Estados Unidos y Ecuador han lanzado operaciones militares conjuntas contra “organizaciones terroristas designadas” en el país sudamericano, según ha informado este martes el Comando Sur (SouthCom), responsable de las operaciones de las fuerzas armadas estadounidenses en América Latina. Las nuevas misiones parecen anunciar una expansión drástica de las operaciones militares estadounidenses de lucha contra los carteles de la droga y de destrucción de supuestas narcolanchas en el Caribe y al Pacífico oriental.

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El huachicol es el nombre que se le da en México al combustible robado a Pemex, la petrolera estatal. Una nueva modalidad, llamada huachicol fiscal, introduce contrabando a México de hidrocarburos desde Estados Unidos, especialmente desde Texas, sin pagar los impuestos correspondientes. México ha perdido recursos enormes por ese tipo de elusión fiscal.

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Francis vio que los hombres uniformados con chalecos anaranjados entraron a su comunidad acompañados con policías armados con fusiles del régimen de Daniel Ortega y Rosario Murillo. Era finales de enero y los uniformados, sin orden judicial, les dijeron a los vecinos del Barrio 19 de Julio, en el municipio caribeño de Rosita — uno de los grandes distritos mineros de Nicaragua— que parte de sus tierras le pertenecen ahora a la empresa Santa Rita Mining Company, una minera china beneficiada con una concesión de 3.356 hectáreas para explotar oro. “Entraron a arrancar unos cercos, clavaron unas varillas, pusieron unos mojones rojos y nos dijeron que esta tierra ya no es de nosotros, que está bajo concesión”, relata Francis, un hombre de 35 años y perteneciente a la etnia miskita. La concesión forma parte del auge de las mineras chinas que avanzan en territorios indígenas con la venia del régimen de Ortega.

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Había una vez dos pedazos de madera. Dos simples pedazos de leña.

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Las dos casas políticas que dominan el Atlántico librarán este domingo una batalla electoral que puede redefinir su proyección nacional. Se disputan las siete curules que le corresponden al departamento caribeño, de casi tres millones de habitantes, en la Cámara de Representantes. Los Char, el poderoso clan familiar que fundó el exsenador Fuad Char, acude por primera vez a las elecciones legislativas sin que su apellido esté presente. Apuestan por una lista de jóvenes exconcejales, líderes sociales e influencers para, por lo menos, retener sus tres curules. Los Torres, fortalecidos tras apoyar al presidente Gustavo Petro desde su candidatura en 2022, tienen una estrategia a dos bandas: buscan retener un escaño en el Partido Liberal y han puesto la cabeza de lista del petrista Pacto Histórico.

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Paraguay’s government has activated intelligence, prevention and financial-control measures in the Tri-Border Area it shares with Argentina and Brazil amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, according to Internal Security Vice Minister Óscar Pereira.

A court in Uruguay’s Flores department convicted three foreign nationals —a Russian, a Kazakh and a Mexican woman— after authorities said they attempted to begin identification procedures using false documentation at the National Civil Identification Directorate (DNIC) office in the city of Trinidad.

Caracas, Venezuela — Venezuela’s recent approval of a new amnesty law, which aims to free political prisoners detained during the regime of Nicolás Maduro, has come under scrutiny from critics for excluding some prisoners, including military personnel who rebelled against the government. 

Family members of detainees and rights groups have denounced the law, which was approved by the National Assembly on February 19, calling it unfair. 

“It is a law that speaks of peace and reconciliation on paper, but in practice it excludes those who have suffered the most political persecution and torture: the military personnel who decided not to betray their conscience and to side with history and the people,” Irene Olazo de Caguaripano, told Latin America Reports. 

Her husband, Juan Carlos Caguaripano, was detained in August 2017 after he led a group of 20 men to the Paramacay military base in the state of Valencia, declaring a rebellion against the government and making off with a small cache of weapons. 

“The military personnel who are in prison today are not common criminals; they are men who swore to defend the Constitution, military honor and sovereignty,” she said. “Many of them did not act out of ambition for power, but out of conviction, out of conscience, out of refusal to participate in what they considered unjust or unconstitutional.”

Congressman Jorge Arreaza said that the amnesty law had freed some 223 incarcerated people and had benefitted some 4,534 people who had some form of freedom restriction, such as house arrest, since Maduro was captured on January 3. 

The parliamentarian explained that they have granted 4,757 full releases out of the 8,110 amnesty applications received by the authorities. These cases must be resolved within a period of no more than 15 days.

On February 27, Arreaza announced that 31 detained military personnel had been granted conditional release, a surprising move given the persistent complaints from NGOs and family members. He explained that these were “alternative measures” as part of efforts to achieve coexistence and peace in the country.

As of February 27, Foro Penal, an NGO that tracks political prisoners in the country, counted 182 military political prisoners and 386 civilians, for a total of 568.

Torture and human rights abuses of prisoners 

Venezuela’s government tortured military personnel accused of subversion, according to a 2019 report from Human Rights Watch and Foro Penal. The report found that the country’s General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) and Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) subjected detainees to “severe beatings, asphyxiation, and electric shocks.” 

For families like Olazo’s, fears for their loved ones remain despite the amnesty law. 

“I have seen the tears of those mothers, how they break down,” she said. “We saw it recently when some relatives of the so-called ‘Gedeones’ were able to see them after months without any sign of life: emaciated, malnourished young men, weighing less than 20 kilos, disoriented, with yellowish skin, with serious health problems,” she added, referring to military members who participated in Silvercorp USA’s Jordan Goudreau’s failed 2020 attempt to overthrow Maduro. 

Juan Carlos Caguaripano and his wife Irene Olazo de Caguaripano. Image credit: Irene Olazo de Caguaripano

The question of exiles 

Another point of contention for the law surrounds people who’ve fled Venezuela in exile. Nearly 8 million people have fled Venezuela in recent years, some facing criminal charges at home. 

Article 11 of the law obliges the courts to dismiss cases and cancel international arrest warrants (such as Interpol alerts) for those being prosecuted for the 13 political events mentioned in the law. However, there is a significant limitation that affects key leaders in exile. 

The law excludes from amnesty those who have “promoted or requested foreign intervention or sanctions against the Republic.”

Critics, especially family members of military personnel who have fled the country, want stricter guarantees for exiles. 

Experts from the UN said, “Those who were forced to exile due to persecution, should not be required to return until there is clear determination on the applicability of the amnesty to their cases”.

“This law allows those outside the country to submit their application through a lawyer from abroad, but how can a lawyer be assigned when there are no embassies in many countries,” said Olazo. In February, the US announced it would re-establish diplomatic relations with Venezuela. 

How will amnesty play a part in reconciliation in Venezuela post-Maduro? 

After years of intense political confrontation, the country could be entering a new phase with the possibility of reconciliation between Chavismo supporters and the opposition. 

However, despite years of attempts to reach agreements between the two sides, no real change has yet materialized. 

For this to happen, a main focus will be on dismantling the repressive apparatus that has persecuted and imprisoned Venezuelans who opposed the Chavista government.

Amnesty serves as an important signal for reconciliation, as it allows the Rodríguez government to say that it is complying with international demands and allows the opposition to recover some of its imprisoned leaders.

However, Olazo argues that the selectiveness of the amnesty law demonstrates that there is no real interest on the part of the government to achieve full reconciliation.

“There cannot be a history with selective memory,” she said. “True reconciliation cannot have double standards. Either it is for everyone, or it is not reconciliation.” 

Olazo added, “They want us to forgive crimes against humanity, corruption, violent repression and torture committed against the Venezuelan people. But who is going to forgive us for thinking differently?”

Featured image: Families of political prisoners in Venezuela protest for their release.

Image credit: Julio Blanca

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Various Cuban opposition groups, including Cuban Freedom March, Pasos de Cambio and the Assembly of Cuban Resistance (ARC), assembled at the Ermita de la Caridad del Cobre – a Roman Catholic church and shrine in Miami dedicated to the patroness of Cuba – to sign the ‘Liberation Accord’. 

Rosa María Paya, one of the two (along with Secretary General of the ARC Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat) main signatories of the Accord and prominent Cuban opposition activist, defined the Accord as “a coordinated transition framework endorsed by a unified coalition of Cuban opposition forces, both on the island and in exile”. 

John Suarez, the Executive Director at the anti-Cuban regime Center for a Free Cuba, spoke to Latin America Reports about the significance of the unification of the Cuban opposition. The Liberation Accord, he explained, “is a step forward in uniting Cuba’s opposition movement with a vision to return sovereignty to the Cuban people after 67 years of communist dictatorship”. 

The signing of such a document appears to indicate that the Cuban opposition anticipates some kind of regime change and subsequent democratic transition on the island in the near future. 

Suárez confirmed that the Cuban opposition “believe[s] change is imminent” because of “the exhaustion of the communist model in Cuba which is repudiated by the majority of Cubans” and the decision of the White House to pressure “the existing regime to make fundamental changes”.

The Liberation Accord maps out what this transition might look like. In addition to condemning the regime, the document sets out a three-stage plan for change in Cuba: it proposes a “liberation”, “stabilization” and “democratization” of the island. 

That process would involve “dismantling the criminal enterprise that is the Communist Party of Cuba, along with dismantling all its repressive organizational mechanisms”. In concrete terms, the document suggests that the Cuban opposition movement would establish a provisional government to address the deepening humanitarian crisis, free political prisoners, rebuild democratic institutions and guarantee a stable transition to free, multiparty elections on the island. 

Suárez explained that unity among diaspora and resident Cubans would be a key part of the process set out by the opposition’s plan. The opposition reportedly invites “all Cubans who have not committed grave human rights violations to join this effort”. 

 If the transition to democracy happens, Suárez expects an end to the “United States embargo on Cuba due to … [the] law established in the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act on March 12, 1996”. This law, widely known as the Helms-Burton Act, stipulates that the establishment of a democratic transitional government is a legal prerequisite for the removal of the embargo.

The proposed democratic transition would likely need the backing of the United States to be successful; the signatories of the Liberation Accord are based primarily in South Florida. The U.S. government, which has recently repeatedly threatened regime change on the island and tightened anti-Cuba economic sanctions, could well support the newly unified Cuban opposition movement’s ambitions. 

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long been a staunch critic of the Cuban regime and is an ally of María Paya, having previously nominated her to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In his statement supporting her nomination, he described her as “a principled, courageous, and deeply committed human rights and democracy defender”.

Sebastián Arcos Cazabón, the Associate Director of the Cuban Research Institute of Florida International University and a Research Council member of the Center for a Free Cuba, spoke to Latin America Reports about the unique nature of the current political moment:  “There are many active Cuban political [opposition] groups inside and outside the island, and a unified umbrella … always seemed unreachable”, Cazabón explained.

The Cuban opposition activist, who was born in Havana and was imprisoned on the island for attempting to escape the country in the early 1980s, expressed hope that this latest declaration by the various Cuban opposition groups “achieves what seemed impossible” and that this unification, combined with support from the United States, will lead to a “complete regime transition to a full democracy … [and] nothing less than free elections  in a relatively short period of time, two or three years max”. 

However, some Cubans have questioned the intentions of the “Liberation Accord”. An official of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, who asked to remain anonymous, told Latin America Reports that “these organizations do not represent the Cuban people, they have no legal standing, and their members prioritize personal and economic interests. Waging counterrevolution in Miami is a lucrative business”.

Although the Cuban government has not thus far published an official statement regarding the “Liberation Accord”, certain left-wing figures have expressed their skepticism about the intentions of the plan. 

María Teresa Felipe Sosa, a Cuban journalist who writes for the left-leaning Diario Red, questioned the legitimacy of Paya and Boronat, as well as the other signatories. Felipe Sosa referred to the supposedly dubious “moral or political authority of those who intend to decide the future of Cubans from a territory that has served as a base to organize terrorist acts against our people”. 

There has indeed been a history of covert and, in some cases, violent incursions of Cuban exiles on Cuban territory with the explicit aim of forcing regime change. Last week, the Cuban authorities intercepted and were allegedly attacked by a Florida-registered speedboat reportedly carrying 10 Cuban nationals who were resident in the U.S. 

According to the Cuban authorities, the group planned an “infiltration [of the island] with terrorist aims”. Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío also lambasted “anti-Cuban groups operating in the United States [that] resort to terrorism as an expression of their hatred against Cuba and the impunity they believe they enjoy” in a statement to the press last week. There has been no suggestion, however, that any of the signatories of the “Liberation Accord” were involved in this incident. 

