You would expect the New York Post to say Glad to see Hugo (get it?). Or Britain’s Daily Mail to label him a brutal despot (ignoring the fact that he won four elections). Toby Young in the Daily Telegraph, looking for the most obnoxious comparison possible, said he was the Latin American Kim Jong-il. More…
Central America is one of the worlds connecting points. The land bridge that now exists through Panama (though one that even today is not open to vehicles) is – in geological terms – brand new. It was created only about five million years ago. Few such bridges currently exist (although many have been built and…
In the huge rubbish dump in the barrio of Cateura, on the south side of Asunción, Paraguayan youngsters who sort through the capital’s rubbish have found the means to make music. The orchestra known locally as Melodias de la Basura or Los Reciclados, and in English as the Landfill Harmonic, was started in 2006 by…
Dervla Murphy has always been a remarkable traveller but becomes even more notable as she continues her intrepid walks (if no longer so many bike rides) well into her ‘third age’. This book of her journeys in Cuba, undertaken when she was in her mid-seventies, is full of excursions on foot for several days along…
On Friday, thousands of protesters will converge on Fort Benning, Georgia, home to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation (WHINSEC). It’s had this title since 2001, but when it was set up in Panama in 1946 it was the School of the Americas. In 66 years it has trained 64,000 soldiers from Latin America in…
Three weeks ago a remarkable caravan of vehicles arrived at the Mexican town of Reynosa, just across the border from Hidalgo, Texas. It left the northern border of Nicaragua on 12 October, carrying the relatives of migrants who made the journey north to cross illegally into the United States, but vanished along the way. The…