Blog entries

At a press conference Thursday, former El Universo journalist Emilio Palacio, of Ecuador, announced that he had been granted political asylum in the U.S. after waiting seven months. Palacio received notification of the decision on August 17, just 24 hours after Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa had controversially granted asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, though … Read more

Chilean Minister of Energy Jorge Bunster addressed concerns on Wednesday afternoon over the threat of rising energy prices and the risk of a power shortage in Chile after its Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday to halt the planned Central Castilla thermoelectric power plant and port project.  While the $5 billion, 2,100-megawatt planned power plant would … Read more

*This blog post was drawn from a CPJ special report released on August 29, 2012. The use of social media is rising around the world, but as government restrictions on traditional Venezuelan media tighten, professional journalists and citizen reporters are increasingly turning to social media, especially Twitter, to transmit and track the news. Venezuela has … Read more

In a historic trial that resumes today, members of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal will decide whether public funds were used for monthly political payouts in Brazil’s infamous 2005 mensalão scandal. The verdict delivered this week has implications on the legacy of former Brazilian President Lula da Silva, whose government is implicated in the scandal. The … Read more

On August 7, India’s foreign minister held the country’s first dialogue with a troika representing a recently formed 33-nation Latin American group, the Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States—CELAC). The meeting drew little attention, and most media outlets dismissed it as a routine affair, akin to India’s engagements … Read more

Last weekend Colombian journal El Espectador revealed that the government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Fuerzas Armandas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces⎯FARC) have made preliminary moves toward the launch of peace negotiations, initiating a series of opinions and speculation from different sectors of the Colombian government. According to a report on Monday on Telesur, negotiations between the … Read more

Comandante Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías has come a long way since his altar boy days in Barinas state.  A landslide victory swept him to the presidency 14 years ago, and there it all began. The election of 1998 allowed Chávez to establish the Bolivarian Revolution, a national plan he developed and polished as a young … Read more

Top stories this week are likely to include: impact of the Amuay refinery tragedy in Venezeula; aftermath in the Caribbean of Tropical Storm Isaac; YPF and Chevron move toward an alliance; fallout of a cabinet shift in Colombia; and Canada seeks to strengthen commercial ties with Southeast Asia. Disaster at Amuay Refinery Continues: After Saturday’s … Read more

The latest flap over Missouri GOP senatorial candidate, Todd Akin, and his atrocious comments about “legitimate” rape received much coverage north of the border.  This, along with the rise of the Tea Party in 2010, has led many Canadians to wonder about the state of the Republican Party today. It was not always that way.  … Read more

A little more than a month from the October 7 Venezuelan presidential election, President Hugo Chavez and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski have heavily increased their campaign spending—but by how much remains unknown. According to Rafael Guzman, finance administrator for the opposition coalition, Chavez has been able to maintain a strong campaign spending advantage by … Read more

  A Nicaraguan court began the trial Wednesday of Henry Fariñas, the Nicaraguan businessman who was accompanying Argentine folksinger Facundo Cabral to the Guatemala City airport on July 9, 2011, when Cabral was shot and killed by assailants. The trial of Fariñas could shed some light on the motivations behind the murder of Cabral, who … Read more

Where does Latin America stand when it comes to contributing peacekeepers to United Nations (UN) missions? In general, there is a large presence of Latin American peacekeepers in Haiti, which is the only mission in the Western Hemisphere.  However, Latin American countries send their troops to many other missions around the world. Their contributions are … Read more

A Cuban court charged 12 former government officials and executives with corruption for their involvement in a project to expand a nickel and cobalt processing plant in eastern Cuba, according to a report on Tuesday by the Communist Party newspaper Granma. The crimes occurred “during the negotiation, contracting and execution of the expansion of the … Read more

The Peruvian Congress gave their vote of confidence to President Ollanta Humala on his new cabinet early Tuesday morning—Peru’s third cabinet under President Humala, who has one year in office remaining.  After 10 hours of debate, 73 legislators voted in support of the new cabinet and 38 opposed it. The debate largely focused on how … Read more

Brasil está de moda en El Salvador y con justa razón. Su ascenso a la palestra mundial como una de las potencias económicas del futuro han convertido a este país en un cooperante apetecible para las pequeñas economías centroamericanas. El Salvador no ha sido la excepción. La euforia por cortejar a Brasil puede llegar a … Read more