Kai M. Thaler, University of California, Santa Barbara
The rule of Daniel Ortega has become increasingly authoritarian. Sanctions and repression could destabilize the region and result in increased numbers of refugees.
Once a revolutionary: Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega appears to want to stop at nothing to retain power.
EPA-EFE/Jorge Torres
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?
Protesters cross the Brooklyn Bridge on June 19, 2020 – Juneteenth – in the United States’ third straight week of protest.
Pablo Monsalve / VIEWpress via Getty Images
Unrest in the US looks familiar to Latin Americans, who are accustomed to resisting undemocratic governments – and to their protest movements being met with violent suppression.
Germany led the way with its early response to the coronavirus crisis.
Getty Images / Sean Gallup
US denies backing failed raid to remove Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro – but it has a long history of sponsoring private armies elsewhere.
Many of Latin America’s leftist ‘revolutions’ are now in crisis. But the left is resurging in some countries.
The Conversation / Photo Claudia Daut/Reuters
Progressives are leading in the presidential elections of Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia, bucking the region’s recent rightward trend. But there are lessons in the failures of leftists past.
A farmer carries firewood during the dry season in Nicaragua, one of the Central American countries affected by a recent drought.
Neil Palmer for CIAT/flickr
Poverty and violence are often cited as the reasons people emigrate from Central America, but factors such as drought, exacerbated by climate change, are driving people to leave too.
Between 1990 to 2015, nearly half of all migrants worldwide went back to their country of birth, whether by choice or by force.
Shutterstock
Deportees and other migrants return home wealthier, more educated and with more work experience than people who never left. This ‘brain gain’ benefits the whole community, financially and politically.
The tortilla business can become an unexpected way out for former gang members.
Cibelle Estrelinha/Flickr
Dennis Rodgers, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)
Being part of a gang may increase the chance of dying young, but when gang members leave their old lives behind, they can find that their street smarts come in handy.
Riot police at an anti-government march in Managua, Nicaragua, Oct. 14, 2018.
Reuters/Oswaldo Rivas
A massive protest movement exploded across Nicaragua in April 2018, threatening to topple the country’s authoritarian regime. What happened to Central America’s ‘tropical spring?’
Inmates, members of MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs, wait upon arrival at the maximum security prison in Zacatecoluca, 65 kilometres east of San Salvador, on August 9, 2017.
Marvin RECINOS / AFP
Dennis Rodgers, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)
Imaginaries of gangs as inherent forms of brutal anarchy promote particular political agendas and obscure the ways gangs can reveal the underlying dynamics of the contexts within which they emerge.
Protesters face off with riot police during a march against president Daniel Ortega in Managua, Nicaragua, on September 16, 2018.
EPA Images
Hundreds have died in a government crackdown in the Central American country, and Labour’s reaction is worrying.
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.
Access to water – not electricity – can have larger gains for health and well-being.
(Shutterstock)
When different sides in a violent political crisis become ever more entrenched, democracy quickly starts to wither.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was a major financier of Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, seen here at a 2016 commemoration on the third anniversary of the socialist leader’s death.
Reuters/Marco Bello
Cheap Venezuelan oil boosted Nicaragua’s economy and funded President Daniel Ortega’s many anti-poverty programs. With Venezuela in crisis, the oil has dried up – as has support for Ortega’s regime.