RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — Brazil defies definition. Its contrasts and contradictions are everywhere — from the Europeans of the south to the African heritage of Bahia, the megalopolis of Sao Paulo to the untouched remoteness of the Amazon, the joyous samba amid the chronic gun violence of the shanty settlements. It has world-class companies like energy giant Petrobras, but in many ways is a highly uncompetitive economy. But the most overwhelming contrast is between the fabulously wealthy and the desperately poor. By every international measurement, Brazil is one of the most unequal societies on earth, a condition that has [...]
PIRIÁPOLIS, Uruguay — Workers in this Uruguayan town have been busily crafting the finishing touches on beachfront shops and restaurants. The Southern Hemisphere’s summer is arriving to this time-travelers’ destination, a place oddly reminiscent of a mid-century resort in the South of France. With summer’s arrival, hordes of tourists from neighboring countries should start rolling in at any moment. As laborers toiled here, somewhere else in the continent a modern brand of Latin American professionals wrapped their work on a more ambitious project. South America’s new crop of leftist leaders met in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to chart a course of regional [...]
MOSCOW — Under the leadership of the Justice and Development Party, Turkey has been drifting eastward in recent years — but not toward the Islamic world. Instead, disputes with European countries over Cyprus and other barriers to Turkey’s entry into the European Union, as well as continuing differences between Ankara and Washington over U.S. policy in Iraq, have helped launch a de facto Ankara-Moscow axis in Eurasia. The last decade has seen a weakening of the factors that have traditionally tied Turkey to the West. Turkish leaders no longer believe they need NATO’s support in an unlikely military confrontation with [...]
