South America Archive

Fans of the television drama “Homeland” might have been surprised when in a recent episode one of the protagonists surfaced in Venezuela as a guest/prisoner of a sinister gang living in a crowded and dilapidated half-built Caracas high-rise. The espionage show normally focuses on Middle East terrorists and the CIA agents chasing them. But Venezuela’s strife and the sheer strangeness it produces proved hard to resist. The depiction, with its post-apocalyptic overtones was, of course, fictional, even though thousands of squatters do live in unfinished buildings in Venezuela, and crime levels are a growing threat. But there is no escaping […]

Representatives of the Colombian government and the FARC guerilla group announced on Nov. 6 in Havana that they had reached an agreement that could allow FARC leaders to participate in Colombian politics. The precise details of the agreement have not been disclosed, and the two sides have agreed that it would not go into effect until a final peace settlement has been reached. Nevertheless, according to Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, the peace process is moving along reasonably well, and the two sides both may have “gotten past the point of no return” toward reaching a […]

While Michele Bachelet is all but certain to win a second, nonconsecutive term over Evelyn Matthei in Chile’s Nov. 17 presidential election, the long-term implications of Bachelet’s victory are still to be written. The election will be a watershed in Chile’s 23-year-old democracy, and not just because it will be the country’s first presidential election held without mandatory voting. A realignment of political forces and the emergence of a new generation of young politicians have pushed a new reform agenda, which Bachelet has tried to capture in a series of constitutional and tax reform proposals. The shifts are certain to […]