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.
In a Latin American country hard hit by COVID-19, an agricultural collective is stepping in to help where government won’t, mounting an astonishing national pandemic response.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Through genetic detective work, scientists have identified missing links in the tomato’s evolution from a wild blueberry-sized fruit in South America to the larger modern tomato of today.
Robert Muggah, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
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.
A series of brazen, highly visible attacks by Mexican drug cartels have killed at least 50 people in the past month, terrorizing citizens and making the government look weak on crime.
To quell weeks of protest over extreme inequality, Chile’s president has agreed to rewrite the country’s constitution, passed in 1980 under the deadly military regime of Augusto Pinochet.
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