The Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts could have an impact on U.S. policy in Latin America, writes COA's Eric Farnsworth. He adds that "an administration that has shown little appetite for pending trade agreements with Colombia and Panama, for example, will not likely decide that now is a good time to take action."

"Be it an earthquake in Haiti or the violent drug war fought in Mexico today, the United States can ill afford to turn a blind eye to our neighbors in this hemisphere," writes former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Antonio O. Garza in The Dallas Morning News.

"Haiti will quite literally need to be rebuilt from the ground up," writes COA's Eric Farnsworth. The United States, aided by partners in the international community,  "should work  together under a special new UN mandate to restore the nation and put it on a new path to long-term, sustainable development. This is where the true test of U.S. leadership will come," he added.

"Perhaps the best signal yet of a new U.S. approach to the hemisphere is on trade issues," writes COA's Eric Farnsworth in this op-ed arguing that the current administration must rekindle languishing U.S.-Latin American trade agreements.

In the first article released running up to AQ's Winter issue on youth leaders, the education secretary of the Capital Federal de Buenos Aires looks at why youth are losing their sense of democracy, and what to do about it.

Recent crises have revealed a fundamental weakness in the Obama administration’s nascent Latin America policy, write AS/COA's Christopher Sabatini and Jason Marczak in Foreign Affairs.

"Of all the developments in Latin America over the past decade the consolidation of power in Venezuela by Hugo Chavez who was first elected in 1998 and the advancement of the 'Bolivarian Revolution' is clearly among the most significant," writes COA's Eric Farnsworth for The Huffington Post.