Just a few years ago, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez used to taunt the opposition by vowing to stay in power until 2031. But now that the 57-year-old leader is facing another cancer scare, some analysts question his ability to hold onto the presidency through the current election cycle.

Facing a tight reelection against a unified opposition, Chávez had been stepping up his public appearances and relying on his legendary charisma to secure an additional six-year term.

Despite being in power for 13 years, he still enjoys approval ratings of about 50 percent. But the announcement Tuesday that he will be returning to Cuba to have a lesion removed, and that it’s likely cancerous, changes the equation.

While Chávez remains popular, his allies and ministers are often blamed for the nation’s problems, wrote Daniel Kerner, a Latin America analyst with New York-based Eurasia Group. And that makes Chávez’s illness — even if he is healthy enough to campaign — a serious liability.

“A large share of voters would probably be reluctant to elect a president that may not be around to fulfill his mandate, especially given how unpopular figures around Chávez are,” Kerner wrote.

Read more here.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez unloaded on the opposition Wednesday, accusing them of lacking proposals and resorting to mimicry of his administration to gin up their popularity ahead of October’s presidential race. 

His comments, transmitted by the Ministry of Communications, come as government supporters and officials are ramping up their attacks on a newly revitalized opposition. 

“What are your ideas bourgeoisie?” Chávez asked during a televised meeting of the National Assembly. “Be honest bourgeoisie! Don’t come out with stories now to camouflage your anti-nationalist, enemy-of-the-people, anti-Bolivarian message!”

The outburst comes after Henrique Capriles Radonski, the governor of Miranda state, swept an opposition primary on Sunday and became Chávez’s chief rival for the presidency.

Capriles, 39, saw his popularity surge as he vowed to bring Venezuelans back together and reduce ideological tensions. In Wednesday’s speech, Chávez said that former Dictator Juan Vicente Gómez also talked of unity.

The coalition of opposition forces said more than 3 million of Venezuela's 18 million registered voters cast a ballot in Sunday’s open primary. Officials have accused the opposition of exaggerating the figures. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court Tuesday said voter records must be handed over, but the coalition said it is going ahead with plans to destroy the documents to protect voters from government retaliation.

Chávez, 57, has been in power for 13-years and his mix of nationalism and programs for the poor have given him strong approval ratings.

Capriles has told Chávez supporters that they have nothing to fear from his presidency and that he would continue, and even expand, some government programs – as long as they are effective. 
On Wednesday, Chávez accused the opposition of trying to piggyback on his ideas.

“Do you want to look like Chávez bourgeoisie? You should take advantage of Carnival and dress up like a little Chávez,” he said. 

The comments come as state-run television has been stepping up attacks. The La Hojilla talk show, which runs on state television, claims it has police documents that show Capriles was caught int a homosexual act in 2000. The show has also led the charges that the coalition resorted to fraud to drum up voter figures.

Colombia will have to rely on some crafty diplomacy if it hopes to overcome the brewing US-Ecuador standoff at the Summit of the Americas. During a recent trip to Venezuela, Ecuador President Rafael Correa asked the eight-members of the ALBA bloc of countries to boycott the Summit of the Americas (which will be held in Cartagena in April) if Cuba was not invited. 

Colombia's foreign ministry said it would begin negotiations to make sure the island nation makes it past the velvet ropes. But it's not clear that the United States is going to budge. During a State Department briefing on Tuesday, the spokesman said the following: "Our view on the posture of Cuba has not changed with regard to the Summit of the Americas and we don’t think that the posture of the Summit nations should change either."

In theory, the meeting is only open to active members of the OAS. You may recall that the body dropped its 47 year ban on Cuba in 2009, but the country decided not to pursue membership.

Washington has been edged out of some of the more important pan-American bodies. (The Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nations, in particular.) 

This Summit would give Obama a rare opportunity for Washington to rub shoulders with all the regional leaders. And who doesn't want to go to Cartagena?

The rumble over Venezuela's consulate in Miami continues. On Sunday, President Hugo Chavez insisted that his decision to close the office had to do with the safety of the staff there, and not any desire to hamstring the Feb. 12 opposition primaries. 

If you're unfamiliar with the spat, check out this story. 

"Now that we closed the consulate because of threats to our personnel, they accuse me of trying to sabotage the primary elections and that it's an abuse of the Venezuelans that live in Miami," he said during his Sunday television show. "Now they say we're the ones being abusive."

South Florida exiles are concerned they will have nowhere to cast their ballots as the coalition of opposition groups vote for a single candidate to face-off against Chavez in October. 

Chavez has said that Venezuelan exile groups were threatening the staff - a charge those groups deny. 

But during a US Department of State briefing last week, the spokesmen did acknowledge there had been...something.

