Search Results for: risk spotlight

AMERICAS Peru’s Presidential Election and Future Impacts On Sunday, 6 June the Peruvian Presidential runoff election was held. As of this writing, the far-left candidate and head of the Free Peru Party Pedro Castillo is holding a slim lead (50.244%) over the conservative candidate and head of the Popular Force Party Keiko Fujimori (49.756%) with… Read more »

AMERICAS Tax Reform Proposal Sparks Protests in Colombia Wednesday, 28 April the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) trade union initiated a national strike (paro nacional) and led mass protests in response to a proposed tax reform championed by President Iván Duque Márquez’s administration. At the time of writing this article, sustained mass protests in Medellín,… Read more »

AMERICAS Thousands Displaced as Venezuela Targets Colombian Guerilla Group in Borderlands On 21 March the Venezuelan military-initiated operations targeting an offshoot of the disbanded Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerilla group known as the Tenth Front in Venezuela’s Apure state along the Venezuela/Colombia border. The borderlands shared by these two countries have long been… Read more »

AMERICAS Elections in El Salvador Give Historic New Mandate to President Bukele On February 28 El Salvador legislative and municipal election results revealed that President Nayib Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas Party won a two-thirds majority of general assembly seats (56 of 84), a significant deviation from the post-Civil War bipolar status quo in which power was… Read more »

AMERICAS Central-South American Asylum Seekers Continue Attempt to Reach the US In mid-January riot police in Guatemala blocked approximately 7,000 migrants traveling north through the country in hopes of reaching the US. Violence was reported, with police deploying tear gas and using batons in clashes with migrants. This was the first mass group, or “caravan,”… Read more »

AMERICAS Brazen Brazilian Bank Robberies Two small cities in different regions of Brazil were hit by brazen bank robberies within 24 hours of each other on 1-2 December. In the first incident, dozens of gunmen arrived in the city of Criciúma, in southern Brazil, in a convoy of vehicles and robbed a branch of Banco… Read more »

AMERICAS Bolivia Conducts Peaceful Election Following botched elections in 2019, and the resignation of President Evo Morales, a divisive but popular leader of the MAS party, Bolivians now have cause for celebrations. The 2020 elections, which took place on 18 October, were largely peaceful. The last year was fraught with difficulties for the landlocked Andean… Read more »

AMERICAS Indigenous Groups Struggle to Cope With the Pandemic Across the Americas, indigenous peoples are suffering disproportionately higher case counts and death counts from the current pandemic. In the United States, Native American reservations from the Dakotas to Mississippi have some of the highest recorded per-capita death rates in the country. The Navajo Nation, the… Read more »

AMERICAS Devastating Fires in Brazil’s Amazon Persists In 2019, the world’s attention was drawn to devastating fires in the Brazilian Amazon. In 2020, as the world’s focus shifted on the pandemic, the destruction to Brazil’s rainforests and wetlands persists, and is on track to be on par with last years’ losses. Between January and August… Read more »