Benjamin Lessing

QUITO, Ecuador — Give it to the members of Bush’s foreign-policy team: They certainly aren’t loafers. While American citizens spent the days leading up to July 4 stocking up on burgers and bottle rockets, the Bush administration was hard at work offending 35 of our remaining military allies and removing any annoying last traces of […]

PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL — The third meeting of the World Social Forum — a gathering of the tribes of international civil society that is meant to steal the thunder from the World Economic Forum, which met last week in Davos, Switzerland — ended as it began, with an exuberant, if not exactly focused, march through […]

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL — Since his election victory in October, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva aka Lula had been saying that he wanted his inauguration to be a popular affair, “for the people.” If Wednesday’s ceremony was an early test of promise keeping, he did pretty well. His organizers descended last week […]

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL — People of all ages flooded the plaza in front of the Rio de Janeiro state legislature last night, where so many protests and rallies have taken place through the years. They climbed up statues and light posts, waved the red flag of the Workers’ Party (PT), chanted slogans from campaigns […]

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA — In the Plaza Dorrego, a small, tree-lined square that occupies the heart of the historic and oh-so-precious San Telmo district, life looks and feels as though nothing has changed in 80 years. The aging Parisian buildings that surround the plaza seem to shelter it from the bustle of downtown and the […]

Montevideo, Uruguay — Looking out from the tip of the harbor here, all you can see is water — the flat, endless waters of the Río de la Plata, at this point in its course the widest river in the world. It is some 80 kilometers to the far western shore, and the only visible […]

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — I’m glad I’m not the only one who was a little relieved when the United States was knocked out of the World Cup. I was worried that such disloyal sentiments might get me hauled in front of a military tribunal, but it turns out that even commentators at The New […]