* The conventional wisdom seems to indicate that Mexico is headed for more political gridlock after the first mid-term elections in seven decades without the Institutional Revolutionary Party (unquestionably one of history's great oxymorons) in power. Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald begs to differ. He suspects that two historical trends bear watching: whether President Vicentee Fox gets a second wind or becomes a lame duck and the trend for candidates for the next presidential election to rise to the surface. * I think that Fox will turn out to be a lame duck, especially if as expected, Fox's National Action Party loses the governorship of Nuevo Leon. It also appears, with Lula as a model, a leftist will be the clear front-runner in the 2006 presidential race (Fox cannot succeed himself). * The important lesson of Fox's impact now is that switching parties no longer appears to be taboo and that the PRI can no longer take their support in certain regions for granted. Mexico may even elect its first transvetite member to congress! * Land remains a hot issue in Brazil. * Nestor Kirchner continues to bring Argentina out of the wilderness and seems determined to focus on transparency and justice in his country. In little more than a month, he has ordered the opening of the government's secret files on the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires in 1994 (which Hizbollah and Iran have been linked to), ordered agents of the state intelligence agency to testify, purged the military to reassert civilian control,and has managed to take the first steps towards cleaning up Argentina's notorious Supreme Court. All this despite Carlos Menem's petulant effort to deny Kirchner a mandate. * The Washington Post has received a copy of a confidential report prepared for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe that claims that the AUC (United Self-Defense Force of Colombia), the primary right-wing paramilitary group fighting the Left-wing rebel FARC (both of which are on the list of terrorist organizations maintained by the US Government) have something else in common: as much as 80% of AUC's funding comes from drug trafficking, 10% of which goes to the AUC's military efforts and the remander goes to the pockets of the top commanders. Well, at least unlike the FARC, to my knowledge they aren't kidnapping people. This poses major problems for Uribe: as he tries to demobilize the AUC, the top military commanders are proving to be resistant. Meanwhile, the citizens of Colombia are wedged in the middle. Remember this old saying: when elephants battle, the grass suffers. * FARC has also started using child homicide bombers lately. The thing is, the children aren't recruited - they're tricked. * For Colombia's mayors, it's a year of living dangerously. Many of the country's municipal leaders are living under an ultimatum from the FARC: Resign or die. * Hugo Chavez and his allies seem determined to scuttle the proposed referendum on Chavez's continued rule in Venezuela. First, he goes public with his contention that his enemies are plotting a coup, then his party - which holds a majority in the national Assembly fails to show up for a meeting to set up the elections council and they accuse Human Rights Watch of meddling because of this letter to Chavez. The opposition - which has persistently been riven with their own disputes - cannot agree on their representatives on the election council. * Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue has it right: "Without continued pressure from the international community and greater unity and strategy within the opposition, it [the Venezuelan referendum] isn't going to happen (this year)." If the opposition can put aside their differences for a moment and place the blame squarely on Chavez, they may be able to get the OAS on their side. I wouldn't count on their putting aside their differences, however. The next installment of Randinho's Latin America Briefing will be August 5. Meanwhile, regular updates concerning Latin American events can be found at Beautiful Horizons. P.S. Randy's work is actually leading me to rethink the structure of our Regional Briefings, possibly along Point/Counterpoint lines where 2 people with different ideological filters each give their 4-5 top links. Not only will they see things differently, they tend to see different things. Panama's Omar Torrijos used to run his inteligence system that way, and it worked very well for him. Thoughts from the audience?