The Trump administration likely will scale back policy changes it believes have benefited the Cuban government while preserving some of the increased commercial activity that has begun after former President Barack Obama moved to normalize U.S.-Cuban ties, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
Four years after Chávez’s death, the movement he founded is splintering, with current and former government officials, as well as residents of poor neighborhoods that were once adamantly pro-government, turning on his successor, Nicolás Maduro. – Washington Post
As Colombia’s leftist rebel movement begins making its transition to a political party, a crucial question hangs over the process: how much money is it hiding? – Associated Press
Colombia's Marxist FARC rebel group on Tuesday all but concluded handing over another 30 percent of its weaponry to the United Nations, part of a peace deal signed with the government to end more than 52 years of war. - Reuters
Jose Cardenas writes: Sanctions, of course, are no magic bullet. But targeted sanctions against corrupt Venezuelan officials, in concert with aggressive multilateral diplomacy, can serve to further delegitimize the Maduro regime before the Venezuelan people and international public opinion, as well as send a signal to nationalists in the Venezuelan military that they are no longer defending the Venezuelan constitution but the criminal interests of a drug-trafficking conspiracy. – National Review Online
Emanuele Ottolenghi writes: The convergence of Iran-sponsored radical Islam with transnational organized crime in Latin America is a serious threat to the national security of the United States, especially in the tri-border area, or TBA, where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay converge. – The Hill