Intellectually Entertaining. Socially Relevant.
One definition of mental illness is repeating something over and over, but expecting a different result. Perhaps that’s why, on April 16, Argentine President Christina Fernández de Kirchner announced a bill for the re-nationalization of YPF, a formerly state-run oil company with majority shares owned by Spanish firm Repsol – the same YPF she supported Read More
A controversial ruling by the highest criminal court in Brazil has effectively legitimized child prostitution in the country with the second worst child sex-trafficking record, behind only Thailand. The March 27 ruling absolved a man accused of statutory rape because the three 12-year-old girls he had sex with in 2002 were engaged in prostitution. There Read More
Finding a best friend isn’t easy. But best friends really do complete a person. Bert had Ernie. Big Pun had Fat Joe. Frida Kahlo had that freaky uni-brow. Our best friend can help us in ways that nobody else can. Last week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff visited the United States and had a formal meeting Read More
My heart bleeds for Mexico. Since President Calderon declared war on drugs in 2006, 50,000 people have lost their lives in drug-related violence. The biggest consumer of Mexico’s illegal drug trade is the U.S., per the Mexican president. The complicated interlacing of the drug economy within the total Mexican economy is not surprising, given that Read More
The KONY 2012 campaign, created by the San Diego-based non-profit organization, Invisible Children, took the social media sphere by storm this week. The campaign is a documentary named after Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a guerilla group originally based in Uganda, Africa that is said to have abducted at least Read More
Throughout present-day Latin America, no two leaders are bestowed with so much fervor, equal parts adoration and animosity, than Fidel Castro in Cuba and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. The socialist, anti-imperialism policies they exhort make them the scourge of the Western world; their totalitarian attempts to prolong their regimes fuel opposition within their own countries. Read More