When Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva reestablished the country’s Ministry of Culture on his first day back in office, the move was greeted by a muted response. The absence of media coverage was surprising, considering that for most of the past decade the ministry had been at the center of Brazil’s culture wars.
While the exodus of millions of Venezuelans from their homeland to countries across the Western Hemisphere has attracted considerable attention in recent years, another equally significant migratory pattern in Central America has been taking place with less notice: the roughly 200,000 Nicaraguans who have fled to Costa Rica.
In the Global South, the rush to create green economies risks leaving behind workers in the informal sector unless there are targeted efforts in education and job training—policies and talking points often left out of this new green rush. Chile, considered to be Latin America’s most developed economy, is a case in point.
Violence and corruption in Central America, particularly in the Northern Triangle countries, is causing a wave of outward migration. The Trump administration’s restrictive measures and pressure on regional governments did nothing to address the root causes of the problem, which the Biden administration has now pledged to tackle. Meanwhile, efforts at reform across the region face opposition from entrenched interests that benefit from the status quo.
Last week, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso used his constitutional authority to dissolve Congress, which had been trying to impeach him, and rule by decree until new elections are held for both the president and legislature. The move paralleled last year’s events in Peru, but the region’s response has been remarkably different.
The lapsing of Title 42, a pandemic-era border control measure, offers an opportunity to reconsider U.S. immigration policy more broadly. Rather than pointing to the need for tighter restrictions, it highlights why the U.S. should adopt an “open door” immigration policy, making it easy for anyone who wishes to enter the U.S. to do so.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has gone out of his way to show that he is putting the climate agenda and preservation of the Amazon rainforest at the center of his presidency. But there are limitations to his ability to achieve his climate ambitions, not to mention some incoherencies within his government’s priorities.
Two of today’s biggest stories in the Western Hemisphere are eliciting starkly different responses: action on migration and inaction on Venezuela’s political and economic crises. Yet, with over 7 million Venezuelans having fled the country, it’s impossible to deal with the first challenge without taking the second more seriously.
Paraguay’s recent elections seemed to deliver a clean sweep to the long-dominant Colorado Party and its presidential candidate, Santiago Pena. Yet the apparent scale of the Colorado victory is deceptive. Pena is unlikely to enjoy a political honeymoon, nor have things entirely his way in terms of policymaking.
The Biden administration’s policy approach to the Middle East has come under recent criticism, and its Indo-Pacific policy and its role in Africa are up for debate. But a key region seems to be flying under the radar: Latin America. What is U.S. policy toward its own neighborhood? Does the U.S. even have a policy toward the region?
Chileans have once again dealt President Gabriel Boric a major setback, handing an overwhelming victory to the right-wing opposition in a vote for a new Constitutional Council. The outcome all but ensures that Chile’s next constitution will fail to bring about the progressive changes Boric and his supporters had envisioned.
A growing number of jurisdictions worldwide have recently moved toward some form of cannabis regulation. Moving away from prohibition makes sense, but cannabis legalization has not been without its challenges. One trend in particular gets little attention: the complicity of legal cannabis corporations in the illicit cannabis trade.
This week, Title 42—the pandemic-era measure curtailing immigration across the U.S. southern border—is expiring. But a new rash of efforts to regulate the flow of asylum-seekers compromises U.S. obligations under both domestic and international law, potentially putting U.S. civil servants implementing these policies at legal risk.
Over the past two decades, Chile has been a place where businesses can operate in a regulatory environment shaped by steady and fair rules, while Argentina’s extensive regulations on prices, taxes and capital controls have made business difficult. However, when it comes to the lithium industry, that narrative has just been flipped.
It’s hard to imagine that Paraguay’s elections would have repercussions for China, or that Taiwan’s status would be of interest to Paraguayan voters. But that is exactly what just occurred Sunday, when one of the top issues in Paraguay’s elections was whether or not to end diplomatic relations with Taiwan and establish them with China.
The Western Hemisphere is experiencing increased migration, driven by repression, persecution, crime, conflict, poverty and the climate emergency. But thousands of migrants are caught between Washington’s continued closure of the southern border to most asylum-seekers and the dangers they face on the Mexican side of the border.
In the U.S. and Europe, the rapid emergence of AI applications like ChatGPT has catalyzed a debate over their implications for the future of work. These concerns are far lower down on Latin America’s agenda. But in a region of stark economic inequality, AI threatens to exacerbate that divide and the political tensions that come with it.