LIMA, Peru — Nearly three weeks after his police officer son disappeared during combat with Shining Path rebels, Dionisio Vilca had to hike into dense jungle and personally retrieve his son’s body. He brought it home in a somber ceremony Thursday. The father’s agonizing odyssey triggered angry recriminations in Peru, where there was already outrage [...]

Over two previous days, 4000 delegates representing 1700 social and political organizations, with two delegates each, had gathered at a convention center. They discussed Colombia’s political situation, outlined organizational structures, defined tasks, approved a political declaration, established commissions, and appointed a National Patriotic Council. Some 130 international guests were present. Plenary session speakers included: Voz [...]

In what may be karmic payback for one hundred and fifty years of U.S. policy imposed on Latin America, 32 nations supported a resolution that Cuba be allowed to attend the 2015 summit with only the U.S. and the reliable Canadians voting against. Cuba had been expelled from the OAS in 1962 with the beginning [...]

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, Colombia – “What matters at this summit is not what is on the official agenda,” said Uruguayan analyst Laura Gil, echoing the conventional wisdom in this Colombian port city, where the Sixth Summit of the Americas ended Sunday without a final declaration. The Fifth Summit, held in Port of Spain, the capital [...]

By W.T. Whitney Jr. Western Hemisphere political leaders 18 years ago began gathering off and on for Summits of the Americas , a project of the U.S. – dominated Organization of American States. The sixth Summit, hosted April 14-15 by President Juan Manuel Santos in Cartagena, Colombia, demonstrated Latin American and Caribbean unity in the [...]

Historian Greg Grandin analyzes the U.S.-Colombia “free trade” deal and the deepening split between much of Latin America and Washington following the Summit of the Americas in Colombia. The summit, which was marred by a U.S. prostitution scandal, concluded Sunday without agreement on the key questions of whether Cuba should be allowed to attend the [...]

CARTAGENA, Colombia — Unprecedented Latin American opposition to U.S. sanctions on communist Cuba left President Barack Obama isolated at the Summit of the Americas on Sunday and illustrated Washington’s waning influence in the region. In contrast to the rock-star status he enjoyed at the 2009 summit in Trinidad and Tobago shortly after taking office, Obama [...]

BOGOTA, Colombia — When President Obama arrives in Colombia for a hemispheric summit this weekend, he will hear Latin American leaders say that the U.S.-orchestrated war on drugs, which criminalizes drug use and employs military tactics to fight gangs, is failing and that broad changes need to be considered. Latin American leaders say they have [...]

Colombia’s largest rebel group has freed some of the world’s longest-held hostages, ending more than a decade of jungle captivity for 10 police officers and soldiers. The captives were released by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, in a long-planned operation overseen by the Red Cross, the Brazilian government and a former Colombian [...]

When Barack Obama campaigned to be the nation’s 44th president, he used the simple mantra, “Yes We Can” — a translation of civil rights leader Cesar Chavez’s chant, “Si se puede.” Now, nearly four years after the presidential election, Obama’s paying homage to the man whose words helped him win office, decreeing Saturday, March 31st [...]