Politics

As the known involvement in corruption of a number of high-profile public officials in Paraguay, former and current, has returned to the fore, pressure is growing on the administration of President Mario Abdo Benítez to crack down on the crime, with the US being particularly vocal on the matter.

This is the case with attacks against Brazil’s indigenous peoples, notably in the Amazon, a problem that is intertwined with environmental issues and illegal economic activities on protected territories.

The death of eight people in the gold-mining town of Ikabarú, on Bolívar state’s Brazilian border, has drawn significant national attention in Venezuela. The so-called ‘Ikabarú massacre’ is the latest violent incident linked to criminal gangs seeking to take advantage of the region’s vast mineral wealth.

Many of the protests were held across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) where, according to the United Nations (UN), 12 women are killed as a result of femicide every day. While the regional voice against the gender-related killing of women and girls has grown in pitch, and has encouraged actions such as the writing of the specific offence into law in many countries

Addressing the weakness of the judiciary, which like Panama’s other institutions has been hit by scandal in recent years, was a declared priority for President Laurentino Cortizo whose Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD) government took office for a five-year.

Peru’s struggle against drug trafficking organisations (DTOs) has been the bane of successive governments, and new defence minister Walter Martos’ pledge to intensify the fight against the DTOs in 2020 seemed, in many ways, like a continuation of this status quo.

As violence in Colombia has surged to the highest levels since the country’s 2016 peace agreement, President Iván Duque’s government has been unequivocal in attributing responsibility to the remnants of the country’s guerrilla forces.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, an international NGO fighting the case on behalf of the family of sexual assault victim Paola Guzmán Albarracín, believes a ruling in its favour would set a hugely significant legal precedent in Ecuador, and across the Americas as a whole.

This result produced few clear insights into the country’s political future, neither identifying a frontrunner for 2021’s presidential elections nor providing the incumbent, President Martín Vizcarra, with a straightforward majority coalition.

The increasing polarisation of Bolivian politics in recent months has shone a light on deeper-lying social divisions in the country, as critics of Jeanine Áñez’s interim government have argued that there is a broadly racialised divide between supporters of Áñez, and of the deposed Movimiento al Socialismo.

US attorney general William Barr’s indictment of Nicolás Maduro on 26 March.

ELN the largest guerrilla group in Colombia since the demobilisation of Farc.

Army commander General Eduardo Zapateiro insisted that “individual actions cannot define this institution

Once more the Vaca Muerta shale oil and gas deposits in Patagonia are being touted as the solution to Argentina’s recurring economic troubles.

Fresh large-scale protests were staged on 16 December, as the government led by President Iván Duque pressed ahead with its unpopular tax reform package.

President Sebastián Piñera shows that he is still under pressure and struggling to find a way through the country’s social and political storm.

The United Nations (UN) COP25 climate talks taking place under Chile’s leadership in Madrid, Spain, concluded with a two-day delay on 15 December.

It does not look like this year’s attendance figures will be any better.

A meeting in Brasília on 29 July between Brazil’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo and his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, was an opportunity for both to highlight the economic benefits that the European Union (EU)-Southern Common Market (Mercosur) trade deal will bring their countries.

Bolivian citizens went to the polls to choose their new president, with incumbent Evo Morales, who had been in power since 2006