Prisoners at the Terrorism Confinement Centre, a prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, built to house 40,000 gang members convicted or detained.
Rodrigo Sura / EPA
Governments across Latin America are resorting to draconian measures in an attempt to rein in surging gang violence.
Men who were detained under the state of emergency are transported in a cargo truck in Soyapango, El Salvador in October 2022 after President Nayib Bukele began a crackdown on gangs that suspended constitutional rights and threw one in every 100 people in jail.
(AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Mass arrests and the suspension of constitutional rights have been a feature of President Nayib Bukele’s tenure. A fresh mandate from voters will likely entrench his hardline approach.
The successful courting of Honduras is the latest example of China’s influence in Latin America.
Lintao Zhang/Pool/Getty Images
As US influence in Latin America has waned, Beijing has been able to expand business interests in the region on the back of shady practices.
A worker from Hope House, an organization that sponsors the use of cryptocurrencies on El Zonte beach, makes a purchase at a small shop that accepts bitcoins, in Tamanique, El Salvador, June 9, 2021.
(AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
Locals from Asunción Mita, Guatemala recently voted against the development of mining activities in their municipality, in a referendum contested by a Canadian mining company that owns a gold mine.
For the commitment to democracy to regain strength across the Americas, citizens need to become more confident in the integrity of their elections and their elected officials.
Plus, a philosopher explains the history of the idea that we might all be living in a simulation. Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.
A bitcoin symbol is seen on an LED screen during the closing ceremony of a gathering of cryptocurrency investors in Santa Maria Mizata, El Salvador, in November 2021. President Nayib Bukele announced his government is building an oceanside Bitcoin City.
(AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)
El Salvador has become the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. This is a noble idea, but unworkable in the long term.
Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele promised voters change. Instead, he seems to be reviving El Salvador’s authoritarian past.
Camilo Freedman/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
El Salvador ‘is inching back toward its authoritarian past’ after President Nayib Bukele fired five supreme court justices and the attorney general – essentially the only checks on his power.
Children play in Las Flores village, Comitancillo, Guatemala, home of a 22-year-old migrant murdered in January 2021 on his journey through Mexico.
Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images
Biden’s $4 billion plan to fight crime, corruption and poverty in Central America is massive. But aid can’t build viable democracies if ‘predatory elites’ won’t help their own people.
U.S. Border Patrol detains tens of thousands of the families and children who try to cross U.S. borders every year.
AP Photo/Julio Cortez
Children and families have been fleeing to the US in rising numbers for nearly a decade. So why is the current situation at the US-Mexico border being viewed as something new?