On Monday morning, crowds gathered in the community of El Mozote to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Peace Accords that ended El Salvador´s 12-year-long civil war. At the solemn event, El Salvador’s first leftist president, Mauricio Funes, apologized for the state role in the 1981 El Mozote massacre and announced reparations for the victims and their families.

Obama’s State Department has become indistinguishable from that of the Bush era. Last week the State Department announced that it would expell Venezuela’s Consul General in Miami, Livia Acosta. No official reason was given, but it was clear that the move was in response to an uncredible Univision “documentary” and the response from right-wing Cubans in Miami.

The U.S. government has denounced the recent legitimate presidential election in Nicaragua, while supporing flawed elections in Haiti and Honduras over the last two years. While this U.S. policy may appear baffling, it begins to make sense when you consider the long-standing U.S. political agenda in the region.

In recent years, media coverage of Mexico has painted a picture of widespread fear. It is a picture that bears little resemblance to what I experience living in central Mexico. Could this picture have been deliberately invented or exaggerated? Might the government of Felipe Calderón want to justify its policies of militarization to attract further U.S. support?