Featured Image: Rosa María Paya and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Department of State

Image Credit: U.S. Department of State via Wikimedia Commons 

License: Creative Commons Licenses

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Medellín, Colombia – On March 2, 2026, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) filed a legal complaint against the Colombian State, claiming a failure to prevent, investigate, and determine responsibility for the alleged femicide of U.S. citizen Kelly Ann Knight, who was found dead in Medellín on July 19, 2019.

IHR Legal, an international human rights law firm, submitted that Colombian authorities ignored documented warnings and alerts of domestic violence in Knight’s case and failed to bring the perpetrators to justice.  

The complaint, which also accuses the state of failing to protect victims of femicide and domestic abuse, renews scrutiny over institutional deficiencies in handling violence against women in Colombia. 

Legal framework and state obligations

Since the enactment of Law 1761, known as the Rosa Elvira Cely Law, femicide has been recognized as a criminal offense in Colombia. The law was implemented in 2015 during the administration of Juan Manuel Santos, following widespread public outrage over the 2012 murder of Rosa Elvira Cely.

The legislation seeks to guarantee investigation and punishment of gender-based killings, address structural violence against women, and strengthen prevention, awareness, and protection mechanisms.

But cases like the murder of Kelly Knight highlight the government’s repeated failure to enforce the law, posing significant threats to civilian well-being, especially for women in Colombia. 

Prior complaints and alleged pattern of abuse

On February 28, 2026, Knight was hospitalized at Clínica Las Américas in Medellín, where she began formally reporting to Colombian authorities that she was a victim of a sustained pattern of physical, psychological, and economic violence since the beginning of her marriage in February 2018. She identified her Colombian husband, with whom she lived in Medellín, as the alleged perpetrator.

However, despite the severity of the complaint and what the petition describes as an “imminent and identifiable risk,” that, according to the claims, authorities had failed to implement protective measures, conduct a comprehensive risk assessment, provide psychosocial support, or initiate an effective criminal investigation before her death.

Other witness statements filed in the case described repeated signs of physical assault, some of which were so severe that they allegedly led to the misscarriage of Knight’s two children during her pregnancy. The complaint also addresses death threat allegations, excessive control over her daily activities, and almost absolute restriction to financial resources. 

Events preceding her death

While staying with her husband at a hotel in Doradal, Antioquia on the night of July 18, 2019, hotel staff reported to the police hearing screams from the room, alerting a possible threat. However, the petition claims that officers failed to provide adequate support. 

According to documented communications between her and a friend of hers, Knight was allegedly assaulted and then dragged across the asphalt following that incident. 

She was found dead in her Medellín apartment the following morning; the circumstances remain unresolved. 

In 2029, a preliminary investigation was opened under the accusation of femicide, but the case has remained at a preliminary stage for over six years, without any formal charges being filed, and nobody has been arrested. 

The petition also addresses Knight’s autopsy, which documented several injuries and precedents that sustain the repeated patterns of abuse that were previously reported to the authorities. 

Alleged investigative failures

The filing highlights the state’s deficiencies in the authorities’ response, such as failure to preserve the crime scene, poor management of material evidence and delays in a forensic analysis of the case. According to IHR Legal, these failures have contributed to sustained impunity and a failure to comply with a law meant to protect victims from such abuse. 

“Kelly’s case is a classic example of violence against women that exposes structural flaws in the state’s response to gender-based violence, particularly when documented complaints in her defense went ignored,” said Ignacio Javier Álvarez Martínez, Executive Director of IHR Legal and former Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the IACHR.

“The legacy of her death transcends her individual case and demonstrates the urgent need for early, effective, and gender-sensitive state responses,” he added.

International claims

The petition before the IACHR alleges that Colombia failed to comply with its international human rights obligations, including the duty to prevent foreseeable violence against women, investigate deaths occurring in contexts of gender-based violence with due diligence, and guarantee access to justice for the victim’s family.

If admitted, the case could place Colombia’s implementation of its femicide legislation under international scrutiny and renew broader debate about structural impunity in cases of gender-based violence in the region.

Featured image description: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Part III – A Personal Journey Through Soccer and Resettlement

by Bashir Mobasher

My interest in this project comes from something deeply personal. As an immigrant and a soccer player, I have lived the story I am telling. I started playing soccer in the United States around 2013 during my doctoral studies. While I had played the game as a child in Afghanistan, I left it behind  when I began preparations for the university entry exam. By the time I returned to it in Seattle, Washington, thousands of miles away, many years had passed.

I started my doctoral studies at the University of Washington School of Law in 2013. Pursuing a PhD was emotionally and mentally exhausting, wearing me down slowly. Between the isolation of doctoral work and the emotional toll of living far from home, I was looking for something that could help me breathe easier. I had also just gained some weight because I wasn’t very active physically. I carried a belly I wanted to get rid of. I knew I needed a remedy, something to refresh my mind and keep me active. That is when soccer returned to my life.

At that time, I was fortunate to be in a program with several other Afghan students. Many of them were pursuing master’s or PhD degrees and shared a love of soccer. Together, we quickly built our soccer community from scratch. We started small, just a few of us kicking a ball around. It did not take long before we had a team, as players from other communities began to join us. A few Indonesian students who lived in the same block, and were already our good friends, began playing with us regularly. Despite that, our team remained predominantly Afghan. However, as time passed and many of my Afghan teammates graduated or returned home, a few of us stayed behind, determined to keep playing.

I started joining pickup games, this time with people from all over the world, including American students, international scholars, and professionals. I began to remember their names, learn their stories, and share mine. We bonded over the game, but we ended up doing so much more together. I went to my first American Football match with them. We watched the 2014 World Cup and Champions League at pubs and movie theaters. Pickup soccer quickly became part of my routine. I would play late in the evening (around 9 pm) during weekdays and around noon on the weekends. Neither rain, nor snow, nor wind, nor harsh summer sun could break our commitment to the game. We showed up in soaked jerseys and with frozen fingers. Sweat and laughter would mix under cloudy skies or blazing heat. It was never about perfect conditions. It was about showing up, again and again, because something bigger than the weather pulled us together.

At one point, some friends invited me to join a local coed league. That was a new experience. Up until then, I had mainly played with male players. This new team felt even more like a family. After our games, we often went out together for food or bubble tea. I remember this team as the Bubble Team because of our collective love for bubble tea. Some of the players were into video games. I never joined them for that part, because I was too cautious about getting hooked and losing focus on my studies, but I loved watching their joy and being part of their world.

When I returned to Afghanistan after completing my PhD, I encouraged friends to form a team and continued playing until I moved back to the United States. Upon returning to Virginia in 2021, I wasted no time. I joined a pickup team and immediately made friends with players from the US, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Argentina, and many other places. During the games and afterwards, we teased each other, shared stories, and celebrated our goals and achievements. Now that my leg is injured, I am unable to play soccer for a while, but I still set aside time to meet with fellow players.

Soccer gives me more than a workout. It gives me joy, purpose, and community. The moment I step onto the field, it feels like entering a different world, a world full of energy, laughter, and healing. It is the best therapy I could have ever asked for. After every game, I return home recharged and ready to give my best to my research and writing.

Dr. Bashir Mobasher is a scholar of constitutional law and identity politics, specializing in governance and institutional design in democratic societies. He currently teaches at the American University Department of Sociology and New York University–Washington, D.C. Mobasher serves as the President of the Afghanistan Law and Political Science Association (in Exile), a network of Afghan academics advancing research, publication, and women’s education inside Afghanistan.

He earned his Ph.D. in Law from the University of Washington in 2017. His recent book is entitled Constitutional Law and the Politics of Ethnic Accommodation.

Part II – How Soccer Creates Belonging for Displaced Youth

by Bashir Mobasher

Hajar Abulfazl is an Afghan soccer player whose journey speaks to the quiet power of the game. She recently coached a middle school team in Baltimore to remarkable success. When we visited her on the field, her team scored numerous goals against a strong opponent. Hajar was hopeful that her team could make it to the final. Beyond her own recreational play, she coaches at Soccer Without Borders (SWB). This organization understands what soccer can do for a young person who is learning to navigate a new life.

Soccer Without Borders recognizes that the field can be a place of belonging for those who feel displaced by conflict, migration, and cultural transition. Its mission is simple . Use soccer to create inclusion, growth, and community. The organization serves refugee and immigrant youth, as well as young people who have been pushed to the margins and have little access to extracurricular opportunities.

The program began in Oakland, California, and has grown into a network with sites in several states as well as in Uganda and Nicaragua. Through partnerships with elementary, middle, and high schools, SWB invites students into a space where the message is clear. You are not alone. Hajar says that this is the heart of their work, a promise carried from practice to practice. It is here that around thirty Afghan players, boys and girls, meet hundreds of students from around the world and begin to form a new community. 

Soccer Without Borders offers English classes, which Hajar describes as essential for integration and confidence. For young refugees, language can be the first barrier to social life, so these classes allow students to participate more fully not only in the game but in everyday life.

Hajar speaks with warmth about her coaching job. It fulfills her, not just financially but emotionally and socially. When she first arrived in the United States, she felt isolated. Soccer helped her make friends, find support, and build confidence. It became her way into a new community. Her passion is community building. She says she has no interest in politics. She visits schools, talks to students, encourages them to join the program, and explains how SWB supports families beyond the pitch. They provide opportunities, summer camps, events, and assistance when families face hardship.

Students often tell her, “Coach Hajar, thank you for bringing us out of our homes and away from the screens to play soccer and have fun.” Their joy becomes her joy. In one instance, she took her team to Washington DC to watch a significant match: Washington Spirit vs. Chicago Stars. For most of the students, it was their first time entering a stadium. They watched the game with wide eyes, shouting and cheering with a passion that could only come from a group seeing the sport in a new light. They thanked her for an experience they would remember for a very long time.

Hajar and colleagues have taken players hiking, camping, and on picnics. These outings create friendships that thrive outside school and practice. They strengthen the sense of belonging that so many newly arrived families desperately seek.

The team also steps in during moments of crisis. Hajar told me about a family whose house burned down. Soccer Without Borders acted immediately, gathering clothing, kitchen supplies, and other essentials. They found the family a temporary home with another Afghan household. Later, when the family moved into a new place, the organization helped raise funds and provided appliances to help them begin again. It was a reminder that being a part of a team is much larger than what happens on the field.

Soccer Without Borders also creates economic opportunities. Students who stay with the program for two years and show commitment, strong character, and a good understanding of the game can become paid referees. One beneficiary of this program was a young girl named Gaga. When she first arrived, she knew nothing about soccer. Under Hajar’s guidance, she became one of the strongest players on the team. Eventually, she became a referee. Hajar has been writing letters of recommendation to support her college applications, hoping she will one day play at the collegiate level.

But the work is not without challenges. Hajar and her colleagues have had to address issues tied to gender in sports. In the beginning, the program encouraged mixed teams, but some of the boys began sidelining female players to gain more playing time, overlooking the girls’ talent. Several girls expressed concern and frustration. In response, Soccer Without Borders created separate teams for girls. The number of girls increased significantly, and many began encouraging other young women to join. Their confidence grew and their teams  expanded.

Hajar’s story, and the story of Soccer Without Borders, shows how soccer becomes much more than a sport. It becomes a lifeline, a classroom, a community, a second home. It brings young people out of isolation, gives them tools to rebuild their sense of self, and reminds them that they are seen. And above all, it shows that in soccer, as in resettlement, no one scores alone.

Dr. Bashir Mobasher is a scholar of constitutional law and identity politics, specializing in governance and institutional design in democratic societies. He currently teaches at the American University Department of Sociology and New York University–Washington, D.C. Mobasher serves as the President of the Afghanistan Law and Political Science Association (in Exile), a network of Afghan academics advancing research, publication, and women’s education inside Afghanistan.

He earned his Ph.D. in Law from the University of Washington in 2017. His recent book is entitled Constitutional Law and the Politics of Ethnic Accommodation.

