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Arturo Valenzuela, the State Department’s top Latin America official, gave a speech at the Brookings Institution Wednesday on “Latin America Relations: A Look Ahead.” While largely upbeat, Valenzuela’s text had strong words about deteriorating democratic conditions in Venezuela, and a hint that Venezuela is violating the OAS Democratic Charter.

Particularly worrisome, among other developments, is the recent delegation of legislative authority to the executive that extended beyond the term of office of the outgoing National Assembly. This undemocratic measure violates the shared values enshrined in the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which will mark its tenth anniversary this year. We are committed to looking for ways to more effectively implement the charter as a safeguard of core democratic principles.

Valenzuela followed this up by tweeting, “it is worrisome to see the delegation of legislative authority to the executive in a way that violates the Dem Charter.”

Violators of the 2001 Charter are subject to suspension from OAS membership, if a special session of the body’s General Assembly votes to do so. Valenzuela gave no indication of what actions, if any, the United States might take with regard to Venezuela and the Charter.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez while both attended the January 1 inauguration of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. But neither the United States nor Venezuela are likely to have ambassadors in each others’ capitals anytime soon. Venezuela has maintained its rejection of U.S. Ambassador-Designate Larry Palmer, because he had told Senate questioners months ago (PDF) that “morale” in Venezuela’s armed forces “is reported to be considerably low, particularly due to politically-oriented appointments.” With the end of the 111th Congress, Palmer’s nomination expired, and State Department officials hinted on Monday that they might nominate someone else. This hint inspired an angry Washington Post editorial on Tuesday, and by Wednesday the State Department had clarified its intention to re-nominate Palmer over Chávez’s objections. For his part, Venezuela’s ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Álvarez, was sent home in December.

Valenzuela, meanwhile, will spend next week in Argentina and Chile.

Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) will travel next week to Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Panama.

Brazil’s newly sworn-in president, Dilma Rousseff, wants to do something that her popular predecessor, Lula, tried and failed to do in 2009. She declared that she wants a Truth Commission to investigate (but not prosecute) human rights crimes committed by the military regime that ran Brazil between 1964 and 1985. President Rousseff’s new Secretary for Human Rights, María do Rosario, has made a Truth Commission a top priority for her office. Brazil’s military, which strongly opposed a similar proposal in 2009, didn’t help its case when a top general, Elito de Carvalho Siquiera, said “it is not cause for shame that the country had political disappearances” during the dictatorship.

Argentina will be the destination of Rousseff’s first foreign visit, before the end of the month.

“Border-state legislators from both parties … say they view the U.S. military presence” on U.S. soil along the Mexico border “as a long-term necessity,” according to a troubling article in Wednesday’s Washington Post.

More than 13,000 people are estimated to have been killed by drug-related violence in Mexico in 2010, up from 9,600 in 2009.

The Associated Press this week published detailed updates on two ambitious anti-crime programs in the Americas: “Todos Somos Juárez,” the struggling anti-crime and economic-opportunity program in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and the “Favela Pacification Program” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The favela program, the topic of a long post to this blog, has been covered by several articles in the English-language press over the past week.

A bomb on a bus killed six people in Guatemala City, while gunmen killed eight people shooting up a minibus on a rural road in Olancho, Honduras. Gangs linked to organized crime are blamed for both attacks.

In one of her first communications as chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) scolded the State Department’s Valenzuela for “efforts by U.S. officials to pressure the Government of Honduras to absolve former President Manuel Zelaya of the criminal charges he faces.” Rep. Ros-Lehtinen’s opinion differs with that of Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, who believes that charges of corruption and abuse of power should be dropped against the ex-president, who was exiled by a June 2009 military coup.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a large U.S. economic aid program founded by the Bush administration, produced its list of countries who, because they met a range of good governance criteria, are eligible to apply for assistance in 2011. Honduras and Nicaragua – both former recipients of MCC aid – are now ineligible.

In Colombia, the FARC guerrillas set off three small bombs over five days in Neiva, a mid-sized city that is the departmental capital of Huila, in the country’s southwest. Meanwhile discussions of the logistics for the FARC’s promised release of five long-held hostages are proceeding with extreme slowness.

Colombia’s El Espectador has a very good piece on the Alto Naya paramilitary massacre of at least 46 people, which took place nearly 10 years ago, in April 2001. Last year, violence killed at least 21 non-combatants in the Alto Naya zone, which sits on a key drug-trafficking corridor along the border between Cauca and Valle del Cauca departments.

Cuba’s almost completely state-run economy has begun to lay off 500,000 workers from government payrolls. In a country of 11,200,000 people, the impact will be staggering.