Latin America
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Cross-posted with Public Diplomacy Musings On Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama named Bernie Aronson as a special envoy to the ongoing peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC rebel group. The move is perhaps the United States’ strongest signal of its support for the process since it began in 2012. In a statement announcing…
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Cross-posted with Public Diplomacy Musings In an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine last spring, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos lamented that his “rivals have been quite effective in sowing the seeds of skepticism around the peace process” that is currently underway between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels. “Waging war is much more popular than negotiating,”…
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Cross-posted with Public Diplomacy Musings The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC, has been listed as a “foreign terrorist organization” by the U.S. State Department since 1997. Many Colombians also refer to the FARC as terrorists, including former president and current Senator Álvaro Uribe as well as the country’s armed forces. However, the…
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Since the 2009 coup against President José Manuel Zelaya and subsequent election of Porfirio “Pepe Lobo” Sosa and his favored successor Juan Orlando Hernandez, Honduras has embarked on a devastating neoliberal economic program that has contributed to its status as one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the region. The privatization of Honduran society has…
