Juan Cristobal Nagel over at Caracas Chronicle makes an excellent point about how the current protests in Venezuela are a direct extension of the 2013 election:

With everything that has gone on since, it is easy to forget what preceded the April 14th election. After Hugo Chávez died and millions participated in a cathartic funeral, an election was called. It was supposed to be a mauling for the opposition. …

Its official result, a razor thin margin of victory for Maduro, was completely unexpected.

Elections are supposed to settle things, and this one settled something alright: politics in Venezuela would never be the same again. …

None of what we see now would be happening if Maduro had romped to a twenty point victory, as was expected. None of this would be happening if the election had been close, but if both sides had accepted its results.

Nonetheless, the opposition — led by Capriles and López — represents two alternatives, not one. Even if Maduro had lost last year, chavismo would still be the plurality.

On Sunday The Washington Post published a story on how Mexican Pres. Enrique Peña Nieto’s popularity is skyrocketing in Washington and elsewhere, but not “in the only place it really counts: Mexico”:

The biggest problem, analysts say, has been Mexico’s feeble growth. Last year, the country’s economy expanded at just 1.1 percent, far below the goal of 5 percent growth Peña Nieto set when he ran for president.

His most widely touted move, a constitutional amendment opening Mexico’s state-controlled energy sector to private and foreign investment, was advertised as a catalyst for faster growth. But it may take years for the benefits to materialize. …

‘Peña Nieto is taking on the big issues that most economists would agree have been holding Mexico back, so the view of Mexico has been quite positive,’ said Shannon O’Neil, a Mexico expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

At the same time, O’Neil said, ‘the reforms have yet to make life better for the average Mexican.’

While Peña Nieto and the PRI are playing the long game, they might not have that much time to convince the Mexican people they’re worth keeping in office.

After being criticized for the mishandling of an 8.8-magnitude earthquake in 2010, Mother Nature is apparently testing Chilean Pres. Michelle Bachelet again:

A voracious fire that spread through the hills of the port city of Valparaíso left at least 12 people dead and more than 500 families homeless on Sunday, a day after it forced the evacuation of thousands of others.

The fire began on Saturday in a forest on one of the city’s many steep, heavily populated hills. Strong winds and high temperatures quickly turned it into an uncontrollable blanket of flames that covered the colorful maze of wooden shacks and houses on the city’s hilltops. …

Ms. Bachelet declared a state of emergency for the Valparaíso region on Saturday night, putting the military in charge of public security and the evacuation.

This is the second catastrophe that Ms. Bachelet has faced since she took office more than a month ago. On April 1, a magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck northern Chile, leaving six dead and much devastation.

With an agenda as ambitious as hers, the last thing the president needs is to be dealing with natural disasters.

At least two of the Republicans expected to run for president in 2016 seem to be empathetic on the immigration issue:

Paul’s comment was in response to a question about former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s (R) recent statement that undocumented immigration was ‘an act of love,’ and not a felony. Bush’s remarks were quickly criticized by conservatives who oppose immigration reform.

Paul was not among those critics, however. ‘I don’t want to say [Bush] is terrible for saying this,’ Paul told ABC’s Jonathan Karl. ‘If it were me, what I would have said is, people who seek the American dream are not bad people. However, we can’t invite the whole world.’

Paul and Bush candidacies could make things interesting come debate time.

The New York Times has published an op-ed penned by Nicolás Maduro, the beleaguered president of Venezuela, in which he blames the U.S. media for distorting the nature of the protests currently wreaking havoc in his country:

The claims that Venezuela has a deficient democracy and that current protests represent mainstream sentiment are belied by the facts. The antigovernment protests are being carried out by people in the wealthier segments of society who seek to reverse the gains of the democratic process that have benefited the vast majority of the people. Antigovernment protesters have physically attacked and damaged health care clinics … This is why the protests have received no support in poor and working-class neighborhoods. The protesters have a single goal: the unconstitutional ouster of the democratically elected government. Antigovernment leaders made this clear when they started the campaign in January, vowing to create chaos in the streets. Those with legitimate criticisms of economic conditions or the crime rate are being exploited by protest leaders with a violent, antidemocratic agenda.

Pres. Maduro recently accepted UNASUR’s offer to mediate talks between the government and protesters.

World-renowned Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez revealed on Tuesday that her new digital newspaper should be up and running no later than early May:

Distribution will rely on cell phones and emails because Cubans have more mobile phones than computers — a meager 74 per 1,000 according to the latest official figures, she said — and easily available memory devices such USB flash drives, DVDs and CDs. The staff is also working on several backup ways of distributing the reports and getting around government censors, Sánchez added. … Government officials will likely try to crack down on her digital newspaper, Sánchez told a news conference after the award luncheon, perhaps by blocking its distribution, slandering its staffers or feeding them false information. Arresting the writers would be ‘clumsy,’ added the author of the blog Generación Y, although several independent journalists have been charged under Law 88, known as the Gag Law, with ‘publishing false news against world peace.’

Sánchez also commented on the political unrest in Venezuela, which provides up to $10 billion a year in subsidies to Cuba, saying that she couldn’t see a similar anti-government movement springing up on the island due to the political and social conditions enforced by Havana.

