Posts:
By Arturo McFields A new wave of immigration is knocking on the doors of the U.S., despite the reduction experienced this summer after the end of Title 42 and the new Biden immigration policy. Detentions on the border with Mexico increased by 30 percent in July, from...
By the Financial Times Editorial Board Latin America’s turbulent politics often hit the headlines. Less well reported is that the region has enjoyed a long and broad democratic expansion over the past 35 years. Nowhere else in the developing world are free elections...
How does a presidential candidate go from 5% in the polls to almost 24% at the ballot box in 10 days? How does another drop from 15% to 4% in the same period? How is it that the leaders of National Assembly and of the movement to impeach President Guillermo Lasso...
By Pablo Ferri No other country handles such a high ratio of tons of cocaine per capita as Ecuador. The South American nation, a hinge between the two major coca leaf producers in world, Colombia and Peru, has become logistical platform for large transnational...
By Florantonia Singer A few weeks ago, social media users celebrated the fact that the traditional cachapa — a corn cake cooked on a budare [griddle] and stuffed with fresh cheese — had triumphed in MasterChef Australia. This comfort food was prepared by a Venezuelan...
By Carlos Maldonado At the beginning of July, the government of El Salvador activated its diplomatic machinery to stop the presentation of a work at the International Book Fair of Guatemala, the largest literary event in Central America. Populist President Nayib...
By David Morrill and Deke Castleman What do expats -- especially those from the U.S. -- think about using the U.S. dollar in Ecuador? Not much, frankly, although it's hard to deny that it makes life easier. We don’t have to worry about exchange rates or go through the...
On the spring of 1974, at the tender age of 21, I had my first encounter with "the light." This encounter came in the form of a Voice which informed me with great authority that I was to radically change the course of my young life. My willingness to follow this...
In 1994 Dr. Sherwin Nuland's book, "How We Die", was published. It is a fascinating read on the exact nature of death. This essay is not informed by Dr. Nuland's work. It is more in line with the recently published book by Buddhist nun and Dharma teacher Pema Chodron,...
By Fernando Ayala Corruption has taken over the political agenda of several countries, large and small, in Latin America. From the Rio Grande down to the south of the continent, the last decades have been marked more by money than by principles. Presidents prosecuted,...
By Carlos Ortega After months of angry charges and countercharges between President Lasso and the National Assembly, everything has turned eerily quiet in Quito. Even the noisy mouthpiece of the indigenous movement, Leonidas Iza, has dialed down the volume. The fact...
By Carol E. Leutner When I was working on my Masters in Business Administration at the University of New Mexico some decades ago, I was required to take a course in economics. This was fine with me. Politicians were beginning to blame all of the country’s ills on the...
By Kenny Stancil A report published Monday reveals how multilateral development banks' financing of factory farms has unleashed significant social and ecological harm in Ecuador, and civil society groups say the banks' failure to consult or compensate affected...
By Rowan Atkinson Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems. Combine this, perhaps surprising, academic pathway...
By Brian Stewart The novelist Mario Vargas Llosa has long distinguished himself as one of Latin America’s shrewdest observers of human nature, as well as one of its scarce classical liberals. Owing to a desire “to have one foot in the street,” Vargas Llosa has never...
By Nathan Proctor Andy Harding has been running his small electronics-repair shop, Salem Techsperts, in Salem, Massachusetts, for the past eight years. He does steady business fixing phones for college students and nurses from the nearby hospital. But soon after the...
By Louis Bourgeois I have learned over a lifetime of study and experience a most valuable lesson. This is about our function, which translates to the all-important "meaning of life." I was quite young when I had my first "encounter" with God. I actually had no belief...
By Will Freeman A leader in exile — or, according to the government, on the run from justice. Top cadres in jail or scattered across continents. A society still nursing the wounds of a decade of polarization. These are not exactly the makings of a political comeback....
By Will Freeman and Beatriz Rey Thirty years ago, Latin America’s nascent democracies did what had once seemed impossible: They confined the militaries that had regularly overthrown them to their barracks. But now presidents from Mexico to Brazil are coaxing the...
By Luis Barrios For several years now, the Ecuadorian prison system has suffered from problems of corruption, overcrowding, violence, and poor infrastructure. While available reports indicate that there have been more than 316 deaths in the nation’s prisons since...
