Latin American governments can’t help but ask how the U.S. government can continue to call on them to implement harsh drug control policies when a key policy is being called into question in the United States itself.
Nestor Kirchner revived his country’s economy by breaking with neoliberal policies and playing hardball with international creditors.
Dilma Rousseff came very close to winning in the first round of voting in Brazil, she ended up on the threshold of the government currently led by Lula de Silva. Lula, the most popular president Brazil has ever had, is stepping down after eight years that changed the face of the country and transformed its place in the world.
Writing about it didn’t, alas, prevent it from happening.
In the late 1940s, Gore Vidal lived in Guatemala, where he shared a house with the writer Anaïs Nin, lived on the cheap, and wrote Dark Green, Bright Red. Published in 1950, this undeservedly obscure novel describes how the operatives of the World Banana Company work behind the scenes in an unnamed Central American country to help a smooth-talking dictator depose a president committed to land reform and free elections.
The namesakes of the IPS Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Award were murdered in perhaps the first terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
The uprising in Ecuador that occurred on September 30 shook the world and sparked a debate about the reason for the unrest. Groups of police and members of the armed forces, disgruntled over a law that, among other aspects, eliminates police bonuses, took to the streets in protest. When President Rafael Correa went out to talk to the police, he was attacked with tear gas and later held captive in the police hospital as police officers continued to attack unarmed citizens.
Chilean-born Edgar Endress is a Virginia-based artist, professor, and founding member of the Floating Lab Collective. Endress’ work stresses a context-dependent blend of media that both forges and illustrates an integration of art and social engagement. For Endress and his Floating Lab Collective, the opportunities for social interaction afforded by his work are every bit as integral to the performance as whatever audio or visual elements he uses to stimulate them. Endress recently met with Foreign Policy In Focus to discuss his recent work on immigration, his theories of social engagement, and his travels to the Balkans.
The Obama Administration promised a break with our violent past in Latin America. Instead it has beefed up U.S. military presence in Colombia and is sending military aid to the government that took power by coup in Honduras.
As the dust settles on the August 10 Colombian Constitutional Court ruling declaring invalid the U.S.-Colombia military bases agreement, politicians and analysts are saying that the decision was for the better. Most of those voices come from former supporters of the deal —including Liberal Party presidential candidate, Rafael Pardo.
It might be easier to talk Venezuela off the nuclear-weapons ledge if the U.S. weren’t so intent on filling the coffers of its own nuclear-weapons industry.