South America Archive

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s Editor-in-Chief Judah Grunstein and host Peter Dörrie discuss ISIS and al-Qaida affiliates, El Salvador’s murder epidemic and the impact of the drop in global commodities prices. For the report, journalist James Bargent joins us to discuss illegal gold mining and violence in Colombia. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant articles on WPR: ISIS vs. Al-Qaida: How Do Affiliates Choose?El Salvador’s Murder Epidemic and the Paradox of Peacebuilding SuccessWith Little International Support, Unrecognized States Turn to Each OtherWPR’s Global Insider Series on the Commodities CycleLengthy Oil Slump Could Force Saudi Arabia’s Hand on […]

The threats arrived in October by Whatsapp messages and pamphlets that were circulated around the northern Colombian town of Segovia. They placed a death sentence on every one of the 1,600 workers of Grupo Damasa, the business that operates the town’s richest gold mines, if the mining company did not pay a gold “tax.” “Stop working or we will stop you. We’re not playing,” they read. Within two months, four of the company’s miners were dead; two more had been shot; and one of its processing mills was attacked with a grenade. But still, Grupo Damasa’s owner would not pay […]

Brazil’s embattled president, Dilma Rousseff, has suffered many setbacks since late last year, perhaps none worse than when the lower house of Brazil’s National Congress accepted an impeachment motion against her in early December. The barrage of negative headlines, however, is unlikely to cut short Rousseff’s term in office, since the political and legal bars to oust her are much higher than those to block impeachment proceedings in the National Congress. In recent weeks, the move to impeach her, which looked more likely in December, has lost some of its momentum. But a hasty impeachment process had little chance of […]

This past week, Iran satisfied its obligations for implementing the nuclear deal reached last July with world powers, earning it relief from sanctions. The prisoner swap with the United States that followed hinted that a new era of possible cooperation between Washington and Tehran could be in the cards as the result of last year’s hard-earned diplomatic victory. But how relations will unfold, and how they will fare under the next U.S. administration, remain unclear. Iran’s other relationships are also in flux. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic ties with Iran following an attack on its embassy in Tehran […]

Argentina’s new president, Mauricio Macri, inherits a host of problems and points of friction at home and abroad from his predecessors, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and, before that, her late husband, Nestor Kirchner. But in contrast to the daunting domestic economic issues his new administration faces—just 0.4 percent economic growth in 2015 and an economy projected to shrink by 0.7 percent in 2016, on top of inflation estimated at 20 percent—the international hangover of nearly 13 years of Kirchner governments looks relatively easy to fix. International spats were an extension of the angry, polarizing rhetoric and policies of Kirchnerismo that […]

For several regional observers and much of the media, the string of conservative electoral victories from Argentina to Venezuela late last year was the last nail in the coffin of Latin America’s left. With Brazil’s leftist government floundering and other signs of discontent among its neighbors, leftism’s appeal appears to be on the decline in the region. But despite setbacks, it’s too soon to declare the left dead in Latin America, given the perseverance of more mainstream leftist governments and ongoing socio-political and economic realities in a region still defined by huge inequality. Admittedly, 2015 did not end well for […]

Venezuela’s opposition officially assumed control of the country’s legislature Tuesday for the first time since the charismatic socialist Hugo Chavez took power 17 years ago. The congressional swearing-in ceremony was gripping and suspenseful, but also a shambolic, sweltering and chaotic exercise, a fitting start to what promises to be an even more contentious era in Venezuela’s already turbulent political saga. The uncertainty in the air was accompanied by a sense of foreboding mixed with excitement. Competing street demonstrations and political battles that raged outside and inside the parliament building made it abundantly clear that neither side has any intention of […]