2018 is on track to become only the second coup-free year in a century. Coup risk is way down worldwide, thanks to growing political stability in Latin America. Africa has the highest risk of coup.
University students ask for a higher budget for public higher education.
AP Photo/Fernando Vergara
Strikes and rallies have gripped Colombia for months. That’s bad news for its new government but a sign of progress in a country that had little tolerance for dissent during its 52-year civil war.
Mexico’s President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador speaks about the upcoming changes his administration will impose on national security during the national peace and security plan conference in Mexico City on Nov. 14, 2018.
(AP Photo/Anthony Vazquez)
The success or failure of Mexico’s new president will have an impact on politics in the rest of Latin America as right-wing forces reclaim power. Is a brighter future for the region possible?
Migrants travel in groups through Mexico for safety reasons. But Mexico is still one of the world’s most dangerous countries.
AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd
Two trucks carrying migrants have gone missing in Veracruz, Mexico. A witness says that ‘65 children and seven women were sold’ to a band of armed men. Other caravan members have reached the border.
Supporters of Brazilian far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro celebrate his victory in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on October 28, 2018.
EPA Images
Brazil’s president-elect wants to roll back environmental laws, saying they hurt rural growth. But preventing Amazonian deforestation has actually made farmland more productive.
Cellphones are everywhere in Africa - but that doesn’t mean the digital divide is closing.
Legnan Koula/EPA
We don’t have the data in developing countries, and in global statistics to know if the digital divide is being closed.
Supporters of Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro hope he will ‘transform’ their country, which has been mired in political and economic crises since 2015.
AP Photo/Leo Correa
Bolsonaro promised angry Brazilians he would transform their crisis-stricken country. But he didn’t say how. Five Brazil experts examine his policies on crime, the economy, women, the Amazon and more.
Bolsonaro supporters celebrate outside his home in Rio de Janeiro after exit polls on Oct. 28 declared him the preliminary winner of Brazil’s 2018 presidential election.
AP Photo/Leo Correa
Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing congressman and former army captain, is Brazil’s next president, with 56 percent of votes. Critics see a threat to democracy in his scathing attacks on Brazilian society.
Some 5,000 Venezuelans flee the country’s violence, tyranny and hunger every day, creating an historic migration crisis that rivals Syria’s.
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Trump has called Venezuela a ‘human tragedy’ and threatened invasion while quietly deporting and denying asylum to Venezuelan refugees. His anti-socialist rhetoric may make for good midterm politics.
Costa Ricans held a march in solidarity with Nicaraguan refugees on Aug. 25, 2018. An estimated 500,000 Nicaraguans live in Costa Rica, with more arriving daily as crisis in the country deepens.
Reuters/Juan Carlos Ulate
Nicaraguan migrants send over US$1 billion home each year. This money has played a changing role in domestic politics – first boosting the Ortega regime and, now, sustaining the uprising against him.
Argentines protest the austerity measures of the IMF bailout.
AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko
A deep recession, a severe drought and a plunging currency have led to the biggest bailout in IMF history. The government hopes it can avoid the meltdowns that followed past crises.
Presidential runoff candidates: Jair Bolsonaro, far-right lawmaker of the Social Liberal Party and Fernando Haddad of Brazil’s leftist Workers Party.
REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes/Washington Alves
After four years of economic crisis and corruption, Brazilians have never trusted their government less. They showed their frustration Sunday, voting for two ideologically opposed candidates.
Mexican soldiers killed up to 300 student protesters and arrested 1,000 more on Oct. 3, 1968, in an event that’s come to be known as the Tlatelolco massacre.
AP Photo
Fifty years ago, soldiers gunned down hundreds of student protesters in a Mexico City plaza. It was neither the first nor the last time Mexico’s army would be deployed against its own citizens.
Black women in Brazil protest presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro, who is known for his disparaging remarks about women, on Sept. 29, 2018.
AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo
In Brazil, a record 1,237 black women will stand for office in Sunday’s general election. As in the US, their campaigns reflect deep personal concern about rising racism and sexism in politics.
Three years into a protracted political and economic crisis, Venezuela has seen millions of migrants flee.
Reuters/Luisa Gonzalez
Robert Muggah, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
Up to 5,000 refugees flee hunger and chaos in Venezuela each day – a migrant crisis rivaling Syria’s. Most arrive to poor South American border cities that are dangerously unprepared for the influx.
The US has meddled in Latin America so much that its influence there is viewed there with deep suspicion.
El Salvador forges new relationship with China – it isn’t the first nor will it be the last nation to be wooed by Chinese investment.
How Hwee Young/EPA
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