On February 3, 2014 Semana Magazine of Bogotá broke the story that members of the Colombian Army’s intelligence division were spying on government and FARC negotiators as they discuss a peace deal in Havana, Cuba. 

MercoPress of Montevideo reported that the Economy Minister of neighboring Uruguay, Mario Bergara, believes that “it is not very clear who is in charge of” Argentina’s economic policy, nor what is its “logic.”   

Xavier Bonilla, the Ecuadorean humorist and political cartoonist also known as Bonil, has received the dubious honor of being the first journalist to be sanctioned under his country’s new and controversial communications law.  By implementing the new law, the government of President Rafael Correa has fined his newspaper, El Universo of Guayaquil, $93,000 and ordered

So noted El Espectador of Bogotá.  The Peruvian president’s approval rating rose to 39%, 8 points more than in January, due to the decision of the International Court of Justice in The Hague in favor of Peru over Chile regarding a territorial dispute. 

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.