On August 26th, the Colombian people headed to the polls to take part in a historic vote intended to curb the unchecked corruption that has plagued the country for many years.
This week, Paraguay’s new president declared that he will be reversing his predecessor’s decision to open a Paraguayan embassy in Jerusalem, now moving the embassy back to Tel Aviv. This decision by Mario Abdo Benítez, who just took office less than a month ago, has seen an angry reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who immediately ordered the closing of Israel’s embassy in Asuncion and the recall of its ambassador.
This past Spring, what started as student protests against the Nicaraguan Government’s negligence resulting in a forest fire has turned into a civil war. The forest fire, which destroyed over 12,000 acres of protected rainforest in the course of a week was so severe according to many due to the Nicaraguan government’s refusal to ask for aid from neighboring countries, and could have been extinguished much faster and have saved much more of the delicate ecosystem (Agren, 2018).
This past Sunday, September 2nd, 2018, a fire broke out in Rio de Janeiro’s National Museum of Brazil. The fire was devastating, almost entirely destroying the historic building and thousands of national and international artifacts. The building itself, which began construction in 1803 was known as Paço de São Cristóvão, and was once home to the Portuguese Royal Family. After Brazil’s independence in 1822, it became the palace of the Brazilian Emperor.
Since the start of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, the country has been seeing mass migration that has astounded many. A late-2017 survey compiled by the group Consultores 21 discovered that more than four million Venezuelans have left the country since the start of the revolution in 1999, with another 51 percent of young adults still living there stating that they had hopes of also emigrating (La Patilla 2018).
Just last week, authorities were shocked to find the remains of eight bodies in what appears to be a string of particularly brutal murders in the Mexican tourist hotspot of Cancun. These findings are representative of the growing problem of gang violence in Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations, an issue that has proven especially severe in beach towns such as Acapulco and Los Cabos.
