Corruption scandals and slowing economic growth have forced President Michelle Bachelet to backtrack on her campaign promises. Now facing the lowest levels of popular approval for any elected president since the 1990 transition, can Bachelet re-focus her government’s policy drift in time for the 2016 local elections?
The landlocked, Southern Cone country is experiencing the same, if not worse, corruption scandals, social protests, approaching economic stagnation, and rising levels of violence widely reported on as just about every country of Latin America and the Caribbean. So why isn’t anyone paying attention?
Brazil’s president is facing protests from both the left and the right, with an approval rating of only 8 percent. The protests are calling for impeachment based on charges of rampant corruption, but politically that isn’t likely to happen. Why? Impeachment requires a two-thirds majority vote from both Houses: unlikely to happen when politicians from all of the major parties are facing corruption charges themselves.
How tolerant are citizens across the Americas of LGBT political rights and marriage equality? While support for political rights is higher than support for the rights of LGBT couples to legally wed, the results track largely with levels of economic development in the region, with two notable exceptions.
Los resultados de las elecciones primarias, abiertas, simultáneas y obligatorias (PASO) que se realizaron el 9 de agosto en la Argentina, dejaron al candidato único del oficialismo, Daniel Scioli, unos puntos por debajo de las aspiraciones de triunfar luego en la primera vuelta del próximo 25 de octubre. En dos meses la política argentina puede producir muchas novedades. Pero lo que está claro es que el escenario para la primera vuelta presidencial en este momento está abierto.
Those who stoke fear every time an extra-hemispheric rival to the U.S. gains influence in the Western Hemisphere are missing the real challenges. While these “BackYardistas” exercise their Cold War reflexes over growing Chinese, Russian and Iranian influence in Latin America, the broader challenge is how those powers are remaking the global liberal order.
21 años después del ataque contra la AMIA, nueve años después de las acusaciones contra Hezbollah y miembros del gobierno Irani, y mas de seis meses después de la muerte del fiscal Alberto Nisman, por fin esta semana habrá un juicio. Lamentablemente es solo por el encubrimiento del caso. Sin embargo, es un paso adelante.
Across the hemisphere a majority of citizens support a greater role for the armed forces in domestic security—with over 80 percent of citizens in El Salvador, Honduras and Ecuador supporting the militarization of police duties. The policy, though, comes with huge risks. It also has not worked.
Donald Trump was right on one thing: corruption in Mexico and Latin America is unbelievable. As the series of scandals from Chile to Brazil to Mexico have revealed, the region still has a corruption problem that not only reduces the effectiveness of government but also increases the economic insecurity of its citizens. And those citizens are fed up.
In a series of posts—this our first—we will assess whether it is not only desirable but also possible that the two divergent trade blocs of Pacific Alliance and MERCOSUR in Latin America can converge as Chile is now pushing. Or is this just another exercise in empty political posturing?
