go the whole deal. Now, I just wonder how good the shawarma is.

Interesting analogy from the New America Foundation's Patrick Doherty, ahead of this week's Organization of American States summit:

The Palestine analogy is early, but we have three very good data points on which to base it. First, in December 2008 at a meeting of the Rio Group of Latin American heads of state, one of the only issues the summit was able to agree on was that the incoming Obama administration needs to end its embargo of Cuba.

Second, in Trinidad at the Summit of the Americas, while Cuba was not on the formal agenda, Cuba was the major topic of conversation both at the summit and in the media. As my colleauge Phil Peters points out, Trinidad was really a Cuba summit.

The third data point is this diplomatic full court press in the run up to the Honduras Ministerial of the Organization of American States, in which multiple sub-groupings of states have submitted a variety of proposals for repealing the act which expelled Cuba from the organization in 1962.

All three point to one clear message: the price of a new relationship with Latin America is ending the dysfunctional legacy of our old ones, in particular, the indiscriminate and disproportionate economic embargo the United States maintains on Cuba. That's pretty close to the formula that the Arab world has used for at least two decades with Palestine: don't think we are going to help you move your regional agenda forward until you help us out on getting a Palestinian peace deal done.

Also, in both cases, the Obama adminsitration has to contend with the reaction from domestic interest groups if it plans on a significant policy shift.

Over the last decade, the leftist insurgents have regularly spilled over into Panama, seeking rest and respite from pursuing Colombian armed forces. But rarely have they appeared as frequently or penetrated so deeply into Panamanian territory as in recent months, say residents and officials here in Darien province.

And guns aren't all they're bringing with them.

Panamanian and U.S. officials say it's no coincidence that drug-related violence has risen in tandem with the more frequent sightings of the guerrillas, whom the State Department labels drug traffickers and terrorists.

U.S. counter-narcotics officials believe that the FARC and other Colombian traffickers are shipping more drugs from Colombia overland across Panama to avoid tighter control of Pacific and Caribbean coastal waterways by the Panamanian and U.S. naval forces. ...

Whether it's because of the drug trade or more aggressive pursuit by Colombian troops, the increased presence of the FARC on Panama's side of the Darien rain forest is indisputable, several locals said.

That Alvaro Uribe's aggressive offensives against the FARC in Colombia have led to an uptick in rebel violence across the border in Panama (as well as Ecuador) sounds quite plausible. It's in some ways similar to how Chechnya's rebel violence spilled over into Dagestan and Igushetia after the Russian crackdown there. Or how the Taliban expanded its influence in Northwest Pakistan after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Or even the increase in drug violence in the southwestern United States since Felipe Calderon's crackdown on Mexican cartels.

It's certainly never safe to border a country in the midst of a violent insurgency, but in the short-term, aggresively fighting the insurgency can make life painful for the rest of a country's region. Something governments probably should keep in mind before demanding that their neighbors squeeze the balloon. 

Days before his murder, Guatemalan lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg recorded this video predicting that he would soon be killed and that the Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom would be responsible:

Rosenberg was shot and killed while riding his bicycle on Sunday. He had been representing a financial expert named Khalil Musa who was himself murdered along with his daughter after accusing a state-owned bank of corruption. Rosenberg had publicly accused the government of conspiring the kill Musa. The video quickly went viral after Rosenberg's death, sparking anti-government demonstrations with thousands of angy protesters demanding Colom's resignation and calling for an international investigation.

Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin has been following the tech angle on all of this including today's arrest of an IT worker for "inciting financial panic" by suggesting on Twitter that Guatemalans remove their money from the accused bank. Guatemalan Twitter users are responding by retweeting his post en masse.

Do we have a second "twitter revolution" on our hands? And does this one have a better chance of success? Over to you, Evgeny.

Update: Great rundown of the situation so far from Ethan Zuckerman.

This has to qualify as the most dangerously stupid swine-flu overreaction yet:

Haitian officials rejected a Mexican aid ship carrying 77 tons of much-needed food aid because of ''unfounded'' swine flu fears, Mexico's ambassador said Wednesday.

