The upcoming return of The Latin Americanist

As you may have noticed there has been an unfortunate absence of posting on this blog for the past three weeks. I made the terrible miscalculation of assuming that I would have regular access to the Internet during my family vacation to Colombia. Yet for a number reasons (which I won't get into) today is the first time since mid-December since I've been more than a few minutes online! Worse was my absent-minded decision not to seek a guest blogger for my time abroad.

ln short, I screwed up big time and I want to fully apologize to you, our readers, for my mistakes.

I'll return with "Daily Headlines", "Today's Video" and our usual mix of posts next Tuesday, January 11th. Don't forget that you can still vote in the top news stories of 2010 poll, which will close on Monday the 10th.

Thanks for your time, feedback, and loyalty since this blog was founded over five years ago.

Happy New Year everyone!

What was the top news story of 2010?

We're going to go on a brief hiatus for a few days.

In the meantime, what do you feel was the most important news story of 2010 regarding Latin America and Latinos? Was it a major story that covered plenty of headlines or an item that was overlooked by the press? Did it involve a regional leader, a sports team, the arts, or another area of interest?

Please vote in the poll located on our sidebar with twenty options as to what was the main story of this year. The results of the survey will be revealed after the poll closes on January 10, 2011.

If we missed something or if you want to respectfully debate one of the choices please feel free to comment to this post.

Your opinion counts!

Image - calendario2010.info
Online Source - The Latin Americanist

Report: LatAm economy to grow in ‘10

The recent international economic slowdown has hit plenty of countries hard and for the most part Latin America has been no exception to that. Yet it appears as if this year the region has bounced back faster than other parts of the world.

According to a study released today by the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, (ECLAC), the region’s gross domestic product will grow by a higher-than-expected 6% this year. The increase represents a big jump compared to a GDP drop of 1.9% last year, and the ECLAC anticipates that the region will continue growing throughout 2011 by 4.2%.

An ECLAC statement credited this year’s expected growth to several factors including an expansive monetary policy and rapidly increasing production. The report also mentioned that the governments in most countries in the region enacted public policies since mid-2009 that have allowed for “robust private consumption, which is due to a gradual improvement in employment, increasing credit conditions, and…an increase in real wages”.

Despite the positive outlook for next year, the ECLAC warned that there are challenges that still remain:

“The big challenge in the region is rebuilding its capacity to take contra-cyclical actions and create conditions for productive development that is not just based on exports of basic goods,” Cepal Executive Secretary Alicia Barcena said in the statement.

Not every country in the region will experience growth this year; Venezuela’s GDP is expected to fall by 1.6% while Haiti’s could nosedive by 7%. Aside from uneven growth, inflation also increased by 1.5% between 2009 and this year.

Paraguay with 9.7% of annual growth is the head of the class in Latin America, followed by Uruguay with 9.0% and Peru with 8.6%. Regional heavyweights Chile and Mexico will each grow by 5.3% based on the ECLAC’s analysis.

An ECLAC report released last month concluded that poverty in Latin America would drop by 33% this year.

Image- Mercopress (Workers at a Chilean fish processing plant).
Online Sources- Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Reuters, WSJ.com, Bloomberg, El Universal

The year that was: Press under pressure

2010 has been a banner year for the Latin American press, albeit for the wrong reasons. From Cuba to Argentina, members of the media have come under attack from government censorship and violence from criminal organizations. For example:

• A group of U.N. “human rights experts” criticized the Honduran government for not properly investigating death threats and murders of against journalists.
• A study by a Mexican press watchdog group concluded that regional newspapers rarely reported on widespread “narcoviolence.”
  
• Reporters Without Borders accused demobilized ex-paramilitary members in Colombia of “forcing journalists to self-censorship or exile.”
  

The following video is of a protest in Mexico City in the name of harassed and slain members of the media. Nearly 700 people participated in a silent march holding signs of killed press members as well as a banner calling for the government to provide “more guarantees” for journalists to fulfill their duties.

The above protest is an unfortunate reminder of the dangers constantly faced by the press in Latin America. Perhaps the situation for the media will improve in 2011 though it's much easier to be pessimistic than hopeful.

Online Sources- The Latin Americanist
Video Source - YouTube

The year that was: The (Peruvian) pen is mightier than the sword

We continue our look at some of the top stories of 2010 with a high honor granted to one of Latin America’s most famous authors.

In October, Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa was named as this year’s Nobel Literature Prize winner. Though oddsmakers named the likes of Philip Roth and Alice Munro as favorites, the Nobel committee cited Vargas Llosa’s “cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". The 1995 Cervantes Prize winner and former presidential candidate thus became the sixth Latin American to win such a prestigious honor.

As part of his Nobel lecture in Stockholm on Tuesday, Vargas Llosa praised the maturation of democracy in Latin America though he also criticized the “pseudo populist, clownish” governments in parts of the region. Politics aside, he also gave some powerful and inspiring on the importance of literature in our modern world:

"We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist," he argued. "Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better."

The following video is of a 2007 Al Jazeera interview of Vargas Llosa by British journalist David Frost. He echoed the sentiments expressed in his speech this week including proclaiming that “literature is not only entertainment…writers and intellectuals can have an impact on political life.”

Video Source - YouTube
Online Sources- The Guardian, Times of India, NPR, The Latin Americanist

The year that was: Up with Uruguay!

For the next few days we will highlight some of what we feel are the top stories of 2010. We’ll also post next week a poll where you can vote on what you think should be the leading story of the year.

One of the surprises of the year in the sports world was Uruguay’s extraordinary run to the semifinals of the soccer World Cup. The cynics will focus on Luis Suarez’ handball in a crucial match against Ghana. But la garra charrua demonstrated a gutsy performance throughout the tournament even in their one-goal losses in the semis and third-place games to the Netherlands and Germany, respectively.

Despite the great team effort, it’s necessary to recognize one player in particular: Diego Forlan. The striker deservedly won the best player at the World Cup honors for his stellar leadership as well as phenomenal goals such as those shown in the video compilation below:

Online Sources- The Latin Americanist, BBC Sport
Video Source - YouTube