Last week, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador canceled a Pacific Alliance summit scheduled to be held in Mexico this month, after Peru’s Congress prevented President Pedro Castillo from traveling abroad. The incident highlights a challenge for the group, which is floundering for a purpose and facing internal tensions.
On the sidelines of last week’s G-20 leaders’ summit, Argentina and China struck a deal to increase their currency swap program. By doing so, however, China is playing to the worst economic instincts of Argentina’s Peronist government, for which every economic problem can be solved by simply throwing yet another currency plan at it.
The government of newly elected Colombian President Gustavo Petro listed countering deforestation as one of its top priorities. But those efforts promise to raise tensions between the central government and local farmers, who in recent years have been on the receiving end of heavy-handed government efforts to counter deforestation.
With the stakes set high in its recent presidential election and amid predictions of election-related violence, Brazil’s electoral system stood out remarkably for treating democracy with the urgency and care it deserves. What can other democracies around the world learn from how Brazil handled its information landscape and voting?
Even a narrow GOP majority in a single congressional chamber could stymie President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda. From a foreign policy perspective, however, divided government does not necessarily hold presidents back. Unsurprisingly, the Biden administration portrayed the results of the midterms as a victory for his foreign policy.
In South America, Twitter has become an online extension of real-life political battlefields, and likely will remain so given economic forecasts for the coming year. That raises big questions over how Elon Musk’s ownership of the platform will affect how protests are organized, how governments respond and how disinformation spreads.
Efforts by the Biden administration to accelerate its quiet diplomacy with Venezuela have already produced some breakthroughs. But the greater challenge comes next, as Washington tries to leverage sanctions to incentivize Caracas to allow greater space for the opposition to compete in the 2024 presidential election.
One key priority for children’s advocacy groups is the prohibition of child labor. But as World Children’s Day approaches this year, it’s worth examining whether children need to be protected from work, or whether it would be better to set regulations that empower child workers, rather than prohibiting it altogether.
Political polarization is not exactly new in Latin America, but it has sharply intensified. The next possible flashpoint is Bolivia, where political, economic, ethnic and regional divisions have exploded in the past and threaten to do so again, over an arcane but combustible issue: When should the country hold its national census?