South America Archive

Demonstrators have taken to the streets over the past three weeks in a series of massive antigovernment rallies in Colombia, making it the latest Latin American country to be convulsed by protests. While the ongoing unrest has not yet reached the scale of other recent crises elsewhere in the region, such as Bolivia or Chile, it nonetheless poses a stiff challenge to conservative President Ivan Duque, who has come under criticism in recent months for his unpopular economic and security policies. The demonstrations began with a general strike on Nov. 21, with hundreds of thousands of people gathering in cities […]

In mid-October, Peruvian authorities declared a 30-day state of emergency in the copper-rich province of Chumbivilcas, where anti-mining protesters had blocked a stretch of a vital highway called the Southern Runway for almost a month. The blockade, led by indigenous farmers and laborers known as comuneros, caused major disruptions to local commerce and large-scale mining efforts nearby, and nearly forced a halt in operations at Las Bambas, one of Peru’s largest copper mines. It was just the latest in a series of anti-mining protests by comuneros in Peru this year, which have held up hundreds of millions of dollars in […]

Operation Car Wash, or Lava Jato as it is known in Brazil, is widely regarded as the biggest corruption investigation in history. It has ensnared some of the biggest and most powerful Brazilian companies, and its investigators have brought charges against hundreds of businessmen, officials and politicians, including former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, widely known as Lula. Its proponents say that Lava Jato has been a welcome cleansing force in a graft-ridden part of the world, but its impartiality has been called into question. According to hacked messages published by the online investigative news outlet The Intercept earlier […]

It came in a predawn tweet, like so many things from President Donald Trump: The announcement of new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Brazil and Argentina. It was just the start of another wild week in Trump’s trade wars. He then threatened to retaliate against France for its new tax on American technology companies with tariffs on French exports of wine, cheese and handbags. Later in the week, Trump said he might prefer to wait until after the election to reach the “phase-one” trade deal with China he announced as all-but done back in October. The comments raised […]

A season of discontent has descended across Latin America, where economies have stalled, politics have become more polarized and poisonous, and millions of newly middle-class citizens have begun to wonder whether they will be able to hold on to their hard-won gains. Sparked by a stolen election here, an increase in the price of gasoline or subway fares there, people from Ecuador to Chile to Bolivia and now Colombia have spilled into the streets angry with their leaders. Where mass protests haven’t erupted—in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico—voters have instead registered their mounting frustrations against incumbents at the ballot box. It […]

For the third time in two weeks, Colombians turned out Wednesday for a national strike, demanding the government of President Ivan Duque accept a wide-ranging list of popular demands. With hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in protest, Duque faces a political challenge that is magnified by the wider context in which it is unfolding: a proliferation of demonstrations across the region and the world, as far away as the Middle East and Hong Kong, some of which have already succeeded in toppling governments, including one in South America. This protest effect is a new phenomenon in […]

Ending 15 years of governing by the leftist Broad Front coalition, Luis Lacalle Pou of the center-right National Party was declared the winner on Nov. 30 of Uruguay’s closely contested presidential runoff. The results of the second-round vote a week earlier, on Nov. 24, came down to just 28,666 votes out of 2.43 million cast, according to the Electoral Court. With turnout at 90 percent, Lacalle Pou, a lawyer, veteran congressman and son of a former president, edged the Broad Front’s candidate, Daniel Martinez, a former mayor of Montevideo, 48.7 to 47.5 percent. During the Broad Front’s decade and a […]