Part I – Soccer, A Perfect Resettlement Game

by Bashir Mobasher

As Pelé once said, “Football is a reflection of life. It has all the elements: joy, sorrow, drama, surprise, failure, success.” Just like resettlement, it comes with red cards and unfair fouls. These setbacks feel both personal and structural. But it also brings assists, breakthroughs, and goals, small victories that lift the spirit and remind players they are not alone. And when those moments arrive, the celebrations are never solitary because in both soccer and resettlement, no one scores alone.

Although soccer is the most popular sport in the world, its profound social significance, especially its role in shaping identity and supporting immigrant resettlement, remains underexplored. Most research focuses on top leagues, famous athletes, or massive fan cultures (Giulianotti and Robertson 2009; Foer 2004). But the most telling stories happen far from the spotlight: in community parks and weekend leagues. At this purely communal and non-transactional level, soccer becomes something else entirely. It becomes a way to cope, to connect, and to begin again. For refugees and immigrants, it becomes a space where healing begins and where identity is slowly rebuilt (Bačová 2022; Armstrong and Giulianotti 2004; Refugee Council of Australia 2010).

Unlike formal resettlement services, soccer works without funding, programming, or bureaucracy. And yet, it provides almost every tool that resettlement demands. Its psychological effects are especially significant in a community like Afghanistan, where therapy often carries stigma or is simply unavailable. Soccer, by contrast, is a space of movement and belonging. It brings rhythm back to the day. It helps players breathe easier. Socially, it builds bonds and networks. Economically, it creates opportunities.

Thanks to the Humanities Truck Fellowship, I was able to engage with Afghan and international soccer players across the DMV area. This episode focuses on my time with Itehad FC, a team based in Northern Virginia. While most players are of Afghan origin, the team also includes players from Nigeria, Palestine, and Tajikistan. Together, they compete in semi-official leagues. However, for Itehad FC, soccer is about more than wins and losses. 

For many Itehad players, the field was the first place they felt welcomed in the United States. Some had played soccer back home before migration disrupted their lives. Others, like Daud Sakhizada, had never played before. He joined the team simply to make friends. Like most others, he was invited by someone he knew. Once he arrived, he stayed. The field became a place where the weight of loneliness began to lift and where the burdens of daily life felt, for a moment, lighter.

Zabi Hamdam and Farhad both shared with me how soccer has become a kind of healing session, especially after difficult days. Zabi once told me he counts the hours until he can get back to the field. And once he is there, the challenges of the day begin to fade. He smiles, passes, dribbles, and jokes with his teammates. It is remarkable how something so ordinary can become a source of such relief. They may play hard, but in doing so, they breathe a little easier.

The connections do not end with the game. Players stay linked through WhatsApp and Messenger, where conversations extend  beyond scheduling matches. They share jokes, check in on one another, plan get-togethers, and exchange news, including immigration updates. Most players are now citizens, but they still share resources that help their broader communities. 

Their bonds extend into homes and holidays. Every Thanksgiving, Farhad opens his door to teammates and their families. Few images capture resettlement better than immigrants celebrating an American holiday with people they met in the field. This year, they were unable to gather due to scheduling conflicts, but the tradition remains alive in memory and the promise of celebrating it together next year. They also come together for Eid, Nowruz, Christmas, and July Fourth, says Zabi Hamdam. Each gathering is a quiet act of community building.

Beyond holidays, these friendships spill into everyday life. Teammates take turns visiting one another’s homes. They go on road trips, camp together, hike trails, and sometimes just gather in someone’s living room to talk. Sometimes they gather with their families. Sometimes it’s just the boys. In the summer of 2025, the team even planned a trip to Arizona to visit a former teammate who helped establish Itehad. Although the trip did not happen, the effort spoke volumes. They were honoring a shared past, held together by memory and loyalty.

On October 26, 2025, Fawad Rahimi hosted the team to watch El Clásico at Huqqa Lounge. For many players, major matches like this—whether El Clásico or a Champions League final—are sacred rituals. Fawad was more excited than anyone. These gatherings, filled with arguments over players and teams, shared plates of food, and familiar laughter, reflect a profound aspect of the Itehad community. They carry forward a long-standing Afghan tradition: one person hosts, and everyone else comes as a guest. No splitting bills. No formalities. Just hospitality and kinship.

The team also functions as an economic support system. Jobs are found. Services are exchanged. Networks grow. Hoshang Jawan hired a teammate to do flooring in his home. It was not just about labor, but about trust built on the field. Zabi Hamdam plans to do the same. Zabi, who studied law at Alberoni University before migrating to the United States, changed career paths to survive. Now he mentors others, including Hoshang, who found a better job after following Zabi’s advice. These exchanges are more than practical. They are profoundly relational.

The story of Itehad FC is not just a sports story. It is a migration story. A story of finding people, building lives, and claiming space in a new country. What brought these players together was not just the love of the game. It was the chance to be seen, valued, and belong. Soccer offered them more than exercise. It gave them rhythm and a second home. For these players, soccer is not simply something they do. It is how they live, resettle, and begin again together. 

Dr. Bashir Mobasher is a scholar of constitutional law and identity politics, specializing in governance and institutional design in democratic societies. He currently teaches at the American University Department of Sociology and New York University–Washington, D.C. Mobasher serves as the President of the Afghanistan Law and Political Science Association (in Exile), a network of Afghan academics advancing research, publication, and women’s education inside Afghanistan.

He earned his Ph.D. in Law from the University of Washington in 2017. His recent book is entitled Constitutional Law and the Politics of Ethnic Accommodation.

By Nyan Reynolds

News Americas, NY, NY, Tues. Mar. 3, 2026: Every March, Women’s History Month invites reflection. It asks us to consider who shaped our world, who challenged injustice, who built institutions, and who carried culture across borders. Too often, those narratives center the same global capitals and the same familiar names.

But to understand modern political leadership, diasporic activism, literary authority, and cultural power, we must look to the Caribbean.

Caribbean women have never been confined by geography. From small island states and colonial territories emerged leaders, thinkers, artists, and organizers whose work reshaped the 20th and 21st centuries. Their influence moved across oceans. Their ideas crossed languages. Their leadership challenged assumptions about race, gender, power, and nationhood.

As we begin Women’s History Month, we highlight just a few of the women whose lives demonstrate a larger truth: Caribbean women are not peripheral to global history. They are central to it.

And this list is only a beginning.

Political Power: Rewriting the Image of Leadership

When Eugenia Charles became the first woman prime minister in the Caribbean in 1980, it was a defining moment for the region. Leading Dominica during a period of political instability and economic strain, she earned a reputation for firmness and resolve. Internationally, she stood alongside world leaders at a time when female heads of government were still rare.

Her leadership disrupted long-standing assumptions about who could command authority in post-colonial Caribbean politics. She was not symbolic. She was decisive.

Years later, Portia Simpson-Miller would rise to become Jamaica’s first female prime minister. Her story mattered not only because of her gender, but because of her journey. Coming from working-class roots, she expanded the image of national leadership. She embodied possibility for women who had never seen themselves reflected in the highest office.

Today, Mia Mottley represents a new phase of Caribbean political influence. Under her leadership, Barbados transitioned to a republic, formally removing the British monarch as head of state. Beyond regional milestones, her advocacy on climate justice has positioned her as one of the most respected voices on the global stage. In international forums, she has spoken with urgency about the vulnerabilities of small island developing states, insisting that global financial systems account for historical inequities.

Together, these women illustrate a clear progression. Caribbean women are not merely participating in governance. They are shaping international policy conversations, redefining sovereignty, and expanding what political leadership looks like.

Social Justice and Diasporic Vision

Long before “intersectionality” became common language, Caribbean women were articulating the connections between race, gender, labor, and empire.

Amy Ashwood Garvey, co-founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, was instrumental in shaping early 20th-century Pan-African thought. While often overshadowed in popular history, she advocated for women’s leadership within global Black liberation movements and worked to ensure that women were not relegated to supportive roles.

Her activism traveled across continents, from the Caribbean to the United States and the United Kingdom. She understood that Caribbean identity was inseparable from the wider African diaspora.

Similarly, Claudia Jones carried Caribbean radical thought into international spaces. Born in Trinidad and later active in the United States and Britain, she confronted racism, economic inequality, and gender discrimination head-on. She argued that the liberation of Black communities required attention to the unique experiences of women.

Jones also founded what would become the Notting Hill Carnival in London, transforming Caribbean culture into a powerful symbol of resistance and pride in the diaspora. What began as community expression evolved into one of the largest cultural festivals in Europe.

Through activism and institution-building, these women reshaped not only political discourse but cultural memory. They demonstrated that Caribbean women were theorists, strategists, and movement architects.

Literature and Intellectual Authority

If politics shapes policy, literature shapes imagination. Caribbean women have long insisted on telling their own stories.

Maryse Condé confronted colonialism and its aftermath through novels that explored identity, displacement, and womanhood. Her work complicated romanticized images of the Caribbean, revealing the layered histories of slavery, migration, and resistance. In 2018, she received the New Academy Prize in Literature, an acknowledgment of her global literary impact.

Edwidge Danticat has similarly ensured that Haiti’s history and the experiences of Haitian women are preserved in global consciousness. Through fiction and essays, she addresses migration, memory, political violence, and resilience. Her work bridges homeland and diaspora, reminding readers that Caribbean narratives extend far beyond tourism brochures and simplified stereotypes.

These writers expanded intellectual space. They challenged dominant narratives written about the Caribbean and replaced them with narratives written from within it. In doing so, they reshaped how the world understands Caribbean history and womanhood.

Culture as Global Power

Cultural influence is one of the Caribbean’s most visible contributions to the world. And women have been central to that influence.

Rihanna emerged from Barbados to become one of the most recognized entertainers and entrepreneurs in the world. Beyond music, her business ventures in beauty and fashion disrupted industries long criticized for limited representation. When she was declared a National Hero of Barbados, it symbolized more than celebrity recognition. It marked the elevation of cultural entrepreneurship as national pride.

Before and alongside contemporary icons, artists like Celia Cruz carried Afro-Caribbean music onto international stages. Known as the “Queen of Salsa,” her voice became synonymous with joy, defiance, and cultural affirmation. Through performance, she preserved and amplified Afro-Caribbean identity across borders.

Culture, in this context, is not entertainment alone. It is diplomacy. It is economic power. It is narrative control.

Caribbean women have used it to shift perceptions and claim space in industries that once excluded them.

More Than a List

It is important to say clearly: this is not an exhaustive roster. For every internationally recognized figure, there are countless Caribbean women shaping academia, grassroots activism, public health, environmental policy, education, and community development.

Women’s History Month offers an opportunity to widen the lens. To move beyond token recognition and toward deeper acknowledgment of sustained impact.

The Caribbean’s history is one of colonization and resistance, migration and reinvention. Within that history, women have always been central. They organized communities during independence struggles. They preserved language and culture under colonial rule. They built businesses, led classrooms, and carried families across borders in search of opportunity.

The 21st century did not create Caribbean women leaders. It revealed them to a wider audience.

Why This Moment Matters

Beginning Women’s History Month by honoring Caribbean women is not about regional pride alone. It is about correcting perspective.

Global history often flows through powerful nations and dominant narratives. Yet many of the ideas shaping today’s conversations about climate justice, diasporic identity, intersectional activism, cultural entrepreneurship, and post-colonial sovereignty have deep Caribbean roots.

The women highlighted here did not wait for permission to lead. They entered political chambers, literary circles, protest movements, and global industries with clarity about who they were and what they represented.

They shifted the image of the Caribbean woman from background figure to global force.

As this month unfolds, there will be space to explore their stories individually and to highlight many others whose work deserves equal attention. But at the outset, the message is simple.

Caribbean women have shaped the modern world.

Women’s History Month gives us language to celebrate that truth. The Caribbean gives us generations of women who made it undeniable.

 EDITOR’S NOTE: Nyan Reynolds is a U.S. Army veteran and published author whose novels and cultural works draw from his Jamaican heritage, military service, and life experiences. His writing blends storytelling, resilience, and heritage to inspire readers.  

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MIAMI, March 3, 2026 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — Sawgrass LNG & Power celebrated its ten-year anniversary last month, marking a decade since the company completed the first-ever LNG export from the continental United States with a shipment to Barbados on February 2, 2016.

That first export marked the beginning of a new era for LNG in the United States and laid the foundation for what has become a decade of safe, reliable operations at Sawgrass LNG & Power’s Miami liquefaction facility and at customer sites across the region.