Here's the Jan 17 exchange with Deputy Department Spokesman Mark C. Toner

MR. TONER: Well, I mean, obviously we take the security of all foreign missions very, very seriously. This is something, as you’re well aware, that we talk about in terms of other governments around the world, that we ask – urge them to uphold their obligations under the Vienna Conventions. We hold ourselves, obviously, to those same standards. If a Venezuelan official in the U.S. did receive any threats, those threats should be reported to the Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, who also works with relevant law enforcement agencies to take appropriate steps to address them.

Obviously, the --

QUESTION: Have you received any reports of threats?

MR. TONER: Well, I’m – let me finish, Kirit.

QUESTION: Go ahead.

MR. TONER: The decision on how to manage its consulates and how to provide consular services to Venezuelan citizens is ultimately that of the Venezuelan Government. Now specifically to Kirit’s questions, we did previously assist the Venezuelan Consulate in Miami to address some minor security concerns in December, but since then we’ve not received any reports of any new threats against the consulate or its employees, nor any additional requests for security support.

QUESTION: Can you describe what those threats --

MR. TONER: I can’t. I can’t get into the details.

QUESTION: But you described them as minor. I mean, what is minor?

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MR. TONER: Not significant.

QUESTION: Thank you.

Hmmm.

Tens of thousands of Colombians hit the streets today to protest the recent execution of four hostages who had been held by rebels for more than a decade. 

You can read about the march here, and you can read about the executions and one man's narrow escape here. 

Today's outpouring comes as many activists complain that the plight of the country's hostages is no longer on the national radar. That's probably a testament to how much safer Colombia has become. Take a look at the chart below to see just how grim things were in the1990s and early 2000s.

Even so, the government says there have been 146 kidnappings in the first five months of this year — that’s up 40 percent versus the same period in 2010. 

To complicate matters, the number of people still in captivity is a matter of debate.

In 2009, the department within the Ministry of Defense that tracks kidnapping cases said it had combed through more than 2,000 reports and determined that were 125 people still in captivity. Human rights groups and researchers at the time balked and accused the government of playing politics with the statistics. País Libre - a foundation dedicated to the issue - said the new administration has agreed to let it look through the reports again to come up with fresh figures. We'll keep you posted.

More details are emerging about the final days of Alfonso Cano. According to El Tiempo, the hounded FARC commander was living in a squalid shack and had a limited supply of food.

The paper said the only members of his group that had any luxuries were Conan and Pirulu, his two dogs. One of the FARC guerrillas was charged with cleaning their feet before they were put to bed with Cano. The guerrilla leader himself bathed them every 15 days.

The men were required to call the animals by name and never to refer to them as "dogs," according to the paper. 

During the Friday night firefight that ended with Cano's death, Pirulo ran away and Conan was injured.

I was in Popayan on Saturday and met some of the special forces soldiers involved in the raid. Among their ranks was Onyx (pictured above), one of the mine-sniffing dogs that helped them safely make their way to Cano's camp. 

The weary men had stayed up all night celebrating their victory. Apparently Onyx did too, because even crowds of photographers and the sounds of choppers failed to rouse him. He was the definition of dog tired.

Latin America has been swamped by hacktivism lately, as groups have attacked government sites in Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Chile and Guatemala among others.

I just wrote this story about the phenomenon.

During Colombia's municipal elections this Sunday, the National Registry - which was reporting the vote tally - says its site was attacked more than 400 million times. Yes, 400,000,000.

There are several factors driving the increase, including the proliferation of computers and online access in the region. (Over the last decade online access has spiked more than 1,000 percent in the region.)

But Nicolas Severino, the director of engineering  in Latin America for Symantec, said another factor driving the surge is the availability of "hacking kits."

Hacking used to be reserved for computer-savvy programmers. Now there are "commercial quality" kits available that make hacking as easy as dragging and dropping, he said. 

"Increasingly, there is this lamentable technology that allows people with low-level technological abilities to do high-level damage," he said. 

One interview I didn't get for the story was with Anonymous Colombia. A person who runs their Twitter account, has more than 40,000 followers and has been calling many of the targets, offered to meet with me, but then disappeared again.

The government is really ratcheting up the pressure on them, so it's no surprise that they would want to stay....anonymous.

Two final things. One very cool site I found is Zone-H, where hackers report their attacks and often provide snapshots of their work. It allows you to search for attacks by website and domain extensions, which is quite helpful.

Also, Symantec provided this scary chart. It shows the going rate for stolen information. 

As the polls predicted, Gustavo Petro - a corruption-crusading former member of the M-19 guerrilla movement - won Sunday's race for mayor of Bogota. It's the first time a former rebel (in a nation full of former rebels) has won such a prominent office. With a population of 7 million +, Bogota's city hall is easily the second-most high profile office after the presidency.

