MEDELLÍN— For much of the 20th century, the Medellín River was an open sewer, collecting the untreated human and industrial waste of the Aburrá Valley. Stretching through the valley’s center, Medellín — a fast-growing city with a reputation for entrepreneurship— turned its collective back and closed its collective nose. Warehouses and rail tracks buffered the city from the rank waters, fed by the hundreds of creeks that started out crystalline high above the city but collected raw sewage as they slalomed their way through the often informal neighborhoods that gradually expanded up into the hil ..read more

Microfinance revolutionized the financial services sector in Latin America over 40 years ago. Millions of individuals who were excluded from traditional financial institutions obtained access to a variety of financial products and services for the first time. Inevitably, there were gaps in coverage. In recent years, various players have been looking beyond microfinance to find ways to fill those gaps. Their main weapon has been the disruptive force of new technology. Across the region, evolving government policy on digital finance and the digitization of information, coupled with the falling c ..read more

The reverberations of Argentina’s loss in NML Capital Ltd. vs. Republic of Argentina continue. The conflict stems from a 2012 decision by United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) Judge Thomas Griesa in a case brought by the hedge fund NML Capital Ltd. and others (NML), over $1.3 billion of bonds they hold, issued by Argentina under a 1994 Fiscal Agency Agreement and governed under New York law, that Argentina defaulted on in 2001. Argentina conducted exchange offers in 2005 and 2010 that canceled approximately 93 percent of bonds governed by various foreign law ..read more

In the past decade, Mexico has made strengthening ties with Latin America a top priority, reorienting its gaze from north to south. This is the product of two factors: criticism that Mexico was ignoring its southern neighbors, and strategic concern over Brazil’s assertion of leadership in the region. Starting in the 1990s with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico focused its economic and diplomatic energy north, neglecting Latin America. This began to change in the late 1990s, in part due to pressure from Mexico’s southern neighbors. Equally motivating ..read more

President Nicolás Maduro inherited a dramatically changed country—and economic situation—when he came to power following Chávez’ death from cancer in 2013. Within a year of Maduro’s election in March 2013, oil prices had started a steady decline. And as investment in the industry also dropped, production fell to 2.62 million barrels per day (bpd) from 3.48 million bpd when Chávez was sworn in to office.1 To complicate matters, the rapidly deteriorating economy, combined with Maduro’s lack of charisma and narrow margin of victory in the election—1.49 percent—were further domestic constraints on ..read more

After nearly 20 years, the dual currency system enacted by Cuba to help mitigate the economic shock from the collapse of the Soviet Union is set to be retired. As part of the government’s efforts to develop the country’s socialist economy, the Cuban government recently announced that it would unify its complicated currency system. In practice, the dual currency system has meant the simultaneous circulation of two domestic currencies: Cuban Pesos (CUP) and Convertible Cuban Pesos (CUC), which is pegged to the U.S. dollar. Today, the system includes multiple exchange rates: one for households th ..read more

Armed conflict and the presence of non-state armed actors harm both agricultural production and rural households’ well-being, for at least two broad reasons. First, conflict disrupts economic activities by hampering access to critical inputs and markets. As a result, producers may reduce or curtail planting or harvesting. Second, rural producers face an unpredictable environment for making economic decisions. Armed actors may “tax” producers, coerce them into growing particular crops (licit and illicit) or require them to follow their rules regarding production and land use. In these cases, fa ..read more

On July 20, 2010, President Juan Manuel Santos promised the 9 million voters who had just elected him to his first term that he would build on the foundation created “by a giant, our President Álvaro Uribe.”1 He declared that Colombia could now look to the future with hope, thanks to the multiple successes that Uribe had achieved during his eight years in power. In his televised speech to the nation that night, the president-elect also told Colombians that he would continue his predecessor’s “democratic security strategy” until the terrorist groups operating in the country accepted three speci ..read more

In the coming months, the United States is going to face a tough choice: either alter its policy toward Cuba or face the virtual collapse of its diplomacy in Latin America. The upcoming Summit of the Americas, the seventh meeting of democratically elected heads of state throughout the Americas, due to convene in April 2015 in Panama, will force the Barack Obama administration to choose between its instincts to reset Cuba policy to coincide more closely with hemispheric opinion and its fears of a domestic political backlash. During her visit to Washington on September 2, Panama’s Vice President ..read more

Millions of students have taken to the streets across Latin America in recent years in protests that reflect an unprecedentedly broad mobilization of popular opinion. Following massive demonstrations led by secondary school students in 2006 in Chile, university students launched a series of protests in May 2011. Powered by a coalition of public and private university students, the protests succeeded in shutting down most of the university system as well as major technical higher education institutions. Since their initiation, popular support for the students’ demands—more affordable and equita ..read more