Category Archives: Americas

Haiti’s New Year’s Day soup has made headlines. But let’s not be naive about its symbolism

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Sharing soup joumou on 1 January represents what Haitians bring to the world – but remembering that inequality prevails is arguably more important

Whispers. Curfews. Never-ending military parades and shows of arms. Opponents’ bodies exposed for children to see as some sort of macabre art. And always, that nasal voice of “Papa Doc”, François Duvalier, chanting on all radio stations. Those were the days of my childhood under a dictator in Haiti.

But on 1 January, Independence Day, there were three things that made a difference.

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China opens embassy in Nicaragua for first time since 1990 after Taiwan ties cut

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Nicaragua trumpets ‘ideological affinity’ with Beijing and seizes Taipei’s former embassy and diplomatic offices

China has opened an embassy in Nicaragua for the first time since 1990, less than a month after the central American country cut ties with Taiwan.

The Nicaraguan foreign minister, Denis Moncada, said there was an “ideological affinity” between the two countries and thanked China for donating 1m doses of the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine.

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Isolating Quebec health staff may have to return to work early under new plans

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Canadian province’s government says measure will be required if staffing levels become too low during Covid surge

Quebec healthcare workers exposed to Covid-19 may have to go to work sooner than expected if staffing levels in the Canadian province’s facilities reach a critical point.

Quebec’s health minister, Christian Dubé, made the announcement earlier this week, explaining that in a worst-case scenario the province would have no choice but to insist that isolating employees return to work.

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‘It was civil war’: photographing Mexico’s women’s rights protests

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Mahé Elipe captures the visceral anger as International Women’s Day protests turned into a violent clash with police

On 8 March 2021, women across the world took part in protests to mark International Women’s Day. In Mexico, there is an added poignancy to the annual event, as at least 10 women are murdered in the country each day; in 2021 the date was was marred by additional violence.

In the runup to the day fences were erected around the national palace in Mexico City’s main square, where thousands of women were due to gather.

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UK zoo helps lost Mexican fish live to see another Tequila sunrise

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Declared extinct in the wild in 2003, species has been reintroduced to its native river after being bred in Chester

A “charismatic little fish” declared extinct in the wild has been reintroduced to its native Mexico after being bred in an aquarium at Chester zoo.

The tequila fish (Zoogoneticus tequila), which grows to no bigger than 70mm long, disappeared from the wild in 2003 owing to the introduction of invasive, exotic fish species and water pollution.

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‘Our house was gone, it was sea and sand’: life on the vanishing coasts – in pictures

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Coastal communities in Mexico, Bangladesh and Somalia are struggling to adapt to the climate crisis. Many people have already lost livelihoods and homes to rising waters

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‘It could explode at any time’: photographing Haiti’s gang warfare

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In a country dominated by gangs, photographer Rodrigo Abd’s images show both armed gangsters and the residents they terrorise

The two images are as stark as what they represent: the cause and effect of Haiti’s increasing woes. In one, a masked and armed gangster keeps lookout on a Port-au-Prince rooftop, just a few blocks from the presidential palace. In the other, a family recently displaced by gang violence takes shelter in a school that now houses dozens of families, a stone’s throw from their homes.

“Port-au-Prince is almost entirely controlled by gangs, and we wanted to show the efforts of people that are running businesses to survive,” says Rodrigo Abd, 45, an Argentinian staff photographer with the Associated Press who took the images. “But I was also trying to show another side to Haiti, to avoid the stereotypes that we always repeat, to show the violent without the violence, or the poor without the poverty.”

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Charity appeal in Guatemala, where the fight for land and water rights is a battle for survival

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This year’s appeal has already raised over £500,000. We report on an organisation supporting Indigenous communities against wealthy vested interests

José Méndez walked up the mountain behind his rural Ch’orti’ Mayan community of Corozal in eastern Guatemala. He pointed towards an abandoned home of the plantation owner who used to run this hillside. “Right outside that house they killed our three compañeros, the exact same day the county government recognised us as an Indigenous community with rights to the land.”

Further up the mountain, in the mist of corn and coffee fields, Méndez shows off a large water reservoir that irrigates the community’s crops as well as small household gardens of nutritious and medicinal herbs. “This is what we sacrificed for. To recover our land and our water to have a chance to survive here.”

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‘A lot of abuse for little pay’: how US farming profits from exploitation and brutality

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Two dozen conspirators forced workers to pay fees for travel and housing while forcing them to work for little to no pay

In June, a farm worker from Mexico, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, was transported through a trafficking network from Monterey to work on farms in Georgia.

They paid the traffickers 20,000 pesos, about $950, loaned from their mother, taking frequent trips back and forth to Monterey, before being told it was safe to leave. Then they were finally transported across the border.

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A seed for all seasons: can ancient methods future-proof food security in the Andes?

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In Peru’s remote villages, farmers have used diverse crops to survive unpredictable weather for millennia. Now they are using this knowledge to adapt to the climate crisis

In a pastoral scene that has changed little in centuries, farmers wearing red woollen ponchos gather on a December morning in a semicircle to drink chicha, made from fermented maize, and mutter an invocation to Pachamama – Mother Earth – before sprinkling the dregs on the Andean soil.

