Pioneering chefs from Bolivia to Brazil are stepping out of the kitchen and into public service. The ‘social gastronomy’ movement uses food to create jobs, prevent violence and boost economies.
In life, Marielle Franco fought against racism in Brazil. Her death put this often-overlooked subject on the front page.
Ricardo Moraes/Reuters
Race has long been a taboo subject in Brazil. With the March 14 killing of the black Rio politician Marielle Franco, any myth of the country as a ‘racial democracy’ has been broken wide open.
Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro are both classic Latin American strongmen. But that’s where the similarities end.
David Mercado/Reuters
Bolivia’s populist leader has been in office for 12 years. He’s a thorn in the US’s side and an ally of the late Hugo Chávez. Now he’s running for a fourth term. But that doesn’t make him a dictator.
Peasant activists in rural Colombia have been under fire since the signing of the country’s 2016 peace plan, which will bring intensive economic development to these areas.
Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters
Nearly 300 community organizers and activists have been killed in Colombia since the country’s 2016 peace accord. Who’s behind these targeted assassinations?
Families clashed with security forces outside the police station in Valencia, Venezuela, where nearly 70 prisoners died in a March 28 fire.
AP Photo/Juan Carlos Hernandez
After a fire killed 66 inmates at a Venezuelan jail in March, news stories portrayed the country’s prisons as lawless. The real backstory of this deadly riot is more complex — and maybe a bit scarier.
Oscar Romero’s canonization is controversial. The process stalled in the Vatican for decades.
Jose Cabezas/Reuters
On March 24, 1980, an outspoken Salvadoran bishop was murdered after decrying his country’s military regime. Thirty-eight years and one civil war later, Pope Francis is set to declare him a saint.
The FARC is out of the running for Colombia’s president. Who gets their votes?
Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters
A former FARC rebel commander-turned- presidential candidate has withdrawn from Colombia’s 2018 election. Despite increased violence, the peace accord he signed will probably survive this setback.
The epicenter of Mexico’s lethal September 2017 earthquake was less than 65 miles outside the nation’s capital.
Nacho Doce/Reuters
Not all earthquakes are made equal. A study on the Sept. 2017 quake that killed 300 in Mexico City found that both its location and cause were unusual.
Latin America’s era of the woman president is over. What have we learned?
Rodrigo Garrido/Reuters
Intimate partner violence has tremendous negative consequences for women, their families and societies, yet it have not received the political attention it should.
Pamela K. Starr, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The admired US ambassador to Mexico is resigning, even as the two countries spat over trade, immigration and Trump’s tweets. Can this critical diplomatic relationship survive yet another problem?
Flooding is a common hazard in Nezahualcoyotl, a Mexican city just outside the nation’s capital.
AP Photos/Eduardo Verdugo
In many Mexican cities, water is treated as a political bargaining chip – a favor that public officials can trade for votes, bribes or power.
The Amazon rainforest is fed by a rich network of creeks, streams and rivers. Informal road construction is now endangering this critical ecosystem.
Rickey Rogers/Reuters
Thousands of dirt roads crisscross the Brazilian Amazon, serving ranchers, loggers and miners. The area’s fragile waterways — and the spectacular fish that live in them — pay a high price.
Murder rates in Mexico have spiked since the military was first sent in to fight organized crime in 2006.
Henry Romero/Reuters
Exactly 234,966 people have died in Mexico’s 11-year drug war. Now the government wants to deploy soldiers to criminal hot spots, a move many fear will just increase violence and weaken the police.
The Venezuelans now rushing across the border to seek refuge in Brazil join millions of Brazilian migrants who’ve been displaced within their own country.
Nacho Doce/Reuters
Robert Muggah, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
Since 2000, 8.8 million Brazilians have been displaced by disaster, development and crime, new data shows. Now Venezuelan migrants are pouring into the country. Still, Brazil has no real refugee plan.
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