Latin America
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The US’s attention is spread pretty thin at the moment – wrangling with Russia; negotiating with Iran; drawing down in Afghanistan; “pivoting” to Asia; looking for solutions to violence and unrest in Iraq, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. Somewhat understandably, there hasn’t been much attention paid to Latin America recently. Despite some success in ameliorating poverty…
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I wrote a few months ago that legalizing marijuana in Uruguay could be a bad idea because gangs and drug traffickers might export cheap, price-controlled government pot for sale in foreign countries where it is illegal. Recently, Quartz had an interesting article that made me rethink the issue. Citing Paraguayan officials who say illegal pot from Paraguay will be…
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When she first came into office, Chile’s former (and likely future) president Michelle Bachelet got off to a rough start, but managed to leave office with sky-high approval ratings around 70%. By contrast, the country’s current president, the conservative Sebastian Pinera, has been deeply unpopular throughout his presidency – in fact he’s probably the least popular president since…
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Today, Hondurans head to the polls for the first real elections since an illegal 2009 coup that ousted the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya after he began strengthening ties with Hugo Chavez’s ALBA alliance. This is a momentous event for the country, which is racked by drug trade-related violence, underemployment and a generally weak culture of democracy. According to the…
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Today marks the one-year anniversary of the inception of peace talks with the FARC. Last week, the Colombian government and the FARC signed a deal to allow for the FARC’s participation in the country’s political system should a final agreement be reached in the peace negotiations. As President Santos put it, “Never before have we…
Mike LaSusa 