I'll start with the bad news for anyone with a pet guinea pig: this blog post is not about pets. It's about food staples -- the guinea pig being a major one for Peru, with 65 million of the critters eaten each year.  In addition to genetically engineering the perfect pig, Peru celebrates its culinary tradition in splendid a guinea pig festival.

Alas, despite a bull market at home, exporting the creature has proven difficult in a world where guinea-pigs are at times more associated with cages and hampster wheels than with fine cutlery. But now from the blogosphere a rather brilliant suggestion: export to China.  No qualms about pet vs. platter there. And guinea pigs are remarkably economical -- at just $3.20 to feed half a dozen people. Sounds like guinea pigs are a recession proof (even countercyclical) market. I'm investing now.

Hat tip: Double Handshake. 

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Former Mexican foreign minister and noted Latin American politics scholar Jorge Castañeda has a piece in this week's Newsweek, positing the fairly explosive theory that the two senior Cuban officials fired by Raul Castro this month were plotting a coup against the Cuban leader with the assistance of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. It's a fascinating piece complete with palace intrigue, betrayal and coded messages hidden in baseball metaphors. But is any of it true? 

CNN.com has a lengthy piece today featuring the baffled reactions of Cuba-watchers to Castañeda's theory:

Robert Pastor, who served as a Latin America National Security adviser for President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, returned Saturday from a weeklong visit to Cuba. Pastor said he wrote Castaneda a letter upon his return expressing his disbelief in Castaneda's contentions.

"This is Jorge at his most creative," Pastor said Tuesday.

Louis A. Perez Jr., a Cuba scholar who has written 12 books on the nation, also expressed his doubts.

"Where is this coming from?" Perez asked. "I operate with the idea that there has to be some standard of plausibility. Is there discontent in Cuba and was Lage seen as the heir apparent? Yeah, that's the conventional wisdom since last year. But that there's a conspiracy between Lage and Perez Roque? I don't think so. It would be helpful if the people who write these reports cross the barrier of speculation."

Castaneda freely offers that he has no proof, calling his thesis "informed speculation."

"I have no way to substantiate any of this," he said by telephone Tuesday from Mexico City. "I have no evidence of it."

To be fair to Castañeda, "informed speculation" is probably the best we're going to get in terms of Cuban political analysis at the moment. His theory seems as good as any of the others (It is a bit strange that Chavez hasn't publicly commented on any of this yet.) and at least it has the virtue of being entertaining.

As new president elect Mauricio Funes celebrates his victory in El Salvador, the world will be watching for answers to the inevitable question: has another Latin America country just turned to the Left?

The immediate answer is: yes. The victorious FMLN party claims deep Marxist roots -- having emerged out of an alliance of rebel groups from El Salvador's bloody civil war in 1992. FMLN appealed to voters who are fed up with poverty, crime, and the inertia of a decades-in-power ruling ARENA party. The party fell hard for Obamamania to get its point of "change" across.

But just how radical is the FMLN? That's a much more interesting thing to ponder. Funes himself is a moderate, but others in the party are less so. During the campaign, the now president elect stressed his business friendliness, and intention to keep up a strong U.S. relationship. But CATO analyst Carlos Hidalgo is still concerned. In a podcast last week, he said that high-ranking FMLN party members (including the Vice President) were intent on dismantling market reforms, dropping out of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and emulating Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution. That could undo gains including the near-halfing of poverty since the end of the war, Hidalgo worries.

Watch and wait, it seems. For now, as Bart Beeson writes for FP, the victory is exactly that for a country long troubled by civil conflict. Everyone seems to agree no matter how far left the FMLN may be, it's better that they've taken their revolution out of the jungle and into voting booths. 

I haven't really been paying attention to this year's World Baseball Classic, but my interest was piqued when I saw that the Dominican Republic, which supplies 10 percent of Major League players and which -- despite being A-Rod-less -- sports by far the WBC's scariest roster, was knocked out of competition after being defeated twice by the Netherlands, whose big league stars consist of...um...Sidney Ponson. (He's from Aruba.) I know that playoffs are a crapshoot and weird upsets can happen (Australia beat Mexico too!) but honestly, what's up with the DR?

Another thought: It's a rare event when a wealthy country like the Netherlands beating the tar out the Dominican Republic is covered as a feel-good Cinderella story. What does Parag Khanna think about all of this?

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Raul Castro made some big changes in a cabinet shake-up in yesterday. The Cuban president consolidated ministries, appointed loyalists, and sent some of Fidel's former confidants packing. The message seemed clear enough: I'm the Castro of the family now. Or, as Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuba expert at the University of Miami, told me, "Power is in the hands of Raul... Fidel is not relevant."

While the reorganization was likely a domestic calculation, there are
several points worth flagging for Cuba watchers beyond Havana's ports.

