Latin America Politics General Thread

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Milei doing a rug pull is the least surprising thing ever.

You can plausibly describe Argentina's economic policy since Peron as a long and painful sequence of rug pulls.
 
So this is an interesting story here in Costa Rica.

The US State Department yesterday revoked US visa for two legislators. While only seeing the headline, I surmised it might be two members of the far left party who are often critical of the US (as many far left politicians in LatAm tend to do). Nope. They were actually former members of the quasi-liberterarian party. Their crime? It's been speculated that both female legislators had been close to representatives of Huawei (the Chinese telecom) and were lobbying on their behalf. Huawi had been participating in a limitation for supplying 5G's network. Our President barred the Chinese company from participating in the process, a move seen as a nod to American interests. These two legislators had been critical of the President for that move; its speculated that the President asked the State Department for that favor. Not a good precedent.
 
"The 85-page report, “‘Forced to Give Up on Their Dreams’: Sexual Violence against Girls in Guatemala,” documents the numerous barriers that girls who are survivors of sexual violence face accessing essential health care, education, social security, and justice. Guatemalan law classifies any sexual activity involving a child under 14 as sexual violence. Guatemala’s National Registry of Persons (RENAP) reported that between 2018 and 2024, 14,696 girls under 14 gave birth and became mothers, in many cases against their will.

'Sexual violence remains a pervasive and systemic issue in Guatemala, disproportionally affecting girls under age 14,' said Cristina Quijano Carrasco, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Guatemala’s failure to take adequate steps to prevent and end sexual violence and forced pregnancies among girls can have life-threatening consequences, including risks to girls’ physical and mental health, and can profoundly affect the realization of their economic, social, and cultural rights.'”

www.hrw.org

Guatemala: Failed Response to Sexual Violence Against Girls

Successive governments in Guatemala have failed to meet their obligations toward girls facing early and forced pregnancies due to sexual violence, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The authorities need to provide sexual violence survivors with comprehensive health care...
www.hrw.org www.hrw.org
 
CRHeel94 said:
Bully politics at its finest

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What's the bully? Is $23B a bad price for those ports? If BlackRock wants to come in, buy the ports from the Chinese company at a respectable price, and thus defeat the claim that China is running it, what's the downside?

It is unlikely to change Trump's mind. He wants the canal for his own glory, and the Chinese bit was just the excuse. I don't necessarily see anything wrong with this particular transaction, though. Maybe I'm wrong and it's actually a fire sale
 
Panama forced the Chinese company to sell because of pressure from the US.

Don't know if it was a fair price or not. Still extortion.

Takes the leg out of one of his excuses. Maybe he'll come up with another excuse.
 
CRHeel94 said:
Panama forced the Chinese company to sell because of pressure from the US.

Don't know if it was a fair price or not. Still extortion.

Takes the leg out of one of his excuses. Maybe he'll come up with another excuse.
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Eh, that sort of thing happens all the time. Heck, the US was trying it with TikTok. As long as the Chinese company got fair value, it doesn't bother me. You're not wrong that it's extortion, but there are thousands of worse problems.

Hopefully Panama understands that they are bullshit excuses and that Trump wants conquest, not canal management. I suspect they do.
 
Hey @CRHeel94 -- do you know if the road to Monteverde is still a rough ride or if they have improved it. When I was there some years ago the big discussion among locals that I talked with and (overheard) were the pros and cons of making it easier to get there. I'm curious and literally asking for a friend.
 
donbosco said:
Hey @CRHeel94 -- do you know if the road to Monteverde is still a rough ride or if they have improved it. When I was there some years ago the big discussion among locals that I talked with and (overheard) were the pros and cons of making it easier to get there. I'm curious and literally asking for a friend.
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Shoot I didn't see this when you first posted. Haven't been up there for a while. Think they have extended the paved portion but not completely. Great place to visit for a weekend.
 
CRHeel94 said:
Shoot I didn't see this when you first posted. Haven't been up there for a while. Think they have extended the paved portion but not completely. Great place to visit for a weekend.
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My wife and I must go back...we were looking places over with an eye to moving to CR when we visited a decade ago. We pretty much decided that if we did move that Heredia looked like a great spot.
 
Saw that @donbosco posted on FB.

Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the best Latin American writers of our lifetime passed away this weekend. Though 90% of my reading is in English, the one author in Spanish I have read regularly has been Vargas Llosa (my favorite is La Fiesta Del Chico which uses the assassination of Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo as its backdrop).
 
donbosco said:
My wife and I must go back...we were looking places over with an eye to moving to CR when we visited a decade ago. We pretty much decided that if we did move that Heredia looked like a great spot.
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Atenas is the place I would look at. Town up in the mountains but a manageable drive to SJ. Have noticed some European-owned restaurants popping up in that area.

Heredia is nice, but the traffic going up can be a pain. That area had the prettiest girls back in the day (I'm sure that's a real winning data point with the wife).
 
CRHeel94 said:
Though 90% of my reading is in English
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I would not have guessed this. I can see it now; it's just not my mental image of you. Actually, I don't know what my mental image was in terms of your diet of books, but it wasn't that, lol.

Anyway, I would have liked to read Garcia Marquez in Spanish. And I'd bet Borges is a better read in the original. I know of Vargas of course but have never read his works.
 
