A year after the mysterious death of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman there are still more questions than answers.  Found dead in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head, just days after filing a criminal complaint against former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, his death thoroughly shocked Argentina’s political world.  Not only are there

The second recapture of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, a.k.a. “El Chapo,” the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, focused the region’s attention yet again.   This was the third time that the drug lord was taken into custody. The first was after he escaped from a maximum security prison in the state of Jalisco in 2001, and the

On December 6, 2015 the opposition alliance in Venezuela, the Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD), won a super majority of 112 deputies in the 167 seat unicameral Asamblea Nacional (AN) or National Assembly, displacing the long-dominant Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), led by President Nicolás Maduro, the hand-picked successor to the leader of the

As Venezuelans prepared for watershed parliamentary elections on December 6, 2015, events took an ominous turn with the murder of an opposition political leader and activist.   Luis Manuel Díaz, a local leader of the opposition Acción Democrática (AD) party, was shot and killed at a campaign event in the town of Altagracia de Orituco in

Cambiemos leader Mauricio Macri edged out Daniel Scioli, candidate of the ruling Frente para la Victoria, also known as Kirchnerismo, the left-wing of the Peronista party. While the narrow victory was more a product of a divided Peronismo than a united opposition, that did not dissuade observers from widely hailing the victory as an important

Smoldering tensions between Chile and Peru flared after Santiago reacted angrily to President Ollanta Humala of Peru’s unilateral decision on November 7, 2015 to create a new district, called LaYarada-Los Palos, inside a disputed border region.  The Chilean government, rejecting the actionwhich tore open a century-old dispute, insisted that the district “unquestionably includes Chilean territory”

The first round of Argentina’s presidential election in late October surprised observers across the political spectrum.  The official Peronista candidate did not win outright, and even seems to be vulnerable in the November runoff.  It has generated much talk of the different economic and political models in play, even as other pundits argue that there

The presidential race in Argentina will go to a second round in November, as the Peronista forces split between the official Frente para la Victoria and the dissident Unidos por una Nueva Alternativa.  In Colombia, governors and mayors were chosen as the nation considers its post-armed struggle political landscape.  Yet even as a peace deal

The final months of 2015 will see many important elections in the region. On October 25 Argentina had its first round of presidential elections, along with general legislative and local elections, Guatemala had the second round of its presidential contest, and Colombia had local elections.  On December 6 Venezuela will hold its legislative elections.  In

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Eduardo Cunha, the president of the lower chamber of Brazil’s congress (Câmara dos Deputados), remain locked in a circling death match as they grapple with impeachment on the one side and forceful calls for resignation on the other.  Both have been caught, to differing degrees, in the fallout of the