In an age of uncertainty, anti-globalisation movements, internet rumours, fake news and shifting political sands, it will be tough for Latin America to avoid being sucked into bigger conflicts. But its relative isolation, modest importance to the global economy and weak strategic importance could all prove a blessing if hostilities erupt over the share of the global spoils elsewhere. Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida, a professor at the University of São Paulo, said Latin America’s foreign trade had fallen to its lowest point in eight decades in 2016. As a result of declining prosperity, she said, there had been a fall in support for governments and political institutions. More attention from Washington, however, was not the answer. “Since the end of the cold war, US policy toward South America has been what is commonly called benign neglect, meaning the region has little political importance to the United States. And that’s good. If it goes on like this, even better,” she said.
Migration trends to watch in 2017
Under the Obama administration, the US has partnered with Mexico to intercept and deport Central Americans fleeing gang violence in the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) before they reach the US border and claim asylum. The Mexican government may be less willing to work with a Trump administration in the wake of highly offensive comments about Mexican immigrants he made on the campaign trail, but Meissner predicts that Mexico’s own interests may be served by continuing to police its southern border. But while Mexican immigration authorities have the power to deport Central Americans, they have no deportation agreements with countries in Africa and Asia, whose citizens are increasingly traversing South and Central America to reach the US. The numbers of Haitians, Africans, and Asians claiming asylum at the US border is likely to continue growing in 2017.
Latin America is set to become a leader in alternative energy
That matters for political as well as altruistic reasons. Latin Americans worry more than anybody else about climate change, according to polling by the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank. They have good reason. The region is prone to natural disasters and extreme weather. To take one current example, Bolivia last month imposed water rationing in La Paz, the capital. The three reservoirs that serve the city are almost dry. Lake Poopó, once a large freshwater body in the altiplano, has all but dried up, seemingly permanently. Outside Chile and Colombia, coal deposits are scarce in Latin America. That is one reason why industrialisation came late to the region. In the 21st century, it may turn out to be an advantage in helping Latin America move swiftly to a post-carbon economy.
GameChangers 2016: Elites, Organized Crime and Political Firestorms
To deal with corruption and criminal penetration of the state, both Honduras and El Salvador appear to be looking towards the CICIG as a model. The Organization of American States-backed Support Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Misión de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras – MACCIH) began the arduous task of assisting in high profile investigations and helping draft legislation to create a sounder legal foundation to fight crime and has already run into roadblocks. In El Salvador, the attorney general announced the formation of an independent special anti-impunity unit. These are not failsafe solutions, as our investigation into the CICIG and its relationship with elites showed…. Throughout the region, there were many other positives, too many to list here. As is often the case, the bad news stories overshadowed the steady incremental change and numerous positive outcomes, much of which are coming because of the extraordinary efforts to prosecute political elites at all levels.
2016 Deadliest Year for Catholic Priests in Mexico
Church members in Mexico — still a deeply conservative and Catholic country — hold visible and respected positions within communities, and priests have long used their role to defend human rights. They are often on the frontlines of defense between their parishes and organized crime, which puts them directly in the crosshairs. The trends of rising violence against church officials documented by the report are symbolic of Mexico‘s generally worsening security situation and the government’s apparent inability to efficiently tackle organized crime. A report published this year argued that the country’s impunity rate reached 99 percent, which explains why the murders of so many priests murders go unsolved.
Anne Frank’s diary inspired some victims of Guatemala’s civil war to tell their stories
Cochoy himself was only 14 when five members of his family were killed or disappeared. He hid in his house for a year, terrified he might be next. His father finally raised the money to send him to study outside of Santa Lucía. Cochoy returned to his community with a university education and a strong desire to tell the world what had happened there during the ’80s. But first he had to persuade the women who were reluctant to break the paradigm of silence. For one thing, they could not read nor write, and struggled to visualize the power of their written testimonies. He finally convinced them by telling them the story of another war victim, Anne Frank. Cochoy remembers the Mayan women being touched when he told them the story of the young Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis. “And then I ask them, ‘Why I know Anne Frank’s story? I didn’t meet her, how [do] I know about her?’ And then one of the ladies said maybe you read it in a book,” Cochoy recalls. “And this moment was the moment when I said, yes, I know about Anne Frank because there is a book about her. And I said we can do it for your children and grandchildren.”
AN ANCIENT CITY EMERGES IN A REMOTE RAIN FOREST
If we follow this scenario to its conclusion, then sometime in the early fifteen hundreds several epidemics of disease probably swept T1 in close succession. If the mortality rates were similar to the rest of Honduras, ninety per cent of the inhabitants died of disease. The survivors, shattered and traumatized, prepared to abandon the city. Their final act was to gather up their sacred objects, arrange them at the base of the pyramid, smash them, and then depart, never to return. Europe’s Black Death, at its worst, carried off thirty to sixty per cent of the population. That was devastating, but the mortality rate wasn’t high enough to destroy European civilization. A ninety-per-cent mortality rate is high enough: it does not just kill people; it annihilates societies. The survivors are deprived of that vital human connection to their past; they are robbed of their stories, their music and dance, their spiritual practices and beliefs. Think what it would be like for you to watch all these people die—your children, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, your friends, your community leaders, merchants, and spiritual authorities. Imagine the wasteland left behind, the towns and cities abandoned, the fields overgrown, the houses and streets strewn with the unburied dead; envisage the wealth rendered worthless, the stench, the flies, the scavenging animals, the loneliness and silence. This inferno of contagion destroyed thousands of societies and millions of people, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from California to New England, from the Amazon rain forest to the tundra of Hudson Bay.
A Nicaragua Balance Sheet for 2016
On a national level, 2016 was a year marked by the reelection of Daniel Ortega via an electoral process with no credibility: the opposition excluded; no national or international electoral observation; and a high level of abstention. Ortega will face his third consecutive term with his wife Rosario Murillo as his vice president in a year marked by uncertainty due to events such as the crisis in Venezuela, the menace of the law known as the Nica Act – currently approved by the US House and waiting to be ratified by the United States Senate – and the incoming government of Donald Trump. Below, we present a summary of the Nicaraguan and world news that marked the year 2016.
Haiti: Jovenel Moise confirmed as new president
Jovenel Moise has been declared the winner of Haiti’s November 20 presidential election, ending a protracted electoral process that has paralysed the Caribbean country’s politics for more than a year. The Haiti provisional electoral council said on Tuesday that Moise was the majority winner with 55.6 percent of the vote. Turnout was low at a reported 21 percent. Moise, previously a little-known businessman, was chosen to run on behalf of the Tet Kale party of former president Michel Martelly, who ended his term without an elected successor. The 48-year-old president-elect runs a banana export company that he sees as a model for rural development and on the campaign trail, he branded himself as “Banana Man”.
Traditional Bolivian healers tackle diabetes crisis (video)
Up until the 1980s, traditional medicine was outlawed in Bolivia. Now, the government encourages traditional healers to work alongside modern medicine to reach those with diabetes, especially in indigenous communities. Merging both traditional healing practices and modern medicine is helping to educate Bolivians on prevention. “Bolivia is a predominantly indigenous society and is increasingly using its ancient medicines to tackle a very modern problem,” said Mario Vargas, a Kallawaya, or traditional healer, who practises an ancient form of medicine learned from his ancestors and adapts it to the modern world.