Colombia

Rural Colombia: The Potential for the Future

This analysis was prepared by Delphine Mechoulan, Guest Scholar for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
January 19, 2012
Source: Endesa

The problems of Colombia’s rural populations have been extensively analyzed, mostly regarding their participation in the country’s historical domestic armed conflict. For example, numerous reports have focused on the violence of the guerrillas, paramilitaries, and narco-trafficking organizations that have forced families and even entire villages to abandon their native land and homes, becoming Internally Displaced People (IDP). However, factors other than civil conflict can lead to the displacement of populations. Biofuel companies, the mining...

Read more »

Mexico’s Drug War: Not Another Colombia

This analysis was prepared by Natalia Cote-Muñoz, Research Fellow for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
January 17, 2012
Source: Borderland Beat

The drug war in Mexico grows more brutal daily. It is practically impossible to read news from that country without exposure to a myriad of literal rolling heads, mass graves, shootouts, and grisly abductions. While addressing the Council on Foreign Relations on September 8, 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton qualified the situation in Mexico as “looking more and more like Colombia looked 20 years ago, when the narco-traffickers controlled certain parts of...

Read more »

Higher Education in Latin America 2011:The Burden of the Youth

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Faizaan Sami
January 12, 2012
Higher Education in Latin America 2011:The Burden of the Youth

The high cost of public education combined with a deterioration in quality, two such consequences of the reforms being introduced to privatize education incited opposition in various Latin American states during 2011, particularly in Chile and Colombia. The regressive atmosphere of higher education and its production of inequitable returns, most attributable to the neoliberal Organic Constitutional Law on Education (LOCE), underlined the grievances of the student movement in Chile. Chilean activists finally ended their...

Read more »

Latin America’s Pacific Alliance Plans for 2012

This analysis was prepared by Gustavo de Lima Palhares, COHA Research Associate
December 21, 2011

During the Second Pacific Alliance Summit on December 4, 2011, held in Mérida, Mexico, the Heads of State of Mexico, Chile, Colombia, and Peru took a significant step towards the formation of what could turn out to be an unprecedented trading alliance, inspired by the July 28, 2011 Presidential Declaration of Lima . In its initial period, the coalition will consist of the aforementioned countries. However, the current members are encouraging additional Latin America...

Read more »

A Legal Wasteland – Lawyers, Murder, Democracy, and Justice in Colombia

This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Liam Whittington
December 4, 2011

Those working in Colombia’s legal field continue to face intimidation, coercion, and violence in performing their professional duties. State authorities have contributed to the ongoing climate of fear by actively undermining, influencing, and criticizing lawyers and the judicial system. Disadvantaged Colombians remain vulnerable to human rights abuses, with little chance of obtaining justice, a crucial component of democracy. On May 25, 2011, Avocats Sans Frontieres Canada and the Colombian Caravana UK Lawyers Group launched a...

Read more »