Petro, 51, has an interesting background. In his teens he joined the M-19 rebel movement.

The M-19 caught global attention in 1985 when they seized the Supreme Court and took more than 300 hostages. The government responded by surrounding the building and shelling it. Almost 100 people died during the "rescue," and officers are still being prosecuted over the event. Ana Carrigan wrote a brilliant book about the saga called "The Palace of Justice - a Colombian Tragedy."

Petro, in his official biography, claims he worked as a community organizer for the M-19 and never resorted to violence. In a book he co-authored Prohibido Olvidar  he talks about learning to fire guns and stealing milk trucks while still in his teens.  He was imprisoned for almost two years and says he was tortured.

Upon his release, he was part of the team that hammered out a peace deal that culminated in the M-19 laying down its arms in 1990 and becoming a political party (Alianza Democratica M-19, which ultimately fused with the Polo Democratico Alternativo).

That peace deal was reportedly taken as a model for other reconciliation processes in Honduras and Guatemala, according to El Espectador.

During his acceptance speech last night, Petro suggested he would build on that experience, and work with President Juan Manuel Santos, to bring peace to Colombia. Presumably that means hammering out some sort of agreement with the FARC, who have been battling the government for almost 50 years.

Those are admirable ambitions, but it's also clear that his priorities will have to be defeating Bogota's grid-lock and rising crime rate if he wants to stay in the capitalinos good graces.

One ambition he doesn't have is being president in 2014. On RCN radio this morning, a groggy sounding Petro said he would not use the mayor's office as a stepping-stone for the presidential race. Petro did run in 2010, when he came in 4th. But if he pulls off city hall without ending up in jail, like his predecessor, Casa Narino could be within reach. 

Check out the Herald's election story here.

Despite isolated reports of violence and fraud, Colombia’s municipal elections today are taking place amid relative calm, observers said.

More than 1,300 governors, mayors and city council members will be voted into office in a process that was marred by violence in the run-up to the race. 

The Electoral Observation Mission, or MOE, said that it had received 100 reports of anomalies during the first three hours of the vote, including allegations of illegal campaigning and vote buying. 

There were three reports of violence, including assassination attempts on candidates in the northeastern departments of Norte de Santander and Arauca, the MOE said.

Candidates in the department of Casanare asked for the elections there to be suspended after a large cache of filled-in ballots was discovered. The ballots were ultimately replaced and the vote is ongoing. 

In addition, stashes of vote-buying cash were found in Cauca and Chocó, the MOE said. In Cauca the pesos were counterfeit...Fake cash for fake votes.

Colombia’s municipal elections have often been troubled in the past, and this year was no exception. Some 41candidates were assassinated in the run-up to the race, up 66 percent versus the last municipal election in 2007, according to MOE data.

The government disputes those figures, and President Juan Manuel Santos said there had been no serious threats against the process on Sunday. 

“The violent ones want these elections to fail,” he said after casting his ballot. “Let’s respond to them by voting massively.”

One of the most closely watched races is for mayor of Bogotá – perhaps the second-most important elected position after the presidency. 

Gustavo Petro, 51, a former socialist senator and organizer for the M-19 guerrilla movement, has been leading in the polls. He is expected to beat out former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa of the Green Party and former congresswoman Gina Parody, an independent.

The polls close at 5 PM EST.

Colombia's international ad campaign declares that the only risk in this country is "wanting to stay."

There's no doubt that the situation here has improved dramatically. Over the last decade, as the administration of Alvaro Uribe broke the back of guerrilla and paramilitary violence, murders have dropped 50 percent to 33.4 per 100,000 citizens. According to the latest UN study on global homicide rates,  Colombia is the 16th most dangerous country in the world and the 6th most dangerous in Latin America after Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Belize and Guatemala.

But violence has always plagued this nation's municipal elections and this year is no exception. 

Forty-one candidates have been assassinated in the run-up to the race, up from 27 in the previous municipal race in 2007, according to the Electoral Observer Mission, MOE, an independent watchdog.

With just over 100,000 candidates in the running, that would mean Colombian politicians are seeing a murder rate equivalent to living in a country right between the U.S. Virgin Islands (39.2/100,000) and Guatemala (41.4/100,000).

The government disputes the MOE's figures. President Santos said political killings were down 10 percent versus 2007, and that political violence overall was down 16 percent.

Most of the political violence is thought to take place prior to th vote - when left-wing rebels and criminal gangs with right-wing roots are trying to exert their power. But the government isn't taking any chances and is guarding the polls with more than 330,000 troops this Sunday.

Here's hoping the ad campagin - which is reportedly close to being retired - is more accurate every day.  

Here's a full story on the issue of political violence.