CIP Americas

The push to rebrand and re-sell the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez is in full swing. With violence way down as 2012 draws to a close, business and political leaders are extolling the return of security, inaugurating public works and opening new restaurants. According to the electronic industry trade journal maquilaportal.com, upwards of 22,000 workers have been hired this year in the assembly-for-export factories called maquiladoras, with especially strong rebounds in the auto and electronics sectors. But how much of the public relations blitz is hype and how much is real? And who benefits from the new Juárez?

The government of President José Mujica achieved its main objective when it proposed legalizing marijuana: to spark a broad national debate regarding drugs, prohibitionist policies, and the repressive measures used to date. The motives set out to explain the proposed legislation criticize prohibitionist policies for aggravating the drug problem and establish assert “users not be stigmatized or treated under penal law, but instead create conditions to work with them and with society as a whole.”

On June 12, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos responded to criticism from a group of a group of retired military by saying, “Don’t be afraid of peace.” Santos’s admonition reveals the power held by the Colombian military and the fact that the armed forces have their own agenda—one that apparently does not coincide with the [...]

The New England Complex Systems Institute, that has developed a quantitative model able to very closely predicted the FAO’s food price index, released a new report predicting sharply higher food prices due in part to excessive speculation. Their model, originally released in September 2011 matched the FAO’s index from 2004 to 2011. Since then it [...]

After ending his first year in office, Ollanta Humala’s government seems to face a permanent crisis due to his inability to resolve key conflicts and demands. The brutal repression of protests against mining projects in the departments of Cusco and Cajamarca in the last few months has revealed an authoritarian streak within the government, and [...]

When the Paraguayan Senate approved the “political judgment” against Fernando Lugo on June 22, it unleashed the biggest political crisis in the Mercosur in the last 20 years.  The dust still hasn’t settled, but it’s clear that nothing will be the same since the shake-up. In Paraguay the most backward political and economic forces have [...]

Even as the world remains mired in the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, one sector continues to thrive: global arms exports. Mexico is the largest new market.