Costa Rican Surprise

After all the scandal and intrigue heading into Sunday's vote I had written off Costa Rica as a CAFTA member. I was wrong. Bully for the Ticos.

WaPost & Letras Libres on MVLL

About the only obsession more unhealthy than the one a I had for Robert Kaplan is my fixation on Mario Vargas Llosa. As it stands right now WaPost and Letras Libres are not helping. From his perch at WaPost Jonathen Yardley reviews MVLl's latest, The Bad Girl. He hits it right on:

Mario Vargas Llosa's perversely charming new novel isn't among his major books -- it lacks the depth of Conversation in the Cathedral, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter or even the more recent and less successful The Feast of the Goat-- but it is irresistibly entertaining and, like all of its author's work, formidably smart.

That The Feast of the Goat was not more successful is downright criminal. Yardley correctly notes that the failure to award the Nobel Prize for Literature is "scandalous." I prefer to consider the exclusion criminal.

Letras Libres meanwhile has plastered MVLl on the cover and dedicated almost the entire issue to him...I'm going to lose my mind. They even have small contributions from Carlos Alberto Montaner and Enrique Krauze...the dork in me is thrilled beyond all measure.

Bookpages: Hugo Books Reviewed in NYT

At the Sunday Book Review Daniel Kurtz-Phelan checks out Hugo Chavez by Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka as well as the entusiastically titled ¡Hugo! by Herbert Matthews...um I mean Bart Jones, who should not be confused with Bert Jones.

I'll keep this brief since I am a bit sleepy. Marcano and Barrera Tyszka's book is a pretty clunky translation of the original Spanish but it is the better of the two. Jones is a boot licking sycophant who loves his Hugo.

Marathon Madrazo: Once a Cheater, Always a Cheater

Roberto Madrazo could not cheat his way to Los Pinos but Madrazo did cheat his way to another finish line.

Drugs and LA

Drugs, drugs and drugs. If you would lived in LA you would think nothing else matters to US. Can you blame the people of LA for being resentful. We extol the virtues of the market, preach about the importance of free trade and one product that they can produce in abundance and seems to have impressive demand in the US is the one thing that we chastise them for.

In Mexico they recently snagged 10 tons of coke as well as a Sinaloa cartel head but Mexicans are still wary of an anti-drug aid package proposed by W. Meanwhile coca cultivation is ramping up in Ecuador and I don't care what the LAT piece says Correa will run US out eventually and stop cooperating to control the trade. A concern for US is the fact that we are scrambling for a new base in LA without much success.

I don't drink and I don't smoke. I've never touched a narcotic except once or twice in my younger days as friends shared and I happened to be seated between. So no, I did not inhale, exhale or even hale. That being said I say LEGALIZE IT. Stop punishing the cultivators for our sins. Stop encouraging illegal trafficking. Who is to say that those same networks will be used to smuggle in terrorists or even weapons of mass destruction?