Latin American Leaders Under Attack

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez never had cancer despite being diagnosed with the disease last month and having her thyroid gland removed on Jan. 4, her spokesman said on Saturday.
The government announced just after Christmas that the recently re-elected leader had thyroid cancer.  The operation to remove the gland went well, but when it was later analysed it turned out to have never contained cancerous cells, said spokesman Alfredo Scoccimaro.

"The original diagnosis has been modified," he told a news conference. "The presence of cancer cells was discarded."

A skilled orator fond of glamorous clothes, high heels and make-up, Fernandez still wears black as she mourns her husband and closest adviser, former President Nestor Kirchner, who died in 2010.

Many thought his death spelled the end of the couple's idiosyncratic blend of state intervention, nationalist rhetoric and the championing of human rights in grains exporting powerhouse Argentina, a major world supplier of soy and corn.

But Fernandez pulled off a remarkable comeback thanks to a brisk economic expansion and an outpouring of public sympathy, setting the stage for her to easily win a second four-year term, which started last month.

Under Attack By Disease 

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speculated that the United States might have developed a way to give Latin American leaders cancer, after Argentina's Cristina Fernandez joined the list of presidents diagnosed with the disease.

It was a typically controversial statement by Venezuela's socialist leader, who underwent surgery in June to remove a tumor from his pelvis. But he stressed that he was not making any accusations, just thinking aloud.

"It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now ... I don't know. I'm just reflecting," he said in a televised speech to troops at a military base. "But this is very, very, very strange ... it's a bit difficult to explain this, to reason it, including using the law of probabilities."

Chavez, Fernandez, Paraguay's Fernando Lugo, Brazil's Dilma Rousseff and former Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have all been diagnosed recently with cancer. All of them are leftists.