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Articles on Latin America

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Even before COVID-19, El Salvador’s prisons were contagious disease hotspots. Here, MS-13 gang members with tuberculosis at Chalatenango prison, March 29, 2019. Marvin Recinos/AFP via Getty Images

Mass arrests and overcrowded prisons in El Salvador spark fear of coronavirus crisis

El Salvador is arresting thousands of people for violating its COVID-19 quarantine, further packing a ‘hellish’ penal system once described as a ‘petri dish’ for infectious disease.
Valley of the Dawn members celebrate ‘Day of the Indoctrinator’ at their temple complex in Brazil on May 1. This year’s event is postponed due to coronavirus. Márcia Alves

Brazilian mystics say they’re sent by aliens to ‘jump-start human evolution’ – but their vision for a more just society is not totally crazy

Brazil’s Valley of the Dawn faith is often dismissed as a cult. But many of the group’s fantastical rituals are a recognizable reaction to this harsh world of inequality, loneliness and pandemics.
Coffins await burial at the Jardines de Esperanza cemetery in Guayaquil, Ecuador, April 10, 2020. Eduardo Maquilon/Getty Images

Deaths and desperation mount in Ecuador, epicenter of coronavirus pandemic in Latin America

Dead bodies left at home and in streets. Quarantined people facing hunger. Political turmoil. Ecuador’s coronavirus outbreak is a grim forecast of what may await poorer countries when COVID-19 hits.
Antonio, from the Yanomami village of Watoriki, photographed in November 1992. After contact with Brazilian society in the 1970s, more than half the Yanomami population died from infectious diseases. William Milliken

Covid-19, isolated indigenous peoples and the history of the Amazon

There are telling parallels between the current pandemic and those that decimated indigenous populations in the post-Columbian era in the Amazon.
He may be praying, but so far the Pope has declined to intervene in Venezuela’s crisis to aid a unified coronavirus response. LUIS ACOSTA/AFP via Getty Images

Catholic Church urges Venezuela to unite against coronavirus

If anyone can convince the Maduro government and the Venezuelan opposition to come together to fight COVID-19, it’s the Pope. But the Church’s power to negotiate an emergency deal is limited.
Health workers test for COVID-19 in Asuncion, Paraguay. Nathalia Aguilar/EPA

Coronavirus: a warning to Latin America and the Caribbean to dramatically increase COVID-19 testing

A group of population experts have called on governments in Latin American and the Caribbean to urgently ramp up testing for COVID-19 before it’s too late.
Undocumented migrants climb on a train known as ‘La Bestia’ in Las Patronas town, Veracruz state, Mexico, Aug. 9, 2018, to travel through Mexico and reach the U.S. Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images

Migrants at US-Mexico border must get past cartels before their long journey ends

The US may be in sight from the border towns of Sonora, Mexico, but the trip is far from over. Cartels control the desert territory that divides the two countries – and no one gets through for free.
South America’s bi-oceanic highway, which will stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic – cutting right through Paraguay – is scheduled for completion in 2022. Joel Correia

Mennonites helped turn Paraguay into a mega beef producer – indigenous people may pay the price

Mennonites settled in Paraguay’s arid Chaco forest a century ago, fleeing religious persecution. Their agricultural success is now driving deforestation, social change and rapid development.
More than 2,000 women were processed through demobilization camps in Colombia as the government transitions disarmed FARC guerrillas back into civilian life, Jan. 18, 2017. Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images

A guerrilla-to-entrepreneur plan in Colombia leaves some new businesswomen isolated and at risk

Small business grants are supposed to help Colombia’s disarmed FARC fighters start new lives as entrepreneurs. But interviews with 12 female ex-insurgents suggests the government plan may fail women.
The ‘Christ of the Pacific’ statue in Lima has caused controversy in Peru because of its financing by a graft-tainted Brazilian construction company. Both religion and corruption loomed large in Peru’s 2020 legislative elections. CRIS BOURONCLE/AFP via Getty Images

Fringe religious party gains power in crisis-stricken Peru

After a bribery scandal that took down four presidents and led Congress to dissolve, some Peruvians are putting their faith in an austere religion called the Israelites of the New Universal Pact.
In Rio de Janeiro, practitioners of the Afro-Brazilian faiths Candomble and Umbanda are increasingly under attack by evangelical crusaders. AP Photo/Leo Correa

Evangelical gangs in Rio de Janeiro wage ‘holy war’ on Afro-Brazilian faiths

As evangelicalism spreads across Brazil, some of Rio de Janeiro’s most notorious gangs see minority religions as an affront to God. And they’re using guns to spread their gospel.

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