Settlement Slips Away For Nicaraguan Banana Workers

A judge in Los Angeles, California has handed down a landmark decision that essentially slams the door shut on banana plantation workers in Nicaragua and other Central American nations who have spent decades seeking damages for pesticide poisoning they suffered at the hands of US-owned multinationals.

Chile Weighs Same-Sex Marriage Options

Argentina’s groundbreaking decision last month to legalize gay marriage had immediate reverberations across the Andes mountain range, in traditionally more conservative Chile, where the issue – already a subject of growing interest – has suddenly turned into a raging national debate with both political and religious overtones.

El Salvador, An Anxious Observer To US Immigration Crack-Down

Salvadoran authorities, Church leaders and common citizens alike are paying close attention to a debate that rages well beyond the country’s borders, in places like the US states of Arizona and Florida, where tough “papers please” anti-immigration laws could increase an already steady tide of detentions and deportations.

Chile: Piñera Passes On Bicentennial Pardon

Opting again for a moderate approach that has surprised critics and set him apart from the more conservative elements in his coalition, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera late last month rejected church proposals to mark the country’s upcoming bicentennial with a general pardon. If approved, the clemency act would have benefited some dictatorship-era human rights violators.

Chile’s Piñera Promises New Approach To Age-Old Mapuche Problem

First-year President Sebastián Piñera is promising a fresh start to a festering problem that long perplexed his left wing predecessors and continues to percolate in Chile’s southern Araucanía region. There, historic tensions between the state and marginalized Mapuches, the country’s largest indigenous group, have turned increasingly violent in recent years.

In Colombia, King Coal Is Dirty Business For Workers And The Environment

A horrific mine explosion, the latest in a long string of deadly accidents, has brought renewed attention to Colombia’s booming coal industry. A key energy source, coal not only fuels several of the country’s electricity plants; it also powers Colombia’s export-oriented economy as a whole. But as the recent disaster made all too clear, coal mining can be truly dirty business when it comes to human lives and the environment.

El Salvador Chips Away At Child Labor

Despite El Salvador’s ongoing economic problems, complicated all the more by last year’s recession, the Central American nation appears to gradually be reducing the incidence of child labor, recent government statistics suggest.