(CNN) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wasn’t well enough to give his annual state of the union speech on Tuesday and hasn’t been seen publicly in more than a month. But that didn’t stop the country’s vice president from announcing a high-level appointment in Chavez’s name. Elias Jaua will now be Venezuela’s foreign minister, [...]

CARACAS, Venezuela –  Mireya Bustamante spent most of the day trying in vain to find flour to bake a birthday cake for her 4-year-old son. Like most Venezuelans, the single, 33-year-old officer worker has periodically struggled with such food shortages for years, and, like many in the country, thinks they’re [...]

There were long lines at Cuban passport agencies as citizens lined up to test the state’s new loosened laws, which — it is hoped — will make it easier for Cubans to obtain passports to travel abroad, and allow some Cubans who have left the country to return. One big [...]

(Reuters) – Brazil is urging Venezuela’s government to hold elections as quickly as possible if President Hugo Chavez dies, senior officials told Reuters on Monday, a major intervention by Latin America’s regional powerhouse that could help ensure a smoother leadership transition in Caracas. Brazilian officials have expressed their wishes directly [...]

As Venezuelans anxiously awaited news from ailing President Hugo Chávez and his ministers in Cuba in recent days, I received a tweet that stated, “This is the first case in history where a country subsidizes another, and is dominated by the latter.” Indeed, historians in the future will be scratching [...]

IT WAS supposed to be a moment of triumph, the inauguration of a third six-year term for Hugo Chávez, secured by a comfortable victory in a presidential election last October. Yet on January 8th Nicolás Maduro, the vice-president (pictured left), wrote a letter to the National Assembly on Mr Chávez’s [...]

Hugo Chávez and the Castro brothers knew in the summer of 2011 that the Venezuelan’s chances of survival were almost nil and began to prepare for a post-Chávez era. They would try to cure the loquatious lieutenant colonel, of course, but ever since the doctors realized the type of cancer [...]

Argentina seems to be on a collision course of its own making.  Inflation is soaring and investment is on the wane.  Despite being the third largest economy in Latin America with abundant resources, Argentina no longer has access to voluntary capital inflows and the growth that funding affords. The republic [...]

CARACAS—Venezuela held an inauguration party on Thursday for President Hugo Chávez to kick off his fourth term. Throngs of supporters took to the streets. A few heads of state flew in. The only thing missing: the cancer-stricken president himself, who officials say is lying in a hospital bed in Havana. [...]

FOR a month Hugo Chávez has been lying in a hospital bed in Havana after undergoing his fourth operation since 2011 for cancer. Most of the facts Venezuelans have been given about their president’s condition have been sparse and contradictory. But the information minister recently declared that the patient faced [...]