Singing in Quechua, the language spread along the vast length of the Andes by the Incas, they hill the soil around plants in the numerous small plots terraced into a patchwork up and down the Peruvian mountainside.

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The world on screen: the best movies from Africa, Asia and Latin America

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From a Somali love story to a deep dive into Congolese rumba, Guardian writers pick their favourite recent world cinema releases

The Great Indian Kitchen

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Could Chile show the United States how to rebuild its democracy? | Tony Karon

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The US once helped destroy Chilean democracy. Now, a constitutional reform movement in Chile could teach the US how to fix its own

Chile always gave the lie to the cold war claim that the United States stood for democracy. When its voters in 1970 showed the temerity (“irresponsibility”, Henry Kissinger called it) to elect socialist Salvador Allende as president, Washington helped orchestrate the coup that toppled him, and backed the resulting dictatorship.

It seems those “irresponsible” Chilean voters are at it again – on Sunday, they elected leftist Gabriel Boric as president by a 12-point margin, on the back of a campaign for a new constitution. But if Chilean democracy seems on the road to recovery from its Washington-backed disfiguration, prospects for democracy in the United States look rather bleak.

Tony Karon is a South African-born journalist and former anti-apartheid activist. He is currently the Managing Editor of AJ+

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Saving Roe v Wade is not just a US battle but one for women across the Americas | Mariana Prandini Assis

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US conservatives’ campaign to undermine the landmark ruling threatens progress in reproductive freedom in Latin America

As the US supreme court prepares to decide a case that could deny women the right to abortion in much of the US, Latin American activists like me are holding our collective breaths.

The continent has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, in spite of recent progressive reforms in the past decade in countries including Uruguay and Argentina.

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Chilean president-elect Gabriel Boric urges citizens to back constitution rewrite

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Boric envisions a greener, fairer and more inclusive country, reflecting the generational shift underway in Chile

Chile’s future as a greener, fairer country, depends on the success of efforts to rewrite the country’s dictatorship-era constitution, president-elect Gabriel Boric said on Tuesday.

After a meeting with the delegates elected last year to rewrite the 1980 constitution which enshrined the ideological legacy of General Augusto Pinochet, Boric called for Chileans to unite behind the project.

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The US military trained him. Then he helped murder Berta Cáceres

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The indigenous activist was opposing the construction of a dam being constructed by Roberto David Castillo’s company

When Roberto David Castillo graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point, the Honduran cadet was confident he’d leave behind a legacy.

“He will be remembered by all as being a fearless leader committed to God, his family and serving others,” read the caption under his yearbook portrait.

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Hostages held in Haiti escaped by slipping past armed guards in the night

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Twelve kidnapped in October, including an infant and small child, walked hours by moonlight to safety

Kidnapped missionaries in Haiti found freedom last week by making a daring overnight escape, eluding their kidnappers and walking for miles over difficult, moonlit terrain with an infant and other children in tow, according to the agency they work for.

Ransom money was raised to pay for the release of the missionaries who were abducted on 16 October, but a dozen of them managed to flee, navigating by the stars to reach safety, Christian Aid Ministries said on Monday

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Gabriel Boric’s triumph puts wind in the sails of Latin America’s resurgent left

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The decisive victory reflects Chileans’ revolt against a threadbare welfare system and a society systematically stacked in the favour of the rich

At the age of 14, Gabriel Boric – the great-grandson of a Croatian migrant and an avid reader of Marx and Hegel – formed a city-wide student union in the Chilean city of Punta Arenas.

At 21, and by then a law student, he led a campus sit-in for 44 days in Santiago, Chile’s capital, to oust a senior professor accused of plagiarism and corruption. Two years later, in 2011, he was elected figurehead of a massive student rebellion against profiteering private universities, and in 2013 became a congressman for his remote home region.

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Leftwing millennial to be Chile’s new president – video

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Gabriel Boric, a leftwing former student leader, will become Chile’s youngest president after storming to a resounding victory in a run-off vote against his ultra-conservative far-right opponent, José Antonio Kast.

With nearly 97% of the vote counted, the 35-year-old claimed 55.8% to take a 12 percentage point lead over Kast, who quickly accepted his defeat and called Boric to congratulate him.

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Gabriel Boric vows to ‘fight privileges of the few’ as Chile’s premier

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Leftist former student has vowed to unite country and tackle poverty and inequality

Gabriel Boric has vowed to unite Chile, fight “the privileges of the few” and tackle poverty and inequality after winning a decisive victory over his far-right opponent to become the South American country’s youngest premier.

The 35-year-old leftist former student leader won 56% of the vote in Sunday’s second-round presidential election, cruising past his ultra-conservative opponent, José Antonio Kast, who took 44.2%.

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Chilean election offers stark choice: a leftist or an admirer of Pinochet

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The campaign has resurfaced deep divisions and revived bitter memories of the country’s recent past

Chilean voters headed to the polls on Sunday to chose between two presidential candidates offering starkly contrasting visions for the future, in the country’s most divisive elections since it returned to democracy in 1990.

Leftwing candidate Gabriel Boric, a tattooed former student protest leader, has pledged to empower women and Indigenous people and raise taxes and spending in order to create a fairer Chile.

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