Full Coverage: South America

30.03.2007 Despite billions of dollars of U.S. assistance, large swaths of Colombia face violence, drug trafficking, poverty, and human suffering on a massive scale. Only Sudan has more displaced people. It's time for a new plan for Colombia -- one that focuses on human, rather than military, needs.

29.03.2007 After teaching elementary school for ten weeks in a small village in rural Ecuador, I came away from the experience with a lot more than the standard shock at the poverty and conditions in the developing world. Instead, I was surprised by how little is really needed to change those conditions.

28.03.2007 Brazil has shut down a soy processing plant operated by the multinational food corporation Cargill in the Amazon rainforest. Soy requires large amounts of land for cultivation, and its surge in popularity had led to rainforest destruction in South America.

26.03.2007 It was exactly forty years ago that Tropicália, the musical revolution that formed the soundtrack to Brazil’s counterculture was introduced. Critical of the country’s abysmal economic inequality, Tropicália had sought a musical and social utopia--and failed.

19.03.2007 At age 16, Argentinean activist Patricia Isasa was abducted and taken to a clandestine detention and torture center set up during her country's dictatorship. Almost 30 years later, her life is again in danger, though she still hopes to see truth and justice prevail.

14.03.2007 Despite growing government rhetoric that it is gaining control over the four-decades-old internal conflict, violence is escalating in many parts of Colombia, a refugee support group said Friday following its visits to the country.

08.03.2007 Increasing the production of bio-fuels would have a disastrous impact on poor communities in Latin America, an international anti-poverty agency said as US President George Bush started a visit to Latin America.

07.03.2007 Rafael Correa's leftist government has moved assertively in its foreign relations during its first month in office, particularly in its approach to the United States and Colombia.