Ecuador’s new president: Hope for a fresh start
Guillermo Lasso was inaugurated as Ecuador’s 47th president on Monday. Given a divided legislature, the new president should prioritize unity.
Guillermo Lasso was inaugurated as Ecuador’s 47th president on Monday. Given a divided legislature, the new president should prioritize unity.
This past weekend, Chileans cast ballots for the 155 delegates to the Constitutional Convention that—per the result of a national plebiscite held last October, in which over 78 percent of voters opted to commence the process of constitutional reform—will be tasked with replacing the 1980 constitution promulgated by the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
Two things stood out when Chileans went to the polls for last October’s national plebiscite on the drafting of a new constitution. First, nearly 80 percent voted in favor of commencing the process to eventually draft a new constitution, signifying a fairly broad popular consensus that the path toward fixing the country’s ills would be an institutional one—quite a relief after the experience of the 2019 protests. Second, there was a high voter turnout: over 7.5 million Chileans, more than 50 percent of eligible voters, cast a ballot, marking the highest turnout since 2009 (in the middle of a pandemic, no less).
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the future is digital. As a result, it has highlighted the transformative power of technology for Latin America and the Caribbean, and accelerated its digital transformation, not only in leading start-up markets like Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, but throughout the entire region.
On Thursday, May 6, an early-morning police raid in a Rio de Janeiro favela left 28 dead, including one officer, sparking allegations of extrajudicial and arbitrary executions and returning Brazil’s brutal history of police violence to the public spotlight.
Vaccine developments at the beginning of 2021 represented a crucial step toward overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic, and inaugurating a new era for all of Brazil. Nevertheless, another task remains crucial for the country: the development of an alternative to the government of President Jair Bolsonaro.
In Colombia this week, demonstrations against a government tax reform proposal evolved into widespread general protests—fueled by the economic and social desperation provoked by the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic—that have been met with brutal repression from state security forces.
If the United States allows other Caribbean Basin countries to be eligible for components of its ambitious domestic agenda, it could simultaneously increase U.S. competitiveness and provide benefits to the region that far outweigh any traditional foreign assistance programs.
Hurricane season is fast approaching, and natural disasters will complicate Central American and Caribbean states’ efforts to vaccinate their populations. A recent volcanic eruption on the island of Saint Vincent offers a preview of just how disruptive these disasters can be. Further, stalled vaccination efforts as a result of climate-related events will add to the existing structural and economic issues facing an already vulnerable and distraught region that is seeing record numbers of migrants arrive at the U.S. border.
In creating an economic strategy, President Biden and his administration are stuck between conflicting policy goals of relocating industrial supply chains back to the United States and of reducing migration from Central America, where so many of these factories are located.