The Americas Archive

On Jan. 24, a Brazilian appeals court upheld corruption charges against former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Despite the ruling, Lula, as he is popularly known, still leads the polls ahead of presidential elections slated for Oct. 7. In an email interview, Kurt Weyland, a professor in the department of government at the University of Texas at Austin and author of several books on Brazil and Latin America, discusses what’s next for Lula, his leftist Workers’ Party and Brazil’s corruption-plagued democracy. WPR: After his corruption conviction was upheld, what can we expect from Lula going forward? Kurt Weyland: It […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about corruption in various countries around the world. On Jan. 16, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales reshuffled his Cabinet, replacing his ministers of the economy, the environment and social development. Morales, who is halfway through his four-year term, has been plagued by his own corruption scandals after running on a campaign to clean up Guatemala, where graft is rampant. He has an approval rating of just 19 percent, according to a recent poll. In an email interview, Elizabeth Oglesby, an associate professor of Latin American studies at the University of Arizona, […]

Until recently, the hyperinflations that inflicted staggering economic costs in South America in the 1980s and 1990s seemed like a thing of the past. But that was before Venezuela, where inflation hit triple digits last year, at 652 percent. Without policy changes from the government, the International Monetary Fund forecasts inflation rates accelerating to 2,349 percent this year and 3,474 percent in 2019. Even these forecasts may be conservative, with the price of selected items already increasing by 80 percent in the first week of January. While normal hyperinflations take place through excessive monetary creation—the government printing more and more […]

South America’s biggest political surprise recently has come from one of its smallest countries, Ecuador, where President Lenin Moreno has maneuvered to break with his predecessor and a legacy tinged with authoritarianism and corruption. Narrowly elected in April, Moreno had been vice president and the anointed successor of Rafael Correa, the populist, left-leaning, U.S.-trained economist who governed for a decade and centralized control over government, the economy and the media. Analysts speculated Moreno could be a timid caretaker put in place to allow Correa to skirt term limits and then sweep back into office in 2021—in the mold of Dmitry […]

Mexico has taken extraordinary measures in recent years to protect marine life threatened by illegal fishing in its waters. But fishermen and drug cartels that profit off illegal fishing have pushed back, heightening tensions. In late December, Mexican fishermen in the Gulf of California shot down a drone that the conservation group Sea Shepherd had deployed to monitor illicit activities. In an email interview, Johan Bergenas, senior director for public policy at Vulcan Inc., and David Soud, head of research and analysis at I.R. Consilium, discuss the impact of illegal fishing in Mexico and the government’s efforts to stop it. […]

Last weekend, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres traveled to Colombia to try to invigorate the 2016 peace agreement ending a relentless guerrilla insurgency that had become a painful relic of the Cold War. The longest-running armed conflict in the Western hemisphere pitted the state against the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the largest of two Marxist guerrilla groups that battled Colombian forces for more than half a century. But in contrast to the international acclaim and optimism that greeted the peace deal, which culminated in Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos receiving the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize, Guterres’ […]

Sebastian Pinera put in an underwhelming performance in the first round of Chile’s presidential elections on Nov. 19, winning just 36.6 percent of the vote. Most polls had predicted that the conservative billionaire and former president, running for the center-right Chile Vamos coalition, would take over 40 percent of the vote, and even pass the 50-percent threshold necessary to win outright and return straight to the Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, which he left in 2014. Yet following a bitter campaign, Pinera romped to victory on Dec. 22 by a wide, 9-point margin over his second-round opponent, Alejandro Guillier, who failed […]

The Trump administration’s decision to end immigration protections for hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans living in the United States will have a crushing impact on the lives of people who have called America their home for more than a decade, if not longer. But the reverberations of the move to end the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, will also have a devastating effect on El Salvador, the tiny Central American country that has struggled to stay afloat in relentlessly stormy socioeconomic and geopolitical conditions. The end of TPS could even gradually turn El Salvador into a failed […]

Courts and legislatures have taken decisive steps to protect LGBT rights in Latin America. But there is a stark difference between the law and day-to-day realities. On Tuesday, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights urged Latin American countries to legalize same-sex marriages and unions, responding to a 2016 petition by Costa Rica’s president, Luis Guillermo Solis, who has championed gay rights. The decision, one of the most sweeping court statements on same-sex marriage in history, appeared to be the latest sign that Latin America is becoming one of the safest regions in the world for LGBT people, at least legally. […]

Argentina’s president, Mauricio Macri, opened the year on the heels of a bruising fight over pension reform, which has galvanized the opposition and sent his approval ratings tumbling. But the promise of greater economic growth and persistent divisions among the opposition make it far from certain that this short-term turmoil will derail his government’s agenda and turn into a major barrier to his re-election next year. Macri’s team first began floating the idea last summer of reforming a retirement system that is plagued by an insufficient funding base—the result of demographic factors and widespread labor informality. His determination to secure […]

After a tumultuous year of political upheaval and economic turmoil in Latin America, 2018 promises to bring a measure of clarity as voters in some of the region’s biggest, most important countries go to the polls. But as the new year begins, the prevailing mood from Sao Paolo to Mexico City is one of uncertainty, with an unprecedented range of possible outcomes. This year, voters will choose presidents in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Paraguay and Costa Rica. Venezuela will also hold a presidential election, or so says President Nicolas Maduro. What is remarkable in the elections in the first three— Brazil, […]

On Dec. 26, Brazil’s government stripped Venezuela’s top diplomat in Brasilia, Gerardo Antonio Delgado Maldonado, of his credentials and kicked him out of the country. The expulsion, which came in retaliation for a similar move from Caracas, is the latest setback in badly deteriorated ties between the former South American partners. In an email interview, Peter Hakim, president emeritus and senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, explains what is behind the breakdown in relations, and what regional governments are doing in response to the ongoing crisis in Venezuela under President Nicolas Maduro. WPR: Why did Brazil expel Venezuela’s top diplomat […]

BOGOTA, Colombia—It was one of the biggest corporate corruption scandals in history, and its web of connections still hasn’t been fully untangled across Latin America. Having paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in political bribes in order to secure lucrative contracts at home and abroad, the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht continues to upend politics, lately in Ecuador and Peru. But things are picking up in Colombia, too. In August, Colombia’s Supreme Court called on President Juan Manuel Santos and several former ministers to testify about Odebrecht bribes to the Colombian government that the attorney general’s office says exceed $27 […]

In 2017, as the Trump administration turned its back on U.S. rapprochement with Cuba, the island deepened its relations with Russia, its longtime backer during the Cold War. Russian exports to Cuba were up 81 percent in the first nine months of 2017, and a possible agreement with Russian oil giant Rosneft may pave the way for Russia to supplant Venezuela as Cuba’s biggest energy supplier. In an email interview, William M. LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University in Washington D.C. and an expert on Latin American affairs, discusses renewed Cuba-Russia ties and the opportunities and obstacles ahead […]