In Brazil, even remembering the 21-year dictatorship can be dangerous:

A session of the Chamber of Deputies to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the military coup started over an hour late on Tuesday morning and was even suspended for a few minutes due to protests from MPs … When the event finally started, [right-wing Congressman Jair] Bolsonaro opened a banner in the gallery with the words: ‘Congratulations Military – March 31, 1964. Thanks to you Brazil is not Cuba.’ One audience member responded with cries of ‘murderer.’ From there, a riot formed in the chamber and the director of the National Union of Military Wives of the Armed Forces, Ivone Luzardo … was shoved to the floor.

This doesn’t bode well for the country hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup, a tournament meant to be bring the international community together under the banner of peaceful athletic competition.

Earthquake experts say the 8.2-magnitude temblor that occurred just off the northern coast of Chile and left at least six people dead last night was nothing compared to what’s to come:

‘Could be tomorrow, could be in 50 years; we do not know when it’s going to occur. But the key point here is that this magnitude-8.2 is not the large earthquake that we were expecting for this area. We’re actually still expecting potentially an even larger earthquake,’ said Mike Simons, a seismologist at the Geological Survey. Chile is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries because just off the coast, the Nazca tectonic plate plunges beneath the South American plate, pushing the towering Andes cordillera to ever-higher altitudes. Nowhere along this fault is the pressure greater than in far northern Chile, an area known as the ‘Iquique seismic gap.’

Newly-elected Pres. Michelle Bachelet, now in her second nonconsecutive term, probably thought she was suffering a terrible case of déjà vu, a 8.8-magnitude earthquake having hit Chile just days before she left office in 2010. More than 500 people lost their lives that time.

DNAinfo Chicago has a story on longtime Chicago Public Schools teacher Jeff Rowell, who teaches math and science to 5th and 6th graders at Murray Language Academy in Hyde Park, and has recently come out as transgender:

People at the school have already noticed changes in her physical appearance, which became more pronounced this school year. Rowell started painting her nails. She doesn’t wear a wig and avoids skirts and heels — ‘you can’t teach in heels,’ she said — but she started wearing women’s slacks, jeans and shirts, which fit better than men’s clothes after she started hormones. Her skin started noticeably changing, too. Recently, a group of fourth-graders murmured among themselves as Rowell worked at a copy machine, chattering ‘Is that a boy or a girl?’ she recalled. ‘That’s the wonderful thing about kids. They’re so honest,’ Rowell said.

Though Rowell will soon go by the name “Jess Scott Celimene-Rowell,” students still call her “Mr. Rowell.”

Svati Kirsten Narula over at The Atlantic writes about the rising cost of college tuition these days and how students are forced to take on much more debt rather than simply work through college:

Follow-up comments compared the rising cost of academic credit at [Michigan State University] to changes in the federal minimum wage. In 1979, when the minimum wage was $2.90, a hard-working student with a minimum-wage job could earn enough in one day (8.44 hours) to pay for one academic credit hour. If a standard course load for one semester consisted of maybe 12 credit hours, the semester’s tuition could be covered by just over two weeks of full-time minimum wage work—or a month of part-time work. A summer spent scooping ice cream or flipping burgers could pay for an MSU education.

Not only has obtaining a college degree become more expensive relative to today’s wages, degrees have also become less valuable, though people with a college education still enjoy lower unemployment and better pay.

Pres. Nicolas Maduro seems content to allow his supporters fight fire with firepower in Venezuela, where two protesters where shot and killed by pro-government vigilantes this past Saturday:

[M]asked gunmen emerged from a group of several dozen motorcycle-mounted government loyalists who were attempting to dismantle a barricade in La Isabelica, a working-class district of Valencia that has been a center of unrest since nationwide protests broke out last month. The barricades’ defenders had been hurling rocks, sticks and other objects at the attackers, who included perhaps a dozen armed men, witnesses told The Associated Press. … President Nicolas Maduro has done nothing to publicly discourage the violence by armed pro-government militants, loosely known as ‘colectivos,’ which are also blamed for scores more cases of beatings and intimidation in multiple cities. That includes a March 19 incursion into the architecture academy at the Central University of Venezuela in the capital in which some 40 masked men and women identifying themselves as government defenders bloodied at least a dozen students.

People across the globe have been calling for dialogue between protesters and the government to begin the trek back to peace. A simple ceasefire would be suffice.

Keep that leftover New Year’s Eve champagne ready:

In 2013, at least 412 Chicagoans lost their lives violently — about 100 fewer than a year ago. That’s more than those murdered in New York, and more than Los Angeles. But a Yale University analysis says that despite Chicago’s grim numbers, the city’s crime rate is not exceptional when compared with other large cities. It ranks Chicago 19th, with violent crime levels similar to those of Houston or Minneapolis, and half that of Detroit or St. Louis.

There were two murders on the last day of 2013, but here’s hoping for 100 fewer in 2013 too.

Well what do you know:

The State Board of Education was deciding what courses will be necessary for new graduation requirements the Legislature passed last session. Those changes have been controversial; there’s been strong resistance by Latino advocacy groups, among others, to eliminating courses like Algebra II—generally seen as important college preparation—from basic diploma requirements. One provision of the law … adds a ‘community engagement’ aspect to school district evaluations. Adding Mexican-American studies to graduation requirements, [author Tony] Diaz told the board, would go a long way now that more than half of Texas’ students are Hispanic.

That this is in heavily Latino Texas isn’t the surprising bit. That it’s the state board of education is the shocking part.