After months of speculation and uncertainty, the White House released a statement on Saturday, March 10, declaring that President Donald Trump will be attending the Summit of the Americas, or
Just this week, leftist leaders in Peru have begun to band together in a movement to impeach sitting president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on grounds of a ‘moral incapacity’ to lead the country, in part due to his alleged ties to Odebrecht. This effort to oust Kuczynski, better known by the nickname ‘PPK’, comes just a few months after his highly controversial decision to pardon former dictator Alberto Fujimori.
Cover Image: Domestic workers and employed population in Peru (2004 - 2013 (See Figure 3 Below)
Thursday October 5th, 2017, Ana Maria Candela of Binghamton University spoke to The University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Asian Studies and Center for Latin American Studies about her research on Chinese immigration to Latin America, and the way that these migrations affect Latin America, East Asia, and the international community.
The Amazonian and Andean regions of South America are home to some of the richest biodiversity on the planet. Of the top ten ‘megadiverse’ countries in the world, six are in Central/South America. Four of these countries house part of the Andes, and five house part of the Amazon rainforest (Hyatt 2014).
Last year as Brazil geared up to hold the Summer 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, a huge corruption scandal hit the country: “Operação Lava Jato”, or “Operation Car Wash”. After much turmoil and international attention, many thought the scandal would subside with the new year. However, this has not been the case. And the scandal is still making headlines over a year since it first began, having become clear that it involves more than just Brazil.
It has been a while since a strikingly populist candidate has been a major contender in a presidential election in the United States. Many think of William Jennings Bryan, the three-time nominee of the democratic party at the end of the 1800s, as one of the only other strongly populist presidential candidates in American history (Ramone, 2010). President Trump’s campaign can fairly be described as populist through his rhetoric against the elites on Capitol Hill, his appeal to working class voters, and most importantly his outsider status as a non-politician.
The direct recall referendum – a bottom-up mechanism of direct democracy (MDD) activated by signature collection among citizens and designed to remove an elected authority from office – has become one of the most intensively used mechanisms of citizen participation in South America, particularly in the Andean countries. To give some examples, between 1997 and 2013, more than 5,000 recall referendums were activated against democratically elected authorities from 747 Peruvian municipalities (45.5 percent of all municipalities).
South America’s first sleeper train, The Belmond Andean Explorer in Peru, is scheduled to begin running in May of 2017.
