The Nicaraguan regime has a new target. Not content with jailing leading opposition figures, the regime has now taken aim at the Catholic Church. The message, it seems, is that there is room for only one church in this majority-Catholic country: the one that worships President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo.
The Lima Group came together in 2017 with the goal of improving human rights and humanitarian conditions in Venezuela. Today, it is clear that the Lima Group failed to achieve its lofty goals. But its experience can offer lessons to Latin America on the challenges similar projects could face in the future.
Canadians have worked hard to develop distinct institutional traditions and international ties, but have undoubtedly benefited from the trade and security guarantees offered by the U.S. If Washington retreats from its role as global guarantor, Canadians will struggle to cope with the ensuing disruptions.
Recent arrests of priests in Nicaragua would seem to offer a moment for the Catholic Church, which remains influential in Latin America, to galvanize regional governments against the repressive rule of President Daniel Ortega. But while local priests speak out, church leaders have appeared unwilling to do more.
In July, Guatemalan police arrested Jose Ruben Zamora, one of the country’s most prominent journalists and publisher of El Periodico, a newspaper whose mission is to shine light on corruption. The arrest was an ominous lurch toward authoritarianism in a region where democracy, with its shallow roots, is getting trampled.
Prospects for a prompt resolution of the protracted political conflict in Venezuela seem bleak. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the opportunities that may arise from recent political developments in the region, including a resurgent left no longer in thrall to Washington’s sterile “maximum pressure” campaign.
The first 100 days of any administration should always be a moment for optimism. So, even if Colombia’s political system is doomed to hit gridlock later in his term, the country’s new president, Gustavo Petro, still has a few months to check a few agenda items off his list and start their implementation.
The international community may be experiencing a case of compassion fatigue when it comes to the violence currently gripping Haiti. But it is hardly an excuse. While much of Haiti’s misery is homegrown, the roots of its troubles extend beyond the island, and the reverberations from its crises always breach its borders.
With polls showing that he may lose by a wide margin in Brazil’s Oct. 2 presidential election, President Jair Bolsonaro is setting the stage to claim fraud and have his supporters protest his loss. More troubling, Bolsonaro has hinted that elements of the military and police will back his efforts.
Argentine President Alberto Fernandez has spent his entire term renegotiating and re-renegotiating the terms of the country’s debt, a process that has seen two economy ministers leave office. No politician on the left, center or right wants to make the necessary, but unpopular, decisions the economy needs.