Latin America

Venezuelan Joggers Find Safety In Numbers

Juan Forero — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:09:04 +0000

It's dusk on a recent day in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, and for many, that's a signal to get inside. Crime and violence have become so widespread here, many people simply shut themselves in.

"Your house becomes your own prison," says Arturo Hidalgo. After about 8 or 9 at night, he says, "you better be home because otherwise you can get in trouble."

Hidalgo would know: He's been robbed before. The result, he says, is a deep-seated fear. For an avid runner, that's a problem.

But Hidalgo is fighting back, with 300 like-minded joggers.

A New Era For U.S.-Latin American Relations?

Elaine Chen — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:00:00 +0000

In a special edition of The Florida Roundup, we focus on our broader region, Latin America and the Caribbean.

China's President Xi Jinping recently concluded a visit to Mexico, Costa Rica and Trinidad, shortly after President Obama and Vice President Biden paid visits there.

Once Home To A Dreaded Drug Lord, Medellin Now A Model City

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 13:20:40 +0000

Of all the violent cities of Latin America, one stands out as a great success story: Medellin, a metropolis nestled in the mountains of northwest Colombia.

Once the home of the cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, it recorded more than 6,300 homicides in 1991, making it the world's murder capital. Then, one city government after another built schools and libraries, parks and infrastructure.

Mass Kidnapping Puts Mexican Legal System On Trial

Carrie Kahn — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:32:38 +0000

Josephina Garcia Rodriguez and Leticia Ponce Ramos sip coffee and console each other at a restaurant in front of Mexico City's prosecutor's office. They're about to head into a meeting with the lead investigator in the case of their kidnapped sons.

"We're going on three weeks since they were kidnapped," Garcia says. "It's been some difficult days, really hard for us mothers. We just want our sons back home with us."

Garcia's 19-year-old son, Said, was taken from the Heaven bar at about 11 a.m. on May 26.

A Must Read For Mexican Youth, Animal Politico Arrives In Miami

Linda Kinstler — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:00:00 +0000

On the second story of the posh Albion Hotel on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach sit the U.S. offices of Animal Politico, an online news site dedicated to Mexican politics that is quickly becoming one of the most respected—and hip—news sources in Latin America.

Founded in 2009 as an anonymous Twitter account called “PajaroPolitico,” or “Political Bird,” Animal Politico has quickly emerged as a must-read news source among Mexican youth.

Criminals Fleeing Rio Crackdown Set Up Shop In The Suburbs

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:17:45 +0000

The provincial town of Mage seems a world away from the violence and drug dealing that plague Brazil's larger cities. On a recent afternoon, the central square is a picture of calm. Children play around a fountain; older people sit on the many park benches dotting the area, under the shade of trees.

Mage, about 35 miles northwest of Rio, is close enough that people can commute to the city, which many of them do. Yet it's far enough away that nothing much really happened here in the past.

In Colombia, A Town Badly Scarred By Wartime Rape

Juan Forero — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:10:47 +0000

El Placer is a remote hamlet deep in southern Colombia, on the edge of the Amazon. Founded half a century ago by farmers who found it fertile and bucolic, its name means "The Pleasure."

But for women and girls in El Placer who suffered years of sexual assaults after an illegal armed group stormed in, the name is only associated with unspeakable violence and murder.

Brigitte Carreño, 25, is among the women who suffered.

Why Honduras Is The Murder Capital Of The Planet

Carrie Kahn — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:05:56 +0000

Latin America is riddled with crime, and no place is more violent than Honduras. It has just 8 million people, but with as many as 20 people killed there every day, it now has the highest murder rate in the world.

It would be easy to blame drug trafficking. Honduras and its Central American neighbors have long served as a favored smuggling corridor for South American cocaine headed north to the U.S.

But there are a number of factors that have contributed to Honduras' out-of-control killings.

Family Blames Venezuelan Police For Men's Murders

Steve Inskeep — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:24:08 +0000

The story of Venezuela's Eloisa Barrios is especially revealing because so many of her relatives have been killed. Revealing because of who she believes pulled the trigger.

Some weeks ago, Barrios climbed into our van for a drive to a cemetery. The burial ground is outside a village in the Venezuelan countryside. We went there to visit the Barrios family dead.

