The exodus of young Latin American entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley and other U.S. technology centers may soon become a two-way street — growing numbers of U.S. techies are heading south to benefit from generous aid packages for high-tech startups.
As Argentine-born Pope Francis nears his first 100 days in office, there is little question that he has brought about a change in style at the Vatican with his daily gestures of humility. But there are also signs that he may bring about a change in substance.
Something very unusual happened at the 34-country Organization of American States (OAS) annual foreign ministers’ meeting last week: the United States and Mexico won a diplomatic victory over authoritarian populist governments that wanted a free hand to suppress human rights monitors and critical media.
One year after Argentina’s nationalization of YPF, the country’s biggest oil company, our forecasts have come true: the firm’s energy production is falling, its debt is rising, and its board has just awarded itself a generous raise.
The most interesting thing about China’s new President Xi Jinping’s first official trip to Latin America is that he will not set foot in Cuba, Venezuela or any other of China’s political allies in the region — which would have received a huge propaganda boost from such a visit.
Perhaps Secretary of State John Kerry’s lack of attention to Latin America might not be so bad after all — it is moving Vice President Joe Biden to get more involved with the region, and may help turn U.S.-Latin American relations into a White House foreign policy priority.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos may not have been hallucinating when he said last week that the Pacific Alliance — the bloc made up of Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile — “is the new economic and development engine of Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Latin American presidents who support decriminalization of marijuana won a big diplomatic victory in recent days when the 34-country Organization of American States issued a report that considers that option as one of several policies that might help reduce the region’s drug-related violence.
The highly respected Nature Scientific Reports journal has just published a map of the world’s leading science cities, and it looks pretty bad for emerging countries: It shows the planet’s northern hemisphere full of lights, and the south almost solidly dark.
I’ve read with great attention President Barack Obama’s article in The Miami Herald earlier this week on how to improve U.S. relations with Latin America. It was pretty disappointing.
Forget all the headlines about immigration, security and drug issues during President Barack Obama’s visit to Mexico last week: the most important (and least noticed) result of his trip may have dealt with an entirely different topic — student exchanges.
Despite a lot of upbeat talk about upgrading U.S.-Mexican economic relations, there will be one big issue that will be off the table during President Barack Obama’s visit to Mexico starting Thursday — Mexico’s request to be part of ongoing U.S.-European free trade talks.
While many of us were focused on the Boston bombings, Venezuela’s dubious elections and North Korea’s war noises in recent weeks, the world’s biggest nations took a potentially historic step — they launched a system to detect secret offshore bank accounts.
New economic projections from the World Bank and the United Nations show that Latin America countries will keep growing at moderate rates this year, except for the booming economies of three countries that start with the letter P — Paraguay, Panama and Peru.
While media coverage of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s inauguration on Friday centered on the contested April 14 election results, a dramatic escalation of government human rights violations since the election has gone virtually unnoticed.
Venezuela’s proclaimed president-elect Nicolás Maduro’s stunning about face after publicly committing to a recount of the April 14 vote is hurting his own chances of serving his term with an aura of legitimacy, and raises growing questions about the entire election process.
Venezuela’s opposition candidate Henrique Capriles’ impressive show of force in Sunday’s election — despite an unfair election process in which his rival enjoyed all advantages — has turned official winner Nicolas Maduro into a politically weak president-elect.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s endorsement of Venezuela’s interim president Nicolás Maduro in Sunday’s elections has perpetuated one of the biggest myths in Latin American politics — that the Venezuelan government, despite its mistakes, has done more than others to help the poor.
Most polls show that Venezuela’s government candidate Nicolás Maduro is likely to win Sunday’s elections thanks to an unfair election process in which the government controls an overwhelming share of TV time, but — even if he wins — Maduro’s future is gloomy.
The fact that the Associated Press news agency decided to ban the term “illegal immigrant” last week is a big victory for fairness in journalism, but there are other terms used daily in the media that should be revised as well.
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