First, it is increasingly clear that the military -- Raul's closest ally -- will be the winner in his government. Top posts went to uniformed allies of the Cuban president, only adding to the stronghold grip that the military has over the economy, controlling over 60 percent. 

One department in the recent shake-up is telling: agriculture. High food prices and shortages have fueled discontent in recent months. So Castro has put food production squarely in military hands. Just six months ago, Raul Castro allowed peasants to borrow land from the government for cultivation -- a measure he hoped would spur both public and black market supplies. Now, he wants the military to bring even more "efficiency" to cultivation. "He wants to try to increase food production to calm down the Cuban people, who are upset," says Suchlicki.

Is the move one step further towards talks with the Obama Administration? Or perhaps a signal that Fidel's health continues to decline? I can't tell you the answers, but at least now we know who to ask: While Fidel strolls in the park, Raul is running the show. 

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In his first on-the-record meeting with the media, held Wednesday, CIA Director Leon Panetta discussed the destabilizing effects of the global economic crisis. After he expressed particular concern over potential trouble in Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela, the Argentines are not happy. Yesterday President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner summoned the U.S. Ambassador to discuss the CIA director's comments, and speaking at a news conference, Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana had this to say:

We consider the statements an unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of our country, even more so coming from an agency that has a sad history of interference in the internal affairs in the countries in the region."

While economists are predicting that Argentina's GDP will contract next year, none of them seem to be forecasting this sort of doomsday scenario. Ambassador Earl Wayne claims that Panetta's statements do not reflect the U.S. government's official position, but rather the CIA chief was merely recounting the opinion of a "foreign source." Even if that is true, it's hard not to get the feeling that the CIA is once again causing trouble in Latin America.

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Two days after Venezuela celebrated the passage of a referendum to remove term limits, the country still seems to be shaking off a hangover. Analysts the world over are mulling over the Venezuela's rising inflation, alarming debt burden, and perceived fiscal shortfall as oil prices fall to dismal lows.

Putting it more frankly, a former Venezuelan central bank official says the country is headed for certain stagflation. "A model based on the state entrepreneurial role is being depleted," he told El Universal. Rough words for a President who has nationalized the oil industry, among others, and may soon do the same in banking.

But if the markets say anything, it is that Chavez will simply have to start reigning in his popular but extensive spending -- something he'd avoided doing until the votes were cast. The country's currency rose on precisely those hopes yesterday.

From the looks of it, Hugo Chavez did indeed enjoy the hell-of-a party in Caracas on Sunday night, celebrating his big win. Good thing. One of the catchier slogans of the campaign, "Oh, ah, Chavez no se va!", is Venezuela's reality: Chavez isn't going anywhere. Is he sure it's a job he wants anymore? La recesion, tampoco, no se va...

Photo: THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images

In the communiqués, issued Jan. 1 and 24, the group claims to have members in five northern states: Durango, Sonora, Baja California, Chihuahua and Coahuila. The latter two border Texas....

The communiqué added that the group is made up of students, professionals and workers, mostly from urban areas, with the goal of "defending the sovereignty of the Mexican people over the aggressions of foreign capital, imperialism and the abuse and injustices of the current government."

The communiqué said that the group will not launch an armed uprising against the government but instead will focus on forming small independent "cell groups" that would be "infiltrated into the institutions of the state."

Wen Jiabao was one thing, but Fidel Castro?

Today's "Reflections of Comrade Fidel" (in Spanish) column is a fun one. In it, the communist leader blasts the Obama adminstration and congressional Democrats for their protectionist tendencies (Translation assist from Blaine Sheldon):

To please the unions that supported them in the campaign, the U.S. House of Representatives, dominated by the Democrats, launched the extremely protectionist slogan 'buy American products', which throws aside a fundamental principle of the World Trade Organization: that all nations of the world, large and small, base their dreams of development on the exchange of goods and services, for which, however only the largest and those of natural wealth have the privilege to survive.

When Fidel Castro is lecturing the U.S. government on the principles of international capitalism, you know that something strange is afoot in the new world order.

Photo: ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images

Two new Castro death-watch developments today: first, a new photo has been released of the Cuban leader meeting with meeting with Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. In the picture, the track-suited Castro looks healthier and seems to have gained a bit of weight since his last appearance, suggesting that reports of his imminent death may have been exaggerated.

Second, in his new "Reflections of Fidel" column, Castro praises Barack Obama for closing Guantanamo Bay and reflects on his "intelligent and noble face," but predicts he will not see the end of Obama's first term:

I have shortened my "Reflections," just as I resolved to do this year, in order not to interfere or get in the way of the comrades of the Party and state as they make constant decisions about objective difficulties stemming from the world economic crisis. I am fine, but I insist, none of them should feel constrained by any of my Reflections, the seriousness of my condition or my death.

