Categories
In The News Society

Years After Court Order, Arsenic Still Flows From Taps in Argentina

Families in Ciudad Nueva unknowingly drank arsenic-laced water. Now, they live with the scars — and they’re losing faith in the government’s ability to solve the problem.

Categories
Geopolitics

How Smaller Nations Can Profit From Superpowers Fighting Over Supremacy

It’s called Active Non-Alignment. The end of a bipolar world and of Western supremacy has created a more fluid, and threatening, geopolitical map. For smaller powers, especially in Latin America, this is the time to “get the best deal” for themselves with the superpowers.

Categories
This Happened

This Happened — May 22: Chile’s Massive Earthquake

Updated May 22, 2024 at 12:05 p.m. The so-called “Great Chilean earthquake” was a magnitude 9.5 earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile on this day in 1960. What caused the Chilean earthquake of 1960? The Chilean earthquake of 1960 was caused by the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Plate. […]

Categories
Green

Saving The Stars: The Fight To Preserve Chile’s Night Sky From Light Pollution

Light pollution in Chile’s Atacama Desert, home to crucial star-gazing infrastructure, is threatening the future of astronomy. Can a new nationwide lighting standard make a difference?

Categories
Ideas

On Democracy, Republics And Lula’s Theory Of Relativity

A democracy is not just the vague and dangerously malleable promise of popular rule. It is instead an institutional regime or “republic” that defines and protects the rights of the people, and of individuals.

Categories
This Happened

This Happened — October 5: Chilean Referendum

The referendum in Chile took place on this day in 1988, when citizens voted against extending General Augusto Pinochet’s regime. Who was General Augosto Pinochet, and what was his regime like? General Augusto Pinochet was a military officer who came to power in Chile through a coup in 1973, overthrowing the democratically elected government of […]

Categories
In The News

Cachaça To Cabernet: A New Generation Of Winemakers Puts Brazil On The Map

Surprising as it may seem, Brazil is also seeking a future in wine. Driven by legendary families and ambitious new winemakers as ambassadors, the country is eager to play in the same league as its famous South American neighbors.

Categories
Geopolitics

Maduro Like Bolsonaro? Lula’s Double Standard On Democracy

Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s goodwill toward the Venezuela’s President Maduro, in spite of the signs Maduro might hijack the 2024 general elections, suggests Lula has a problem with Western-style liberal democracy, even after he has criticized his predecessor for the same thing.

Categories
In The News

Worldcrunch Magazine #39 — Pageant Trafficking: How Venezuela’s Beauty Queens Are Forced Into Prostitution

June 26 – July 2, 2023

Categories
LGBTQ Plus Society

The Colombian Paramilitary’s Other Dirty War — Against LGBTQ+ People

In several parts of Colombia over the past decades, right-wing paramilitaries and their successor gangs have targeted all those tagged as sexual “deviants” for execution, supposedly in a bid to restore traditional values.

Categories
In The News

How Argentina Is Changing Tactics To Combat Gender Violence

Argentina has tweaked its protocols for responding to sexual and domestic violence. It hopes to encourage victims to report crimes and reveal information vital to a prosecution.

Categories
In The News

This Happened — May 4: Ground Is Broken On The Panama Canal

The building of the Panama Canal started on this day in 1904. This man-made waterway connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and was built by the United States. Why was the Panama Canal built? The Panama Canal was built to provide a more direct route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, saving time and money […]

Categories
Geopolitics Ideas

The Trumpian Virus Undermining Democracy Is Now Spreading Through South America

Taking inspiration from events in the United States over the past four years, rejection of election results and established state institutions is on the rise in Latin America.

Categories
Geopolitics In The News

Adiós Castillo: Why Latin America Is Ready To Close The Era Of “Cheap Populism”

The impeachment and arrest of Peru’s Leftist president can be taken as perhaps a conclusive signal to the region that populism — from the Left and Right — may have run out of gas.

Categories
Migrant Lives

Walls Of Shame: Trump Is Not Alone In Building Barriers To Shut Out Latin Americans

Keeping out the poor from one country to another, or even within a country, is not a new idea, though former U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have set off a new wave across the region, and the world.

