José Fernando López

President Barack Obama's decision to support marriage among homosexuals generated a jolt in the presidential campaign in the United States. The announcement introduced another ideological element into what is now thought to be a highly polarized campaign. Independently of its importance and the fact that some analysts think otherwise, civil...

The second decade of the 21st century will go down in history as an era in which the world got fed up of one of the most useless and prolonged wars: the war on drugs. Or, at least, of the indiscriminate war on all types of drugs and in particular...

I have had the fortune of knowing Jose Antonio Ocampo for many years, and I have followed his successful career closely. Born in Cali, Colombia in December of 1952, Ocampo is one of the most brilliant economists of his generation.

At a very young age, he led Fedesarrollo, one of...

Towards the end of last year there was a book circulating virally in United States and the rest of the world written by two Israeli authors -- Dan Senor and Saul Singer -- in which they describe a series of (in the words of Fareed Zakaria of CNN) "fascinating stories...

In Mid-February I had the chance to attend a forum organized in Mexico City by a nonprofit organization called Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia (Mexico United Against Delinquency), where they presented many arguments against the prohibitionist paradigm of the war on drugs that has cost the country more than 50,000...

Since the publishing of my recent post about the consequences that Mexico has suffered because of its war on drugs, including the dramatic rise of corruption within the police force (or at least the perception of corruption), I have gained access to a report by Eduardo Salcedo-Albaran and Luis Jorge...

It is not easy to measure the results of a war. With no razed land or without the unconditional surrender of the enemy, the signs of victory become blurry. Even more if the objectives of the war are not clear enough. What was the objective with, for example, the Iraq...

This Christmas, I came across a fascinating book: Present at the Creation, The history of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider. Written in 2010 by Amir D. Aczel, author of 14 popular science books, the book tells the story of an epic: the union of wills of 20 European countries...

I am one of the many millions of Americans whose house, during the past two years, has lost so much value that they now costs much less than the value of their debt. That is why I, as an individual person, can understand the frustration of the many people in...

On the 22nd of November, Justin Bieber was the invited guest on The Late Show With David Letterman. In his interview, Bieber talked about how his fame has permitted him to travel throughout all the world's continents. When Letterman asked him if he could name them, the surprised young singer...

The economic crisis that has been engulfing the big economies of the west for three years now has been nothing but a remainder of what economists have always known: that capitalism is a cyclic system in which the accumulation of wealth machines make further crisis unavoidable. When the latter occurs,...

Ever since the Occupy Wall Street movement was born in mid-September, many analysts have asked themselves if the Americans have valid reasons to protest in the way that they have been doing so. Some have questioned it following academic rigor, seeking justification for the movement. Others have done so following...

Richard Dawkins was invited on September 30 to Miami by the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences. Dawkins, one of the most renowned evolutionary biologists in the world, and one of the most active science preachers of modern times, came to present The Magic of Reality, his most...

There are few things in life as precious and lasting as the love one feels for a sports team. Sergio Bendixen, one of the best Latin surveyors that live in this country told me this one day while having a chat and a coffee: if there is one cultural heritage...

Days before the arrest of 700 people in the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, I read in the El Pais newspaper, from Spain, an article about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Until the arrest, except for acknowledging certain fleeting appearances on record, such as the one from Michael Moore or...

In one of his widely read columns, journalist Andrés Oppenheimer complained last week that President Barack Obama, in his speech to the United Nations, didn't mention Mexico at any time and the impact that the war on drugs is generating in the country. "President Obama talked at length about Palestine,...

Every year, during the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, we usually bring out a series of statistics regarding the presence of Hispanics in institutions that shape the economic, political and social American landscape. It is then that we realize the "mea culpas" we give ourselves for the little we have...

As a result of the letter written by Warren Buffet, in which he asked US legislators to stop pampering the rich so much and make them pay more taxes -- a petition that found acceptance in countries like Italy and France, BBC Mundo published an article titled "¿Pagarían...

When I was young, and films started becoming my passion, there were three actors who fascinated me and who eventually became idols of various generations: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman. Simply the fact that one of their names was attached was a guarantee that I was going...

A couple of months ago I interviewed Henry Cisneros, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Bill Clinton's administration between 1993 and 1997. Cisneros, together with Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, leads an informal group that seeks the establishment of a constructive dialogue between the Latin and the Jewish communities of United...