The Americas Archive

LIMA, Peru—Most Peruvians were relieved to see Vice President Martin Vizcarra sworn in as the country’s new leader last Friday, after a series of revelations and accusations of corruption forced beleaguered President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to resign. But the installation of the relatively unknown Vizcarra as Peru’s 61st president marked the beginning of a period of uncertainty, as his ability to govern effectively in a political environment tainted by corruption and chicanery remains to be seen. Vizcarra is a 55-year-old civil engineer whose only political experience prior to becoming Kuczynski’s first vice president was a four-year term as governor of […]

On Feb. 27, the president of the Dominican Republic, Danilo Medina, declared that his government was sending a contingent of 900 soldiers, aided by surveillance drones, to secure the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The two countries share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, but significant economic disparities between them have fueled migration from Haiti to the Dominican Republic for decades, a phenomenon that some hard-line Dominicans describe as a “quiet invasion.” In an email interview, Maria Cristina Fumagalli, a professor of literature at the University of Essex and the author of “On the Edge, Writing the Border Between […]

Earlier this month, the United States, Canada and Mexico concluded the seventh round of talks to amend the North American Free Trade Agreement, once again failing to agree on terms to update the 24-year-old pact that U.S. President Donald Trump promised to renegotiate. Trump’s threats to pull the U.S. out of NAFTA if he doesn’t get what he wants, on top of his other protectionist trade policies, have pushed Mexico to diversify its trade relationships, including with its neighbors in Latin America. In an email interview, Duncan Wood, the director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, […]

Before Colombians voted in congressional and presidential primary elections last Sunday, the front-runner in the race for president, according to early polls, was Gustavo Petro, a former leftist guerrilla fighter and once-mayor of Bogota. But to anyone who thought those numbers meant Colombia was about to take a sharp leftward turn, the election results came as a surprise. The most startling outcome from the congressional vote was the spectacularly disastrous performance by the FARC, the longtime rebel group that signed a peace deal in 2016, demobilized and entered politics, repurposing its Spanish acronym from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia […]

On March 4, Salvadorans went to the polls for legislative and municipal elections. According to preliminary results, the opposition Nationalist Republican Alliance, or ARENA, won 37 of 84 seats in the Legislative Assembly. The ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, won 23, down from 31. The results are widely regarded as a stinging defeat for the FMLN, which also lost several key mayoral races, including in the capital, San Salvador. Besides the two leading parties, the Grand Alliance for National Unity, or GANA, took 11 seats in the assembly and the National Coalition Party, or PCN, eight. Several […]

With less than four months until Mexico’s presidential election, it looks like a perfect storm of support is brewing for the perennial standard-bearer of the left, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO. The former mayor of Mexico City, who is mounting his third quest for the presidency, could hardly find the current conditions more to his liking. Everywhere he looks, at home and abroad, the stars appear to be aligning in his favor. His foes are fighting each other; the president of the United States is using rhetoric that unwittingly bolsters his prospects; and even Russia is apparently putting […]

On Feb. 19, Brazil’s government announced it was abandoning an effort to reform the pension system, which is a main driver of its ballooning deficit. Though the official reason was the military intervention launched last month in Rio de Janeiro state, which makes constitutional amendments impossible to act on, the reform effort was widely understood to have little chance of success. The failure of Michel Temer, Brazil’s exceedingly unpopular president, to deliver on a key promise prompted credit ratings agencies to downgrade Brazil further below investment grade. In an email interview, Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the […]

On March 11, Colombians vote in what could be the biggest test of the country’s democracy in decades. For the first time, the now-demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, will compete at the polls as a newly formed political party. No matter how it performs, the FARC, now known as the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force—maintaining its old acronym in Spanish—is guaranteed 10 seats in Congress overall, with five in the Senate and five in the House of Representatives, as part of the landmark 2016 peace agreement. But the former guerrillas are aiming higher. Running on a message of […]

Eduardo Enrique Urbina Ayala was shocked to see his face and name making the rounds on social media, in posts that framed him as the person responsible for setting fire to a military truck during a protest at the height of Honduras’ post-election crisis in December. The 22-year-old activist had left the country five days before the vehicle went up in flames. “I was already in Costa Rica,” Urbina told me over Skype from an undisclosed Costa Rican city. “I have everything documented in my passport … It’s proof from the state itself.” Nineteen days after Honduras’ contested Nov. 26. […]