The Americas Archive

It probably comes as no surprise that most of the world’s cocaine is produced in just three countries: Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. It is also probably no surprise that the biggest consumer markets for cocaine are in the United States and Europe. But after decades of media coverage of the violent turf wars over northward cocaine-trafficking routes through Central America and Mexico, it may spark interest to learn that South America’s Southern Cone countries have become the region’s new battleground for organized crime.  Ports in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, in particular, have become prized turf for drug-trafficking criminal gangs for […]

Half a century ago, MIT meteorology professor Edward Lawrenz famously posited that if a butterfly flaps its wings, it could ultimately trigger a tornado. The notion, which came to be known as the “butterfly effect,” aimed to illustrate how chain reactions in nature can be kicked off by unexpected events or phenomena, with unknowable consequences.  Lawrenz would have found a fine case study for his work this week in events that started with a volcanic eruption in the South Pacific and led to dramatic results—political, social and economic—far away in Peru. Ten days ago, a volcano at the bottom of […]

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s proposed energy reform bill is still awaiting legislative action since being sent to Congress last October. But it is already generating sparks in Mexico—and Washington. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm traveled to Mexico City on Jan. 20 to meet with AMLO, as Lopez Obrador is known, and Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. The main issue on the agenda: How to prevent Mexico from approving the bill, which Washington argues would violate several clauses of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada, or USMCA, free trade agreement.  This isn’t the first time U.S. government officials have signaled their reservations about […]

Suriname and Guyana find themselves at the forefront of a dilemma for developing countries endowed with hydrocarbon resources, one that will only become more challenging as the climate crisis worsens: how to balance their development needs with their climate commitments. Fortunately, both countries might be able to achieve the seemingly mutually exclusive goals of alleviating poverty while respecting their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement. The key lies in their forests. Both Suriname and Guyana are desperately poor, with poverty levels at 47 percent and 36 percent respectively. Both are also in the early stages of developing what appear to be […]

BOGOTA, Colombia—Violent confrontations on the Colombian-Venezuelan border between leftist armed groups with roots in the Colombian civil war have left at least 27 dead and an unknown number of people displaced or confined to their homes since fighting began on Jan 2.  The 10th Front—a dissident group that splintered from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC—has been engaged in a simmering conflict with the National Liberation Army, or ELN, in the Arauca region of Colombia since at least last year. But the recent fighting represents a serious escalation between the two groups. Investigators at Human Rights Watch have […]

In Honduras’ presidential election on Nov. 28, Xiomara Castro and her allies among the country’s political opposition ousted the ruling National Party, which has spent the past decade using corruption, violence and vote-buying to entrench itself in power.  For Castro’s coalition, just making it to election day meant facing down targeted assassinations, engineering a fragile consensus among opposition factions to back her candidacy and convincing disillusioned voters that turning out was worth it, even if the elections might be rigged.  But in retrospect, winning the election might have been the easy part for Castro and the opposition—at least compared to what comes next.  Castro has promised to rebuild democracy […]