The New York Times

A dozen doctors interviewed across Sao Paulo last week, however, remained focused on the issue of foreign doctors. Their almost unanimous conclusion: resources should be the top priority.

Washington is finding that its leverage in Latin America is limited just when it needs it most, a reflection of how a region that was once a broad zone of American power has become increasingly confident in its ability to act independently.

Nearly every day, and sometimes twice daily, an unarmed American drone soars skyward from a secluded military airfield here, starting a surveillance mission of 10 hours or more to track fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda and other militants in neighboring Mali.

It’s still tense, and many Malians fear that militants in an Al Qaeda African affiliate could return with their hijacked, extremist distortion of Islam. Al Qaeda extremists antagonized the public by closing schools, banning music, destroying monuments, flogging citizens and arresting women for not fully veiling themselves or going to the market without a male relative...Yet, while Erin and I found the killing over, the dying continues on a vast scale — from hunger.