Author » Miami Herald Americas

Presented by President Hugo Chávez as an instrument to make shopping for groceries easier, the “Good Life Card'' is making various segments of the population wary because they see it as a furtive attempt to introduce a rationing card similar to the one in Cuba.

Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas underwent emergency surgery Friday to remove his gall bladder, inflamed as a result of his 135-day hunger strike earlier this year to demand the release of political prisoners.

Cuba's Fidel Castro, reprising symbols of his former power, wore a full military uniform and spoke to a mass audience outdoors Friday for the first time since he nearly died four years ago.

Fidel Castro dusted off his full military uniform for the first time since stepping down as president four years ago, a symbolic act in a communist country where little signals often carry enormous significance.

Fidel Castro dusted off his full military uniform for the first time since stepping down as president four years ago, a symbolic act in a communist country where little signals often carry enormous significance.

The U.S. State Department Thursday flatly denied reports that the Obama administration is considering swapping the “Cuban Five'' spies in U.S. prisons for a U.S. government subcontractor jailed in Havana.

An electoral official accused President Hugo Chavez and his allies of breaking campaign laws by using state-run media to berate rivals and praise friends ahead of this month's legislative elections.

Mexican soldiers killed at least 30 suspected cartel members in two shootouts near the U.S. border in a region that has become one of biggest battlegrounds in the country's drug war, authorities said Friday.

A Honduran who survived the massacre of 72 migrants in Mexico helped untie the only other survivor – a wounded Ecuadorean – and the two fled together, an official said Friday.

El Salvador has made it illegal to belong to a street gang in the wake of an attack on a passenger bus that killed 17 people.

In stories Aug. 7 and Aug. 8 about Colombian government efforts to cement control over a longtime rebel stronghold, The Associated Press, quoting a former deputy defense minister, Sergio Jaramillo, erroneously reported that 30 percent of the world's cocaine had come from the area. The correct figure is 13 percent of the world's cocaine.

Police say a 17-year-old teen was detained after he shot arrows with cell phones attached over the walls of a prison in southern Brazil to inmates waiting on the other side.

With Venezuela's much-watched parliamentary elections coming up Sept. 26, El Universal newspaper has produced an interactive map showing a state-by-state breakdown of the last five national votes from 2004 to 2009.

Colombian authorities say five police officers were killed and four wounded by a roadside bomb while on patrol in an area where leftist rebels are active.

At a time when immigration is a political flash point across the country, the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is in sharp decline.<p/> Fewer migrants without papers are sneaking into the United States and more may be leaving, according to a study released Wednesday by the respected Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.

Mexican police have rescued six illegal Cuban migrants kidnapped by gunmen in the beach resort of Canc&uacute;n who were demanding ransoms of up to $10,000 for their release.