Three Innovations That Might Save the Amazon
This article is adapted from the Fall 2015 print edition of Americas Quarterly. To subscribe, please click here With each passing day, we lose more of our world’s forests to deforestation and degradation. But the good news is that in recent years, we’ve become considerably more sophisticated in how we try to protect the Amazon … Read more
Why Amazon Tribes Are Losing the Fight Against New Dams – Again
This article is adapted from the Fall 2015 print edition of Americas Quarterly. To subscribe, please click here Versão em português As our boat nudged down the Tapajós river, the hypnotic sameness of the Amazon was shattered by the splash of small bodies. A half-dozen children from the local Munduruku tribe had been dangling from … Read more
The Long View: How Argentina and Brazil Stepped Back from a Nuclear Race
In AQ’s feature on Latin American history, how Argentina and Brazil ensured their rivalry remained limited to the soccer field.
Goodbye to the Status Quo: Why Change Is Coming to South America
This article is adapted from the Fall 2015 print edition of Americas Quarterly. To subscribe, please click here I first met Dilma Rousseff in the hallway of a dingy hotel in Juiz de Fora in August 2010. She was in the homestretch of the presidential race and she, like Brazil, could seemingly do no wrong. … Read more
Puerto Rico Deserves Better from Washington
The United States consists of 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories — one of which is Puerto Rico. Individuals born in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, but island residents cannot vote for president or senators. The territory has a single delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives who can vote in … Read more
Cuba: Open for Business, But…
Now that U.S. and Cuban flags fly over reestablished embassies in Washington and Havana, the question on many minds is: Is Cuba open for business? The short answer: Yes, but with caveats. In leading four Americas Society/Council of the Americas business delegations to the island over the past three years to explore possible investment opportunities, … Read more
Dream Chasers: Immigration and the American Backlash
Immigration is part of the DNA of the United States. Whether motivated by the search for economic opportunity or by religious and political freedom, immigrants have been flocking to U.S. shores for over 400 years. Yet debates about “who belongs” and “who should be allowed in” are as old as the nation itself. Sometimes the … Read more
¡Crear o Morir! La esperanza de Latinoamérica y las cinco claves de la innovación
Drones that deliver pizzas, 3-D printers that produce shoes, and space tourism that seeks to start a colony on Mars. These are a few of the innovations under way or on the drawing board that Andrés Oppenheimer, award-winning Miami Herald columnist and author of seven books, uses to illustrate how the world is fundamentally changing— … Read more
No End in Sight for Brazil’s Petrobras Scandal
Brazil’s current political crisis began at a gas station in Brasília. When federal police raided a currency exchange booth in the station on March 17, 2014, they stumbled upon a network of political corruption that has cost state oil giant Petrobras at least $2 billion. Since then, more than 50 politicians have come under federal … Read more
Privacy Is a Human Right: Data Retention Violates That Right
In March 2015, the United Nations Human Rights Council endorsed the creation of a special rapporteur on privacy. The landmark resolution1, spearheaded by Brazil and Germany and cosponsored by 46 states, including 10 other Latin American countries, gives the right to privacy the international recognition and protection it deserves. For Latin America, this resolution couldn’t … Read more
Behind the Numbers: Race and Ethnicity in Latin America
Throughout Latin America, race and ethnicity continue to be among the most important determinants of access to opportunity and economic advancement. Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples in Latin America represent 40 percent of the total population—a sizeable share—yet they remain a disproportionate segment of the poorest of the poor. While a priority for social inclusion measures, … Read more
Behind the Numbers: The Reproductive Rights Debate in Latin America Today
In April 2015, a 10-year-old Paraguayan girl was taken to the hospital after complaining of a stomachache. She was found to be 22 weeks pregnant. Authorities said she had been raped by her stepfather. The girl’s mother requested an abortion, but the hospital refused on the grounds that it was against the law. In Paraguay, … Read more
Why We Need A Global Trade Deal
With growth in Latin America expected to decline for a fifth consecutive year in 2015, trade can be a powerful engine for economic renewal. However, it’s clear to most observers that at present this engine is not firing on all cylinders. The World Trade Organization (WTO) forecasts a rise of just 0.2 percent in the … Read more
Harvesting Hope
Correction appended below Being a consumer today is a fraught enterprise. The marketplace is no longer simply a venue for satisfying individual preferences. It is now an arena for expressing social and political identity, and even a mechanism for addressing some of consumerism’s less desirable side effects—from environmental degradation to exploitative labor practices. But consumerism’s … Read more
Bloc That Trade
The old vision of economic integration in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has failed. Over the past decades, LAC countries have concluded more than 60 bilateral trade agreements, as well as formed a number of powerful trade blocs. But the region’s social, political and economic advances have not produced the productive integration that would … Read more
