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When Luis Fonsi launched his ninth album, “Vida,” in January 2017, he probably didn’t imagine that its main song, “Despacito,” featuring Daddy Yankee, would become an international sensation. The track broke seven Guinness records, among which were the most weeks at the top of...
April has been a hard month for the largest and most populous Latin American country. While the whole world is engulfed in the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over 200,000 globally to date and unleashed an unprecedented economic crisis, Brazil has also been going through political upheaval....
In November 2019, Luis Lacalle Pou was elected president of Uruguay after defeating the ruling party candidate and former Montevideo mayor, Daniel Martinez, in the second round. President Lacalle Pou’s inauguration in March marked the end of a decade and a half of executive leadership by members...
The countries in Central America's Northern Triangle — Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — do not have the public health infrastructure necessary to overcome the challenges of a pandemic. That is why these countries, which are used to seeing significant migratory transit, quickly shut their...
As the global COVID-19 pandemic engulfs the world, the grand strategy of revisionist powers will either falter or accelerate. At the dawn of the post-coronavirus world — whenever it might come — the Chinese Communist Party will push forward with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which will...
Elected in 2019 as a political outsider to El Salvador’s two main parties, Nayib Bukele assumed the country’s presidency with the promise of ending gang violence and enforcing the rule of law in an institutionally weak nation. However, Bukele’s recent actions as president seeking to pressure...
After Iowa and New Hampshire, two states known for the homogeneity of their white populations, the Democratic primaries move west and south. The next venue is Nevada, a state with a significant Mexican minority. The pundits see this as the first test of the capacity of Democratic candidates to...
Last October, Ecuador witnessed some of the largest mass protests in its modern history. Concentrated mainly in the capital city of Quito and, less intensely, in Guayaquil, Cuenca and Portoviejo, the protests ignited on October 3, when President Lenin Moreno’s government announced the...
In Havana, Cuba, the effects of sanctions imposed by the Trump administration have seeped their way into daily life: the long lines of cars outside gas stations, the dwindling stock on store shelves, the increasingly common apagones, or power outages. In early September 2019, Cuba’s President...
Over the last several weeks, Colombia has been making international headlines as social protest engulfed the country. On November 25 — the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women — hundreds of Colombian women went out into the streets to claim their rights and shine a...
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has changed. Gone are the days when it would use its lending powers to strong-arm countries into adopting a slate of “free market” reforms that put the interests of investors before those of the people — or so it claims. The IMF truly has progressed...
