Coletta A. Youngers is the Latin America Regional Associate with the International Drug Policy Consortium and a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America. She is an analyst of international drug policy, human rights and political developments in the Andean Region of South America and of U.S. foreign policy toward the Andes.
Promise of a collaborative foreign policy and focus on land reforms at home provide a glimmer of hope for new Colombian president Juan Santos’s administration.
Those who most need to hear alternative points of view on drug policies turn a deaf ear to those most affected by them.
The Obama administration’s rhetoric on drug policy has changed dramatically. But has the policy changed to fit the rhetoric?
Peru’s Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of former president Alberto Fujimori for crimes against humanity.
The Obama administration should take advantage of promising new trends in Latin America to seek more effective and more humane drug control policies both at home and abroad.
Most disturbingly, it is unilaterally waging war against its own Latin American “axis of evil”–the Colombian “narcoterrorists,” Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez–with little if no effort to take into account the concerns of Latin American
While Latin America may be off the maps of key political pundits, the Bush administration faces immediate and extremely important policy challenges that will shape U.S.-Latin American relations over the course of President Bush’s tenure in the White House
We need to shift the policy debate in Colombia so that politicians in Washington begin to feel that they can get more support by developing effective alternatives.