In El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City, long-time journalist and author John Ross summons the magic of Mexico’s history, making it shine through the political blood and city smog. This monstrous work is spiced with humor, murder mysteries, gossip, and haunting detail.
Venezuela has the highest per capita consumption of beer in Latin America, clocking in at 90 liters per person annually. Empresas Polar, one of the largest breweries in the country, is currently in the crosshairs of President Hugo Chávez, who would like to put the company under state control.
Colette Lespinasse is director of the Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GARR, by its French acronym) in Port-au-Prince. Here are her thoughts on solutions to the crisis in which 1.9 million homeless people are still living in precarious tents and other makeshift structures, six months after the earthquake.
Argentina approved a gay marriage law early this morning, making the country the first in Latin America where same-sex couples can wed. Same sex couples will now be granted the same rights, responsibilities and protections that married couples have. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government supported the bill and defied the Catholic Church’s opposition to the law.
Haiti during the World Cup is much like my hometown of New Orleans was during the Superbowl. Don’t try to make plans with anyone to do anything during a game. (In the more cash-rich New Orleans, the ban on non-game-related activity stretched back a day or two before a game, because there was food and alcohol to be purchased and a feast to be cooked.) I make the mistake of trying to go to a cell phone office during that time; employees sit hypnotized in front of the big-screen TV, unwilling to be distracted by clients.
"I'm struggling to end slavery because I know how I suffered," said Helia Lajeunesse, a former restavèk, child slave, who is now a children's rights advocate. Today, there are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world, according to the research of Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves. This is more than at any time in history, even including during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In Haiti, the only nation ever to host a successful slave revolution, 225,000 to 300,000 children live in forced and usually violent servitude in a system known as restavèk, literally "to stay with." The numbers are at risk of rising dramatically because of the hundreds of thousands of children who lost their parents or were abandoned after the earthquake
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019