Central America Archive

In late December, nearly 100 years to the day after the Panama Canal first opened for business, Nicaragua broke ground on Central America’s second mega-canal project, the aptly named Nicaragua Grand Canal. Billed as the world’s largest engineering project, it will snake 173 miles across Nicaragua upon its projected completion in 2019, providing a wider, deeper alternate route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for ships too large to transit the Panama Canal, several hundreds of miles to the southeast. The new canal, which will stretch three times the length of the Panama Canal, promises to not only alter the […]

Leaders from across the Caribbean are meeting in Washington this week for the first-ever Caribbean Energy Summit, hosted by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. In an email interview, Johanna Mendelson Forman, senior adviser at the Stimson Center, scholar-in-residence at American University and founder of the Latin American and Caribbean Council on Renewable Energy, discussed renewable energy in Latin America. WPR: How extensive is renewable energy infrastructure in Latin America, and what countries have been most active in pursuing renewable energy? Johanna Mendelson Forman: With the greenest energy matrix in the world, mainly due to the extensive use of hydropower, South […]

The war on drugs has been subjected to unprecedented criticism over the past few years. For the first time since the inception of the international drug regime in the 1960s, world leaders are calling for the regulated legalization of all drugs, and not just marijuana. Politicians, businessmen and activists from across North, Central and South America are leading the charge. Several Latin American presidents are at the forefront of this drug policy revolution, insisting on the legalization of cannabis, opium poppies and coca. Some Western European leaders are also demanding that punitive drug laws be replaced with updated measures putting […]