A selection of stories from around the web on the Americas:
A property scandal buffets Cristina Fernandez
A step forward for Canada's Northern Gateway pipeline project
Cuba lets out the throttle on car buying
From iron to meat: why the LatAm commodities boom will continue
"The most pervasive narwhal tusk-smuggling ring of modern times"
Crime and growth in Mexico
THE Conservative government led by Stephen Harper has made being tough on crime one of its signature themes, passing a series of bills during its almost eight years in power to make criminal justice more punitive. Heedless of critics who point out that the crime rate is in long-term decline and that harsh jail terms have been shown not to work, the government has introduced new mandatory minimum sentences, increased and made mandatory so-called “victim surcharges” (an additional fine used to fund victims’ services) and created new crimes that call for incarceration.
A selection of Americas stories from around the web:
The taper and emerging markets
The NSA affair and Brazil's fighter-jet contract
Another road concession auctioned in Brazil
Bolivia accuses the US of helping an American escape justice
The decline of "eh": a Canadian expression fades
Horacio Cartes, a businessman whose empire spanned banking, farming, tobacco and football, became Paraguay's president in August. A political neophyte, he only joined his party, the Colorados, in order to be eligible for office. The party ruled Paraguay for 61 years, 35 as a dictatorship, until losing the presidency in 2008 to Fernando Lugo, a leftist former bishop. After a lightning impeachment in 2012 Mr Lugo's vice-president, Federico Franco, took his place until this year's election.
The Economist spoke to Mr Cartes on December 11th in his official residence, the Mburuvicha Roga ("Boss House" in Guaraní, the Amerindian language spoken alongside Spanish by most Paraguayans).
IN HAITI the year is ending with squalls of street protest. Shows of public anger have been going on for weeks in Port-au-Prince, the capital, and other major cities. The protests are amorphous. Gatherings of differing sizes and intensities have been called by various entities, ranging from opposition parties to the trade unions.
If there is a thread running through them, it is a general discontent with President Michel Martelly’s 27-month-old administration. The country is still traumatised by 2010’s devastating earthquake and years of what Mr Martelly calls “bad governance”.
In February we will start a new weekly column in The Economist about Latin America. We are searching for a title for the column, along the lines of Bagehot, Charlemagne or Lexington. Preferably, it has to be a title that has some resonance throughout the region and which fits with The Economist’s broadly liberal outlook. It could be geographical or botanical (eg Aconcagua or kiwicha). It could be mythological (eg. Kukulkan/Quetzalcoatl, whose cult favoured the spread of trade). Or of course it could be a historical figure: Vespucci, Humboldt or Cochrane all have resonance, but were outsiders. Or Bello, Juárez, Miranda, or Tiradentes?
A SELECTION of stories from around the web:
Women in Latin America: political power but not economic power
Another look at Brazil’s development bank
Uruguay deserves the Nobel peace prize
S&P cuts Venezuela’s credit rating
Canada Post’s cutbacks illustrate a wider pensions problem
POLLING stations in Chile’s presidential election closed at 6pm on Sunday. By 6.45pm, and with barely a third of the votes counted, the centre-right’s candidate Evelyn Matthei had acknowledged defeat. That was how emphatic her opponent’s victory was.
In the end Michelle Bachelet, who also held the presidency from 2006 to 2010, won with 62% of the vote to Ms Matthei’s 38%. That was by far the widest margin of victory in any of the past four presidential elections, all of which have gone to a second round. In the previous three, no one got above 54%.
THIS is not the best time to be a confidante of Jang Sung Taek, the uncle of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s leader, who was executed in Pyongyang this week. One man who is apparently already counting the cost of close association with Mr Jang is the North Korean ambassador to Cuba.
Ambassador Jon Yong Jin is a veteran diplomat who boasted what were considered, until very recently, impeccable credentials: he is married to Mr Jang's elder sister. South Korean officials say he was ordered back home on around December 6th.
IN A move that now seems like subliminal messaging, Canada Post celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Canadian postal service in 2012 by issuing a special set of stamps featuring the Royal Mail Ship Titanic. The drastic changes announced by postal management this week, the most significant of which is the eventual elimination of home delivery, are meant to avert disaster.
Canada Post has been hit by a familiar story: rising electronic communication and declining volumes of letters.
THE sacking of Bogotá's mayor may have consequences beyond the capital
A selection of stories from around the web:
A data visualisation from the World Bank on doing business in Brazil
Venezuela hints at raising petrol prices
The most Canadian arrest ever
Reversing the resources curse: a McKinsey analysis
Advertising aimed at FARC guerrillas
ON THE evening of December 10th thousands of Chileans were glued to the box, watching the dramatic final match of their football championship between Universidad Católica and the wonderfully named O’Higgins of Rancagua. After the final whistle (O’Higgins were crowned champions for the first time in their 58-year history), coverage switched to the second presidential debate between Evelyn Matthei and Michelle Bachelet (pictured left and right respectively).
Most will have reached for the off-switch. The truth is that for most Chileans, this weekend’s election run-off is a bit of a bore. It’s not that they don’t care about their country’s future.
WHEN Russia made a big show of placing a Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole in 2007, Canada’s then foreign minister Peter MacKay huffed that “this isn’t the 15th century” and countries couldn’t just go around the world planting flags and claiming territory. Yet in a move worthy of a medieval monarch, John Baird, the current foreign minister, announced on December 9th that the North Pole was Canadian. The government has instructed its scientists to provide the data to prove a claim described by Mr Baird as big and bold. (The prime minister’s parliamentary secretary went further still, asserting in the House of Commons that Santa Claus was Canadian.)
Reporting, analysis and opinion on politics, economics, society and culture in Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada
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