Andean Region Archives - Page 55 of 78

Mexico’s Energy Reform: Lessons from Colombia and Brazil

In the early 2000s, Colombia’s oil industry was weakening. There had been a decrease in new discoveries, followed by a decline in production from a peak of 800,000 barrels per day (b/d) in 1999 to nearly 550,000 b/d in 2004. Exploration and production had moved to increasingly remote areas with higher security risks and risky … Read more

Monday Memo: USAID and Cuba – Mexican Energy – U.S. Immigration – Argentine peso – Bridge in Colombia

This week’s top stories: USAID is accused of running a secret program in Cuba; Mexican energy reform passes in the lower house; U.S. Republicans pass immigration bills before recess; the value of the Argentine peso drops over debt woes; a bridge in Montería, Colombia collapses. USAID and Cuba: In a statement this morning, the United … Read more

The United States Restricts Travel for Top Venezuelan Officials

The U.S. has issued a travel ban for a list of unnamed Venezuelan officials who are accused of involvement in human rights abuses after the Venezuelan military and police cracked down on anti-government protests earlier this year. The ban affects 24 high-ranking officials from Venezuela, ranging from cabinet members and senior judiciary members to members … Read more

Brazil’s Marina Silva Calls For a New Vision of Development

From the age of 10, Marina Silva would wake up before dawn to prepare food for her father, so that he could set off through the dense jungle before the heat of the tropical sun made it impossible for him to keep working. In Silva’s community of rubber tappers in Brazil’s northwestern state of Acre, … Read more

Monday Memo: Mercosur Summit – General Hugo Carvajal – Gov. Jerry Brown – Mexican Energy Reform – Argentine Debt

This week’s likely top stories: Mercosur leaders meet in Caracas; former General Hugo Carvajal returns to Venezuela; California Governor Jerry Brown visits Mexico; Mexican Congress discusses energy reform; Argentina nears its debt deadline. Mercosur leaders to address Israel at Mercosur summit: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is expected to lead Mercosur leaders in condemning Israel’s military … Read more

Political Innovator: Claudia López

Claudia López fled Colombia in October of 2013 after receiving death threats for her investigative reporting on the so-called parapolítica network that linked her country’s politicians with paramilitary groups. “Yesterday, I left the country as a preventative measure,” López wrote to her Twitter followers. “I will return when the police and the inspector general do … Read more

Security in South America: The Role of States and Regional Organizations by Rodrigo Tavares

Nowhere in the world is the web of treaties, agreements and agencies concerned with regional security needs as thick as in Latin America. The region has seen one of the most dramatic institutional transformations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Among the many reasons for this transformation is the widespread rejection of U.S. … Read more

Peace: Elections and Peace in Colombia

Colombia’s 2014 presidential elections marked a watershed in the country’s politics. This was not because incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos won by nearly six percentage points, after having narrowly lost the first round to Óscar Iván Zuluaga, a hardliner backed by Santos’s political nemesis, former president Álvaro Uribe. Rather, the campaign offered—as never before—starkly opposing … Read more

Oil Sparks in the Amazon: Local Conflicts, Indigenous Populations, and Natural Resources by Patricia I. Vásquez

Since the early 1990s, the rising price of crude oil and other key natural resources—and the resulting drive by governments and private companies to extract those resources—has led to sharp conflicts in Latin America. At the core of these disputes is the clash between national economic interest and the rights of Indigenous people inhabiting the … Read more

Policy Updates

A snapshot of policy trends and successes in the region.

Venezuela: How Long Can This Go On?

On April 10, Venezuelans stayed up past midnight to watch an event on TV that just a few weeks prior would have seemed incredible, almost miraculous: after three months of intense protests, headed by students in alliance with the most combative sectors of the opposition calling for President Nicolás Maduro’s departure, the government and the … Read more

Latin America at the Winter Olympics

Latin American and Caribbean countries may not be as well-known for their winter sports as Canada, Russia or the United States, but the region does have a storied tradition at the Winter Olympic Games. Argentina, the first Latin American country to participate, sent a five-man bobsled team to the second-ever Winter Games in 1928. Chile … Read more