Since that milestone, Sawgrass LNG & Power has grown into one of the most experienced LNG suppliers serving customers in the Southeast United States and throughout the Caribbean. Over the past decade, the company has supported a wide range of users, from transportation and industrial customers to resorts and island utilities seeking to transition away from diesel and heavy fuel oil. Sawgrass LNG & Power’s focus on operational safety and reliability has helped customers reduce energy costs, lower emissions, and strengthen system resilience in regions where energy delivery can be particularly challenging.

“We take pride in our place in the history of U.S. LNG and in the industry’s extraordinary growth over the last decade. We are especially proud to have been the first to deliver LNG to Barbados, the Bahamas, and Haiti. Sawgrass looks forward to continuing to grow and support our customers with energy solutions over the next ten years,” said Daniel McLaughlin, President & Chief Commercial Officer.

Today, Sawgrass LNG & Power continues to expand to meet rising demand from customers seeking practical, lower-cost alternatives to conventional liquid fuels across the Florida and Caribbean markets. The company’s deep experience operating in remote markets has made it a trusted partner for utilities, industrial operations, commercial customers, and transportation providers alike. As it enters its second decade, Sawgrass LNG & Power remains committed to the principles that have defined its success: safe operations, reliable service, and strong partnerships with the customers and communities it serves.

About Sawgrass LNG & Power

Sawgrass LNG & Power is a leading provider of LNG supply and gas-to-power solutions, serving a diverse range of customers in the Southeastern U.S. and the Caribbean. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, the company operates a state-of-the-art LNG facility and provides turnkey LNG supply, logistics, and gas-to-power solutions for utilities, industrial users and commercial operators.

News Americas, NY, NY, Tues. Mar. 2, 2026: Colombia and Tanzania illustrate how public policy quietly becomes part of betting infrastructure. In both markets, licensing frameworks define what payment rails, identity checks and content integrations operators can deploy. Colombia’s national regulator, Coljuegos, created a unified online betting regime early, allowing international platforms to operate under clear taxation and compliance conditions; the country recorded more than 1.3 billion regulated online betting transactions in 2024 alone. 

Tanzania’s Gaming Board followed a different cadence, yet reached a similar outcome: a licensed digital ecosystem where operators integrate directly with national oversight systems. Over 70% of wagers in Tanzania already flow through online channels, demonstrating how regulation effectively sets the default transaction layer for betting Tanzania platforms. For anyone evaluating market entry, the first technical integration target often sits inside regulatory architecture.

Mobile money as the core transaction layer

If you design or operate betting products in emerging markets, Tanzania demonstrates that wallets matter more than cards. Mobile money subscriptions surpassed 70 million in 2025, embedding digital wallets into everyday commerce and gaming payments across the country. So, today, licensed sportsbooks now rely heavily on these rails for deposits and withdrawals, making mobile money the settlement backbone of betting Tanzania applications. 

Operators increasingly design apps around USSD and low-bandwidth mobile experiences because smartphones remain unevenly distributed. Payment design, therefore, starts with telecom infrastructure, reversing assumptions common in Europe or North America. When you map user journeys in Tanzania, account funding and cash-out experiences almost always center on telecom wallets, revealing why payment strategy often defines competitive advantage in betting Tanzania systems.

Distribution through telecom and handset ecosystems

Infrastructure lessons from betting Tanzania also highlight distribution physics across the Global South. Roughly three-quarters of Tanzanians own mobile phones, with internet users expanding from under 2 million in 2014 to tens of millions within a decade. Telecom expansion and rural fiber investment pushed betting access far beyond urban kiosks, shifting the industry toward app-first engagement. 

For product teams, this means acquisition channels resemble prepaid airtime marketing and SIM registration ecosystems more than desktop advertising. Colombia’s trajectory parallels this pattern through mobile broadband growth in secondary cities, confirming that telecom reach often determines betting scale before marketing spend does. When you evaluate distribution strategy in betting Tanzania environments, telecom partnerships frequently matter as much as brand campaigns or odds differentiation.

Operator architecture: low-data, high-volume systems

Technical design priorities in betting Tanzania domains differ sharply from mature markets, with platforms emphasizing lightweight interfaces, asynchronous transactions and tolerance for intermittent connectivity across diverse network conditions. Many sportsbooks support SMS or USSD wagers, so users without smartphones can still participate, effectively extending the tech stack into telecom signaling networks. 

This architecture favors stateless transaction processing and rapid settlement cycles, since users expect immediate wallet updates after each wager. Colombia’s operators faced similar constraints during early mobile adoption phases, reinforcing that scalable betting systems in the Global South evolve around bandwidth scarcity. When you architect services for betting Tanzania contexts, performance per kilobyte often outweighs visual richness or complex interactive layers.

Data, compliance and identity at scale

Identity and compliance requirements also reveal infrastructure convergence between Colombia and Tanzania. Tanzania mandates age verification and licensing checks for all operators, pushing platforms to integrate national identification workflows and regulator reporting channels directly into transaction systems. Digital tax collection and monitoring services operated by the Gaming Board now sit inside operator reporting pipelines, effectively turning compliance into an API layer within betting Tanzania stacks. 

Colombia’s centralized regulatory data exchange works in a comparable fashion, illustrating how oversight technology becomes inseparable from product architecture. Engineers entering these markets quickly discover that regulatory telemetry can rival gameplay logic in system complexity. When you deploy or scale betting Tanzania platforms, compliance automation often becomes a core engineering discipline.

Economic gravity and platform investment loops

Market size feeds back into infrastructure investment, with Tanzania offering a clear illustration of this cycle. Betting activity contributes several percent of national GDP, supporting tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs across retail and digital channels. Operators invested tens of billions of Tanzanian shillings in technology and content between 2024 and 2026, expanding the catalog of games, odds feeds and mobile services available nationwide. 

Such capital flows reinforce the dominance of mobile-first architecture across betting Tanzania platforms, since revenue correlates directly with transaction volume beyond just high-end graphics or immersive features. Colombia’s earlier regulatory certainty produced the same investment loop, validating the model across regions. When you analyze betting Tanzania growth patterns, infrastructure investment and market demand appear tightly coupled.

Strategic lessons for builders and regulators

Viewed together, Colombia and Tanzania show that betting infrastructure in the Global South emerges from three converging systems: telecom networks, mobile money ecosystems and centralized regulatory platforms. Product teams entering betting Tanzania environments benefit from prioritizing wallet integration, low-data design and compliance automation before entertainment features or advanced personalization. Policymakers gain parallel insight, since clear licensing and payment interoperability accelerate digital migration faster than retail expansion alone. 

Global operators often assume technology leadership flows from mature markets outward, yet these cases demonstrate reverse innovation, where constraints produce architectures later adopted elsewhere. Today, betting ecosystems built around mobile wallets and regulatory APIs increasingly influence platform design beyond their origins. Ultimately, when you study betting Tanzania stacks, future global betting architecture trends become visible early. For technology strategists, these markets function more strongly as practical laboratories for the next generation of scalable betting infrastructure.

Medellín, Colombia – Security forces in Colombia and Ecuador have launched a joint operation to target criminal groups on their shared 600km border, Colombian Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez announced yesterday.

As part of “Operación Espejo”, or “Operation Mirror”, the two nations have identified five target zones which will see a permanent presence of Colombian and Ecuadorian military forces and the use of drones, anti-drone systems, helicopters, gunships and patrol boats.

The announcement came the same day that Ecuador raised tariffs on Colombia to 50%, which it described as a “security fee” for its neighbor’s failure to police the border. 

In response, Colombia’s Commerce Minister drafted a reciprocal 50% import tax which once approved is set to be in force until the Ecuadorian tariffs are lifted.  

Following the announcement of the joint operation, Sánchez reaffirmed that the “enemy is armed groups, not nations”. 

The Defense Minister also celebrated the destruction of 45 drug laboratories in the three preceding days of operations in the Colombian Pacific department of Nariño. 20,000 security personnel have already been stationed on the Colombian side of the border in Nariño and Putumayo. The United States will also provide intelligence assistance to help identify areas of illegal activity. 

“The problem of drugs is not only a health problem; while consumption increases in European countries and the U.S. […] here we are suffering from the production,” said Sánchez. While the defense minister underlined that the joint operation will respect the possibility of dialogue with some groups, bombing border zones has not been ruled out. 

“We will act with full force against crime […] we will not tolerate the crimes, terrorism, extortion, kidnapping, and forced displacement that these criminals commit,” he added.

The most recent tariffs mark the latest escalation in the neighbours’ trade back and forth dispute that commenced in January. Tough-on-crime Trump ally Noboa has claimed Colombia is failing to “implement concrete and effective measures in the area of border security.”

Colombian President Gustavo Petro imposed a retaliatory 30% tariff in January whilst defending his record on crime and praising the two countries’ historically close security relationship. 

The trade dispute has been generating anxiety on the part of businesses and workers in both countries, with ex-ministers calling for the reopening of dialogue between the two nations. 

Featured image: A Colombian military checkpoint

Image credit: @Mindefensa via X.

The post Colombia and Ecuador join forces on border crime despite escalating trade war appeared first on Latin America Reports.

By Keith Bernard

NEWS AMERICAS, NY, NY, Mon. Mar. 2, 2026: If ever there were a moment in recent Caribbean and hemispheric history where one would desperately wish to be a fly on the wall, it is now — on the eve of the anticipated meeting between the Presidents of Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States of America. At a time when the Middle East continues to burn with a ferocity that is reshaping global alliances, energy markets, and the very architecture of international order, such a gathering carries implications that stretch far beyond the walls of whatever room these three leaders occupy.

The world in which this meeting takes place is not the world of even five years ago. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East — with its cascading effects on oil prices, shipping routes, global food security, and the re-alignment of geopolitical loyalties — has elevated the strategic importance of the Western Hemisphere’s energy producers to a degree that would have seemed extraordinary in calmer times. Guyana, sitting atop one of the most significant oil discoveries of the twenty-first century, and Trinidad and Tobago, a seasoned natural gas exporter with decades of energy diplomacy under its belt, are no longer peripheral players in conversations that Washington must have. They are, increasingly, central to them.

And so, as a Caribbean citizen watching all of this unfold, I confess I would give much to hear what is truly said — not the polished communiqués that will emerge for public consumption, but the frank exchanges that happen between statesmen who know the weight of what they carry. What does Washington really want from Guyana and Trinidad? Is this a conversation about energy security — redirecting supply chains away from volatile Middle Eastern sources — or is there a broader strategic ask being made, perhaps regarding regional security architecture, the posture toward Venezuela, or the management of China’s deepening footprint in the region?

I would want to hear how our leaders push back — or whether they do. Will Guyana’s President articulate a vision for how this oil wealth serves Guyanese first, even as global powers circle with their interests? Will Trinidad’s leader bring to the table the voice of a small island state that has survived the boom-and-bust cycles of hydrocarbon dependence and has something honest to say about the terms of these relationships? The Middle East crisis has a way of making powerful nations suddenly generous — but generosity from the powerful rarely arrives without strings.

There is also the humanitarian dimension to consider. As the Middle East conflict has deepened divisions within international institutions — the United Nations rendered increasingly impotent, Western consensus fractured, and the Global South watching with a mixture of anger and calculation — small states like ours face real choices about which version of the international order we wish to inhabit and uphold. I would want to hear whether anyone in that room speaks to this, or whether the conversation stays safely within the language of investment, trade, and strategic partnership.

History is being made in real time, and the Caribbean — often spoken about as an afterthought in global affairs — now finds itself in a peculiar and powerful position. I would want to know, in that room, whether our leaders recognise this fully and are negotiating accordingly; or whether old habits of deference and dependency are quietly reasserting themselves under the pressure of a superpower’s invitation.

A fly on the wall would hear the truth of it. The rest of us will have to read between the lines of whatever statement follows. I trust that our leaders understand that the people of this region are watching — and hoping — that they negotiate not just for today’s headlines, but for the long arc of our sovereignty and wellbeing.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Keith Bernard is a Guyanese-born, NYC-based analyst and a frequent contributor to News Americas.

