Latin America

The San Juan River, center of discord and diplomatic conflicts between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, is seeing its riverbanks fill up with economic projects that scientists and environmentalists say will irreversibly alter its course.

Guatemala, it seems, is trying out a new image. As of this month, women are at the helm of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Comptroller General’s Office, winning their posts on merit, in what local activists are calling an important step in women’s access to political power — though “there is a long way to go.”

Investigations of the raping of women in the 1980s during Peru’s counterinsurgency war have ground to a halt, even though the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission filed the respective complaints in 2004. Not one sentence has been handed down for the soldiers alleged to have committed the rapes, while more victims come forward.

South America still has vast extensions of land available for growing crops to help meet the global demand for food and biofuels. But the areas of greatest potential agricultural production — central-southern Brazil, northern Argentina, and Paraguay — could be left without the necessary rains.

Wikileaks cables have revealed a disturbing development in the African uranium mining industry: abysmal safety and security standards in the mines, nuclear research centers, and border customs are enabling international companies to exploit the mines and smuggle dangerous radioactive material across continents.

Noah Flug, head of the International Association of Holocaust Survivors, told IPS he was shocked by the content of the rabbis’ letter, saying it recalled the Nazis banning of Jews from living alongside other Germans.

Juan Antonio Gallegos sells Mexican tortillas in Cuscatlán Park in the capital of El Salvador. Like other street vendors who work in the area, he has one thing on his mind these days: how to resist the imminent eviction that forms part of the city’s government’s urban renewal plan.

Juan Antonio Gallegos vende tortillas mexicanas en el Parque Cuscatlán de la capital de El Salvador y como otros comerciantes informales del área estos días solo piensa en una cosa: como resistir el desalojo impuesto por un plan de ordenamiento urbano.

The recent successes of local medicinal researchers have turned the spotlight on local laws that fail to protect Jamaica’s rich biological diversity.