Market Access This issue puts the “free” in free trade by tearing down the barriers between nations and letting goods flow unfettered across borders. The current draft mandates that member countries eliminate tariffs on all imports from other member countries within ten years after the FTAA goes into effect. Taxing…
The story of the Free Trade Area of the Americas began — and may well end — in Miami. At the Summit of the Americas held here in December 1994, the heads of every nation in the hemisphere (except Fidel Castro, who was not invited) agreed to tear down trade…
Andean Region On the great-grandfather clock of time, 500 years is about a second. And in that second, European mestizos have managed to plunder this region of nearly all its mineral wealth, subjugate the Indian populations, and force on them Western laws and the Catholic Church. But if the recent…
Miami is known for its combustible mix of people from all points on the sociopolitical spectrum. At Home Depot the wealthy former somocista bumps into the Sandinista commander who appropriated his Managua mansion. The retired Medellín cocaine kingpin lives in the same Key Biscayne condo as the attorney general who…
It is not comforting to watch our elected officials squirm in fear, and make no mistake — the Miami City Commission is scared right now. Johnny Winton, Art Teele, Joe Sanchez, and the others are twisting in their seats, worried that the city won’t be able to control the throngs…
As of press time, the World Series is tied at 1-1. No matter what happens, it’s clear the Marlins have had their best year since they won the 1997 World Series. Fans know this phenomenal achievement can mean only one thing: It’s time for Marlins management to trade away the…
It’s no secret that Hector Pesquera, special agent in charge of the FBI’s South Florida operations, is friends with convicted felon Camilo Padreda. It may not be a secret, but the friendship is strange enough that it’s now the subject of a preliminary investigation by the Department of Justice. Padreda,…
Victor Monzon-Aguirre this past July pleaded guilty to forgery, fraud, and providing a false notary for his part in a scam in which a company he helped run submitted forged documents to Miami-Dade County in order to receive $500,000. By the time Monzon-Aguirre was being investigated he had left the…
I wasn’t going to say anything. Who wants to spoil a birthday party, even if it’s the Herald’s ballyhooed 100th anniversary? No, I was just going to let it slide — their endlessly self-congratulatory centennial, their costly new redesign, their coy suggestion that perhaps they’d actually reinvented journalism. (“The next…
The topic of the weekend gathering at Pittsburgh’s Thomas Merton Center two weeks ago was the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Miami this November. But those who showed up weren’t interested in tariffs and treaties. They were getting ready to rumble. “We just want to disrupt the…
For those frustrated with the chronic dysfunction of our school district, television images this past April offered a tantalizing promise of change. Newscasts showed federal agents leaving the United Teachers of Dade headquarters with boxes of financial records. Then in July agents descended on one of the homes kept by…
The water is flat and calm behind Pipin Ferreras’s home in North Bay Village as we load snorkeling gear into his boat, Olokun III. But by the time the 30-foot craft shoots out of Government Cut into the Atlantic, heavy swells roll the hull, forcing us to run parallel to…
A year after 1999’s boisterous World Trade Organization talks in Seattle, where protesters surprised police with their numbers and violence that cost millions in property damage, the Republican Party held its national convention in Philadelphia. Many of the same protesters who took to the streets in Seattle arrived in the…
I was surprised to learn last week that Ed Guevara, head of the newly formed Transportation Security Administration at Miami International Airport, announced his resignation after one year on the job. He and I had a date. Guevara was scheduled to provide me with proof that his previous employer, the…
In 1999, when the Miami Herald Publishing Company launched the free weekly they called Street Miami, it was promoted as an “entertainment and lifestyle weekly” that promised no long, boring investigative articles. (Unlike some free weeklies in town.) Instead it would concentrate on pop culture and music — but with…
For more than a year the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has been investigating four high-level Miami police officers suspected of stealing money intended to pay for off-duty security at several public housing sites. The case quickly took on a significance among Miami cops greater than the alleged misdeeds of…
When Sgt. Walter Clark strutted the stone-cold halls of the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, the keys clinked a little louder on his chain. In that big house, Clark was a big man, bigger than his rank of sergeant implied. Within the county’s sprawling 2000-employee jail system, Clark had become…
The NAACP’s national convention this past week in Miami Beach was a big deal. It’s an honor that such a prestigious national organization chose us for its annual gathering spot. It makes sense, too. All our racial strife aside, diversity isn’t just a politically correct buzzword here; it’s a hot,…
Joe Martinez is picking quite a fight. The District 11 county commissioner recently asked Miami-Dade’s manager to study the possibility of merging the county’s police department and its corrections department. By even broaching the subject, Martinez, chairman of the commission’s public safety committee, is squaring off with several politically noisy…
Things are heating up at the Miami firefighters’ union. The boys there are hot under the collar because of a recent column I wrote. Let’s just say I won’t be invited to the fireman’s ball this year. (Okay, that’s enough.) A few weeks ago I wrote about problems inside the…
On a hot June night in 1991, two men in a Toyota inched through the streets of Liberty City. A riot was brewing and New Times staff writer Sean Rowe and reporter Rick Bragg, then with the St. Petersburg Times, wanted to see it firsthand. The impending violence followed news…
Last week the Golden Beach Town Council voted to hire a new police chief — Greg Feldman, from the South Miami Police Department. He’ll be the fourth in three years, not including current stopgap chief Bobby Cheatham. I wish Feldman luck. He’s going to need it. The last chief in…
