Americas Articles

In 1992, a widely discussed set of peace agreements put an end to a prolonged civil war between El Salvador’s military and a united front of revolutionary guerrillas. The Chapultepec Peace Accords set the path for democratic consolidation by strengthening democratic institutions, limiting the role of the army in civilian politics, and transforming the guerrilla front into a peaceful and law-abiding political party. Since then, the small Central American country has been largely forgotten by the international community.

A generation ago, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) was known for debt crises, military dictatorships, hyperinflation, and grinding poverty. Today, the region is characterized by regional political and economic integration, increased global market share for its exports, sound financial management, and declining unemployment. Most importantly, it is a region that has internalized its role in the world. Imbued with new choices and an independent voice, the region is emerging as the center of the South-South-East exchange of goods and financial capital between LAC, Africa, and China. It is time for the world to look at Latin America and the Caribbean in a new way.

Canada’s diverse federal nature is illustrated by the current divergence between the fiscal and economic policies of Canada’s federal government and that of Ontario, its largest province. Canada’s Conservative federal government in Ottawa has embarked on a methodical pursuit of national economic and fiscal sustainability, steered by the hand of a majority government. On the other hand, Ontario’s government at Queen’s Park in Toronto is mired in economic decline and fiscal crisis with a lack of direction amplified by its recent Liberal minority government and the search for a new leader in the wake of Premier McGuinty’s sudden resignation.

In 1982, a group of Yucatec Mayas created the Maya Literature Workshop in Yucatan, southern Mexico. According to writer Miguel Angel May May, the Workshop’s members had “a minimal degree of high school education, were all about the same age, and were native speakers of Maya.” They shared a common desire to cultivate their mother tongue. This collective experience was the beginning of a creative search by this group to produce their own works of written literature. In 1990, two of its members, Gerardo Can Pat and Maria Luisa Pacheco Gongora, published their first literary works in Maya ​​and in Spanish.