The Mexican navy ship El Huasteco was to arrive May 2 in Port-au-Prince carrying rice, fertilizer and emergency food kits to help the impoverished country respond to chronic hunger and devastating tropical storms.

But Mexican Ambassador Zadalinda Gonzalez y Reynero said Haitian officials told her April 29 they would not accept the ship, which was still in Mexican waters near the Yucatan peninsula at the time.

''The crew was in perfect health and there was no risk at all,'' Gonzalez y Reynero told The Associated Press, adding that the cargo and 64 sailors aboard the ship had all been screened in Mexico.

24 percent of children in Haiti suffer from chronic undernutrition. Glad the country has its priorities in order.

Tyler Cowen looks for a silver lining for Mexico in the swine flu:

Once the national government discovered what is going on, they acted decisively and without undue panic.  There has been very little denial, a common feature in the early stages of health crises (how long was it until the U.S. government acknowledged AIDS?).  No one is treating the Mexican federal government like a banana republic or a basket case or thinking that the Canadian government would have done so much better.

Am I wrong?  Could this episode in the longer run bring Mexico closer to the community of developed nations?  Might Mexicans now be more likely to self-identify with a government that is at least partially competent?

Most Mexicans seem to agree. Over 70 percent give Felipe Calderon's government high marks for its handling of the crisis. 

Thanks to Mexico's raging drug violence, there's been a growing meme in the U.S. media -- including this magazine -- that the country was teetering on the brink of anarchy. The Obama administration even chose an expert on state failure as its ambassador to the country. The Calderon administration's decisive response to swine flu at least complicates this notion.

Compare, for instance, Mexico's fast and seemingly effective handling of swine flu to China's disastrous initial denial of the 2003 SARS outbreak and ask which one looks more like a failed state.  

Mexico's problems haven't gone away. This is still a country where 11,000 public servants have been sanctioned for corruption in the last three years and more people have been killed in drug violence than all the U.S. troops killed in Iraq. There are also new fears that Calderon will use the flu crisis to consolidate power. 

However, I think it's safe to say that more than a few governments around the world would have collapsed or reverted to dictatorship given the horrendous few months that Mexico has had on the economic, crime, and public health fronts. Mexico, on the other hand, is gearing up for what promises to be a lively and close-fought midterm election.

It shouldn't be shocking that stable and functioning states can sometimes respond to crises in ways that seem hopelessly inept (Just ask anyone in New Orleans) or that weak and corrupt ones can provide some public services quite well. Where Mexico falls on this spectrum is certainly open for debate, but the fundamental strength of the country's political institutions are stronger than they're often given credit for.

ALFREDO GUERRERO/AFP/Getty Images

State-owned Venezuelan oil company Citgo finalized a deal yesterday to donate an island it owns in the Delaware river back to the state of New Jersey. Citgo built refineries on Petty Island decades ago but the facilities are no longer in use and the island has become a sanctuary for eagles and waterfowl. New Jersey plans to create a nature sanctuary on the island.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez trumpted the deal at last weekend's Summit of the Americas. According the Newark Star Ledger the involvement of Chavez spooked New Jersey governor Jon Corzine who decided not to attend the handover ceremony:

A ranking Corzine administration official, however, said the governor's office feared Chavez was planning to issue a video statement complimenting Corzine, which would prove potentially sticky for the Democrat during his re-election bid this year. The official said the concern was that Republicans would use a Chavez statement to paint Corzine as a "socialist."

You know things have gotten bad when the former CEO of Goldman Sachs is afraid of being called a socialist.

Comedian Stephen Colbert likes to brag about his ability to boost the book sales and political careers of his guests -- the scientifically-proven Colbert bump -- but he's got nothing on Hugo Chávez.

After the Venezuelan president gave a copy of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent to Barack Obama at the Summit of the Americas, the book's sales have skyrocketed:

In just hours, the book, by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, rocketed to bestseller status on online book store Amazon.com.

