ARGENTINA / VENEZUELA : 29 Dec UPDATE: Chavez Speculates on LatAm Leaders Cancer Cluster After President Cristina Fernandez's Thyroid Cancer Revelation.

                                        BLOOMBERG

      Another Latin American leader is diagnosed with cancer.
      This time is it President Cristina Fernandez, 58...with papillary thyroid cancer.
      She will have surgery on 4 January...and be absent until at least 24 January.
     A spokesman said that the cancer was detected on 22 December...and “has not metastasized."
     Thyroid cancer has a high survival rate...with 95% of patients living at least 10 years.

     Former Economy Minister...guitar playing, motorcycle riding new Vice President Amado Boudou, 49...will be in charge until her return.
    The Fernandez/Boudou ticket won a landslide victory in October.
     Brasil's current President Dilma Rousseff, her predecessor Lula da Silva, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez have all been treated for cancer in recent years.

   AND: NEW!!!   President Hugo Chavez thinks the USA may have been up to something foul in Latin America...with 5 top leaders recently afflicted with cancer. 
   "Would it be so strange that they've invented the technology to spread cancer and we won't know about it for 50 years," he mused.
  "It is very hard to explain, even with the law of probabilities, what has been happening to some leaders in Latin America. It's at the very least strange, very strange." 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/29/hugo-chavez-us-cancer-plot