A crisis erupted in Guatemala on August 28, 2017, after Attorney General Thelma Aldana denounced President Jimmy Morales’ decision to expel Colombian lawyer Iván Velásquez, head of the Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG), which was created in 2006 with the support of the United Nations. While Morales claimed that he was expelling

Vice President Mike Pence took a quick trip to four countries in the region in mid-August 2017. While the trek was overshadowed by President Trump’s clearly impulsive ejaculation about a possible “military” solution to the on-going crisis in Venezuela, any visit by a sitting U.S. vice president to Latin America receives ample coverage on many

In what seemed like an off-the-cuff utterance, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to end the crisis in Venezuela with military action. His statement caught even his closest advisers off guard, and could upend diplomatic efforts by his own administration to isolate embattled Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Predictably, Trump’s hint at a “military option” was roundly

With tensions running high in Venezuela and around the region, President Nicolás Maduro pushed ahead with his constitutional convention, essentially cutting the growing opposition movement out of any role in Venezuela’s political life. Maduro’s supporters say he is defending the Bolivarian Revolution, while his critics say he is a dictator bent on destroying Venezuelan democracy,

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s most popular and significant president in living memory, was convicted of graft and money-laundering in mid July 2017. He was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison. Lula, as he is known, denied the charges and promised to appeal, while also going ahead with preparations for another campaign for the

Since the beginning of April 2017, Venezuela has experienced repeated waves of demonstrations. Most of these mobilizations have been in protest of President Nicolás Maduro’s government, and many of them have turned violent, leaving almost 80 people dead, thousands wounded, and many hundreds detained. The protesters want to halt the non-democratically elected constitutional assembly that

U.S. President Donald Trump struck down parts of his predecessor Barack Obama’s diplomatic rapprochement with Cuba, re-tightening rules on U.S. citizens travelling to the island, and moving to block U.S. firms from doing business with enterprises controlled by the Cuban military. While Cubans in Miami cheered, and Latin Americans across the region lamented the “return

In the governor’s race in the State of Mexico, the PRI (Mexico’s generally dominant ruling party since 1929) eked out a narrow electoral triumph against the candidate of its most dangerous competitor on the left, the MORENA party led by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known by his initials as AMLO). But the arguably Pyrrhic victory

The former commander of the disbanded Panamanian Defense Forces, General Manuel Antonio Noriega, who was called the “last dictator of Panama,” died on May 29, 2017 at the age of 83. Noriega, known as “the Man” by his supporters and “Cara de Piña” (“Pineapple Face”) by his enemies, ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989. He

Brazilian President Michel Temer has been floundering since the recent release of an audio recording that allegedly captures him in the act of signing off on the payment of hush money to Eduardo Cunha, the former President of the Lower House of the Brazilian Congress, who is now serving a 15-year prison sentence. Temer’s predicament