Latin America

As President Obama grapples with accusations of torture by U.S. agents, I suggest he consult the former Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle. I first contacted Daschle in 1975, when he was an aide to Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota, who was leading a somewhat lonely campaign against CIA abuses. At the time, I was researching a book on the United States' role in the spread of military dictatorships throughout Latin America.

Slinging fish tacos at a stall in Grand Central Market on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles was never Ana Sanchez's idea of heaven. But the job pays enough so that she can wire money to her mother and daughter in Mexico, and last year she sent $1,500. This year Sanchez, 44, reckons they'll be lucky to receive half that. With her wages stagnant and the cost of living climbing, her family in Jalisco state will have to do without. "If it gets bad I won't be able to send any money anymore," Sanchez, a Commerce resident, said Tuesday.

For all its miscues at home, General Motors Corp. has built a powerhouse operation in Latin America, where its fuel-efficient vehicles could play a crucial role in returning the battered company to health. Since it filed for bankruptcy a month ago, the automaker has been striking deals to shed much of its operations, including its Hummer, Saturn and Saab brands and its Opel division in Europe. GM is closing more North American factories, laying off workers and slashing its U.S. dealership ranks.

The book that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave his U.S. counterpart, Barack Obama, has long been regarded as a bible for the Latin American left, found on the bookshelves and university reading lists of a generation of students in the region. "Open Veins of Latin America" recounts, as its subtitle says, "Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" -- the harvesting of the region's cotton, rubber, coffee, fruit and other resources by U.S. and European powers.

Venezuela took control this weekend of a Chinese-built communications satellite, part of a deepening trade relationship that some say illustrates waning U.S. influence in Latin America. Accompanied by Chinese technicians at a communications facility in western Guarico state, President Hugo Chavez presided at a ceremony in which Venezuela formally assumed operation of the Simon Bolivar, a $400-million satellite that China launched in October.

Near the end of the 1930s, the Nazis were making inroads in Latin America. To quell that momentum, President Roosevelt named Nelson Rockefeller head of a special agency -- a veritable international chamber of commerce and cultural exchange agency -- that sent various Hollywood celebrities to visit these countries to, in effect, win the hearts and minds of the people. Hollywood was even asked to include Latin American themes in its movies to bolster good will. One such celebrity ambassador was Walt Disney, who traveled the area during the late summer of 1941.

Alarmed by the rise in Latin American drug traffic in West Africa, nations including Colombia, Brazil and the United States are establishing or increasing their police presence in that unstable region. Racked by internal strife that has left them poor, crime-ridden and institutionally weak, several West African nations in recent years have become key transit hubs for Colombian, Peruvian and Bolivian cocaine headed to Europe. In an interview last week, Colombian National Police commander Gen.

David F. Belnap, an award-winning foreign correspondent for The Times in Latin America who later became a respected editor, has died. He was 87. Belnap, who received the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University in 1973 for his coverage of Latin America, died of heart failure Sunday at Methodist Hospital in Arcadia, according to his wife, Barbara. Based in Buenos Aires for much of his career, Belnap had worked for United Press for 20 years before joining The Times in 1967.

Sometimes he wakes up with a shudder, thinking he needs to take cover, fast. At other moments he dreams he's running and the mortar shell strikes again, fiery shards of metal ripping through his flesh. "I take pills to help me sleep," Gregorio Calixto says, proffering a box of cheap over-the-counter medication, the only kind he can afford.

The perceived immigrant-bashing of GOP presidential hopefuls has drawn fury in neighboring Mexico, where U.S. policies may resonate more than anywhere else. President Felipe Calderon complained recently that the candidates have competed to be "the most loudmouth, the most macho and the most anti-Mexican." The next U.S. president could champion changes in immigration affecting, for better or worse, the lives of millions of apprehensive Mexicans. Many Mexicans are able to watch U.S.