She told us nine relatives had been killed in shootings over the past 15 years. All nine were young men.

Eloisa doesn't visit their graves much. She's moved away from this village, called Guanajan.

How Venezuelans in South Florida Are Shopping For Toilet Paper In Caracas

Tim Padgett — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:41:38 +0000

Inmates In A Venezuelan Prison Build A World Of Their Own

Steve Inskeep — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:30:06 +0000

In Latin America — home to the vast majority of the world's most violent cities — it's said the only part of a prison a guard controls is the gate, leaving convicts to fend for themselves inside, even running criminal networks from behind bars.

I wanted to understand how a prison like that worked, and I was in luck: A colleague knew a man serving time a Venezuelan prison. The prisoner got in touch with the leader of the inmates, who sent word that he'd be willing to see us.

So on the appointed day we drove to the prison in the far western city of Barinas.

How The Most Violent Places On Earth Benefit Miami

Tim Padgett — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Latin America and the Caribbean is a region of stark paradoxes, and that has never been truer than in the past decade: Even as the continent enjoys one of its most dynamic economic booms, it’s suffering one of the worst violent crime crises in its history.

Rio Goes High-Tech With An Eye Toward Olympics, World Cup

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 16:44:19 +0000

We are standing in front of a huge bank of screens, in the middle of which is a glowing map that changes focus depending on what the dozens of controllers are looking at.

The room looks like something straight out of a NASA shuttle launch. The men and women manning the floor are dressed in identical white jumpsuits.

New Laws Enshrine Domestic Worker Rights In Brazil

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro — Fri, 31 May 2013 17:15:20 +0000

The phone is ringing off the hook at the crowded waiting room at the Domestic Workers Union in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil.

In the past decade, millions of Brazilians have joined the middle class.

Think Driving In South Florida Is Scary? Try Brazil

Tim Padgett — Thu, 30 May 2013 17:24:47 +0000

Like Miami Herald sportswriter David J.

Why China Is Behind Fresh U.S. Moves In Latin America

Tim Padgett — Mon, 27 May 2013 12:20:38 +0000

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will visit Colombia, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago next week. President Obama already swung through Mexico and Costa Rica this month and next month Obama will host the presidents of Chile and Peru at the White House.

WLRN Adds Latin America Correspondent In Collaboration With NPR And The Herald

Christine DiMattei — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Journalist Tim Padgett spent nearly a quarter of a century covering Latin America and the Caribbean for TIME and Newsweek magazines.

But he's always been envious of the way foreign correspondents deliver the news for NPR.

"They're giving listeners a richer sense of the sounds and the colors than perhaps I'm able to do as a print reporter," he says.

Borderless Latin American Cooking With Maricel Presilla

Trina Sargalski — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:48:11 +0000

When she won a James Beard award for her cookbook, Gran Cocina Latina, Maricel Presilla felt gratified to be acknowledged for the "work of a lifetime," as well as for "the collective work of millions of Latin Americans that live on two continents, in the Caribbean Islands, and also in the U.

Violence, Hardship Fuels Immigration To U.S., Miami

Carrie Kahn — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:08:00 +0000

William Ordonez and his wife, Carolia, thought that starting a new business in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, was a great idea.

But just two weeks after they started selling chips, candy and soda, gang members showed up and ordered them to pay about $25 a week.

"We tried explaining to them that we just opened, we aren't making that much, we can't pay you," Ordonez says.

The men didn't care, so Ordonez went to the police. He says instead of helping, the police told the gang that Ordonez and his wife had complained.

As Youth Crime Spikes, Brazil Struggles For Answers

Lourdes Garcia-Navarro — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:38:20 +0000

In Rio de Janeiro, tourists are drawn to Copacabana for its wide beach and foliage-covered cliffs. But a month ago, not far from the tourist hub, an American woman and her French male companion were abducted. She was brutally gang-raped; he was beaten.

Perhaps what was most shocking to Brazilians, though, was the age of one of the alleged accomplices: He was barely in his teens.

"Why? That's what you ask yourself," says Sylvia Rumpoldt, who is walking with a friend at dusk by the sea in Rio. "It's horrible. It's criminal energy."

