When millions of Venezuelans left their country over the last few months the world finally started to refocus on Venezuela. Since the death of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela has not gathered much attention outside of the region. When three million of its citizens crossed the border into Colombia, Brazil as well as the rest of Latin […]
In my city, we had one of the first internationally known populist leaders in our city government. He won because his main challenger was seen as a part of a corrupt regional government that were far from allergic to scandals. His personal life was complicated and tragic, with the man himself succumbing to cancer after […]
On the road of corruption, there must often be a legal shield in order to protect past crimes committed by a government with its hands in the public purse.
Problems for Venezuela and its president Nicolas Maduro continue to mount as the country heads inexorably towards its collapse.
While Latin America is slowly turning its back away from populist policies, it looks like North America might give it a shot.
If there is no single truth, lies can become powerful tools in an election.
There is always a danger in economies that are heavily dependent on one commodity to become states where conflict and power vacuums arise due to the concentration of power in one industry, and that industry having control of a large part of a national economy. External pressures for countries that are oil producers are the […]
The new president will be puppeteered out of office quicker than he was put in The election played out as many opposition supporters of Henrique Capriles supporters feared. Government candidate Nicolas Maduro won by a close margin — closer than expected actually. Capriles denounced the results, pointed out cases of fraud and intimidation and […]
This week the BBC was promoting a new study that redefined the traditional class structure in Britain into new modern categories. With the assistance of some U.K. universities and research institutes, they made a class calculator that can be taken online and will define in what part of British society you currently belong. You can […]
Now that one of Latin America’s most controversial figures has died, it is interesting to look back at his actions, actions that will reverberate in the western hemisphere for some time to come. This is a short piece (about 52 minutes) that is clearly a love letter from the maker, Cinema Libre Studio. The whole […]
Last week, Raul Castro announced that he would step down from power in 2018. The last Castro to leave the seat of power in Havana is effectively ending a half-century long novella starting in the 1950s, etching the names of Castro and Che across all of Cuba and world history. The strength of the left […]
The Economist’s Venezuela correspondent put out an informative video on the succession of the next possible leader in Venezuela, that can be found here. I also encourage everyone to read the last few posts on FPA’s Latin America blog for information on Venezuela as well. The consensus among many experts in the region is that […]
This week’s election in Venezuela was important for reasons outside of Venezuela itself. The victory of Hugo Chavez with over 80% of the electorate voting and a sizable minority voting against the current President showed that Hugo Chavez does have a great deal of support as well as a strong opposition to his economic model. Outside of […]
Early October will see an election in one of the most politically influential states in Latin America, Venezuela. Since Hugo Chavez was elected he has become the face of leftists in Latin America and populists worldwide. This upcoming election against rival Capriles is likely to be the closest race in Chavez’s career with polls contradicting […]
Student protests this year in the streets of Montreal over a relatively small tuition hike took the Quebec government by storm. In reality, it is likely more than just tuition that fuelled this year’s protests with the Liberal Party of Quebec facing allegations of corruption after nine long years in power. The Parti Quebecois, the […]