South America Archive

This is the web version of our subscriber-only Weekly Wrap-Up newsletter, which uses relevant WPR coverage to provide background and context to the week’s top stories. Subscribe to receive it by email every Saturday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. What matters in global affairs? It’s a question that, as the editor-in-chief of World Politics Review, I keep constantly in mind, because our job at WPR is to help our readers answer it, week in and week out. At times, the answer is right in front of us: the […]

The two candidates facing off in Peru’s upcoming presidential run-off election, Keiko Fujimori and Pedro Castillo, couldn’t be further apart ideologically. Castillo, who belongs to a party that describes itself as Marxist, is calling for a radical overhaul of Peru’s economic and constitutional systems. Fujimori, on the other hand, wants to deepen the free-market model installed under the authoritarian presidency of her father, Alberto Fujimori, in the 1990s. But beyond the obvious differences, the candidates share one overlooked similarity: Both owe big debts to political mentors currently in jail for corruption, whom they are eager to shield from justice. Whoever […]

Something interesting is happening in Venezuela. Just as the rest of the world risked becoming resigned to a stalemate in that failed nation’s political crisis, with essentially no viable path to a solution, a sudden flurry of activity suggests a possible way forward. Even if experience tells us a strong dose of skepticism is warranted when it comes to the Venezuelan regime’s real intentions, the recent developments must be taken seriously. The key event came last week, via Twitter. Opposition leader Juan Guaido released a video calling for talks with the government of President Nicolas Maduro in pursuit of a […]

For more than a week, crowds of Colombians have taken to the streets to vent their anger at the government. It began on April 28, with a general strike organized in response to a controversial tax reform proposal that has since been withdrawn by President Ivan Duque’s government. But the harrowing repression of the demonstrations by Colombian security forces has added fuel to the fire, and the protests have evolved into a general show of discontent with Duque’s unpopular right-wing government. The scenes playing out across Colombia today mirror the social protest movement that erupted in 2019, amid similar uprisings […]