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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO and MEXICO CITY, March 2, 2026 /PRNewswire-HISPANIC PR WIRE/ — Equisoft, a leading global digital solutions provider to the financial services industry, announced today that Equisoft/manage, a cloud-based and AI-native policy administration system, is the only platform that earned top tier “Luminary” status in Celent’s LATAM Policy Administration System report, which includes the Caribbean region. Recognized for its integration capabilities, agentic AI innovation, and comprehensive functionality spanning from illustrations through claims, Equisoft/manage is also the winner of the XCelent Awards for Advanced Technology in LATAM (and Caribbean) and North America.

“Having recently partnered with over 18 Caribbean insurers to modernize their legacy systems, we understand firsthand the unique challenges and opportunities that define this market,” said Ruben Veerasamy, Senior Vice President, Caribbean at Equisoft. “This third consecutive Celent recognition affirms that our investments in AI-enabled technology and comprehensive platform functionality are directly aligned with what the Caribbean and LATAM markets need to remain competitive and serve policyholders better.”

Equisoft’s AI-powered capabilities include automated underwriting and claims support, intelligent document processing, real-time product changes without IT support and Agentic AI powered workflows that help insurers reduce operational costs while improving speed-to-market for new products. The solution supports the complete life insurance value chain, from illustration and application through policy servicing and claims administration.

“The AI components integrated into Equisoft/manage are designed to help carriers improve efficiency and identify potential revenue opportunities. Along with other factors, this supported Equisoft/manage receiving the XCelent Award for Advanced Technology,” said Fabio Sarrico, Senior Analyst in Celent’s insurance practice. “With its broad platform functionality and AI capabilities, the platform can help insurers streamline operations and adapt to changing market conditions.

Equisoft continues to invest in AI capabilities, data migration expertise, and cloud infrastructure to maintain its position at the forefront of insurance technology innovation.

To download the full report, click here.

To learn more about Equisoft/manage, click here.

About Equisoft

Founded in 1994, Equisoft is a global provider of advanced insurance and investment digital solutions. Recognized as a valued partner by over 325 of the world’s leading financial institutions, Equisoft offers a complete AI-enabled ecosystem—from front-end applications to integrated back-office and pension systems—backed by proven data migration expertise. The firm’s ecosystem serves insurers, distributors, banks, pensions, and asset managers. With a multicultural team of over 850 experts based in North America, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, Equisoft helps its clients tackle any challenge in this era of digital disruption.

For more information, please visit www.equisoft.com.

About Celent

Celent is a leading research and advisory firm focused on technology for financial institutions globally.

The Celent Policy Administration System North American edition provides an overview of the policy administration systems available in North America for individual and group life insurers. The report profiles 21 policy administration systems and provides an overview of their functionality, customer bases, supported lines of business, technology, implementation, pricing, and support.

About the xCelent Awards

To help financial institutions better understand the vendor landscape and compare vendors, Celent developed its ABC methodology, which positions and awards vendors across three dimensions: Advanced Technology, Breadth of Functionality, and Customer Base and Support. Top performers in each ABC dimension receive a corresponding XCelent award.

Ecuador’s rainy season has left 21,089 people affected since January 1, 2026, with three deaths and 14 injured, according to the latest assessment by the National Secretariat for Risk Management (SNGR).

The Pantanal is a land of superlatives. The largest tropical wetland in the world. A biodiversity hot spot. Home to South America’s “Big Five”: Jaguar, Giant Anteater, Giant River Otter, Maned Wolf & Brazilian Tapir. Not to mention the Pantaneira culture, shaped by an unforgiving landscape. What the floodplain landscape lacks in elevation it holds […]

The post The Pantanal hotspot of Biodiversity appeared first on New Jetpack Site.

A Bolivian military Hercules C-130 transport aircraft suffered an accident on Friday afternoon in El Alto, the city adjacent to La Paz, leaving at least 15 people dead, according to a preliminary toll attributed to firefighters. The aircraft overran the runway and slid onto a main avenue, striking vehicles and triggering chaotic scenes as residents attempted to collect bundles of cash scattered across the crash area.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that his administration is holding talks with Cuba and suggested the process could lead to a potential “friendly takeover” of the island, portraying Havana as facing acute economic and supply strains.

You’ve bought your plane ticket, booked your hotels, lined up tours, and you’ll be heading to a country in Latin America on vacation. Great! You’re not quite done yet though. Make sure you’re prepared for what can go wrong along the way by getting a few extra travel apps on your phone or laptop....

The post Download These Travel Apps Before Your Latin America Trip appeared first on Luxury Latin America Blog.

In the face of Trump’s steady decline in approval ratings, White House spokesman Davis Ingle claimed: “The ultimate poll was November 5th 2024 when nearly 80 million Americans overwhelmingly elected President Trump to deliver on his popular and commonsense agenda.” OVERWHELMINGLY? Trump received under 50% of the popular vote and only 1.5% more than Kamala Harris. Does that make his triumph “overwhelming?” Of course not, but that doesn’t deter Trump and his allies from constantly conflating the popular vote and the electoral college vote in order to claim that 2024 was a landslide victory.

Mérida, February 23, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan National Assembly passed the Amnesty Law for Democratic Coexistence on Thursday, January 19. The government, led by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, immediately enacted the legislation and presented it as a step toward “peace and tolerance.” The law establishes mechanisms that aim to promote political reconciliation through a […]

The post Venezuela offers Amnesty and pardon for Political Prisoners appeared first on New Jetpack Site.

Momentum is building for the March 28 massive nation-wide No Kings rally. But as reflected in this sign “No War on Venezuela,” the protests should focus as much on the aggressive regime-change moves by the U.S. and the resultant death and destruction, as on issues on the domestic front. These photos are from today’s protest in Germantown MD, which are taking place every Saturday and are getting positive, enthusiastic responses from cars passing by at this busy intersection. 

(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

By Isabella Serra & S. Shrestha  

On January 24, 2006, Estuardo Remache was criminally charged with domestic violence and removed from his position as head of Ecuador’s Human Rights Commission. The case was brought forward by his wife, Maria Lucrecia Nono, who had spent years seeking justice for the repeated abuse she endured. On numerous occasions Maria’s attempts to report the violence were dismissed, her credibility questioned, and her intentions painted as vindictive.

When Maria first turned to local authorities and Comisarías, state-run women’s centers meant to support survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), she was told her case was a personal matter to be resolved at home. Officials cited Article 191 of the Ecuadorian Constitution, which separates the federal and Indigenous legal systems, and told her she must seek justice within her own Kichwa community. 

Gender-based violence, which includes emotional, physical, and sexual harm rooted in gender inequality, is a widespread and deeply structural form of oppression. Maria’s abuse didn’t stop at home; it was reinforced by the very institutions intended to protect her. Each time she sought help, she was met with indifference, disbelief, or outright rejection, despite returning with visible bruises and ongoing emotional trauma. Her story points to a more systemic issue: the absence of female political power in Ecuador to challenge and transform these injustices. 

Maria’s ordeal highlights a troubling paradox: the greater presence of women – particularly Indigenous Kichwa women – in Ecuador’s political sphere, alongside the continued high rates of GBV in their communities. Why, despite growing political representation for women, does gender-based violence remain so entrenched, especially among Indigenous communities?

 Legal and Structural Context 

Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution marked a turning point, officially recognizing the country as plurinational and intercultural, thus legitimizing Indigenous governance structures alongside the national legal system. Yet this dual system has limitations. While intended to acknowledge indigenous sovereignty, in practice it often creates conditions of legal marginality, particularly for Indigenous women. In Maria’s case, the national judiciary abdicated responsibility, claiming the Kichwa system to be the appropriate jurisdiction, while Kichwa authorities sought to silence her to avoid casting their communities in a negative light. 

This tension reflects a broader legal failure: the promotion of state-sponsored multiculturalism but the failure to protect vulnerable populations within specific communities. The burden of representation falls heavily on Indigenous women like Mirian Masaquiza Jerez, a Kichwa woman staffing the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. In an interview, she explained that any missteps are seen not as individual failings, but as reflections on her entire community. Despite these pressures, her greater visibility, along with that of many others, marks a notable shift in the gendered landscape of Ecuadorian politics 

 Gender-Based Violence in Context 

Ecuador has made substantial progress toward increasing women’s political representation, thanks in part to gender quotas implemented since the early 2000s. These measures mandate a minimum number of female candidates in national and local elections, enabling more women to ascend to political leadership. Despite recent infighting and a diminished presence in the national legislature, Ecuador’s Indigenous-led Pachakutik party has played a pivotal role in this shift over the past three decades, advocating for environmental justice and Indigenous rights, including those of women. 

Yet political representation does not always translate to structural change. The existence of women in positions of power can obscure the continued suffering of those on the margins. Indigenous women in rural areas still live under deeply patriarchal norms, face high rates of GBV, and often lack access to justice, health care, or safe housing. Nearly 6 in 10 women in Ecuador report having experienced GBV. The rate rises to 68 percent among Indigenous women, 10 percentage points higher than among their non-indigenous counterparts. These figures expose the intersectional nature of GBV: it disproportionately affects women who are poor, Indigenous, or otherwise marginalized. GBV is not just a personal issue; it is a societal failure sustained by socioeconomic inequality, cultural norms, and weak legal protections. 

In many Indigenous communities, patriarchal expectations remain strong. Divorce and contraceptives are taboo, and women who speak out like Maria risk being ostracized by their families and communities. Maria’s relatives warned her that if she pursued legal action, she might lose custody of her children. And she nearly did: Estuardo Remache was awarded custody of four of their five children before he was convicted. 

Eco-Politics, Exploitation, and Gendered Harm 

The entanglement of environmental exploitation and gender inequality has further exacerbated the issue. Since the 1960s, Ecuador’s adoption of a free-market model encouraged the expansion of oil extraction in the Amazon. While economically beneficial in the short term, these projects have devastated Indigenous lands and polluted vital resources. The resulting health effects, such as increased miscarriages and birth defects, are disproportionately born by women. 

Historically oil companies, empowered by deregulation, offered large financial incentives to communities in exchange for land. Communities that resisted remained poor and resource scarce. Those who accommodated faced social stigma, displacement, and environmental degradation. Both paths potentially deepened indigenous poverty. 

These developments have reshaped gender roles. As men leave to work for the very oil companies that displaced their communities, women are left to manage households, often under increased financial and social stress. This dynamic has continued to entrench patriarchal authority and contributes to higher rates of domestic violence. Workers exposed to exploitative labor, drugs, and alcohol often bring that trauma home. Women, already made vulnerable by poverty and legal liminality, often suffer the consequences. 

While the 2008 Constitution granted new rights, Ecuador’s laws have failed to notably improve conditions for indigenous women, and in some cases, have exacerbated hardships. The continued expansion of extractive industries under new hydrocarbons and related environmental laws, has led to further environmental contamination, social disruption, and increased gendered violence. 

Reassessing “Progress” 

After years of litigation, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court issued a judgment in 2014 finding that María Lucrecia Nono’s constitutional rights had been violated. Yet the ruling did not bring closure: the prolonged process left her struggle for justice fundamentally unresolved.

Maria’s story is often held up as an example of progress, offered as proof that Indigenous women can now access justice. But this interpretation is dangerously reductive. Maria’s case dragged on for years. She endured physical and emotional abuse, not only from her husband but from a system that refused to believe her. Even after winning she paid a steep price: continued violence, loss of custody, and pressure from Indigenous political leaders urging her to remain silent to protect their image. 

Her case exposes the limits of symbolic victory. Representation alone is not enough to dismantle cultures of impunity and deeply rooted systems of oppression. Real justice requires the transformation of legal systems, political norms, and economic structures that continue to marginalize Indigenous women. 

Conclusions  

Ecuador presents a complex landscape: a country lauded for increasing female political representation, yet plagued by high levels of GBV, especially within Indigenous communities. Maria Lucrecia Nono’s case is not a victory; it is a warning. It illustrates how cultural recognition, extractive capitalism, and patriarchal power can conspire to silence women, even when they appear to be gaining political stature. 

The emergence of Indigenous women in Ecuador’s political sphere is long overdue. But without corresponding reforms in legal protections, community norms, and economic structures, political power will remain largely symbolic. True liberation for Indigenous women in Ecuador will require dismantling the intersecting systems that perpetuate gender-based violence, which requires listening to women like Maria not only when they win, but when they are silenced. 

Isabella Serra & S. Shrestha  are Research Assistants at The Immigration Lab

*This post continues an ongoing series, as part of CLALS’s Ecuador Initiative, examining the country’s economic, governance, security, and societal challenges, made possible with generous support from Dr. Maria Donoso Clark, CAS/PhD ’91.

