South America Archive

The investigation of an elite police unit in Brazil for allegedly trying to cover up the disappearance of a Rio de Janeiro man may represent an opportunity to restore the public’s trust in the rule of law, and perhaps repair the reputation of a controversial program to pacify favelas. The disappearance of Amarildo da Souza, a 47-year-old bricklayer who was last seen by witnesses in July 2013 being led into a local police base in Rio’s Rocinha favela, provoked immediate outrage. Residents and civil society groups demanded justice; prosecutors soon launched an investigation that ultimately resulted in charges of murder, […]

Last week, prosecutors in Brazil formally opened an investigation into alleged influence-peddling by former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva. The popular Brazilian leader is accused of using his position to benefit the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, Latin America’s largest engineering firm, between 2011, when he left office, and 2014. The corruption probe is only the latest headache for Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, and a Brazilian political class shaken to the core by the ongoing Petrobras scandal, in which dozens of politicians and businessmen are under investigation for taking over $2.1 billion in kickbacks from the state-owned oil giant. Odebrecht’s […]

Now that negotiators have walked to the brink and returned with signed documents on two major international crises—Iran’s nuclear program and Greece’s debt—it’s time to look at another historic diplomatic effort that appears to be hanging by a thread: peace talks aimed at ending the world’s longest-running conflict, the war between the Colombian government and the FARC insurgency. The war has already lasted half a century, outliving countless revolutionary movements in poor countries and outlasting the Soviet-led push for a global workers’ revolution by decades. In the past three years, much of the contest has shifted from battlefields in the […]

After almost three years of talks, Colombia’s peace negotiations with the FARC guerrilla group will end soon—with or without an agreement. Amid an uptick in violence in recent months, Humberto de la Calle, the government’s chief negotiator, said in a July 5 interview with the Colombian media, “It’s clear to me that the process is coming to its end, for good or ill. It could be because we’ve reached an accord, as we’re in the homestretch of the fundamental issues [on the negotiation agenda]. Or for ill, if—as is happening—Colombians’ patience runs out.” Two days after de la Calle’s interview, […]

Both the Brazilian and U.S. governments billed President Dilma Rousseff’s late June meeting with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in Washington as a reset of relations between the Western Hemisphere’s two largest democracies. Revelations in 2013 by NSA contractor Edward Snowden of U.S. eavesdropping on Brazilian officials, including Rousseff herself, caused her to cancel her state visit scheduled for that October, putting bilateral relations on ice for almost two years. Arguably, Brazil and the United States had already been on separate tracks for some time prior to that, given Brasilia’s more assertively independent foreign policy under the […]