Juice stand, Colombia. Photo: Anna Vogt
New Year’s Resolutions for U.S. Policy Towards Latin America: Check Some off the List, More to Do!
How is the Obama Administration’s Latin America policy stacking up? In January 2013, the Latin America Working Group called for 10 New Year’s Resolutions for U.S. policy towards the region. Two years later, President Obama has made progress on several fronts — despite resistance from Congress.
Breaking Ground on the Nicaragua Canal
A few days before Christmas, in Brito, Nicaragua, on the Pacific coast, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for the world’s latest megaproject. The Nicaragua Canal is expected to take five years to complete and cost fifty billion dollars; when finished (if it is ever finished), the hundred-and-seventy-two-mile canal will bisect Nicaragua from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.
Women in Nicaragua combat country’s macho culture
The initiative is indicative of a move within Nicaragua’s cooperative movement to combat the country’s pervasive macho culture. Among the pioneers is Soppexcca, a cooperative representing 650 coffee growers in the mountainous province of Jinotega. “We were the first cooperative to define and implement an explicit gender equality policy back in 2003,” says Fátima Ismael, the cooperative’s general manager. “With the help of FLO [Fairtrade International], 32 other cooperatives in Nicaragua adopted their own gender policies over the following three years.”
Obama backs Mexico government amid calls to suspend military aid
Barack Obama has pledged support for the Mexican government despite calls for him to withhold aid to the country’s security forces following a string of incidents in which military troops and police have been implicated in torture, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.
Six women murdered each day as femicide in Mexico nears a pandemic
According to the National Citizen Femicide Observatory, a coalition of 43 groups that document the crime, six women are assassinated every day. Yet only 24 percent of the 3,892 femicides the group identified in 2012 and 2013 were investigated by authorities. And only 1.6 percent led to sentencing.
Haiti: Five years after devastating earthquake tens of thousands still homeless and desperate
“Many people who lost everything in the 2010 earthquake have faced renewed hardship as they are thrown out of their shelters and makeshift camps. Others face homelessness and destitution in the long-term as financial support programmes from international donors begin to dry up,” said Chiara Liguori, Caribbean Researcher at Amnesty International.
After months of nothing, ELN opens doors to formal peace talks
Colombia’s second largest rebel group said Tuesday — half a year after announcing preliminary peace talks with the government — that they are willing to take the talks a step further and aim for a political solution to 50 years of war.
Homicides in El Salvador up 57% after gang truce ends
Ramírez Landaverde attributed the sharp increase to the dissolution of a pact among the Central American country’s criminal gangs. In March 2012, leaders of the gangs Mara Salvatrucha MS13 and Barrio 18 agreed to reduce violence, and homicides fell to an average of five a day.
After an extended deliberation, the court decided, in a majority decision, that Judge Valdez should excuse herself for reasons of partiality. Judges Yoc and Castellanos affirmed that Judge Valdez had already stated a position on an important question at issue in the trial and that Rios Montt had reason to doubt her impartiality. They thus suspended, again, the reopening of the trial, this time for an indefinite period.