In Chile’s presidential and legislative election on November 17, 2013 former President Michelle Bachelet, candidate of the left-leaning Nueva Mayoría (New Majority) coalition, took an impressive lead with 47% of the vote,

The Run-Up to the Election Didn’t Look Good for the Government Marcelo Izquierdo broke it down in El Telégrafo of Guayaquil.  The opposition and dissident Peronistas expected a major victory over the governing Frente para la Victoria, FPV, especially given the absence of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was recovering from an operation.   

The consensus around the region in early October 2013 was that trouble is brewing in Venezuela.  According to stories in the Venezuelan media, the country was recently turned down by China for a loan.  Also, despite roughly $90 billion a year in oil revenue, Venezuela has trouble importing basic consumer goods.  And

Prelude at the G20 Vivian Oswald remarked in O Globo of Rio de Janeiro that before embarking back

While people in the United States remembered the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Latin Americans pondered “the other 9/11.”  Salvador Allende, who came to power in Chile in 1970 as the first elected socialist president in Latin America, fell victim to

A diverse collection of groups went on strike throughout Colombia beginning on August 19, 2013 including coffee, dairy, and potato farmers from various departments, truckers, university teachers and students, health care workers, rice growers, sugar cane cutters, and miners.  Echoing protests in Brazil in June, and continuing actions by farmers who blocked Colombia’s main roads

Across the region the Argentine primary election on August 11, 2013 (in which voter turnout topped 75%) was seen as a defeat for the forces loyal to President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.  Though she went all out to support her hand-picked candidates, and even finagled photo opts with the Pope in Brazil, her Front for

Pope Francis, formally cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, was born in Buenos Aires to Italian immigrant parents.  As the first Latin American pontiff, and indeed the first non European Pope, he has become the focus of intense interest in the region, home to 42% of the world’s Catholics.  He traveled to Brazil for his