The English version was at No. 11 on the site's list of top sellers Saturday night. On Friday, it had been No. 60,280.

The book topped Amazon's "Movers and Shakers" list on Saturday -- with a reported 466,378-percent increase in popularity on the site.

Back in 2006, Chávez pushed Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival" to the top of bestseller lists after praising it in an address to the United Nations.

Can it be long before authors are clamoring to appear on Alo Presidente?

Thailand's efforts to extradite former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and charge him with corruption were made quite a bit harder last night, thanks to Nicaragua of all places:

The Nicaraguan government announced late Wednesday it had named Thaksin a "Nicaraguan ambassador on a special mission" to bring investment to the Central American country and issued him a passport in January.

The announcement came just hours after the Thai government said it had revoked Thaksin's personal passport, accusing him of stoking the unrest that paralyzed the Thai capital earlier this week.

If you're wondering what Nicaragua has to with any of this you're not alone. Thai authorities seem to have been taken off guard by this development as well. Thaksin has spent some time in Nicaragua since he was exiled so it's conceivable he simply payed for a passport, though he claims to be short on money since the Thai military seized his assets. 

This isn't the first time in recent months that Nicaragua has stuck its nose into an international dispute that seemingly doesn't concern it at all. Last September it became the first (and so far only) country other than Russia to recognize the breakaway Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. 

Granted it's only two examples, but it will be interesting to see if President Daniel Ortega continues to offer his country as a one-stop-shop for conferring (albeit dubious) legitimacy on international scofflaws.

He started out as one of Peru's most unexpected, and most well-respected political leaders. But today, former President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in jail for the killings and kidnappings that took place under his watch. The trial took place under close international watch -- the first such proceeding for a democratically elected leader. Many hope it will set a precedent for ending impunity for the powerful the world over.

What remains just as fascinating as the trial, however, is Fujimori's continued presence and legacy in Peru, where many remember histechnocratic leadership fondly (in 2002, Fujimori was more popular than the then president). Fujimori suppressed the Shining Path rebellion, undertook public works, and rehabilitated a broken economy even as he relied on shady characters to help enforce justice and keep the system in order. The former president's daughter Keiko, now a congresswoman, is seen as a possible presidential candidate.

64 percent of Peruvians believed that Fujimori was guilty -- certainly no way to lay down the law, but a good indicator of his waning brand name. Still, the "Fujimoristas" (yes, they even have a website) have hardly disappeared from Peru. And if they stay technocratic, without that whole death-squad part, they might even pick up a few votes in 2011.

ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP/Getty Images

No one is betting on the health of Argentina's economy these days. Ever since the country defaulted on its international debt in 2001, confidence that its economic situation could turn around has been extremely low. Indeed, in February, when the Argentine government requested permission to once again enter its bonds into U.S. capital markets, the Wall Street Journal suggested this response:

The SEC should instead insist that Argentine securities bear a warning like cigarette packages: 'This issuer has a record of misrepresentation, debt defaults and debt repudiation, and therefore may be dangerous to your financial health. Do not consume this issuer's bonds unless you have a platoon of lawyers and a Navy to back them up, and you're prepared to use both.'"

Why, then, would China use this week's Inter-American Development Bank meeting in Medillín to agree to a $10.24 billion currency swap with a country whose bonds could be worth next to nothing by the end of 2010? Two reasons seem apparent -- one is straightforward, the other is disturbing.

First, as Xinhua reports, the Argentines can essentially use the RMB as extra cash to pay for imports. But one might note that, since the Yuan is not a convertible currency, the money can only be used to purchase goods from -- you guessed it -- China, potentially giving a boost the Dragon's ailing export sector.

The other reason for the swap seems more strategic, especially in conjunction with other currency trades that China has very quietly signed with Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Belarus, and Indonesia over the past three months. As the Financial Times puts it:

Economists...see Beijing's currency swap deals as pieces in a jigsaw designed to promote wider international use of the renminbi, starting with making it more acceptable for trade and aiming at establishing it as a reserve currency in Asia, something that would also enhance China's political clout." 

