Battling Organized Crime in Guatemala
Over the past three years, Guatemala has been pursuing a unique experiment to fight organized crime and government corruption—with impressive results. Hundreds of corrupt or ineffective police officers, prosecutors, judges, and military officials have been investigated and dismissed. A multinational investigation involving the United States and France has led to money-laundering charges against former President … Read more
The Honduran Catharsis
An AmericasBarometer Insights Series Report1
Six Reasons Why Argentina Legalized Gay Marriage First
Javier Corrales also wrote for AQ Online in March on Latin American Gays: The Post-Left Leftists, examining the innovative and successful political strategies—in action and thinking—adopted by LGBT groups in Latin America in the last decade. —AQ This month, Argentina changed its civil code to permit gay marriage and adoptions, becoming the first nation in … Read more
Marketing Documentaries
Educational TV can be a powerful tool for raising awareness of social issues. The problem: production costs place it beyond reach for most activists and educators in Latin America. Enter Fundación Albatros Media, a Panama-based nonprofit that produces and distributes documentaries on quality of life and environmental and social issues free of charge to television … Read more
Civic Innovator: ViaEducation, Mexico
To address educational gaps among marginalized populations in the Americas, a group of Latin American students attending Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched in 2004 an education assistance network. Drawing from the knowledge and expertise in the United States, their goal was to expand access to secondary and … Read more
The Five Cs of Universal Health Care
Earlier this year, the U.S. Congress passed a landmark health care reform bill that broadened access to health insurance for millions of Americans. Even as U.S. pundits and politicians continue to argue about the meaning and the scope of the bill, many other countries in the region might reasonably wonder what the fuss is all … Read more
Health Care
Articles: Health Care: Expanding Coverage in the Americas Available online soon. Filling the Gap by Donika Dimovska The private sector is expanding access to the poor—and making a profit. Full text available. Lessons from the Mexican Reform by Dr. Julio Frenk Seguro Popular‘s far-reaching impact. Full text available. Finally Reaching the Poor by Amanda Glassman … Read more
Panamanian Indigenous Community Seeks Protection of its Land
The Naso indigenous community of Panama is lucky to be able to call Bocas del Toro home. This is an idyllic tropical paradise that begins in mountainous forests near the border with Costa Rica and ends up in the Caribbean Sea. It’s a fertile land where they grow plantain, corn, coffee, pineapple, and grapefruit, and … Read more
New CICIG Commissioner Selected in Guatemala
On Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon named Francisco Dall’Anese Ruiz the new head of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, known by its initials in Spanish as CICIG. Ruiz is a well-known advocate against corruption and, since 2003, he has served as attorney general in Costa Rica, where he has led major anti-corruption investigations … Read more
Gates, Slim Team Up on Health Care
The two richest men in the world joined forces on Monday for the cause of delivering basic preventative health care to marginalized populations of the Americas. Carlos Slim, Mexican telecom tycoon and founder of Instituto Carlos Slim de la Salud, and Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, … Read more
Hillary Clinton’s Quito Address: Now Comes the Hard Part
Hillary Clinton responded to the drumbeat of demands for a major administration policy speech on Latin America this week during her stopover in Quito, Ecuador. The U.S. secretary of state was working her way back home—due to also visit Colombia and Barbados—after attending the annual Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly in Lima, Peru. … Read more
After Pacification: The Social Aspect of Controlling Crime
Asserting the democratic rule of law and recovering social peace is a difficult task, especially in places like Rio de Janeiro’s favelas and Colombia’s one-time, crime-ridden cities and war-torn countryside. Democratic and sustainable crime control means establishing state control in places where it has never been present or where it was lost long ago. It … Read more
Technology: HablaCentro
With Internet connectivity rates around 22 percent, many Central Americans are missing out on the digital revolution’s potential for greater communication. Guatemalan-American journalist and U.S. Fulbright fellow (and AQ blogger) Kara Andrade is working to reverse that trend with a new portal (HablaCentro.com) that allows citizen journalists to upload stories from their cell phones. Seeking … Read more
No Ordinary Trade Agreement
Anyone who remembers the 2004 debate in the U.S. Congress over the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) likely recalls a contentious and emotional tug of war over the commercial merits and the adequacy of labor provisions in the bill. Nearly five years, $84 million to support labor capacity building and more than … Read more
Dirty Money
Politics has long been a magnet for drug money in Latin America. In the 1970s, Costa Rican politicians were accused of accepting contributions from the late Robert Vesco, a U.S. financier who settled in Costa Rica after fleeing prosecution at home. Vesco, some of whose money purportedly came from heroin smuggling, was a major backer … Read more
