A key aspect of Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s ambitious “Total Peace” plan is resuming negotiations with the largest remaining rebel group in Colombia—the ELN. Warming ties between Colombia and Venezuela remove one obstacle to that objective. But other remaining challenges mean that progress will be slow and difficult.
Given the threat that Jair Bolsonaro represented to the democracy of Latin America’s largest country, the whole region should feel some relief that Lula da Silva defeated him in Brazil’s presidential election. And yet, there are many pro-democracy activists in Latin America for whom Lula returning to office is a cause for anxiety.
Brazilians go to the polls Sunday in a presidential election pitting left-wing former President Inacio Luiz “Lula” da Silva against the far-right incumbent, President Jair Bolsonaro. The contest has become a poster child of the “democracy versus autocracy” narrative, given Bolsonaro’s populist, authoritarian brand of politics.
More than 7.1 million Venezuelans have now fled the country, making the exodus the largest migration crisis in the world. But while most Venezuelan migrants had previously sought a safe haven in other countries in South America, migration patterns have shifted toward the U.S. under the false hope that things will be better there.
“The worst is yet to come.” That’s the message from the International Monetary Fund about what to expect in 2023. For Latin America, the IMF’s bad news about the year to come will add to a pile of years’ worth of other economic and political problems and will be critical to every political story in the region for the year to come.
The results of Brazil’s first-round presidential election were an unpleasant shock for the left, even if Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party, or PT, finished first and remains the frontrunner against Jair Bolsonaro on Oct. 30. The PT is now a diminished political force, due as much to its own mistakes as the rise of the far right.
The focus on Peruvian President Pedro Castillo’s political travails are understandable, but they have overshadowed one of the more significant policy developments from his presidency so far: a recently introduced stimulus package designed to promote flagging economic growth that backtracks on Castillo’s hard-left economic agenda.
Between October 2021 and August 2022, U.S. authorities at the U.S.-Mexico border took undocumented migrants into custody more than 2 million times—a record number that has generated nonstop commentary about a “border crisis.” But the numbers fail to convey a dramatic shift in the migrant population over the past nine years.
The “War on Drugs” has failed. While that statement is absolutely true, it’s also a cheap applause line. Calling out the failures of the war on drugs is easy, and these days doing so generally finds widespread support. But it’s easier to criticize the current failed approach than to develop and implement alternatives.