South America Archive

It wasn’t very long ago that Venezuela anchored one side of a left-right divide in Latin America, with the late President Hugo Chavez inspiring a wave of leftist electoral victories across the hemisphere. More recently, the region’s leftward drift has stopped, even reversed, but Venezuela is again the catalyst in the new political alignments. The current crisis in Venezuela has forced governments everywhere, but especially in Latin America, to clarify where they stand on the future of Nicolas Maduro’s presidency. It is no longer possible for Latin American leaders to issue fuzzy statements now that the Venezuelan opposition has declared […]

In January, after the Colombian guerilla group ELN carried out a car bomb attack against a police academy in Bogota that left 21 cadets dead, the government of President Ivan Duque called on Cuba to extradite ELN leaders—including their top commander—who are in Havana as part of a suspended peace process. Cuba’s refusal to honor the request, which would violate an agreement guaranteeing the ELN negotiators safe return in the event the talks are abandoned, is the latest point of tension between the two governments. In an email interview, Michael Camilleri, director of the Peter D. Bell Rule of Law […]

Last month, a man linked to the National Liberation Army, or ELN, rammed a truck laden with explosives into a school in Bogota where cadets were training for the Colombian National Police. The blast, which killed at least 21 people and injured 68 more, jolted Colombian society and brought back memories of similar attacks in the early 1990s. Hundreds of thousands of Colombians took to the streets to condemn terrorism. After the ELN claimed responsibility for the attack, President Ivan Duque suspended peace talks with the guerilla group indefinitely. Many observers worried about the prospect of a return to widespread […]

Colombia’s new president, Ivan Duque, has set his sights on the challenge of reuniting a divided country. Find out more when you subscribe to World Politics Review (WPR). It came as no surprise in June when Colombians delivered a strong victory to Ivan Duque, the conservative candidate that the polls had predicted would win the country’s presidential election. That the outcome was largely expected in no way diminishes the historic significance of the election, and it does nothing to ease the complexity of the challenge facing the man some are calling Colombia’s Emmanuel Macron, a young, little-known figure who rose […]

A country’s gold reserves are meant to provide stability and financial ballast, not cash for everyday purchases. Only in the most extreme cases do they become a source of currency for vital supplies. That is exactly what is happening in Venezuela, where the political crisis has triggered the kind of international intrigue usually scripted in Hollywood. The embattled government of President Nicolas Maduro is trying to cash in its reserves while the opposition and its foreign backers maneuver to keep the country’s gold and any hard currency from its sale out of Maduro’s hands. This intrigue involving bank vaults and […]

As unrest grows in Venezuela, oil production mismanagement is turning the disaster from bad to worse. Find out more when you subscribe to World Politics Review (WPR). When oil prices started their collapse in 2014, plummeting from well above $100 a barrel to just over $29 by early 2016, the market drama sent shockwaves across the global economy, producing winners and losers. Oil importers benefited from sharply lower import costs, while producers’ economies, particularly those that rely on oil for the majority of their exports, went into crisis mode. That was the case in Venezuela, where oil production remained the […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the implications of the upcoming second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and the potential consequences of a content-free diplomatic process. For the Report, Mariana Palau talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about Colombia’s post-conflict land restitution program, which is not only struggling in its mission to help landowners reclaim property that was stolen during the country’s civil war, but is also in some cases driving a new cycle of displacement. If you like what you […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about national drug policies in various countries around the world. Eighteen people were killed last month in a fire at a drug rehabilitation center in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s second-largest city. The blaze was reportedly caused by patients who rioted in a bid to escape the clinic, which was operating illegally. In an interview with WPR, Carla Alvarez, a titular professor of political science at the State University of Milagro in Ecuador, discusses the pervasive problem of illegal rehabilitation clinics and explains why Ecuador’s government should focus on preventing drug addiction instead […]

Weeks into Nicolas Maduro’s disputed second term as Venezuela’s president, his prospects for political survival appear more uncertain than ever. Many countries, including the United States and many South American and European countries, have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido, president of the National Assembly, as the legitimate interim president, as he declared himself last month. It is risky to predict the end date of a regime whose leadership has already weathered nearly six years of economic crisis, but if it is approaching, there should be plans for reviving the economy of an oil-rich but desperate nation. Guaido is already devising […]

The standoff pitting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro against National Assembly leader Juan Guaido, who declared himself interim president two weeks ago, continues to paralyze the country. It has also highlighted a political divide outside Venezuela—in particular in the U.S. between advocates and critics of the Trump administration’s pursuit of regime change in Caracas. That debate has broader implications for the formulation of a progressive foreign policy framework in the runup to the U.S. presidential election in 2020. After the U.S., joined by most of the governments of South America and Europe, recognized Guaido as the legitimate head of state, a […]

The scale of the humanitarian disaster in Venezuela is almost inconceivable. Despite the world’s largest proven oil reserves, the economy barely functions. People struggle just to survive. Store shelves are nearly empty of food, medicine and other necessities. The few goods available are out of reach for most people because of hyperinflation that the International Monetary Fund estimates reached a shocking 1 million percent in 2018. An estimated 3 million Venezuelans have already fled to neighboring countries, and more will likely join them. Last fall, the Pharmaceutical Federation of Venezuela estimated that only around 20 percent of needed medicines were […]

APARTADO, Colombia—The sun was sitting low in the sky when Luis Izquierdo noticed the group of armed men walking onto his family’s farm in this town in Uraba, a region of northwestern Colombia that abuts the Caribbean Sea. In the fading daylight, he couldn’t see them clearly at first; he and his parents and siblings thought they might be soldiers looking for something to eat or drink. Their guts started to clench, however, when the men came closer with their rifles shouldered. They realized it was more likely that the men belonged to a paramilitary group that had recently started […]

After years of impoverishment, Guyana is suddenly on the verge of prosperity. Since 2015, a consortium led by Exxon Mobil has developed at least 10 deepwater oil wells off Guyana’s shores, with a combined productive capacity of around 750,000 barrels per day. Exploration is ongoing, with most experts anticipating the country’s oil reserves exceed the current estimate of 5 billion barrels. One way to grasp the magnitude of these discoveries is that in 10 years, Guyana, with a population of slightly less than 800,000, could pump nearly a barrel of oil per person each day—more production on a per capita […]

Paraguay’s main opposition party recently introduced a bill offering conscription-age youth an alternative to mandatory military service: replanting trees in depleted forests. The reforestation proposal highlights the seriousness of environmental degradation in Paraguay, mainly driven by the clearing of forests for agriculture, which has sustained one of Latin America’s highest economic growth rates. In an interview with WPR, Joel E. Correia, an assistant professor of Latin American studies and core faculty member in the University of Florida’s Tropical Conservation and Development Program, discusses deforestation in Paraguay and its disproportionate impact on the country’s indigenous peoples. World Politics Review: How serious […]