Brazil has been throwing money at Amazonian cattle farmers, hoping they’ll adopt ‘greener’ crops like fruit or corn. A new study shows why loans won’t fix the environmental issue presented by ranches.
Arrests aside, until the politicians who collude with gangs are stopped, crime in Central America will likely continue unchecked.
Reuters/Jose Cabezas
Corruption, not gang warfare, is the root cause of the record violence in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Until public officials stop shielding criminal groups like MS-13, lawlessness will reign.
Advertising continues to portray women as charming keepers of the home, making it harder to succeed at work.
Andrea44/flickr
TV commercials continue to traffic in outmoded gender roles, relegating women to the home. A media scholar explains how these stereotypical portrayals can fuel workplace harassment by powerful men.
In courting the right, President Lenin Moreno (L) has broken with his powerful predecessor, Rafael Correa, unleashing a very public Twitter feud.
Mariana Bazo/Reuters
Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, has been flirting with conservatives. Beyond irking his base, it has also lead to mass resignations and Twitter battles with his powerful left-wing predecessor.
A ceasefire with the ELN rebel group is another big step toward peace in Colombia, but the road ahead is long.
Reuters/Federico Rios
A court decision securing last year’s peace deal and a new ceasefire have invigorated Colombia’s peace process, but there are plenty of ways it could still go wrong.
Christo Venter, University of Pretoria and Gary Hayes, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
South Africa needs to review its approach to rolling out Bus Rapid Transit systems as the current model is proving to be too expensive and unsustainable.
Undocumented migrants are among those helping to rebuild the hardest-hit areas of Oaxaca state, where federal aid has been slow to trickle down.
Presidencia de la República Mexicana CC-by-2.0
A brigade of migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala have interrupted their trek north to stay in Mexico and support earthquake recovery efforts.
Gilles Pison, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN)
There’s no reason why small families shouldn’t become the norm in Africa. But this will depend on improving education opportunities for women and improving birth control policies.
A Nepalese political refugee in Brazil in 2013.
Sebastiao Moreira/EPA
The region has welcomed resettled refugees for a few decades, but it has not always gone smoothly.
‘I’m not inviting you to abort, I’m inviting you to decide.’ Can democracy exist if women aren’t recognized as people with full human rights?
Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters
Seventy-five percent of all abortions in Latin America are illicit. In Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador, where abortion is totally illegal, the bans correlate with a generalized failure of the rule of law.
Homeless residents of El Bronx embrace after a May 2016 raid that displaced thousands, sending some to shelters and others to streets elsewhere in the city.
Fernando Vergara/AP
Bogota’s mayor wants to make the city ‘better for all,’ but repeated police crackdowns have displaced thousands of homeless Colombians. Are clean streets really more important than human rights?
Anti-government protesters march in Guatemala City, Guatemala, Sept. 20, 2017.
REUTERS/Luis Echeverria
Marcia Tiburi, Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO)
Artists, free speech advocates and gay rights activists in Brazil are dismayed after an LGBTQ-centric exhibit was closed because the subject matter offended evangelical Christians.
Levi Gahman, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine Campus and Gabrielle Thongs, The University of the West Indies: St. Augustine Campus
The Caribbean is facing its second deadly hurricane in as many weeks. This isn’t just bad luck: the region’s extreme vulnerability to disaster also reflects entrenched social inequalities.
Rescue workers arrive to Juchitán, Oaxaca, which was almost completely destroyed in Mexico’s September 7-8 earthquake.
Reuters/Edgard Garrido
Shattered by powerful back-to-back earthquakes, Mexico is facing daunting damages across six states. Now Chiapas and Oaxaca, the country’s two poorest states, which were hit first, fear neglect.
Colombian soliders on parade in Bogota.
EPA/Mauricio Duenas Castaneda
It seems the culprits in a “cash-for-kills” scheme that claimed thousands of lives might find a way to wriggle out of the peace process.
The city of Juchitan, on Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, was hit particularly hard by the 8.2-magnitude earthquake that shook the region on Sept. 7, 2017.
Edgard Garrido/Reuters
The Tehuantepec gap in southeastern Mexico, where this month’s massive earthquake originated, was long thought to be ‘aseismic.’ On September 7, scientists learned otherwise.
The Virgin Mary may not be able to pull Brazil out of a deep recession, but her church-sponsored house calls do wonders to ease economic malaise among participating Catholic families.
Pilar Olivares/Reuters
For a century, Brazil’s Catholic Church has sent holy statues out to parishioners’ homes. A new study finds that these visits create a local subeconomy, benefitting families and the church.
Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University; Director of Studies at the Changing Character of War Centre, and Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford