Latin America News

Venezuela’s government on Thursday ordered the local United Nations office on human rights to suspend operations and gave its staff 72 hours to leave, accusing it of assisting coup plotters and terrorist groups. Foreign Affairs Minister Yván Gil announced the decision at a news conference in Caracas, which came amid heightened concerns that the government...

By Vanessa Buschschlüter Rights groups have expressed concern for Venezuelan activist Rocío San Miguel, who has not been heard from since she was arrested on Friday. Ms San Miguel is a vocal critic of President Nicolás Maduro’s government. She has been accused by the prosecutor general, who is a close ally of Mr, Maduro, of...

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, has won a landslide victory in elections after voters cast aside concerns about erosion of democracy to reward him for a fierce gang crackdown that transformed security in the central American country. Thousands of Bukele’s supporters clad in cyan blue and waving flags thronged San Salvador’s central square to celebrate...

At least 110 people have been killed in Chile as forest fires rage throughout the country, with authorities warning the death toll is likely to rise. They say that hundreds remain unaccounted for. A state of emergency has been declared as coastal cities are choked in smoke and people living in central regions are forced...

A week of road blockades in Bolivia has led to food and fuel shortages as supporters of former president Evo Morales protest his disqualification from 2025 elections, authorities said Monday. Protesters, led by coca growers — the mainstay of Morales’ political base — began by blocking eight highways a week ago with stones, logs and...

By Matt Rivers As the migrant crisis continues to weigh on cities across the United States, immigration advocates and international groups contend that most Americans are not aware of the depths of despair that have forced the migrants to relocate from country to country. Extreme poverty, racism, and even violence have followed many of these South American...

By Javier Cordoba Many Costa Ricans on Friday welcomed a ruling this week by the country’s Supreme Court of Justice eliminating the requirement that people use their father’s surname before their mother’s on identification documents. In Spanish-speaking nations, people usually go by two last names. In Costa Rica, if a man were named José and...

Venezuela’s Supreme Justice Tribunal has upheld a ban which prevents presidential candidate Maria Corina Machado from holding office, upending the opposition’s plans for elections planned for later this year. Machado, a former lawmaker, won the opposition’s independently run presidential primary last October with more than 90 percent of the votes, potentially putting her in a prime position...

By Alvaro Murillo and Isabel Woodford Long a byword for laidback environmental tourism, Costa Rica is now wrestling with a surge in violence so striking that its government is borrowing a page from nearby El Salvador, which took draconian steps to tackle its own crime problems. In an effort to cut a homicide rate that...