A richer country fared better than Haiti. Even so, the government struggled to respond to the destruction
Why is economic liberalism so taboo in socially liberal Brazil?
Belize’s prime minister is attacking one of Britain’s most powerful political figures
Sebastián Piñera, Chile's president-elect, announced he would leave in place the 14,000 soldiers that the current president, Michelle Bachelet, deployed to maintain order in areas hit by an earthquake on February 27th. Mr Piñera will be sworn in on March 11th. Ms Bachelet says recovery will take at least three years.
Although Honduras has returned to democracy, activists opposed to last year's coup are still being attacked, according to a report issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Monday. It cited numerous cases of murder, torture, kidnapping, and rape during the last month.
While some private businesses in Argentina have faced harassment or even nationalisation, others have flourished thanks to political contacts More»
Many corruption scandals stem from the high cost of politics, and unrealistically tight campaign-finance rules More»
Panama has high hopes for a $5.25 billion expansion of the canal that bears its name More»
Brazil used to be all promise. Now it is beginning to deliver, says John Prideaux in this special report More»
Stephen Harper is counting on Canadians’ complacency as he rewrites his country’s political rules to weaken legislative scrutiny More»
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One good thing to come from these earthquakes may be the economic stimulus produced by rebuilding. Jobs will be had and money will pour in—just hopefully not into the pockets of corrupt officials. More»
It's understandable that Uribe, who has freed large parts of Colombia from the FARC, is very popular. But he would be more convincing if he had applied the same iron fist to his paramilitary friends, who were even more bloody and cruel. More»
Latin America’s most free-market-friendly governments have also been its most corrupt, authoritarian, and oligarch-friendly. So the free market is viewed as synonym of corruption, authoritarianism, and support for oligarchs. More»
In wealthy places where earthquakes happen more often than the typical lifetime of buildings, constructing strong structures makes sense. But in impoverished places with infrequent earthquakes, the money could better be used elsewhere. More»
The US drug culture could not exist without cheap and abundant narcotics flowing from the South. To claim that the root of the problem lies solely with the Americans is an oversimplification. More»