Around the Hemisphere

• Ecuador ratifies a new constitution with a 64% “Yes” vote. Some of the immediate impacts: 1)tightens presidential control over banking, energy and telecom industries 2)Correa now has direct control over central bank, can set interest rates 3)allows for a second, four-year presidential term. Given Correa’s wild popularity in Ecuador (around a 70% approval rating), winning re-election seems a foregone conclusion. Now let’s see if he starts to consolidate power even more, as Chavez did when he first pushed through his constitutional rewrites in 1999.
  

• The cartel violence rages on in Mexico as sixteen bodies are found in Tijuana, murdered execution-style.
  

• With the uptick in hurricane action these last few years or so, stories of devastation seem to blend into one another. Katrina, Ike, Rita, etc… What we rarely see, however, is how all these hurricanes hit other, much poorer nations than our own. Ike did some massive damage in Cuba, as evidenced in these photographs.
  

• U.S. financial crisis impacts markets in Buenos Aires and São Paulo
  

• Does Obama’s “Change” message remind Venezuelan-American voters a little too much of Chavez?
  

• A statue dedicated to recently deceased FARC leader Manuel (Tirofijo) Marulanda Vélez was erected in Caracas. Gustavo Coronel characterizes it as “a new affront to the decent and democratic people of America”.
  

• Statistics like this always make me sad. In August alone, the Amazon lost another 756 square kilometers of acreage, an area roughly half the size of the city of São Paulo.