In an important new investigation, journalist Natalia Viana of Agência Pública has revealed how, during Sergio Moro’s 15 month tenure as Justice and Security Minister under Jair Bolsonaro, he quickly enabled the US Federal bureau of investigation to drastically expand its activities and reach in Brazil.
The report reveals meetings involving the representatives from other areas of the US Government,...
This article was originally published on the the author's own website. You can see the original here.
El Salvador ranked 142nd out of 163 countries for Societal Safety and Security in the 2019 Global Peace Index. Nayib Bukele coincidentally became president the same month the report was published. He claimed his victory would be the end of El Salvador's...
Between the 24 and 27 April 2020, 76 gang-related murders were reported in El Salvador - a significant hike from the 65 murders which took place across the country in the previous month. As a reaction to the bloodiest few days that El Salvador had seen for a while, President Nayib Bukele authorised a 24-hour lock-down of prisons and...
Gender-based movement restrictions came into effect in Bogotá this Monday (13 April), permitting men and women to go out for essential trips on alternate days. The measure, announced last week by the city’s mayor Claudia López Hernández as an attempt to curb the spread of Covid-19, has received criticism from trans rights groups.
Bogotá is following in the...
Open and poorly treated
wounds, food waste on the cell floor, rat faeces, little ventilation, water
rationing, insects everywhere. While some inmates do not even get up from their
beds, such is their weak state of health, others are stuck in wheelchairs. To
wash one’s body or one’s hands or clean any object prisoners have to wait for a
hole in the wall to...
When
students jumped the turnstiles at the Baquedano metro station in Santiago on 18
October 2019 in protest at the 30-peso fare hike, nobody could have predicted
that it would lead to a full-scale social uprising and the largest protests since
the military dictatorship.
Within
days, disaffected social groups such as the No to AFP campaign (the
controversial pensions system implemented during the regime), environmental
groups, students,...
It’s 11 January 2020, and I am sitting on a hot and unforgiving cement esplanade, at the commemoration of the 10th anniversary of Chile’s national Memory and Human Rights Museum. The mood is generally good natured, but somewhat restive: in between the official acts and speeches, the crowd spontaneously breaks into chants. These compare right-wing president Sebastián Piñera –...
São Paulo, November 10 2019. Following a controversial Supreme Court ruling, Lula has been temporarily freed after 580 days in prison on a corruption charge he has always denied. His freedom came, not because of the leaked conversations that revealed a conspiracy between local judge, now Justice Minister, Sergio Moro and the prosecutors to stop Lula running in the...
Cartonera books – cheap
books with cardboard covers and photocopied texts – were originally a
by-product of the Cartonero movement in Argentina, when people from the shanty
towns travelled into Buenos Aires and other big cities in the wake of the 2001
economic collapse to collect and sell cardboard and other waste left on the
streets.
In Argentina, the idea of
using cardboard to back books...
Written by Nathalie Mercier, Christian Aid’s Programme Officer in Guatemala
Decision day is fast approaching
for Guatemalans awaiting the result of the country’s presidential elections.
Neither of the two front-running candidates
- Sandra Torres from the centre party National Union for Hope (UNE), and
Alejandro Giammattei from the far-right party Vamos - achieved the majority needed
for victory in the first round (in June)....