Tag Archive for "Latin America"

Posts Tagged Latin America

We already lost Savita in Ireland. Don’t let Beatriz die in El Salvador.

Ed. note: This is a guest post by Juliana Britto Schwartz. By day, Juliana is a student at University of California, Santa Cruz. By night, she is a Latina feminist blogger at Julianabritto.com, where she writes about reproductive health justice, immigration, and feminist movements in Latin America.

You all remember Savita Halappanavar, right? Well, the world is looking at another Savita right now, and the only thing standing between her and life is a group of Salvadoran politicians.

Savita Halappanavar was a pregnant woman living in Ireland who was denied a life-saving abortion because her doctors could still detect a fetal heartbeat and were therefore required by law not to terminate the pregnancy. She died of blood poisoning while her husband watched.

“Beatriz” is ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 11 years ago

“The war on drugs has become a war on women”

Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchu. Pic via CNN.

Violence against women in Latin America is on the rise–and it’s partly thanks to the US’s ineffective drug policies. A delegation of women, led by Nobel Laureates Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchu, released a report yesterday on the horrifying levels of gender-based violence in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala.

Over the past decade, there’s been a 257 percent increase in femicide in Honduras, a 40 percent increase in Mexico, and a more than 30 percent increase in Guatemala. And in the last couple years, 24 women human rights defenders have been assassinated in those countries. (Recall Agnes Torres Sulca’s murder just a couple months ago.)

The violence is being perpetrated by both ...

Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchu. Pic via CNN.

Violence against women in Latin America is on the rise–and it’s partly thanks to the US’s ineffective drug policies. A delegation of women, led by Nobel Laureates Jody ...

By Katie Halper • 12 years ago

Videos from the non-violent war against the violent drug wars

Prostitutes and secret service and Latin America, oh my. This year’s Summit of the Americas was reduced to a scandal about secret service agents too dumb or too cheap to pay the money they owed the sex workers they solicited in Cartagena.

But the real story is that Latin American leaders are coming out of the woodwork and stating that the war on drugs is not working. These leaders are calling for reforms ranging from legalization, to decriminalization, to focusing of treatment instead of incarceration. And what’s shocking is that they are not just the lefty leaders who have come to power on Latin America’s so-called Pink Tide.

In addition to the left wing presidents in Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil, to name ...

By Lori Adelman • 13 years ago

Quick Hit: Latin America Ahead of U.S. on Same-Sex Marriage

Amidst all the hateful hype surrounding Prop 8 in CA, it can be easy to lose perspective on the same sex marriage “debate” and forget that it’s actually quite a straightforward issue, a matter of common sense and a basic human right. An opinion piece in today’s LA Times gives us a much-needed reminder of this, providing some perspective with the bold headline “Latin America ahead of U.S. on same-sex marriage.”

The article is definitely worth a read. It points out that countries like Mexico and Argentina have been able to recognize “that religion and civil law have different roles to perform in marriage, something absent in the debate in the U.S.” and highlights some of the most ...