Full Text Articles

Americas Quarterly regrets the tragic passing of former President Néstor Kirchner. He will be remembered and missed by all. Below is an updated version of this article, which originally appeared in the Fall AQ. Argentina’s overhaul of its electoral legislation last year dramatically re-shaped the nature of the campaign for the October 2011 presidential elections. … Read more

The celebration of two centuries of independent republican life in Latin America is an appropriate time to assess past achievements, current challenges and future opportunities. Nowhere is that critical examination more timely and necessary than for the educational institutions that were created precisely to prepare Latin American citizens for self-rule. Schools and universities in Latin … Read more

Our neighbor to the south is in a massive battle with well-organized drug cartels. Because of Washington’s failure to secure our southern border, Arizona has become the superhighway for illegal drug and human smuggling activity. In December 2008, the U.S. Justice Department said that Mexican gangs are the “biggest organized crime threat to the United … Read more

When the Arizona legislature decided to crack down on illegal immigration, it forced its state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce immigration law—or at least Arizona’s version. But what if Arizona’s new law drives more illegal immigration to the three remaining border states? How would those states react? Imagine that legislators in California pass … Read more

Kathleen Sebelius answers: For too long, Americans have been at the mercy of insurance companies who, using faulty assumptions and loopholes, have gamed the system at the expense of middle class families—hiking up premiums to unfair and unsustainable levels and dropping health care coverage when people are most in need. But with the passage of … Read more

From 1930 to 1961, Rafael Trujillo presided over one of Latin America’s most brutal dictatorships. Countless books and articles have dissected the political nature of his regime, but none has fully examined the way Trujillo managed to control Dominicans’ everyday lives. Lauren Derby’s book, The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era … Read more

Social scientists are often more inclined to explain past events than to predict future economic and political developments. That approach makes their scholarly production more rigorous, their claims and explanations more parsimonious and their theoretical and methodological constructions more solid. Unfortunately, it is also unlikely to interest those concerned with current developments and inclined to … Read more

Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s newly elected president, arrives in office on the coattails of President Álvaro Uribe’s 70 percent approval ratings. As president, Santos is expected to continue much of Uribe’s agenda including his signature “Democratic Security” policy. While the policy is popular, it remains a source of sharp division. Launched in 2003, it focused … Read more

Twenty years after education reform, Bolivia has changed an array of policies to improve access to quality education. Despite some progress, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas’ study, Indigenous Population and Differences in Access to Primary Education in Bolivia, finds that families’ socioeconomic status is still the most important factor affecting educational attainment. The gap … Read more

When Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), an Inuktitut-language film based on Inuit folklore won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2001, few viewers had ever seen an Inuit film. Spurred by its success, the film’s creators, Igloolik Isuma Productions, went on to raise the profile of Inuit and indigenous filmmaking. In 2008, the company, based in … Read more