Issue Sep 28-Oct 04 2022: After the unsettled first round of presidential elections on October 2, 2022, Brazilians face another month of uncertainty in a deeply polarized political environment. Ex-president and frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva failed to garner the 50% of the votes plus one needed to avoid an October 30 run-off against

Issue Sep 21-27 2022: On September 25, Cuba held a referendum on same-sex marriage as well as other family-related reforms. The measure passed with a solid majority. The call to vote “Yes” was vigorously pushed by all state media as an act of revolutionary virtue. And while LGBT groups praised the exercise as a step

On September 15, 2022, El Salvador’s Independence Day, amid military parades and fireworks, President Nayib Bukele announced that he will seek reelection. Legal minds around the region pointed out that El Salvador’s constitution clearly prohibits immediate presidential reelection, though a series of legal rulings by Bukele appointees seem to have muddied the waters. Despite a

Issue Sep 07-13 2022: On September 7, 2022, President Jair Bolsonaro presided over festivities marking the 200th Anniversary of Brazil’s Independence from Portugal. Yet he outraged many Brazilians for turning the event into a militaristic campaign event with authoritarian overtones. The president was applauded by a crowd of supporters in Brasilia, where the heads of

On September 4, 2022, Chileans voted on whether to accept or reject the new constitution written by the Constituent Assembly elected to replace the constitution imposed on the country in 1980 by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. As polls predicted, Chileans rejected the new charter by a huge margin, offering a serious defeat to Chile’s

Venezuela and Colombia formally resumed diplomatic relations on August 28, 2022, after a three-year diplomatic rupture, with the arrival in Caracas of the Colombian ambassador Armando Benedetti, appointed by the newly elected President Gustavo Petro of Colombia. This followed an announcement by President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela that he had chosen former Foreign Minister and

On August 18, 2022, Mexico’s Comisión para la Verdad y Acceso a la Justicia investigating the infamous September 2014 disappearance and presumed murder of the 43 normalistas (students from the Escuela Normal Rural “Isidro Burgos” de Ayotzinapa in Guerrero) declared that the incident had been a “state crime.” Soon thereafter, former Procurador General de la

In the weeks after August 4, 2022, the National Police did not allow Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez, a critic of President Daniel Ortega, to leave the Episcopal Palace. The bishop, along with at least ten other people, has been accused by the Ortega regime of “trying to organize violent groups.” With their detention, they joined

After just one year in office, Peru’s leftist President Pedro Castillo reshuffled his cabinet for the fifth time at the end of July 2022. Castillo declined Prime Minister Aníbal Torres’ resignation, who will therefore remain in his post. But amid ongoing tensions between the executive and the one-house legislature, Castillo swore in six new cabinet

During July 2022, Panama experienced weeks of popular protest and convulsion. Thousands of people went into the streets to demand government action to contain the prices of gasoline, basic food items, and medicine. The protests led to the closing of public schools, suspension of transportation, and calls for strikes. The United Nations office in Panama