My own concern for the well-being of the new Administration? I personally sent out more than 5,000 blogs and "posts" to newspapers, magazines and other media Web sites since the beginning of 2008 in favor of Obama, mostly during a period of time in which Valenzuela was working for Clinton. (See, for example, http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/martinedwinandersen, the one with the slogan:  Restore Honor and Integrity to the White House and to the Democratic Party ... Barack Obama, '08!!!)

Three years earlier, in 2005, I resigned in protest as the senior analyst for Latin America for the human rights group Freedom House--who I had worked for since 1997-- over the treatment they planned to give Mexico in their annual "Freedom in the World" report. Valenzuela was Freedom House's academic advisor on Latin America.

I had given Mexico low marks in its country write-up due to the violence and fear created by drug mafias and their police protectors in the northern states bordering the U.S. More than 900 people had been killed in the first nine months of that year and journalists, in particular, had fled several cities in fear.

Against all evidence, Valenzuela demanded on giving Mexico a pass on the issue.

Valenzuela, a Georgetown University professor, claimed that violence wasn't a major issue in Mexico, that there was nothing approaching a state of terror in major cities of the north in the U.S.'s southern neighbor, and that, of all the countries in Latin America, it was Mexico that he knew best.

I had previously clashed with Valenzuela for his being an apologist for Argentina's corrupt president Carlos Menem (after the Argentine's corruption was well known, Valenzuela nonetheless sonorously declared that the "The Western world owes a debt of gratitude to Carlos Menem"). He had also loudly defended Venezuela's narcissist-leninist Hugo Chavez on press freedom in previous meetings at Freedom House. 

(For those who do not know my record: I was one of Menem's most vocal and persistence critics in the United States in the 1990s and, in 1999, wrote an editorial denouncing Chavez in the Washington Times with the headline: "The Robespierre of the Andes?"  I had wrote a number of lengthy pieces for Freedom House itself detailing the attacks on political rights and civil liberties under Chavez.)

When Valenzuela prevailed at the Freedom House meeting on the Mexico issue, I announced my resignation.

Like Henry Kissinger, Valenzuela has made a career of rising up the bureaucratic ladder while leaving a string of questionable judgments in his wake.

Below is a copy of the e-mail I sent to Freedom House announcing my resignation:

Subject: Arturo Valenzuela: "Mexico expert"
Date: 11/29/2005 7:02:16 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
From: Anacasti
Reply To:
To: puddington@_____________
CC: piano@___________, rosenberg@____________ , valenzue@___________, repucci@________, derikson@_______, goldbissm@____, windsor@_____, FHPRES

Arch,

As you will recall, in our very uncomfortable meeting last week, Dr. Arturo Valenzuela made a big deal about how he followed events in Mexico closer than any other country in the region, and that he was absolutely sure that a climate of fear did not reign in the country's north.