Monday Memo: Brazil’s Economy – Argentine Debt – Tropical Storm Sonia – Honduran Police Abuses – Uruguayan Marijuana
Likely top stories this week: Brazil will reduce lending by 20 percent next year; Argentina wins a stay on its $1.33 billion payment; Tropical Storm Sonia Hits Mexico; Honduras’ police chief denies abuses; Brazilian delegation opposes Uruguayan marijuana legalization. Brazil to Reduce Lending Due to Budget Deficit: Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said Friday that … Read more
Women in Mexico’s Workforce
“Women are not doing well because they want to do it all. They want to study, go out and get a job and be housewives as well. Well, that is really difficult to achieve.” These were recent and controversial words spoken by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, president of Grupo Salinas and owner of TV Azteca, one … Read more
Third House Republican Pledges Support for Immigration
A Representative from California became the third Republican in the House of Representatives to pledge support for comprehensive immigration reform legislation proposed by House Democrats. Rep. David Valdadao of California’s twenty-first congressional district joins Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) in publicly supporting H.R. 15 this week, the House version of the bipartisan bill … Read more
Rudy Giuliani: Recipe for Montreal
On Friday, October 25, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani spoke at Montreal’s Board of Trade on the eve of the Montreal mayoral election. The Board of Trade, anticipating the fervor of the final stretch of the campaign for a new mayor, chose to invite Giuliani for his take on how to revive Canada’s … Read more
Monday Memo: Argentine Midterms – UN Anti-Spying Measure – U.S. Immigration – Paraguay and Mercosur – FARC Releases Captive
Likely top stories this week: Argentine opposition gains influence in midterms; Brazil and Germany lead a UN anti-spying initiative; lobbyists push for U.S. immigration reform; Paraguay to represent Mercosur in negotiations with EU; hostage Kevin Scott Sutay is released by the FARC. Argentines Vote in Midterm Elections: With 72 percent of the votes counted in … Read more
Polling Data Used to Make Case for Immigration Reform
A Washington, DC-based advocacy organization began running pro-immigration reform advertisements on the websites of local newspapers in Republican Congressional representatives’ districts on Thursday. In order to pressure the House of Representatives to vote on pending immigration reform legislation, Americas Voice’s web ads target news outlets in Republican members’ districts that, according to recent polling data, … Read more
PRI Supports Tax Increase on Junk Food
Mexico’s ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party—PRI) announced its support on Wednesday for an opposition proposal to increase the 5 percent tax on junk food set out in President Enrique Peña Nieto’s fiscal reform plan. The tax would be applied to purchases of high-calorie foods including chocolates, sweets, puddings, potato chips and ice cream, … Read more
Snubbing the U.S., Brazil Turns its Foreign Policy to the Global South
Brazil’s postponement of its White House state dinner–seen as a long-awaited wedding ceremony for the two countries after a very drawn out courtship–may signal more than just President Rousseff’s anger with revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had been spying on her personal life and Petrobrás, the state oil company. Since the postponement … Read more
Monday Memo: Protesters & Police Clash in Brazil – Train Crashes in Buenos Aires – Hurricane Raymond Nears Mexico – Bachelet Leads Polls in Chile – U.S. Surveillance in Mexico
Likely top stories this week: Protesters clash with Brazilian police forces in Rio de Janeiro; A commuter train crash injures 30 in Buenos Aires; Hurricane Raymond builds strength near Mexico’s Pacific coast; Michele Bachelet leads the polls in next month’s presidential elections in Chile; Newly leaked documents reveal that the U.S. spied on former Mexican … Read more
Los migrantes que no importan by Óscar Martínez
In Los migrantes que no importan (The Migrants that Don’t Matter), Óscar Martínez depicts a dark side of Mexico that few people know. The book, based on stories published in El Faro—an El Salvadoran digital newspaper whose founder is interviewed on page 53 of AQ—describes the hardships experienced by thousands of undocumented Central American migrants … Read more
Education: Dual Language Instruction in the United States
A non-English speaker who walked into a U.S. classroom today may well feel at home. As the U.S. has become less monolingual, so has classroom instruction. Students today are just as likely to recite their multiplication tables in any number of languages other than English. Over the past five decades, dual language programs in elementary, … Read more
Infrastructure: U.S. Seaport Expansion
U.S. seaports are in an enhancement and expansion mode. While the widening of the Panama Canal may serve as the catalyst for some of the anticipated $9.2 billion in annual facilities investment in the foreseeable future, this is only part of the story. Several other factors are propelling this huge investment of private capital into … Read more
Arts Innovator: Gopher Illustrated, Venezuela and the United States
In the age of on-demand entertainment and Internet memes, Latin America’s rich cultural achievements often get lost in the cloud of information available in the English-speaking world. But Michelle Benaím Steiner, 26, and Lope Gutiérrez-Ruiz, 31—two Austin, Texas–based Venezuelans—have found a way to penetrate the cloud: start their own print journal. The two editorial and … Read more
El Barrio Tours
East Harlem—also known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio—located in northeastern Manhattan, has long been a destination for immigrants settling in New York City. Once a hub for recent arrivals from Germany and Italy, the neighborhood became a primarily Puerto Rican enclave after World War II. Andrew Padilla, a 23-yearold filmmaker who was born and … Read more
Skip Traffic with EcoBici
In 1992, Mexico City was dubbed “the most polluted city on the planet” by the United Nations. Ever since, city officials have been struggling to lose that tag. One of their most innovative (and successful) ideas is a bicycle-sharing program called EcoBici. Not only is EcoBici, launched in February 2010, the largest bikeshare system in … Read more