Her friend, Maria de Paula, agrees.

Will Spanish Thrive Or Decline In The U.S.?

Luis Clemens — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:58:44 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnKFP-2se84

Exploring Coffee's Past To Rescue Its Future

Dan Charles — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:02:25 +0000

At the Center for Tropical Agricultural Research and Education (CATIE) in Turrialba, Costa Rica, you can touch the history of coffee — and also, if the optimists have their way, part of its future.

Here, spread across 25 acres, are coffee trees that take you back to coffee's origins.

"The story starts in Africa, no? East Africa," says Eduardo Somarriba, a researcher at CATIE, as we walk through long rows of small coffee trees.

These trees came directly from forests in Africa.

Azuquita Pa'l Cafe: What Coffee Songs Mean To Latin America

Jasmine Garsd — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:49:41 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZOLOggfWp0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgpn4wBlFzo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8C8_P8l2Cc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IIopGu_LLc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3hBU9aRoT0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z03pc4_ixu0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-RlQM1u0_c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1wpTgmW8NE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Er-HgiCq7w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDokxiFCQwQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=584t773W6hk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw9b0i6XN2M

How Coffee Makes The World Go 'Round

Dan Charles — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:09:12 +0000

Coffee is more than a drink.

Popular Writer Debates His Own Kidnappers On Venezuelan Politics

Steve Inskeep — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:22:43 +0000

Earlier this week in Caracas, we were about to go to an interview when it had to be rescheduled. The man we were going to speak with was unavoidably detained — kidnapped, to be precise.

It took awhile after that for Laureano Marquez to free up his schedule and meet us in a coffee shop.

"I'm so sorry," he said when he finally arrived, as if it was his fault for being thrown into a car and driven off to the far reaches of town.

We'd been planning to talk with Marquez about Venezuela's presidential election this weekend, an election that opens a door on a changing Latin America.

Oil, Chavez And The Silent Rise Of The Venezuelan Novel

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:35:52 +0000

Marcela Valdes is the books editor of The Washington Examiner and a specialist in Latin American literature and culture.

For more than 40 years, the most important book prize in South America has been bankrolled by the region's most famous petro-nation: Venezuela. Yet Venezuelan novelists themselves rank among the least read and translated writers in the entire continent.

Chavez Looms Large As South Floridians Prepare To Vote In Venezuela Election

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:13:14 +0000

Hugo Chavez died in March, but his ghost still lingers in Venezuela. He was president for well over a decade and, according to journalist Rory Carroll, his oversize influence hasn't faded.

"It's slightly surreal, because Chavez has never been more ubiquitous in Venezuela than now. His face greets you from the airport the moment you arrive; there are posters of him everywhere; there are fresh murals of him around the city; his voice booms from the radio; recordings of him singing the national anthem fill government rallies," Carroll says.

Upon News Of Argentinian Pope, Latin Americans Are Overjoyed

editor — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 21:26:49 +0000

Pope Francis goes into history as the first pontiff from the New World.

For Latin America in particular, this is a momentous occasion: It is home to 483 million Catholics, or a little more than 40 percent of the global population.

Pope Francis was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, of Italian parents.

Cubans Wonder If Aid Will Still Flow Following Death Of Chavez

editor — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 20:19:05 +0000

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is an especially tough blow for Cuba, whose feeble state-run economy has been propped up for more than a decade with Venezuelan oil shipments and other subsidies.

The Castro government has declared three days of mourning, calling Chavez "a son" of Cuba, but privately Cubans are quietly fretting about the potential loss of billions in trade and the threat of a new economic crisis.

When he was first diagnosed with cancer in 2011, Hugo Chavez turned to Fidel Castro and Cuba's doctors to save him.

Will A New Secretary Of State Put A New Focus On Latin America And The Caribbean?

Phil Latzman — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:23:57 +0000

Wednesdays on WLRN, we discuss issues related to Latin American and the Caribbean. Today: how a transition at the top of the U. S. State Dept. might be felt in the hemisphere.

Some have said the Obama Administration has ignored that part of the world as it tried to put out other fires in the President's first term.