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.
Latin America’s spike in violence is the result of systemic problems that have long gone unaddressed.
A ceremony to punish people for heresy, called an ‘auto da fe,’ in the town of San Bartolome Otzolotepec, in present-day Mexico.
Museo Nacional de Arte/Wikimedia Commons
Conversion was often a violent affair, but that doesn’t mean it was 100% successful. Colonial Latin America was home to many different spiritual traditions from Indigenous, African and Asian cultures.
A priest and Catholic worshippers pray in front of an image of ‘Sangre de Cristo,’ burned in a fire on July 2020, at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Managua.
Oswaldo Rivas/AFP via Getty Images
Kai M. Thaler, University of California, Santa Barbara
When President Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2006, church figures supported him. Violent repression after the 2018 protests has soured the relationship and made clergy targets for intimidation.
Violent chaos: security forces occupy a prison in Esmeraldas in northwestern Ecuador.
EPA-EFE/Ecuadorian Armed Forces
Poverty, insecurity and a naive and misguided drugs policy have led to a virtual civil war in Ecuador.
Special Forces soldiers in action: Ecuador is hostage to organised crime, amid a culture of violence rooted in the foundations of a society with a fragile economy and political and legal systems compromised by corruption.
AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa
Just five years ago, Ecuador was still considered one of the safest countries in Latin America. Now, there is a brutal war playing out between criminal gangs and the state.
Ecuador looks set to entrust its anti-gang fight to the military.
Franklin Jacome/Agencia Press South/Getty Images
Widespread violence tied to Ecuadorian drug gangs has left the country looking at a draconian response.
Fireworks light the sky while the portraits of persons who were disappeared and executed during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet are displayed on the stands of the National Stadium during a vigil marking the 50th anniversary of the 1973 military coup in Santiago, Chile on Sept. 11, 2023.
(AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
Despite hosting the 2023 Pan American Games and electing a president with a progressive agenda, Chile continues to grapple with entrenched economic inequality.
Aerial view of a waterfall in the valley of Vilcabamba, Ecuador, where an historic lawsuit was won by a river in 2011.
Curioso.Photography/Shutterstock
Some countries have managed to elevate nature and ecosystems to the status of legal entities. Do these innovations really help to protect the environment?
Joel Roberts Poinsett is given credit for bringing the popular red and green plant to the U.S.
Constantine Johnny/Getty Images
Women represent half of Mexico’s Congress and hold key positions in politics and the judiciary. But the country is still dogged by high rates of femicide.
The idea of vacation spots that are a “paradise on earth” can sometimes overlook uncomfortable truths.
Pexels
As detailed in a June 2023 event in Grenoble, France, business schools hold partial responsibility for the longstanding behaviour of multinational corporations (MNCs) in indigenous territories.
Migrants heading north arrive in Panama on Oct. 6, 2023, after walking across the 100-kilometre stretch of treacherous jungle shared by Colombia and Panama known as the Darien Gap.
(AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)
Migrants who cross the treacherous Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia often experience violence and abuse, extortion or detention by migration authorities.
The mention of the Falklands/Malvinas territorial dispute in an EU document shows that, post-Brexit, Brussels no longer feels beholden to toe the UK’s line on sovereignty.
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