Often when a lodging company has three resorts in one location, they’re scattered around town in different spots, even if it’s a big brand like Marriott. The Velas Resorts company has a very different situation in Los Cabos though, where their three resorts that appeal to different crowds are all a few minutes’ walk...

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US President Donald Trump is considering a visit to Venezuela, though he did not specify when the trip might take place or what agenda it would entail. I’m going to make a visit to Venezuela, Trump told reporters outside the White House on Friday. The US President addressed the press ahead of a trip to […]

The post USA demands Venezuela to change Labor Laws, Court & Banking Systems appeared first on New Jetpack Site.

The U.S. embargo (really a blockade) on Cuba is a “humanitarian threat.” Those aren’t my words. They’re Trump’s very words. Basically, what Trump is saying amounts to this: Someone puts a gun to some else’s head and tells the person to pull down their pants. He then says, if you don’t do what I'm telling you to do, I’m going to kill you and it’ll be your fault.

I’m writing this post from a hotel, which is not unusual since I’m a travel editor. I’m on an open signal that anyone in the 400+ rooms here can access without a log-in, as can any random person here for a conference, a meal, or a drink. If I opened up my travel itinerary...

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Pam Bondi gets the award for coming up with the worst excuse ever made in all of history. At the hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, various Democratic Representatives asked her if she would apologize for the Justic Department’s failure to redact names of Jeffrey Epstein victims who were sitting just in back of her. She shouted back at the Democrats asking ‘have you apologized for the criminal charges you leveled against the greatest president in U.S. history for supposedly attempting to rig the 2020 presidential elections?’ Anybody who doesn’t see the pathetic nature of Bondi’s response, let me recommend an undergraduate course in “Introduction to Logic.”

By Ernesto Castañeda

Bad Bunny’s halftime performance showed how much Latinos love America, even if some parts of America do not love them back. Performed mostly in Spanish, it showed the reality that Latinos and Spanish are part of America’s culture: its history, its present, and its future. As the performance’s references to salsa and Ricky Martin’s participation in it reminded us, Latinos’ contributions to U.S. and global culture are not a new phenomenon.

Performances like this weaken MAGA’s ideological project even without any direct references to the current administration. Most importantly, they are a reminder of what most people can see: that Latinos, Asians, and Africans are part of U.S. communities, schools, labs, and the art and music scenes.

That is why most people in the U.S. were against ICE and mass deportations before the Super Bowl halftime show. But the humanization of Puerto Ricans and brown people could have reached and created empathy or even admiration among some people who were on the fence, do not follow the news, or live in areas with few immigrants.

When Bad Bunny was announced, some said they would boycott, that ICE would be present and carry out mass arrests, that people would not watch the show, or that it would go badly. None of that happened. The hate and fearmongering just made Bad Bunny’s performance even more special and powerful.

The performance’s positive message about love and inclusivity is a strong antidote to the fear created by ICE operations and the hatred induced by anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, and anti-black discourse. As a Puerto Rican, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, is a U.S. citizen. However, like many other minorities, on the street, he is racialized and treated as having fewer rights and valid political claims than white citizens who speak English as their first language.

Trusting his team to catch him after he fell backwards from the roof of the casita is a good metaphor for how he knew that Puerto Ricans, Latinos, immigrants, and Americans would have his back, despite the death threats against him that forced him to wear a bulletproof vest during the Grammys ceremony. The community was able to celebrate with him and through him as they watched the Super Bowl during a challenging time. Thus, in his own eyes, his music, lyrics, and his political statements against colonialism, calling Puerto Rica trash, and the dehumanization of people of color and the risks this entails, are worth it.

The halftime show made Latino kids and teenagers feel proud of who they are. It also made many Latinos and non-Latinos, whether they speak Spanish or not, proud of their musical tastes. Some of their parents or grandparents may not have known Bad Bunny’s music, but his fans are not alone. Bad Bunny recently won the Grammy for Album of the Year. He is the most-streamed artist globally on Spotify and other platforms, and the Super Bowl halftime show was enjoyed by over 130 million live viewers, plus over 80 million replays on the NFL YouTube page. This is as close as any cultural act can come to entering the U.S. and global mainstream. 

That is why the NFL selected the world’s leading artist. Bad Bunny is popular worldwide, singing in Spanish. He has no shame about his native language, accent, lingo, or culture. He is proudly Puerto Rican, which makes him emblematic of this multicultural reality.

MAGA proposes that these types of performances threaten US culture. But the USA is stronger than MAGA thinks. It is strong because of its diversity and its mixing of elements from around the world into new, creative products that sell very well. 

As I told Univision News, soon after Bad Bunny was announced as the performer for Super Bowl LX, and after he had hosted SNL and addressed the controversy the announcement caused, sending ICE to the Super Bowl would not have changed our multicultural reality; though it would have represented the fact that ICE and CBP act as if immigration equals crime. Santa Clara, California, is in the San Francisco Bay Area, where many residents were born abroad and work at Silicon Valley’s corporations. Thus, it would have been very difficult for ICE to patrol the streets around the Levy Stadium. Furthermore, it would have been economically and politically expensive if a large ICE operation in or around the stadium had caused the Super Bowl to start later or be severely understaffed. 

When criticized by conservatives for being selected, Bad Bunny defended himself. In doing so, he also indirectly defended other Latinos who are not as famous as he is, but who also contribute in their own way to daily life in the U.S.A. 

The U.S. continues living a practical contradiction on the one side being dependent on immigrant labor for affordability and economic growth but also complains about people arrivie to work and study. On the one hand, we have ICE detaining people for speaking Spanish, for being Latino, and hundreds of thousands of deportations happening. On the other hand, we have Latinos, the majority of whom are American citizens. Latinos are part of the economy, of culture, and of music. In the case of Bad Bunny, they make America great. 

All Puerto Ricans are citizens because Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. Nevertheless, many assume that being American means being white and speaking English without an accent, which is not true. There are U.S. citizens of all origins, races, skin colors, faiths, and mother tongues. This Super Bowl halftime show was a celebration of that diversity, which makes us strong. Bad Bunny was not out of place in the Super Bowl, but much discrimination against Latinos includes the belief that Latinos are not one hundred percent American.

The upset from MAGA spokespeople is because they do not have control over popular culture. They would like corridos and songs in all genres to be written in celebration of Trump. However, with a few rare exceptions, this is not the case. 

People vote every few years, but they listen to music every week. The “culture wars” are not what Fox News says they are. Fox and other right-wing organizations politicize social issues that are at the early stages of the popular opinion shifts that ultimately lead to social change. No cultural product is loved by one hundred percent of the public. Culture is about practice, consumption, and remixing. People choose what type of food, music, and movies to consume time and time again. In recent years, Pedro Pascal, Diego Luna, Oscar Isaac, Benicio del Toro, Marcelo Hernández, Zoe Saldana, Ana de Armas, Rosario Dawson, Sofia Vergara, to name a few, have played key roles in some of the most popular movies and shows. 

The takeaway is that Latinos are an important part of the United States and make cultural contributions that benefit the whole world. Besides many transnational influences, collaboration with other artists based in the U.S. and throughout the Americas creates a new cultural reality. This cultural reality is a blend of contributions from Latinos and other U.S.-based artists. Together, we are all stronger, and our music is more universal, as the broad national and international appeal of Bad Bunny’s performance clearly shows.

Ernesto Castañeda is a political, social, and cultural analyst.

Football teams have 22 players in addition to punters and kickers. Of those 22, one player, the quarterback, gets 60 % of the attention and credit (and blame) for a team’s performance. Five other players (the backs and the two ends) get 35% (in other words each get 7%) of the attention. The remaining 5% goes to the 11 members of the defensive team (that is, each get less than a half of 1%). The 5 members of the offensive line (excluding the ends) get 0%. Why is that? The performance of the defensive line can get measured by the number of tackles, sacks and fumble recoveries. But all the offensive line does is block. How can you measure that?

Caracas, February 4, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Chavista supporters filled the streets of Caracas on Tuesday to demand the release of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady and Deputy Cilia Flores. The rally marked one month from their kidnapping on January 3 as part of a US military attack against Venezuela. Heavy gunfire erupts near Presidential […]

The post Venezuela stages Massive Rally demanding Maduro Liberation & Return to Caracas appeared first on New Jetpack Site.

Bolivia will honor lithium agreements concluded by the previous government with Russia and China if the integrity and transparency of those deals are confirmed, President Rodrigo Paz said. The deals will be reviewed and made public to allow proper scrutiny, Paz told the Financial Times in an interview published Tuesday. Bolivia controls the Price of […]

The post Bolivia to honor transparent Lithium Deals with Russia & China appeared first on New Jetpack Site.

The luxury resort scene in Los Cabos keeps getting more heated all the time. This has clearly become the go-to spot for high-end hotel chains to make their mark in Mexico. The home-grown Mexican companies are no slackers, however, and Grand Solmar Land’s End is worth considering for its impressive pool complexes, large rooms,...

The post Tour Grand Solmar Land’s End at the Tip of the Baja Peninsula appeared first on Luxury Latin America Blog.

Even in today’s connected world, a journey to Antarctica is not a spontaneous trip you decide to take on a whim. It takes a day or two to get to the bottom of South America for the departure point, you need to build in buffer time, and then there are all those decisions on...

The post The Best Time to Go to Antarctica appeared first on Luxury Latin America Blog.

What has happened in Venezuela is not a surprise to those who have read the Magical Realism stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the other famous Latin American writers. In this signature genre of Latin American literature, the writers blur the line between fantasy and facts, weaving magic into reality.

The Mexican writer Octavio Paz was the most prominent Latin American to understand, analyze, interpret and promote India intellectually and culturally  from a Latin American perspective in the twentieth century. He had first hand experience of India as a diplomat posted in New Delhi for seven years. He has written numerous poems and articles on India. His book "Vislumbres de la India" (In the light of India) is regarded as one of the best introductions to India among Latin American thinkers.  Some cultural visitors from the Spanish-speaking world travel around the country with Paz’s book as an ‘intimate guide’. They see India through his eyes, trying to grasp the immense complexity of India. 

 Nicaragua, the “Republic of Poets” has become a “Republic of Clandestine Poets.”

Itamar Vieira is a young and upcoming Brazilian writer. Crooked Plow (Torto Arado) is his first novel. He has earlier written a short story collection.

While the Spanish and Portuguese colonized Latin America, the British have played a significant role in slavery, wars of independence, politics, lending, investment, railways and football in the region. These have been brought out by the author of the book who has done extensive research and travelled through the South American countries which had been impacted by the British. 

Our present, however, is one of spiraling crises. Since the financial crash of 2008, the economic crisis converges with ecological collapse and the exhaustion of liberal democratic forms, reaching civilizational dimensions. In this context, the pandemic laid bare how, instead of disappearing, the divide between the center and periphery of the world system is as sharp and as meaningful as ever. 

With neoliberal hegemony fractured, other ways of thinking and practicing politics have reemerged from their intellectual exiles. Among these, dependency theory stands out as an original and revolutionary contribution of Latin American critical thought, offering tools for understanding uneven capitalist development and imperialism both historically and today. For an introduction to this unique framework, we turn to Dr. Jaime Osorio. 

When a military coup d’état in Chile overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, Osorio had already been accepted to begin his doctoral studies at the University of Chile’s Center for Socio-Economic Studies (CESO, in Spanish). The dictatorship’s advance brought him instead to Mexico, where today he ranks as Distinguished Professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) in Xochimilico and as Researcher Emeritus by the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT). He is the author of many books, including Fundamentos del análsis social. La realidad social y su conocimiento and Sistema mundial. Intercambio Desigual y renta de la tierra. 

In this interview, Osorio speaks with Jacobin contributing editor Hilary Goodfriend about the Marxist school of dependency theory, its origins and principles, and its present-day applications.  

Dependency theory and its Marxist strain emerged from debates and dialogues about development, underdevelopment, and imperialism in the context of decolonization and the national liberation struggles of the twentieth century. What were the main positions and strategies in dispute, and how did Marxist dependency theorists position themselves in these arguments?