I am reviewing the speeches and materials I have elaborated over more than half a century.

I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long period of time. I receive information and meditate calmly on the events. I don’t expect to have that privilege in four years, when Obama’s first presidential term will have concluded.

Photo: Government of Argentina 

Hugo Chavez, following in the footsteps of "Blogger Fidel" Castro, today debuted a new newspaper column which will be regularly syndicated in several Venezuelan papers. With a translation assist from FP Web Developer Blaine Sheldon, here are some highlights from Chavez's first effort. He starts with a baseball metaphor:

The hardest lines I gave as a baseball player were always to the right side.

Now, on the field of politics and revolution, these lines that today begin, will go to all sides with the equal force.

Only now they go with the force of ideas, of conviction, of patriotic passion.

Barack Obama's inaguration doesn't seem to have dampened Chavez's enthusiasm for Yanqui-bashing:

The other road, in which the colonial Yankee sympathizers want to take us, would condemn our country to disability, to smallness, to a historic tomb; it is the road of capitalism and its political expression: the “bourgeois democracy.”

We, the independents, go forward with the oath to which our leader Simon Bolivar made in Monte Sacro, August 15, 1805. We, the patriots, have a project, we carry a flag…

Them, the colonialists, do not have an oath, they have no project, no flag. Or, better said, as we have seen in diverse activities of the Yankeee sympathizers, their flag backwards and upside down, of seven stars and not of eight as the mandate of Bolivar in Angostura, says everything—they represent the opposite of the country, they are the antithesis, they are the anti-Venezuela, they are the anti-Bolivar. They are the negation. They are the anti-homeland.

All of this is leading up to an appeal to voters to support a February 15 referendum that would allow him to extend his term as president:

Those who want the country, come with me!

Those that come with me will have the country!

In truth, nothing in the column departs much from the familiar tropes of Chavez's rhetoric. Though it's possible that like Castro, he will soon tackle more esoteric subjects. In any event, his debut was still better than Bono's.

When President-elect Barack Obama and Mexico's President Felipe Calderon met today in Washington, the subject matter was as hot as the tortilla-soup they ate for lunch. Mexico is in the midst of a heated drug war that threatens to rip the country apart. The United States sends extensive aid to its southern neighbor to help out. But as the Council on Foreign Relations' Shannon O'Neil points out for FP's The Argument, the United States also supplies the demand for drugs, the money to pay from them, and the weapons that ratchets up the violence.

Then, there is immigration, where more than one politician has gotten burned. President Bush was among them, and even mentioned immigration in his nostalgic press conference today. Bush's proposal was beaten down brutally in Congress, before it died a quiet and unlamented death. NAFTA was also rumored to be on the table, too, with Calderon pressing Obama not to review the trade agreement, as the president-elect had promised on the campaign trail.

Both men left praising the others' efforts, and vowing closer cooperation. Both countries are economy focused, and now is no time for spats on trade. Mexico's economic growth is forecast to shrink from 2 percent to 1.8 percent, driven largely be the shrinking demand for Mexican products on Obama's side of the border.

Next up for Calderon: meeting with U.S. Congressional leaders and with World Bank President Robert Zoellick. Next up for Obama: proving his partnership with Mexico will last past lunch.

Photo: Martin H. Simon-Pool/Getty Images

Five-hundred illegal, but colorful, slot machines confiscated by police during several operations throughout Lima, Peru, meet their demise at the port of Callao on Dec. 16.

The bottles of Indonesia feel their pain.

Photo: ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP/Getty Images

Obviously, no one who works in the media can help but be disturbed by the economic troubles of the Tribune Company and its dark implications for the venerable American newspapers the company owns.

Reading the latest headlines from the Rod Blagojevich scandal, David Carr sees the danger a downsized Chicago Tribune poses to American politics:

In a city and state where corruption is knit into the political fabric, a solvent daily paper would seem to be a civic necessity. But if another governor goes bad in Illinois — a likely circumstance given the current investigation and the fact that the last governor, George Ryan, is serving six and a half years on corruption charges — what if the local paper were too diminished to do the job?

Good question. Here's another one: What if thousands were being killed in an armed conflict that directly impacted U.S. security, and no U.S. reporters were there to cover it?

While much of the U.S. media and political establishment has been ignoring the ongoing drug violence in Mexico that has claimed almost 7,000 lives, severely weakend the Mexican state, and involved 50,000 troops, reporters from the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times have largely been driving the story.

The turmoil in Mexico is already not getting the coverage it deserves. Without steady paychecks for Times reporters like Tracy Wilkinson and Ken Ellingwood, the full-scale war being waged just across the border might not be noticed at all.

Photo: ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images