Latinoamerica 21Una región, todas las voces

The shockwave produced by the first round of the presidential election was seismic. There was not a single political assumption left unquestioned. The message to the government of Gustavo Petro was clear: its blatant intervention in the campaign came at a high cost to candidate Iván Cepeda. Likewise, the once kingmaker Álvaro Uribe Vélez saw the right abandon his party’s candidate, Paloma Valencia, in order to support a new right-wing movement that has positioned itself as independent. Abelardo de la Espriella, virtually unknown to most Colombians just a few months ago, now has every chance of becoming Colombia’s next president, while Senator Iván Cepeda secured a historic vote tally that nevertheless feels like a defeat for the left. The political center, which placed its hopes on moderation, discovered its irrelevance at the ballot box and is now licking its wounds. Senator Cepeda ran a campaign that even aspired to win...

Rare earths are reshaping global power. Can resource-rich countries finally turn mineral wealth into genuine economic and technological autonomy?

Growing public disillusionment with democracies that are unable to guarantee welfare, representation and a shared future is putting Latin America’s political and social stability to the test.