Women’s empowerment and political participation are not only crucial for women: they are essential for effective democratic governance, one which promotes human rights and equity. The same can be said about the importance of boosting youth political participation. The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) invited three young women parliamentarians from Latin America and the Caribbean to join a recent discussion in Salamanca, Spain, on young women’s political participation in the...

In the two years since taking power as president of Peru, Ollanta Humala has been struggling to please the poor and indigenous majority that elected him and to placate the economic elite and foreign investors who are indispensable to sustaining robust growth. At this point, Humala appears to be walking a fine line, headed in the right direction. Helping him along that path is in the interest of every Peruvian and others who are betting on that country's stability and growth. Being a...

An end to prison terms and exorbitant fines for crimes of defamation, slander and libel remains a key objective for the overall improvement in freedom of information in the southern countries of South America. In this respect, Argentina and Uruguay have shown the way. However, the step remains to be taken by Ecuador, which is still under the influence of the El Universo case, Bolivia, Colombia and Chile. Decriminalization is urgent in Peru, where a promising reform of the criminal code...

When the Peruvian Prime Minister Salomon Lerner Guitis resigned from his post as Prime minister early in December, it generated a reaction of panic, both among government supporters and among the opposition. Fear was focused mostly on the potential instability Lerner’s resignation could generate. Lerner had been praised by members of the opposition who thought he had done a good job because he had succeeded in generating business confidence and had secured the continuous flow of...

Uncertainty was high as the police closed in, but instead of pursuing a criminal, they had surrounded a democratically elected president, aiming to overthrow him. Another coup attempt was underway in Latin America. On Sept. 30th, 2010, a group of police officers led a protest over benefit cuts, in Ecuador’s capital, Quito. After President Rafael Correa spoke to the group of revolting officers, he was attacked with tear gas and was rushed to a hospital. He later declared he was being...

LIMA, Peru - Her parole restored, political activist Lori Berenson slipped out a prison's side door and back to freedom after serving three-quarters of a 20-year sentence for collaborating with leftist rebels in Peru. The 40 year-old New York woman's legal troubles are not over, however, as Peru's top anti-terrorism prosecutor is trying to revoke her parole. Berenson and her lawyer and husband, Anibal Apari, arrived by taxi at her apartment just after dark Monday. "I will not be making...

AT DAWN on September 16th 1810 Miguel Hidalgo, the parish priest of Dolores, a small town in central Mexico, rang the bells of his church to raise the cry of rebellion against the Spanish crown. Mexico, Spain’s richest American colony, thus joined a struggle for independence which had already seen the colonial authorities ousted and rebel juntas installed in Caracas, Buenos Aires and other South American cities. Two years earlier, following Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of the...

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the start of Latin America’s struggle for political independence against the Spanish crown. Outsiders might be forgiven for concluding that there is not much to celebrate. In Mexico, which marks its bicentennial next week, drug gangs have met a government crackdown with mayhem on a scale not seen since the country’s revolution of a century ago. The recent discovery of the corpses of 72 would-be migrants, some from as far south as Brazil, in...

In the 1960s, leftist philosophy professor Abimael Guzman started a Maoist guerilla group at the University of San Cristobal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru. Guzman named this organization in honor of the most celebrated phrase ever turned by an early Peruvian Communist and journalist, Jose Carlos Mariategui, who wrote that "Marxism-Leninism will open the shining path to the revolution." Little did Peruvians realize then that the path would turn into a river of blood. Dried up for a...

US President Barack Obama underestimates the threat Iran poses to global security. Were this not the case, he would not have sent CIA Director Leon Panetta to Israel ahead of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's visit to the White House. Panetta was reportedly dispatched here to read the government the riot act. Israel, he reportedly told his interlocutors, must not attack Iran without first receiving permission from Washington. Moreover, Israel should keep its mouth shut about attacking Iran....