Dina Fernández wrote in El Periódico of Guatemala City that Guatemalans “live in a time capsule” dominated by the ghosts of the Cold war.  This year marks 60th anniversary of the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz, over half a century that includes 36 years of civil war and nearly two decades of attempts at peace. 

Jorge Fernández Díaz wrote in La Nación of Buenos Aires of the “furiously roaring volcano of Peronismo.”  Down in its interior one can “hear the sounds of the large pool of magma, fragmented, but boiling.” 

María Elvira Samper observed in El Espectador of Bogotá that the question of Mayor Gustavo Petro’s future continues to fester as Bogotá drifts in a sea of instability and uncertainty.  Yet despite the institutional mess, the case underlines “at least two certainties.”  

In La Jornada of Mexico City John Saxe-Fernández said he felt a chill after reading an interview with Rogelio Cárdenas, Secretary of Agriculture, and seeing that the “the objectives of reform” are meant to benefit the “giants of banking, agribusiness, mining and energy.” 

Paul Cádiz wrote in La Tercera of Santiago that the future government spokesman of the second administration of President Michelle Bachelet, the Socialist Alvaro Elizalde, stressed that “the need for a new Constitution” will be one of the main focuses of the government of the New Majority. 

In El Nuevo Diario of Managua, Karlos Navarro wrote that during most of the twentieth century Nicaraguan political life has been dominated by “different ideological hues” of authoritarianism. 

MercoPress of Montevideo noted that 2014 will be a big year for elections in Latin America, with significant contests in Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Uruguay, Panama, Costa Rica, and El Salvador. 

Edward Davis wrote in La Nación of Buenos Aires that President Rousseff’s year is off to a tough start,

Martín Gambarotta asserted in the Buenos Aires Herald that now in Argentina ‘K’ is for Kicillof. 

In La Jornada of Mexico City Alma E. Muñoz observed that Andrés Manuel López Obrador had announced a new stage of struggle to combat corruption,