I read some Mario Vargas Llosa. And I enjoyed what I did. I hope to read more someday when I don’t read so many drafts of student essays and annotated bibliographies and tests and theses. My favorite thing that he wrote came in 1984 when he had already begun his rightish leaning. It was ‘The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta.’ It is never touted as his best but I liked it for the history. I should (and will) read ‘Harsh Times’ (2019) because it is about Guatemala. While he left The Left, spent time as a Liberal, then moved Center-Right, he was always anti-authoritarian and thus also anti-fascist - which in these times is something hopeful to bind some of us together in solidarity I guess.

Quote from ‘El País’ of Spain following the death of Vargas Llosa: "...when it seemed that he would no longer write anything worthy of his great novels, he published the superb ‘Harsh Times,’ (Tiempos Recios) based on the CIA's intervention to overthrow—in 1954 and with false accusations of radical communism—the moderately social democratic government of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala. The work closes with a paragraph in which Vargas Llosa, a staunch anti-Castroist, demonstrated that rather than being an enemy of Fidel Castro, he was a friend of the truth. The Guatemalan lesson, he acknowledged, led revolutionary Cuba to ally itself with the Soviet Union to ‘shield itself against pressure, boycotts and possible aggression from the United States.’ In his opinion, ‘the history of Cuba could have been different’ if the United States had earlier accepted the ‘modernization and democratization" of the Guatemala attempted by Árbenz.’”~ ‘El Pais,’ — Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-2025)

elpais.com

Muere Mario Vargas Llosa, gigante de las letras universales

El escritor hispano peruano, premio Nobel de Literatura en 2010, fue autor de obras maestras como ‘Conversación en La Catedral’. Ha fallecido en Lima a los 89 años
elpais.com
 
CRHeel94 said:
Atenas is the place I would look at. Town up in the mountains but a manageable drive to SJ. Have noticed some European-owned restaurants popping up in that area.

Heredia is nice, but the traffic going up can be a pain. That area had the prettiest girls back in the day (I'm sure that's a real winning data point with the wife).
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Thanks for the tip...am I wrong in remembering a light rail set-up from SJ to Heredia?
 
donbosco said:
I read some Mario Vargas Llosa. And I enjoyed what I did. I hope to read more someday when I don’t read so many drafts of student essays and annotated bibliographies and tests and theses. My favorite thing that he wrote came in 1984 when he had already begun his rightish leaning. It was ‘The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta.’ It is never touted as his best but I liked it for the history. I should (and will) read ‘Harsh Times’ (2019) because it is about Guatemala. While he left The Left, spent time as a Liberal, then moved Center-Right, he was always anti-authoritarian and thus also anti-fascist - which in these times is something hopeful to bind some of us together in solidarity I guess.

Quote from ‘El País’ of Spain following the death of Vargas Llosa: "...when it seemed that he would no longer write anything worthy of his great novels, he published the superb ‘Harsh Times,’ (Tiempos Recios) based on the CIA's intervention to overthrow—in 1954 and with false accusations of radical communism—the moderately social democratic government of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala. The work closes with a paragraph in which Vargas Llosa, a staunch anti-Castroist, demonstrated that rather than being an enemy of Fidel Castro, he was a friend of the truth. The Guatemalan lesson, he acknowledged, led revolutionary Cuba to ally itself with the Soviet Union to ‘shield itself against pressure, boycotts and possible aggression from the United States.’ In his opinion, ‘the history of Cuba could have been different’ if the United States had earlier accepted the ‘modernization and democratization" of the Guatemala attempted by Árbenz.’”~ ‘El Pais,’ — Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-2025)

elpais.com

Muere Mario Vargas Llosa, gigante de las letras universales

El escritor hispano peruano, premio Nobel de Literatura en 2010, fue autor de obras maestras como ‘Conversación en La Catedral’. Ha fallecido en Lima a los 89 años
elpais.com
Click to expand...

I enjoyed Tiempos Recios... I find the Arbenz coup a fascinating time in Central American history. I asked my parents what was their favorite and they went back to Conversation en La Catedral (one of his first novels). Added that to my reading queue.
 
superrific said:
I would not have guessed this. I can see it now; it's just not my mental image of you. Actually, I don't know what my mental image was in terms of your diet of books, but it wasn't that, lol.

Anyway, I would have liked to read Garcia Marquez in Spanish. And I'd bet Borges is a better read in the original. I know of Vargas of course but have never read his works.
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Its probably higher than that if I'm honest with myself. I read 20-24 books a year and maybe one or two are in Spanish. I read so much faster in English than in Spanish, so it feels like Im getting bogged down.

There are some authors that translate well, but most of them have such a powerful way with the verve that there is definitely an impact. Garcia Marquez in Spanish is amazing. I have not really read much Borges. I bet Vargas Llosa is decent in English, but there are times when he can use very particular slang words (wonder how they translate those words or phrases).
 
I regularly assign a book, a barely fictional account of the Mexican Revolution called The Underdogs or Los de Abajo. I’ve used two different translations over the years and the slang translations in them differs wildly. I appreciate it when the translator oro ides their own “Foreword” and does some explaining of their decision-making.
 
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