Regional Studies: Latin America 
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Student Event: The Fight For Liberty in Latin America
The DC Forum For Freedom is hosting its second spring semester lecture at the Cato Institute on Friday, February 26th from 4-6pm. This month's speaker is Cato scholar Ian Vasquez, who will be addressing Latin America's uneven struggle for liberty over the past 30 years. Vasquez will describe those trends and inspiring work being done throughout the region to promote the fight for liberty in Latin America.
The event will be held at the Cato Institute (1000 Masssachusetts Av., NW, Washington, DC) and will be broadcast online with a live discussion board here. Please register for the event and the reception to follow, here.
South America: The Destructive Potential of Presidential Power
Cato VP Gene Healy discusses the imperialist tendencies of many of the United States' neighbors to the south, and draws comparisons to politics within the US. For years, Lain American nations have shifted more and more power to their chief executives, which has led to great abuses. In fact, research has shown “that presidential systems are especially bad for developing countries, because they encourage cults of personality and foster instability.” Healy says that the abuses possible do not necessarily outweigh the benefits of the separation of powers system, but rather, it is our responsibility to "watch our presidents closely, and check them when they try to slip their constitutional bonds."
The Idiot's Bible
Mary Anastasia O'Grady writes in the Wall Street Journal: "Just days after Hugo Chávez gave President Barack Obama a copy of 'Open Veins of Latin America' in Trinidad last week, the English-language version of the book shot to the No. 2 slot on Amazon.com.... It is widely regarded in free-market circles as 'the idiot's bible.'"
"Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap Between Latin America and the United States"
What: Book Forum Where: Cato Institute Description: Featuring the editor Francis Fukuyama, Professor of International Political Economy, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; with comments by Norman Loayza, Lead Economist, Research Department, World Bank; moderated by Ian Vásquez, Director, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, Cato Institute
Mexico's Drug War: The Growing Crisis on Our Southern Border
What: Policy Forum Where: Cato Institute Description: Featuring Ted Galen Carpenter, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute; Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance; Vanda Felbab-Brown, Foreign Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and Daniel T. Griswold, Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute.
FARC Politics, FARConomics
By Ibsen Martinez: "Shortly after noon, on Wednesday, I finally sat down to write my monthly column when I received news that 15 hostages, including three U.S. defence contractors, held for years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the infamous drug-trafficking guerrilla, branded a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union, had been rescued by a successful army operation. Most eminent among the hostages was the 46-year-old former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt."
Munger on the Political Economy of Public Transportation
"Mike Munger and Russ Roberts deliver one of the best podcasts ever. Munger describes the way in which moving from a private bus system to a public system in Santiago Chile made essentially everyone in the city worse off. The puzzle that Roberts keeps pushing Munger to resolve is why the political incentives do not work to abolish the public system and revert to a private system." - Bryan Caplan
From Breadbasket to Basket Case
By Mary Anastasia O'Grady: "As the presidential campaign drones on, Barack Obama and the Democrats are fleshing out the promise of "change" with some specific, big-government policy proposals. Many are familiar, perhaps because they already have been tried – in Argentina."
The Global Food Crisis : Political Factors
AfricanLiberty.org produced this short video about the political factors behind the Global food crisis.
Venezuelan Student Movement Leader Awarded $500,000 Milton Friedman Liberty Prize
Yon Goicoechea, leader of the pro-democracy student movement in Venezuela, has been awarded the 2008 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. Under Goicoechea's leadership, the student movement organized mass opposition to the erosion of human and civil rights in Venezuela and played the key role in defeating Hugo Chávez's bid for a constitutional reform that would have turned the country into a dictatorship.
Ohio Needs More Foreign Trade
By Daniel T. Griswold: "But tinkering with a 14-year-old trade agreement [NAFTA] will not bring an industrial renaissance to Youngstown and other Rust Belt cites. The relative decline of those regions dates back to the 1960s and 1970s, when the American economy began a transition from heavy industry toward an information-based service economy."
The Lie About Where Che Lies
By Alvaro Vargas Llosa: "It is not surprising, of course, that Che Guevara's remains are a myth. Everything about this modern saint is a myth -- his love of justice, his romantic disposition, his goodness."
Why Does Latin America Fail?
By Mario Vargas Llosa: "Institutions cannot flourish in a country if the people don’t believe in them—if, on the contrary, people have a fundamental distrust of their institutions and see in them not a guarantee of security, or of justice, but precisely the opposite."