The Americas Archive

After months of peaceful protests, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina was stripped of immunity and forced to step down last week. He now faces charges of illicit association, customs fraud and bribery for his alleged role in a massive corruption scheme. A judge has ordered that he remain in jail until his trial in December. Over a dozen public officials, including former Vice President Roxana Baldetti, Cabinet members and government ministers, have been arrested and put on trial for their participation in the criminal network. The corruption scandals uncovered by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the U.N.-led International Commission against […]

As the plight of Syrian refugees and their harrowing attempts to enter Europe dominate international media, calls have mounted for the United States to play a greater role in managing the crisis. Last week, a photo of the lifeless 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish beach, went viral, only intensifying demands to address the humanitarian needs of many Syrians fleeing the civil war that has raged since 2011. European countries—the target for many migrants—have responded unevenly; Germany and Sweden are liberally accepting European Union-bound refugees and have called on other member states to absorb more migrants, though prospects […]

With the Iran nuclear deal well on its way to safe passage through Congress, the post-mortem tallies of winners and losers are already being written. And one name, seemingly more than any other, can regularly be found in the loser column: AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group. On the surface, this makes a lot of sense—AIPAC got steamrolled. By some estimates the organization will have spent as much as $40 million, much of it on television advertisements that have run in two dozen states, in trying to kill the deal in Congress. All these efforts have appeared to accomplish so […]

President Barack Obama has now won enough support among Democrats in Congress to ensure that the nuclear agreement reached between world powers and Iran will move forward. But while indisputably a major political achievement, the victory is not any guarantee of long-term success. We can now see the outlines of the next phase of the struggle, in which profound disagreements over the deal persist in Washington, denying any semblance of consensus on one of the president’s most important foreign policy wins. First, to savor the success. It remains unknown whether Senate Democrats will manage to prevent the resolution of disapproval […]

Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-part column on the Islamic State’s use of extreme brutality as part of its strategy. Part I looked at the roots and intended effects of that brutality. Part II examines whether extreme brutality is sustainable or will be the group’s downfall, and what that means for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State. The past week brought another example of the deranged brutality of the so-called Islamic State. In this case, a video surfaced showing the extremists burning alive four prisoners from a Shiite militia group. Far from an anomaly, this was […]

The good times are winding down in much of Latin America, and with them ends not only a period of economic growth but very possibly also one of relative political stability. As the global economy and financial markets strain to adjust to a slowdown in China, for years one of the world’s principal engines of growth, no region of the world will feel a more painful punch from the new reality. In fact, the International Monetary Fund’s growth projections show Latin America and the Caribbean with the slowest economies of any major region this year. Such a sharp deceleration inevitably […]

With Congress preparing to vote on the Iran nuclear deal later this month, the proverbial fat lady in the wings is preparing for her solo. After months of lobbying, millions spent on advertising, hundreds of op-eds, thousands of articles and an incalculable number of tweets, the opponents of the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran are on the verge of a major defeat. Indeed, the White House is now pushing for Democrats to filibuster the vote in the Senate and prevent President Barack Obama from having to veto any resolution. Even if not blocked in the Senate, the White House has […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. There was a time when “affairs of state” were seen as having nothing to do with women. That time is now over. Today we have a strong evidentiary base that links the situation and security of women to state-level outcomes across a wide variety of issue areas—from health, wealth and governance to national security and stability. These linkages are no longer obscure. And because they have been made visible, policymakers have begun […]