Panama Tries Compromise; US Says It’s Not Enough
After intense pressure by the U.S. on Panama to return possession of its canal to Washington because the Trump administration thinks China is threatening it, the Central American nation on Sunday sought a compromise by announcing it would study whether or not to renew contracts with a Chinese company managing two ports on the waterway […]
Whether Biden or Trump, US’s Latin American Policy Will Still Be Contemptible
By John Perry and Roger D. Harris With Donald Trump as the new US president, pundits are speculating about how US policy towards Latin America might change. In this article, we look at some of the speculation, then address three specific instances of how the US’s policy priorities may be viewed from a progressive, Latin […]
What’s Left in Latin American and the Caribbean: Year 2024 in Review
By Roger D. Harris and John Perry The progressive regional current, the “Pink Tide,” could be better called “troubled waters” in 2024. The tide had already slackened by 2023 compared to its rise in 2022, when it was buoyed by big wins in Colombia and Brazil. Then, progressive alternatives had sailed into power replacing failed […]
COVID-19 as a pretext for repression
“He’s not a doctor, I don’t think.” Trump had just finished a phone call with Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), the de facto president of Honduras who runs a narco-state. On April 30, JOH was indirectly implicated in drug and murder charges by the US Justice Department in a case against a former chief police officer. This […]
Getting to know the General
A review of Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement by Graham Greene. For anyone interested in the politics of Central America in the 1970s and 1980s, which of course also requires an interest in the US intervention in the isthmus that intensified during the later stages of the Cold War, this […]
An Indomitable Beast: The Remarkable Journey of the Jaguar
Alan Rabinowitz begins his compelling story of the jaguar with two experiences of meeting one. The first was in the zoo, as a child. The second, more than two decades later, is set in Belize, a key part of the ‘Jaguar Corridor’ that Rabinowitz has fought to preserve through Mesoamerica and into the northern parts […]
The Saint of Santa Fe by Silvio Sirias
Silvio Sirias comes from a Nicaraguan family who brought him up initially in the United States, but clearly bequeathed him a strong interest in finding out about the story of the region from which the family came. His latest novel is based in Panama, where he now lives, and I’ve yet to read his first, […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on