January 2014 marked the 20th anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a treaty that created a single market covering Mexico, the United States, and Canada.  It remains a point of contention.

The key to creating a living democracy goes beyond words.  It entails more than a commitment to rhetoric and calls for efforts to improve its implementation.  You can’t just declare it.  You must live it.  

With the birth of the “social market economy” in Germany in the postwar era, a new age dawned in Europe.  That process is now afoot in Latin America. 

The commemoration of the oil expropriation of 1938 revealed deep divides among the country’s political players, even as forces in the oil industry seemed to act as if all is normal. 

The international press is once again constructing a negative image of Argentina. 

So argued Marcelo J. García in the Buenos Aires Herald.  He pointed out that Radio journalist Andy Kustnesoff, “who generally supports the government,” pleaded repeatedly with Economy Minister Axel Kicillof during an interview to “let us avoid the Clarín, anti-Clarín debate.” 

Fernando Camacho Servin wrote in La Jornada of Mexico City that if President Enrique Peña Nieto wants to save the country, he could start with a strong defense of human rights. 

Nasere Habed López argued in El Nuevo Diario of Managua that “hedonism is a pervasive feature” of Nicaraguan youth culture today in a way that it was not in “previous generations.” 

Emir Sader argued in Página/12 of Buenos Aires that the wave of progressive governments in Latin America has made significant strides “to turn the page on neoliberalism.” 

In PáginaSIETE of La Paz Eduardo Gudynas wrote of the “divorce” between left and liberalism in Latin America.  According Gudynas, “progressivism” was “born from the womb of the left” but has “consolidated its own identity, and would seem to be taking another direction.”