At the theoretical level, Marxist dependency theory [TMD, in Spanish] is the result of the Cuban Revolution’s victory in 1959. Latin American Marxism was moved by the island’s gesture. All the main theses about the nature of Latin American societies and the character of revolution came into question. 

A little over a decade after that event, which sharpened the debates, TMD reached maturity. In those years, some of the proposals that fed theories of dependency emphasized the role of trade relations, such as the “deterioration of the terms of trade” thesis put forward by the [Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean] CEPAL, which referred to the cheapening of primary goods against the rising prices of industrial products in the world market.

Orthodox Marxists highlighted the presence of internal “obstacles” that impeded development, like idle terrain in the hands of landowners, which also blocked the expansion of wage relations. Generally, in these proposals, capitalism wasn’t to blame. In fact, it was necessary to accelerate its spread so that its inherent contradictions would heighten. Only then could a socialist revolution be proposed, according to this stage-based perspective prevalent in the Communist Parties.

For the Cepalinos, their horizon was achieving advanced capitalism, which would be possible by means of a process of industrialization. This would allow the region to cease exporting primary goods and food products and importing secondary goods, which would now be produced internally, sparking technological development and stemming the outflow of resources. 

In both proposals, the industrial bourgeoisie had a positive role to play, be it in the medium or long term.

For Marxist dependency theory, the region’s so-called economic “backwardness” was a result of the formation and expansion of the capitalist world system, whose course produced development and underdevelopment simultaneously. Therefore, these divergent economic histories are not independent processes, nor are they connected tangentially. From this perspective, the fundamental theoretical and historical problem required explaining the processes that generated both development and underdevelopment in the same movement. 

This problem demanded, furthermore, a response that accounted for how this process is reproduced over time since civilization and barbarism are constantly made anew by the world system. 

Many of the acclaimed Marxist dependency theorists—Ruy Mauro Marini, Theotonio Dos Santos, Vania Bambirra—share a trajectory of flight from South American dictatorships and exile in Mexico. You were also subject to this forced displacement. How did these experiences of revolution and counterrevolution influence the construction of TMD?

Four names stand out in the development of TMD: André Gunder Fank, Theotonio Dos Santos, Vania Vambirra, and Ruy Mauro Marini. The first was a German-U.S. economist and the other three Brazilians, who shared readings and discussions in Brazil before the 1964 coup in that country. Subsequently, they found each other in Chile in the late 1960s in the Center for Socio-Economic Studies, until the military coup of 1973. During this period—at least in the case of the Brazilians—they produced their principals works with regards to TMD. I had the fortune of meeting and working with Marini in Mexico in the mid-1970s, before his return to Brazil. 

TMD offers no concessions to the local ruling classes, holding them responsible for the prevailing conditions in which they manage to reap enormous profits in collusion with international capitals, despite [international] value transfers. For this reason, it was hard for these theorists to find spaces for their knowledge in the academic world.

The 1973 military coup in Chile meant that the principal creators of TMD appeared on the search lists of the military forces and their intelligence apparatus. And this coup in Chile, which was preceded by the coup in Brazil in 1964, was followed by many more in the Southern part of the continent, which dispersed and disbanded working groups and closed important spaces in those societies. 

At the same time, this long counterrevolutionary phase, which was not limited to military governments, favored sweeping transformations in the social sciences, where neoliberal theories and methodological individualism came to reign supreme. TMD emerged in an exceptional period of recent history. However, subsequently and in general—saving certain moments and countries in the region—ideal conditions for its development and dissemination have not existed.

In his classic work, The Dialectics of Dependency, Marini defines dependency as a “relation of subordination between formally independent nations, in whose framework the relations of production of the subordinate nation are modified or recreated in order to ensure the expanded production of dependency.” What are the mechanisms of this expanded production, and how have they changed since Marini formulated his proposal in the 1970s?

When we talk about the processes generated by dependent capitalism, the “dependent” qualifier isn’t redundant. We’re talking about another way of being capitalist. That is to say that in the world system, diverse forms of capitalism coexist and are integrated, and they feed off each other and deepen their particular forms within the global unity of capital. 

The heterogeneity of the system can be explained, then, not by the backwardness of some economies, not as prior states [of development], not as deficiencies.  Each constitutes its full, mature form of capitalism possible in this system. 

In this way, with the stroke of a pen, TMD destroyed the hopes of the developmentalists, who supposed that the dependent economies could achieve higher states of welfare and development within this order constituted by capital. For them, it was just a matter of taking advantage of windows that regularly open. There is nothing in the prevailing dynamic to suggest that things are moving in that direction. To the contrary, what is produced and continues to emerge is the “development of underdevelopment,” so long as capitalist social relations prevail. 

The gap between underdeveloped and developed capitalism, or between imperialist and dependent capitalism is ever widening. Dependency deepens and more acute modalities are generated. In a world in which digital capitalism is gaining ground—the internet of things, artificial intelligence, robotics, as an example—this isn’t hard to understand. 

Experiences like that of South Korea can’t be repeated at will. They are, instead, exceptions to the rule. Why did the IMF cut off and suffocate the Argentine economy and not extend its hand like imperialist capital did for South Korea after the 1952 war on the peninsula? It was the latter’s exceptional position in a strategic space, which was disrupted by the triumph of Mao’s revolution in China and the need to construct a barrier to prevent the expansion of socialism in Korea, that turned on the faucet of enormous resources, at least for Japan and the United States, and put blinders on those defenders of democracy and the free market when South Korea was governed by a succession of military dictatorships that ferociously applied state intervention, not the free market, to define plans and programs to define priorities for investment and loans. 

Today, all a government in the dependent world has to do is establish some rules for foreign capital, and the whole clamor and propaganda of transnational media demand that communism be stopped, impeding international loans, blocking access to markets, and seeking to suffocate those alleged subversives. 

The concept of superexploitation as a mechanism by which dependent capitalists compensate for their subordinate insertion in the international division of labor is perhaps Marini’s most original and polemic proposal. Some Marxists, for example, protest the possibility of the systematic violation of the law of value. This is a theme that you take up in your debate with the Argentinian researcher Claudio Katz. How do you define superexploitation, and why, or in what terms, do you defend its validity today?

With Marini’s short book, The Dialectics of Dependency, whose central body was written in 1972 and would be published in 1973, TMD reaches its point of greatest maturity. We can synthesize the nucleus of Marini’s thesis in the question: How is the reproduction of a capitalism that regularly transfers value to imperialist economies possible?

It’s possible because in dependent capitalism, a particular form of exploitation is imposed which means that capital isn’t just appropriating surplus value, but also part of workers’ consumption fund, which ought to correspond to their salaries, in order to transfer it to their accumulation fund. That’s what the category of superexploitation accounts for. If all capital eventually ends up being unpaid labor, in dependent capitalism, all capital is unpaid labor and the appropriated life fund [of the working class].

Marini’s response is theoretically and politically brilliant, because it allows us to explain the reasons for the multiplication of misery and the devastation of the workers in the dependent world, but also the reasons for which capital is unable to establish stable forms of domination in these regions, regularly expelling huge contingents of workers from its civilizational promises, thrusting them into barbarism and converting them into contingents that resist, revolt, and rise up against the projects of the powerful. 

Superexploitation has consequences at all levels of Latin American societies. For now, we can emphasize that it accompanies the formation of economies oriented to foreign markets. Following the processes of independence in the nineteenth century, and under the guidance of local capitals, the region’s economies advanced on the basis of exports, initially of primary materials and foodstuffs, to which we can add, recently, the production and assembly of luxury industrial goods like cars, televisions, state-of-the-art cell phones—products equally distant from the general consumption needs of most of the working population. This is compatible with the dominant modality of exploitation, which seriously impacts salaries, reducing workers’ consumption power and reducing their participation in the formation of a dynamic internal market. 

It’s relevant here to consider a significant difference with capitalism in the developed world. There, as capitalism advanced in the nineteenth century, it faced the dilemma that in order to keep expanding, which implied the multiplication of the mass of goods and products, it would need to incorporate workers into consumption. That was achieved by paying salaries with the purchasing power for basic goods such as clothing, shoes, utensils, and home furnishings. This balance was accomplished by introducing improved production techniques, which reduced the pressure to extend the working day by multiplying the mass of products thrown into the market. From there, we can understand the weight of relative surplus value in developed capitalism. 

But in Latin America, things worked differently. Nineteenth-century capitalism didn’t see the need to create markets, because they had been available since the colonial period in the imperialist centers. In addition, English capitalism’s takeoff increased the demand for primary materials and foodstuffs. For this reason, there wasn’t any hurry to change the kind of use values and products put on the market. They continued to be foodstuffs and primary goods. In this way, the emergent capitalism in our region was under no pressure to do something qualitatively different. The mass of salaried laborers expanded, but they don’t comprise the principal demand for the goods being produced, which was in Europe, the United States, and Asia.  

Through their insertion in the world market and when it comes time to sell products, Latin American economies transfer value [abroad] for the simple reason that the capitals that operate here have lower compositions and productivities than the capitals in economies that spend more on new machinery, equipment, and technology, allowing them greater productivity and the ability to appropriate value created in other parts of the world. This process is called unequal exchange. 

It's important to note that unequal exchange occurs in the market, at the moment of the purchase and sale of commodities. Apart from their low organic composition, this concept doesn’t tell us much about how these commodities were produced, and above all, what allows for a capitalist process to be reproduced over time in such conditions. That’s where super-exploitation comes in. 

That is the secret that makes dependent capitalism viable. And this calls all the more attention to the errors of people like Claudio Katz, who have formulated proposals that try to eliminate this concept and do so, furthermore, with grotesque arguments, like that Marx never mentioned it in Capital – he refers to [superexploitaiton] many times, in a variety of ways – because that would imply a dilution or a direct attack on his theoretical proposition since capitalism can’t annihilate its workforce. 

I’m not going to repeat those debates with Katz. I will simply reiterate that Marx’s Capital is a book that is central to the study of capitalism and its contradictions. But no one can claim that it accounts for everything, or that capitalism, in its spread over time, can’t exhibit theoretical or historical novelties of any kind. That is a religious reading, but Capital is not a sacred text. Such a position, furthermore, is an attack on a central dimension of Marxism as a theory able to explain not only what has existed, but also that which is new. For this reason, the only orthodoxy Marxism can claim is its mode of reflection.

It's also argued that the spread of superexploitation to the central economies following globalized neoliberal restructuring invalidates its character as a process unique to dependent capitalism. 

Superexploitation can be present anywhere that capital operates, be that in the developed or underdeveloped world, just like forms of relative surplus value and absolute surplus value. Of course, there is superexploitation in Brazil and Guatemala, just as there is in Germany and South Korea. 

But that’s not the problem. What’s relevant is to elucidate the weight of these forms of exploitation, which can be present in any capitalist space, in capital’s reproduction. So the central issue is different, and so are the economic, social, and political consequences. 

Setting aside periods of crisis, when the most brutal forms of exploitation can be exacerbated everywhere, can capitalism operate in the medium and long term without a market that generates salaries, or with extremely low salaries? Something like if, in Germany, the average salary of the Armenians and Turks was generalized for the entire working population, or if the salaries of Mexican and Central American workers in the United States were predominant there. I don’t think so. 

Finally, what tools or perspectives does Marxist dependency theory offer us in the face of today’s crises?

In its eagerness to deal with the acute and prolonged capitalist crisis, capital in every region seeks to accentuate forms of exploitation, including superexploitation. It seeks, once again, to reduce rights and benefits. With the war in Ukraine, it has found a good excuse to justify the increase in the price of food, housing, and energy, and its shameless return to the use of fuels that intensify pollution and environmental barbarism, as well as the increase in military budgets at the expense of wages and jobs. 

The great imperial powers expect the subordination of economies and states to their decisions in periods of this sort. But the current crisis is also accelerating the crisis of hegemony in the world system, which opens spaces for greater degrees of autonomy—which does not put an end to dependency. This is evident in Washington’s difficulties with disciplining the Latin American and African states to support their position in the conflict in Europe. 

The scenario in Latin America over the last few decades reveals processes of enormous interest. We have witnessed significant popular mobilization in almost every country in the region, questioning various aspects of the neoliberal tsunami, be it jobs, salaries, retirements, healthcare and education, as well as rights like abortion, recognition of gender identities, lands, water, and much more. 

