Street art in Bogota, Colombia. Anna Vogt
Poverty remains on the up across Latin America, Cepal report reveals
During a summit in Lima on Monday, the commission aims to increase measures to combat inequality, steadily rising over the past few years. Despite many Latin American countries profiting from an economic boom in the early 2000s, poverty is once again on the up across the region. While it is estimated 66 million people lived in extreme poverty in 2012, this figure rose to 71 million last year.
Red Tape Slows U.S. Help for Children Fleeing Central America
President Obama vowed a year ago to give Central American children fleeing violence a new, legal way into the United States by allowing them to apply for refugee status while in their own countries instead of accepting help from smugglers or resorting to a dangerous trek across Mexico. But not a single child has entered the United States through the Central American Minors program since its establishment in December, in large part because of a slow-moving American bureaucracy that has infuriated advocates for the young children and their families.
How one of the most obese countries on earth took on the soda giants
The battle continues. At the end of October, the lower house of Mexico’s congress, the chamber of deputies, passed an amendment that would have halved the tax for beverages with less sugar. But the political climate has now shifted; after the vote, all the parties scrambled to deny responsibility for watering down the tax – “The industry did it,” said one PRI deputy – and the senate quickly overturned the amendment. Calvillo, meanwhile, is campaigning to go further. In interviews and press conferences he talks about doubling the soda tax and removing the VAT on bottled water; a soda would then be twice the price of a same-size water. And he’s campaigning to go wider. “This is not just a battle for the perceptions of Mexicans,” he said. “The governments of Colombia, Ecuador, other Latin American countries, South Africa, India – they’re all looking at a soda tax. The world’s attention is on Mexico.”
Many Guatemalans simply stayed home on election day. In the end, more eligible Guatemalans didn’t vote at all than voted for Jimmy Morales. Only 55% voted. Abstention rates— whether motivated by apathy, or to protest a system perceived as illegitimate, or because many registered voters are living in the U.S. where no absentee ballots are available— were even higher than usual. Despite rumors that the blank-vote and no-vote movements originated as a plot by Baldizón, and criticisms that such a strategy was no way forward, the push continued strong up until the day of the runoff election. “Tu dignidad no se vota” signs calling for people to cast blank ballots are still tacked up on walls all around Guatemala City. The phrase means, roughly, “Don’t vote away your dignity.”
Jimmy Morales, the New Face of Guatemala’s Military Old Guard
Morales had campaigned as an outsider candidate, the antithesis of a career politician. His campaign slogan, “not corrupt or a thief,” looked to ease voters’ minds following the revelation of a massive corruption scandal within the administration of ex-general Otto Pérez Molina. But unbeknownst to many Guatemalans, their new president’s backers represent the same forces that carried out some of the worst crimes of the country’s 36-year-long internal armed conflict.
US has blood on hands for encouraging Honduras coup, says journalist (audio)
Journalist Fred Alvarado says the U.S. has the blood of Honduran journalists on its hands for encouraging a coup that brought a corrupt government against a democratically elected government. He looks back on the 2009 Honduran coup, and its impact today.
Honduras: the most deadly place for journalists in the Americas
The report, published on Monday, listed the deaths of 150 journalists in Latin America and the Caribbean from 2010 to its publication date. IACHR said that these murders were “allegedly for reasons related to the exercise of freedom of expression, because they informed, discussed or commented on events and situations that were happening in their community.” Though Mexico claimed the most lives at 55, it has more than 15 times the population of Honduras, where 28 journalists were killed. This means that journalists in Honduras were killed at a rate eight times higher than in Mexico.
Presidential Elections in Haiti: The Most Votes Money Can Buy
At least a half-dozen leading presidential candidates have come out before results are even announced to denounce widespread fraud in favor of the government’s candidate, Jovenèl Moïse. The allegations have been wide ranging: replacement of ballot boxes with fakes distributed by ambulances, mass ballot box stuffing, and burning of ballots for opposition candidates. Little proof has been provided to back up these claims. But the most blatant example was there for everyone to see on election day, and was in fact anticipated by electoral officials and international observers.
From narco to negotiator, will Colombia’s FARC be the key in reducing illicit crop cultivation?
“U.S. government has said that the FARC are one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in the world, in other words, when we are discussing drug trafficking and cocaine, we need to include the FARC in the top 10, perhaps even the top five global groups involved in the trade.” Brown commented during an interview with daily El Tiempo. “I hope that if the U.S. government supports the efforts made by Colombian government we are going to need to update past politics and both governments will need to have the same objective: we want to reduce and eliminate the cultivation and production of illicit drugs, produced in Colombia and consumed in the U.S. We have the same objective, the only thing left to discuss is tactics, we have the same strategy, the question is what will be the best tactic for completing this operation.”
The movie doesn’t show that the real-life client of Greenberg, Carville and Shrum, Sánchez de Lozada a year after his election in October 2003 ordered the army into the city of El Alto where they brutally repressed protests leading to 68 deaths and 400 injured. Sánchez de Lozada then fled to the US together with former Defense Minister Carlos Sánchez Berzain. Despite detailed investigations by the Bolivian Attorney General that confirmed their roles in the massacre and two formal requests by the Bolivian Government for extradition, the US State Department has yet to respond positively.