“The Nobel Prize is not up to the expectation that the planet’s population places on him,” Minc stated, alluding to the Nobel Peace Prize received this year by the US leader.

In a direct and personal appeal to the president, the Brazilian minister then said, “Obama, do something. Or you will have to bring the Nobel Prize back here.”

Minc said the Brazilian delegation was equally disappointed with Obama’s speech: “We were very frustrated with President Obama’s speech, it seemed like he had nothing to do with it,” the minister complained.

The Brazilian representative said he didn’t like either the way the meeting was run by the Denmark representatives. On Wednesday, December 16, the Danish Environment minister, Connie Hedegaard, resigned as chairman of the conference. Prime minister Loekke Lars Rasmussen took her place.

One took place in Miami. There, in December 1994, leaders from 34 countries met for the first Summit of the Americas. European communism had collapsed a few years earlier, and trade barriers were falling around the world. Eager to hasten that process in the region, U.S. officials laid out plans for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA.

“I thank God” for the crisis, given that it was necessary to have economic instability so that “some people would be able to perceive that the recovery of the economy was not just luck, but a matter of being organized,” said Lula.

Lula was talking to employers and union officials attending a session of the Economic and Social Development Council. He also said that the Brazilian businessmen are “more mature” now because they understood that wage increases don’t cause inflation.

According to the president, Brazil was prepared before the crisis and was able to get out strong enough to sustain the country’s growth and development. To maintain the same pace in 2010, Brazilians will have to work even more, he state.

Few of the officers have been charged in the extrajudicial killings, which are often labeled in police reports as the deaths of suspects who resisted arrest, the report said.(See photos of a Brazilian iron ore mine, the biggest in the world.)

The 122-page declaration echoes a 2008 United Nations’ finding that police throughout Brazil were responsible for a “significant portion” of 48,000 slayings the year before.

“Extrajudicial killing of criminal suspects is not the answer to violent crime,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “The residents of Rio and Sao Paulo need more effective policing, not more violence from the police.”(See pictures of Sao Paulo.)

Jose Mujica, now president-elect of Uruguay, seemed like he could hardly believe the transformation himself in his rousing victory speech Sunday night, delivered as rain drenched thousands of supporters along the Ramblas, Montevideo’s coastal avenue.

“The people gave us this victory!” Mujica shouted, moving back and forth as aides struggled to cover the 74-year-old with umbrellas. “There are those who believe that power is up above, and they don’t notice that it’s actually in the hearts of the great masses. Thank you! It cost me an entire life, perhaps, to learn this. Thank you, and until forever!”

Mujica won more than 50 percent of the votes cast Sunday, compared to about 45 percent for former President Luis A. Lacalle, according to exit polls by Cifra, Factum and Equipos Mori, the South American nation’s leading pollsters. The Electoral Court was slowly releasing official results, but the conservative Lacalle conceded the race.

Rivas’s supporters say the 22-year-old university student is just one of many Venezuelans jailed for challenging a populist government that they contend is increasingly intolerant of dissent.

As the Chávez government approaches 11 years in power, many of its most prominent opponents are in exile in foreign countries or under criminal investigation here.

But human rights and legal policy groups say that even more worrisome is the growing number of government foes in jail for what they allege are politically motivated reasons. There are more than 40 political prisoners in Venezuela, and 2,000 Chávez opponents are under investigation, the groups and human rights lawyers say.

Since then, Latin America has agreed, usually in exchange for US aid, to the rules of the game: an aggressive stance toward coca eradication and against narcotics trafficking.

Now, it seems, countries are beginning to back down from the punitive status quo and embracing the decriminalization of illicit drugs for personal use.

To be sure, Washington still finds many on its side. Many of Latin America’s politicians, nonprofits, and citizens are questioning the merits of decriminalization, and all countries still strictly forbid the legalized production, transport, and sale of illicit drugs.