The Americas Archive

Corruption and falling commodities prices have many in Suriname worried that their country is turning into the next Venezuela. Businesses are closing; inflation is rising; and the economy is predicted to contract by 2 percent this year. In an email interview, Robert Looney, distinguished professor in the department of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, discusses the economic crisis in Suriname. WPR: What factors are behind the recent economic turmoil in Suriname? Robert Looney: Suriname’s economy has never been able to break out of the boom-and-bust cycle that afflicts many resource-producing developing countries. The country is almost totally […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and host Peter Dörrie discuss Central America’s “other” migrant crisis, the United States’ expanding military engagement across Africa, and reforming how the World Health Organization is financed. For the Report, Eric Farnsworth joins us to explore the limits of U.S. President Barack Obama’s pragmatic approach to Latin America. Listen:Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: As New Migrant Streams Look North, Central America’s Crisis Moves South As U.S. Military Assistance in Africa Grows, How Can It Mitigate the Risks? The Pitfalls of the Pentagon Taking the Lead on […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on countries’ risk exposure, contribution and response to climate change. According to a recently released report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, climate change will lead to more frequent and severe droughts in the Caribbean region, already home to seven of the world’s most water-stressed countries. That will in turn affect agriculture, with the risk of food shortages. In an email interview, Carlos Fuller, the international and regional liaison officer at the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, discusses the region’s climate change policy. WPR: What is the […]

Amid the wave of migrants fleeing to the United States from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala—collectively referred to as Central America’s Northern Triangle—another migration crisis is unfolding farther south. The Central American isthmus is increasingly becoming a pressure point for migrants from around the world, whether Cubans attempting to reach the U.S.-Mexico border via a circuitous route that begins in Ecuador, or migrants from Africa and South Asia who have been shut out of Europe and look instead to entry points in South America that lead north. The influx is not only straining the resources of countries in southern Central […]

Protesters have taken to the streets in Chile to demand that the country’s pension system, which was privatized in 1981 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, be reformed or scrapped all together. In an email interview, Jennifer Pribble, an associate professor of political science and international studies at the University of Richmond, discusses Chile’s pension system and the prospects for its reform. WPR: How is Chile’s pension system currently organized, and what problems is it now facing? Jennifer Pribble: In 1981, during Pinochet’s dictatorship, Chile privatized its pension system, eliminating the pay-as-you-go system for all except the military. Under the […]

At his first Summit of the Americas, in Trinidad and Tobago in 2009, President Barack Obama laid out a vision for U.S. relations in the hemisphere based on partnership and a commitment to pursuing policies that aligned the United States with the needs and interests of the region’s people, particularly those living in its barrios and favelas. Gone would be the days of overt attempts by Washington to influence Latin America’s political direction or to promote a particular economic course. Countries would decide for themselves which path to pursue, and the United States would cooperate where possible based on mutual […]

Over the past few decades, Latin America became the very public incubator of new economic models—or at least of flamboyant variations on old ones. For a while, it seemed as if the region might just give birth to some kind of a successful hybrid: a populist, leftist formula for expanding economies and erasing poverty, powered by the free market and assertively steered by governments. But those days are gone, and they’re exiting the stage with the same bombast and drama with which they burst onto it. No one would suggest that the so-called 21st Century Socialism concocted by the late […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the legal status and socio-economic conditions of indigenous peoples in a range of countries. Canadian Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould recently told a gathering of British Columbia Cabinet members and indigenous leaders that Canada will adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but that Canada cannot incorporate it “word for word” into law, which has prompted widespread criticism across the indigenous community. In an email interview, Niigaanwewidam Sinclair, the head of the native studies department at the University of Manitoba, discusses indigenous rights in Canada. […]

On Sept. 7, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto announced the resignation of Finance Minister Luis Videgaray and appointed Jose Antonio Meade, a reputable technocrat, as his replacement. Since Videgaray had been instrumental in organizing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s controversial visit to Mexico City late last month, most coverage framed his exit as the fallout. But Videgaray’s resignation had more to do with a longer track record of failing to deliver on ambitious economic and structural reforms. It was the latest upheaval in Pena Nieto’s Cabinet at a time when the Mexican economy faces mediocre growth, mounting debt and a […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the legal status and socio-economic conditions of indigenous peoples in a range of countries. Indigenous groups in Chile are calling for the release of Machi Francisca Linconao, a spiritual leader of the Mapuche people who has been imprisoned for arson since 2013 under the country’s controversial counterterrorism law and whose health is currently in decline. In an email interview, José Aylwin, the co-director of Observatorio Ciudadano, a Chilean human rights NGO, discusses indigenous rights in Chile. WPR: What is the legal status of Chile’s indigenous peoples, and what […]

This is it. As of Aug. 24, after 52 years of fighting and four years of negotiating, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have a peace accord. The FARC will cease to be one of the hemisphere’s largest generators of violence and will transition into a peaceful political movement. Already, the past 13 months have been the least violent period in Colombia since the conflict with the FARC began in 1964. And at midnight on Aug. 29, the government and the leftist guerrillas made it permanent, calling a definitive halt to all hostilities. The […]

As if there were any doubt, it is increasingly clear that Venezuela’s profound political and economic crisis is not confined to its borders. The repercussions of the country’s humanitarian disaster and creeping authoritarianism are spreading throughout Latin America, posing tough choices for its neighbors and straining hemispheric relations. How best to deal with the Venezuela question is also making it even more difficult to set common policies to address the region’s economic stagnation. Nowhere is this problem clearer than in Mercosur, the Common Market of the South, an integration mechanism founded in 1991 by Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, which […]