Combine these actions with China's recent call to replace the U.S. dollar as the international reserve unit, and it starts to look like this currency swap has nothing at all to do with Argentina.

RAUL ARBOLEDA/Getty Images

The New York Times reports, following the Mexican media, that Hillary Clinton's visit to Mexico is in danger of being upstaged by concerns over Obama's reported pick for ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual. Pascual, who is director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and former ambassador to Ukraine, has written extensively about failed states and ran the State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization under the Bush administration:

That could raise hackles among some Mexicans, who take umbrage at recent assertions by American analysts that drug-related violence has so destabilized Mexico that it is danger of becoming a failed state.

Pascual's views on state failure are state laid out in this 2005 Foreign Affairs piece (subscribers only) co-written with Stephen Krasner:

In today's increasingly interconnected world, weak and failed states pose an acute risk to U.S. and global security. Indeed, they present one of the most important foreign policy challenges of the contemporary era. States are most vulnerable to collapse in the time immediately before, during, and after conflict. When chaos prevails, terrorism, narcotics trade, weapons proliferation, and other forms of organized crime can flourish. Left in dire straits, subject to depredation, and denied access to basic services, people become susceptible to the exhortations of demagogues and hatemongers.

Most of Pascual's work concerns post-conflict scenarios like Iraq and Afghanistan and doesn't quite apply to Mexico's current situation. I haven't been able to find anything he's written specifically on Mexico and he didn't mention drugs or Mexico as major concerns in his Brookings "memo to the President.

It'll be interesting to see if he shares the view, put forth by Niall Ferguson and Sam Quinones in the most recent issue of FP, that the Mexican state is in danger of being overwhelmed by a "criminal-capitalist insurgency." His appointment does seem to indicate that the Obama adminsitration is taking that possibility seriously.

Photo: Brookings Institution

Is this a joke? After denying the Dalai Lama a visa to attend an international peace summit in South Africa, the country today announced that it would award Fidel Castro its top honor, the Order of Companions of O. R. Tambo In Gold. Previous awardees include Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Okay, okay, I know that the Cuba's revolutionaries were tight with South Africa's anti-apartheid left back in the day. (both countries championed the non-aligned movement). But in 2009, isn't that day over yet?

Sigh. It's a moments like this when even the news wires get a little fiesty. 

South Africa, which prides itself as a model of democracy and human rights, drew fire from opposition parties this week when it denied a visa to Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who was due to attend a peace conference."

A well respected South African journalist put it more bluntly: 

Human Rights and democracy are no longer the cornerstones of our foreign policy. We prefer countries with entrenched, unelected, self-perpetuating leadership. Ignore the dull thud of rifle butts."

(Hat tip: Passport reader Eric Jon Magnuson)

ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images

We know that Fidel Castro really loves baseball. We also know that he really hates losing. But even so, he seems to have taken Cuba's elimination by Japan from the World Baseball Classic pretty hard. First there was this self-flagellating column from last Friday, praising the "technical and scientific" advancement of Asian baseball and berating his own team's coaches:

I should point out that the team leadership in San Diego was abysmal.  The old criteria of well-trodden paths prevailed against a capable adversary who is constantly innovating.

We must learn the relevant lessons.

In a weird psuedo-Maoist moment, Cuba's players were instructed to study the column and "systematically evaluate" Castro's writing upon their return to Havana.

Then in a column yesterday (written before Japan's eventual win) he declared that the results proved that the contest had been "organized by those who run the exploitation of sports in the United States" because Cuba had been placed in the same division as eventual finalists South Korea and Japan. (He actually kind of has a point about that.)

If anyone should be humiliated by how the WBC turned out, it's those overpaid capitalist stooges the Dominicans, not Cuba. As he did after the Olympics, Castro seems strangely focused on the negative but I guess that's just blogger Fidel doing his thing. 

Speaking of blogger Fidel, this piece about Rahm Emanuel from February is kind of how I would imagine Gabriel Garcia Marquez would write after a 36-hour Robitussin binge.

JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images