Categories
In The News

How Cuban Intelligence Helped Secure Maduro’s Grip On Power In Venezuela

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has managed to cling to power after an allegedly rigged 2018 presidential election. He did so with the help of Cuba, having enjoyed “working relations” with Cuban intelligence for decades.

Categories
Economy Geopolitics

Brazil And Argentina, It’s Time For A Single Market

Amid rising global tensions, Brazil and Argentina must form a strategic economic alliance that will help them interact with the world’s chief powers.

Categories
In The News

Why Brazil Is Excavating An Infamous Torture Center 40 Years Later

As the country gears up for a politically-charged run-off election, a team of archaeologists, historians and forensics experts are set to excavate the grounds and buildings of one of the worst torture centers in São Paulo, trying to recover the country’s painful history of torture during the military regime.

Categories
Geopolitics Green

How South American Oceans Can Sway The U.S.-China Showdown

As global rivalries and over-fishing impact the seas around South America, countries there must find a common strategy to protect their maritime backyards.

Categories
In The News

Germany’s Cynical Solution To The Energy Crisis: “Green Colonialism”

Germany has supplies of climate-damaging resources like oil, gas, coal, lithium. But faced with an energy crisis, its government, including the Greens, has opted to outsource extraction to Latin America. The party’s betrayal of its core values has not gone unnoticed.

Categories
Geopolitics Ideas

Why Chile’s Radicals Are Already Sinking Their Own Leftist President

After becoming Chile’s youngest president in December’s elections, former student activist and socialist Gabriel Boric has disappointed his most radical voters. Will they prolong the social unrest and creative chaos that have smashed the country’s fame as a conservative backwater?

Categories
In The News

Why Ghosts Of Hitler Keep Appearing In Colombia

Colombia’s police chiefs must be dismally ignorant if they think it was “instructive” to expose young cadets bereft of historical education to Nazi symbols.

Categories
Society

The Pandemic As A Welcome Lesson In Humility

The coronavirus crisis has been stressful and tedious. But it’s also a reminder that we can’t have everything we want, when we want it. And that, in many ways, is a good thing.

Categories
Geopolitics Ideas U.S. Election 2020 - Views From Abroad

Trump’s Sudden Interest In Latin America: A Play For Florida

-Analysis- LIMA — Last August, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration published its Western Hemisphere Strategic Framework paper, which designated the Western Hemisphere — North and South America — as a “geo-political priority for the United States.” National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien, who presented the document, insisted the region was incredibly important to the United […]

Categories
Geopolitics

In Kirchner’s Absence, Argentine Whispers Of Health Secrets And Successors

BUENOS AIRES – The announcement came this weekend that Argentine President Cristina Kirchner will be recuperating for at least the next month from a brain condition brought on by a head injury in August. While the news is shaking up the nation, it is also putting a veil across a potential political crisis for Argentina. […]

Categories
Ideas

As Latin American Economies Stall, Opposition Parties Get A Boost

BUENOS AIRES – After a period when South American regimes seemed untouchable, the forces of opposition have revived in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Up until a few months ago, South American presidents seemed invincible. They were reelected automatically. If someone faced a term limit, a successor would be designated who would later achieve a crushing, […]

Categories
Ideas

For Latin America, China’s Boom Should Neither Scare Nor Seduce

Categories
Economy

Capitalizing On Euro Crisis, Colombia Moves Into Banking Big Leagues

BOGOTA – If Latin America were a game of Monopoly, we would be watching as one player put all his chips in the bank. That is the big offensive of Colombian banks, which have expanded from 35 international branches in 2007 to 175 last March. In 2007, Bancolombia bought the Banco Agricola conglomerate in El […]

Categories
Future

Assange Asylum: How Europe And The US Lost Their Influence In South America

ANALYSIS – The announcement by Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño at a press conference that Ecuador would grant WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange asylum met with cries of approval and applause from assembled journalists. As always, whenever the government of Ecuador calls an official press conference, mostly only journalists close to the government are invited. The […]

Exit mobile version