Today the two leaders, often partners but sometimes rivals, offer starkly different paths toward development, and it is Brazil’s milder and more pragmatic approach that appears ascendant. Amid the decline of American influence in the region, the Brazilian president is discreetly outflanking Chávez at almost every turn in the struggle for leadership in South America.
Chávez [...]

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As commodity prices soar, South America’s agricultural giant steps up to feed a needy world
The Brazilians still call these lightly wooded plains the cerrado—or “closed” or “inaccessible” land. But nowadays the cerrado is very much open for business, its fertility a springboard from which the world’s newest superpower in agriculture is emerging. “We have been [...]

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South America has a right to beef up its armed forces but is not in an arms race, Brazil’s defense minister said on Monday, as the region raises military spending on the back of high oil, food and metals prices.
Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim, who is in Venezuela to discuss a planned South American security [...]

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A spectacular find may prove what many have long suspected. E-mails and other files found on a FARC laptop in the jungles of Ecuador show that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez may have close relations with the terror group. By Jens Glüsing more…

Photo Gallery: Colombia’s Struggle against FARC
Sarkozy to the Rescue: France Announces Mission to Broker [...]

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Now, a young, well-traveled, multilingual foreign-policy scholar, Parag Khanna, suggests in “The Second World” that we are on the cusp of a new new world order — “a multipolar and multicivilizational world of three distinct superpowers competing on a planet of shrinking resources.” The three are the United States, the European Union and China. The [...]

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BUENOS AIRES — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez launched another verbal assault on President Bush last night as he led about 20,000 supporters in an anti-American rally, calling the US leader a “political cadaver” and blasting his policies as “imperialist.”
“Gringo go Home!” Chávez shouted to raucous applause at a crowded soccer stadium in the Argentine capital. [...]

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About ten thousand protestors rallied in Sao Paolo on Thursday against President Bush’s arrival in Brazil, chanting “Bush Go Home” and prompting police to fire tear gas (BBC). As the protests demonstrate, anti-Americanism runs deep in Latin America, and many are skeptical (LAT) of this new attention from the United States.
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Mercosur, the “Common Market of the South,” is the largest trading bloc in South America. Mercosur’s primary interest has been eliminating obstacles to internal trade, like high tariffs, income inequalities, or conflicting technical requirements for bringing products to market. Yet Venezuela’s recent addition to the group has experts wondering if Mercosur will reorient itself as [...]

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