On this deeply fractured terrain that capital generates in the dependent world, class disputes tend to intensify. This explains the regular social and political outbursts in our societies. It’s the result of the barbarity that capitalism imposes on regions like ours. 

One expression of this social force is manifested in the electoral terrain. But just as quickly as there have been victories, there have been defeats. These comings and goings can be naturalized, but why haven’t the victories allowed for lasting processes of change? 

Of course, this is not to deny that there have been violent coups of a new sort that have managed to unseat governments. But even then, there were already signs of exhaustion that limited the protests, with the clear exception of Bolivia. There is an enormous gap between the leftist voter and the person who occasionally votes for left projects. The neoliberal triumph was not only in the economic policies and transformations it achieved, but also in its installment of a vision and interpretation of the world, its problems, and its solutions.

The struggle against neoliberalism today involves dismantling privatization of every kind and putting a stop to the conversion of social services and policies into private businesses. That means taking on the most economic and politically powerful sectors of capital, with control over state institutions where legislators, judges, and military members operate, together with the main media, schools, and churches. We can add that these are the sectors of capital with the strongest ties to imperialist capitals and their assemblage of supranational institutions, media, and states. 

It's a powerful social bloc. It’s hard to think about attacking it without having to attack capitalism itself.  

Publicado em Revista Rosa, Vol. 6, No. 1 Septembro 2022. 

 Dear Readers:

The Latin America Daily Briefing is moving to Substack, part of a broader redesign project that aims to get you the same content you know (and hopefully love) in better formats with fewer technical glitches. 

If you're already a subscriber, you don't need to do anything. If you are a new reader interested in subscribing or reading content online, please head to: https://latinamericadailybriefing.substack.com/ to check it out.

Thank you all!

-- Jordana

News Briefs

A Brazilian Supreme Court judge rejected a complaint filed by President Jair Bolsonaro in which he accused another justice of abusing his authority, the latest in an ongoing battle between Brazil's executive and judicial branches ahead of October's presidential elections. 

• Covid-19 cases in the Americas surged 27.2 percent last week over the prior one. Central America saw the largest percentage rise in cases, with infections soaring by 80%. The Pan American Health Organization warned that Covid is on the rise again in the region as many countries have abandoned measures like masking and social distancing and many lag in vaccination rates. (Reuters)
  
  
• Experts who track Conti -- the Russia-based ransomware gang that has held Costa Rica's tax collection and export systems hostage for over a month -- said the group had recently begun to shift its focus from the United States and Europe to countries in Central and South America, perhaps to retaliate against nations that have supported Ukraine, reports the New York Times.

The U.S. Biden administration has slightly eased restrictions on Chevron's ability to negotiate with Venezuela's government. Senior administration officials said the move was intended to support talks between the government of President Nicolás Maduro and the U.S.-backed opposition, reports the Washington Post. 

 by LAP Editor, Steve Ellner

by LAP Editor, Jeffery R. Webber

Posted by SPECTRE Journal

With seven opposition presidential candidates imprisoned and held incommunicado in the months leading up to the vote and all the remaining contenders but one from miniscule parties closely allied with President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the results of Nicaragua’s November 7 presidential elections were a foregone conclusion. The government declared after polls closed that Ortega won 75 percent of the vote and that 65 percent of voters cast ballots. The independent voting rights organization Urnas Abiertas, meanwhile, reported an abstention rate of approximately 80 percent and widespread irregularities at polling stations around the country.

The vote was carried out in a climate of fear and intimidation, with a total absence of safeguards against fraud.The vote was carried out in a climate of fear and intimidation, with a total absence of safeguards against fraud. In a complete breakdown of the rule of law, Ortega carried out a wave of repression from May to October, leading the opposition to issue a joint statement on October 7 calling for a boycott of the election. Several dozen opposition figures—among them, presidential candidates, peasant, labor, and student leaders, journalists, and environmentalists—were arrested and detained without trial, while several hundred others were forced into exile or underground.

Among those exiled were celebrated novelist Sergio Ramirez, who served as Ortega’s vice president during the 1980s revolution. While the government charged Ramirez with “conspiracy to undermine national integrity,” his crime was provoking the ire of the regime by publishing his latest novel, Tongolele No Sabía Bailar, a fictionalized account of the 2018 mass protests that marked the onset of the current political crisis and the degeneration of the regime into dictatorship. The book was promptly banned in the country, with customs authorities ordered to block shipments at ports of entry.

The repression particularly decimated the left-leaning opposition party Democratic Renovation Union (UNAMOS), formerly called the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS). The MRS was formed in 1995 by Ortega’s former comrades in arms who either left the FSLN after the failure of their efforts to democratize it or were expelled for challenging Ortega’s leadership of the party. Among those UNAMOS leaders arrested and to date held incommunicado are legendary guerrilla commanders Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres, as well as deputy foreign minister in the 1980s, Victor Hugo Tinoco, and party president Ana Margarita Vigil. Amnesty International condemned such detentions and incommunicado conditions as “enforced disappearance as a strategy of repression.”

As part of the crackdown the government also banned 24 civic organizations and professional associations—in addition to some 30 that it had previously banned, including three opposition political parties. The majority of these 24 organizations were professional medical guilds that had come under fire for criticizing the regime’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, including reporting that the government had concealed the number of infections and deaths. Vice President Rosario Murillo accused doctors of “health terrorism” and of spreading “false outlooks and news” on the impact of the contagion. During the early months of the pandemic the government convened mass public events under the banner of “Love in Times of Covid.” Nicaragua, together with Haiti, has the lowest rate of vaccination in Latin America, with only 4.9 percent of the population inoculated as of October.

In late 2020, the Sandinistas decreed a spate of laws that allows authorities to criminalize anyone who speaks out against the government. Among these are a Cybercrime Law that allows fines and imprisonment of anyone who publishes in the press or on social media what the government deems to be “false news.” Meanwhile, a “hate crimes” law allows life sentences for anyone considered to have carried out “hate crimes,” as defined by the government. Among the varied offenses listed by Sandinista prosecutors for the recent wave of detentions are “conspiracy to undermine national integrity,” “ideological falsehood,” “demanding, exalting, or applauding the imposition of sanctions against the Nicaraguan state and its citizens,” and “using international funding to create organizations, associations, and foundations to channel funds, through projects or programs that deal with sensitive issues such as sexual diversity groups, the rights of Indigenous communities, or through political marketing on topics such as free expression or democracy.”

A week before the vote, Ortega proclaimed that his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, was henceforth the “co-president” of the country. While his bizarre declaration has no legal basis or constitutional legitimacy, it was widely seen as a move to anoint her as his successor—the 76-year-old Ortega is known to be in ill health—and a further step towards the rule of a family dynasty. The ruling couple’s eight children already serve as advisors to the presidency and manage the family’s empire of private and ostensibly public media outlets, investment funds, and family businesses.

A mid-October poll by CID-Gallup—an independent pollster that has been conducting political opinion surveys in the country since 2011—found that 76 percent of the country’s electorate believed the country was moving in the wrong direction. The poll reported that 19 percent of the electorate planned to vote for Ortega, 65 percent stated they would favor an opposition candidate, and 16 percent remained undecided. A rival pollster contracted by the FSLN, M&R, showed Ortega with nearly 80 percent support. While all polls should be assessed with caution given the methodological limitations to surveys conducted amid political instability and civil conflict, it is noteworthy that Ortega’s support dropped to 19 from the 33 percent support reported by a CID-Gallup survey conducted in May of this year, which in turn was down from the high point of popular support for Ortega, 54 percent, registered in CID-Gallup’s 2012 poll.

Now that the votes have been cast, it is impossible to get accurate figures for the results given that the Sandinistas control the Supreme Electoral Council and exercise a near absolute control over reporting on the results. In addition, independent foreign observers were banned, and the threat of repression has dissuaded journalists and civic organizations from speaking out.

Ortega will now start his fourth consecutive term in office since the FSLN returned to power in 2007 in the midst of economic and political crisis. With its legitimacy shattered in the aftermath of the 2018 mass uprising and its violent repression, the regime has to rely more on direct coercion to maintain control. After the economy contracted each year from 2018 to 2020, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America estimates a 2.0 percent growth rate for the current year and 1.8 percent for 2022—not enough for the economy to recover from the three-year tumble. As the crisis has intensified, the number of Nicaraguans trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border climbed to historically unprecedented levels to exceed 50,000 this year, compared to just a few thousand in 2020. These numbers are in addition to the 140,000 who had already fled into exile since 2018, mostly to Costa Rica.

The International Left Remains Divided on Nicaragua

The international left remains divided on the Nicaraguan crisis, with some among it arguing that the Ortega-Murillo regime represents a continuation of the 1980s revolution and that the United States has been attempting to overthrow it. However, as I showed in an earlier NACLA article, there is little evidence to corroborate the claim that the 2018 mass uprising was instigated by Washington in an attempt to carry out a coup d’état against the government, or that the United States has since carried out a destabilization campaign aimed at overthrowing the regime.

It was not until the mass protests of 2018 that the co-government pact that Ortega had negotiated with the capitalist class, organized into the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP), broke down.The Ortega inner circle hacked its way into the ranks of the country’s elite in the aftermath of the 1980s revolution and launched a new round of capitalist development starting in 2007. During this period, the Sandinista bourgeoisie set about to vastly expand its wealth. Leading Sandinistas grouped around Ortega heavily invested in tourism, agroindustry, finance, import-export, and subcontracting for the maquiladoras. Ortega and Murillo championed a program—dressed in a quasi-leftist discourse of “Christian, Socialist, and Solidarity”— of constructing a populist multiclass alliance under the firm hegemony of capital and Sandinista state elites. This model did improve material conditions until the economy began to tank in 2015. It was not until the mass protests of 2018 that the co-government pact that Ortega had negotiated with the capitalist class, organized into the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP), broke down.

Washington would have liked to have a more pliant regime in place from the start, and the recent events have upped the ante in U.S.-Nicaragua relations. Nonetheless, successive U.S. administrations accommodated themselves since 2007 to the Ortega government, which cooperated closely with the U.S. Southern Command, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and U.S. immigration policies. Although the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has supplied several million dollars to opposition civic organizations through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID also granted several hundred million dollars directly to the Ortega government from 2007 until 2018.

On the eve of the Nicaraguan vote, the U.S. Congress passed the RENACER Act, which calls for targeted sanctions on Nicaraguan government officials found guilty of human rights violations and corruption. It also requires the executive branch to determine if Nicaragua should be expelled from the Central American Free Trade Agreement and to “expand oversight” of lending to Nicaragua by international financial agencies. In 2017 the U.S. government passed almost identical legislation, the NICA Act, which to date has resulted in sanctions slapped on several dozen top Nicaraguan government officials, affecting the assets they hold in the United States.

Apart from these sanctions on individuals, however, Washington did not enforce the NICA Act. It did not apply trade sanctions and has not blocked Nicaragua from receiving billions of dollars in credits from international agencies. From 2017 to 2021, Nicaragua received a whopping $2.2 billion in aid from the Central American Bank of Economic Integration (BCIE), and in 2020-2021 it received several hundred million in credits from the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

Some among the international Left condemn calls for sanctions on Ortega. Yet the U.S. and international Left broadly mobilized (unsuccessfully) in 1978 and 1979 to force Washington to impose sanctions on the Somoza dictatorship and block international financing because of the regime’s gross human rights violations. The worldwide Left similarly demanded sanctions against apartheid South Africa, sought to block U.S. and international financing for the Pinochet dictatorship, and currently calls for “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” against Israel.

Grassroots opponents of the Ortega-Murillo regime find themselves between the rock of an Ortega-Murillo dictatorship and the hard place of the capitalist class and its political agents among the traditional conservative parties. The Right—just as disturbed as Ortega by the outburst of popular protest from below in the 2018 uprising—tried to hitch mass discontent to its own agenda of recovering direct political power and assuring there would be no threat to its control over the Nicaraguan economy.

It was the government’s repression of the popular uprising of students, workers, feminists, and environmentalists that paved the way for the Right’s current hegemony over the anti-Sandinista opposition. The mass of Nicaraguans—beyond the Sandinistas’ secure base in some 20 percent of the population—have not shown any enthusiasm for the traditional conservative parties and businessmen that dominate the opposition and have no real political representation. Indeed, the October CID-Gallup poll found that 77 percent of the country’s electoral does not feel represented by any political party.