Featured Articles
Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, facing corruption allegations, mounts unlikely comeback
July 29, 2019
BUENOS AIRES — When President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner reached her two-term limit in 2015, it felt as if an era had ended in Argentina. Flamboyant and divisive, she had come to epitomize the populist Peronist politics, rooted in economic interventionism and fervent nationalism, that have dominated this country for much of the past 80 years. Her successor, Mauricio Macri, a Read more
The race to extract an Indigenous language from its last lucid speaker
June 23, 2023
Nelita Campos, an Iskonawa woman in Ucayali, Peru, is the last lucid speaker of the Iskonawa language. (Florence Goupil for The Washington Post) CALLERÍA, Peru — It’s a ritual that Roberto Zariquiey and Nelita Campos have engaged in for more than a decade. The odd couple — Zariquiey, a university linguist conducting postdoctoral research at Harvard; Campos, the last lucid speaker Read more
Beyond Machu Picchu: my wild adventures in Peru
November 20, 2021
Beneath the intense Andean sun the dusty avenue lined by the jagged remains of once imposing stone and adobe walls stretches over the undulating valley floor into the distance. The purpose of this prehistoric thoroughfare remains a mystery. Andean cultures never developed writing and the dozens of surrounding crumbling houses were not just abandoned a millennium ago but even had Read more
A surprising move on LGBT rights from a ‘macho’ South American president
July 17, 2016
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivia has a new gender identity law that might put it in Latin America’s vanguard on LGBT rights — but the story behind the measure reveals how far the Andean nation still has to go before ending homophobia. That’s according to Carlos Parra, aka Paris Galán, the country’s best known drag queen and a prominent gay Read more
Chaotic start to Castillo’s presidency leaves Peruvians wondering who’s in charge
August 12, 2021
LIMA, Peru — At his swearing-in ceremony on the 200th anniversary of Peruvian independence last month, Peru’s first campesino president condemned the “racial regime” imposed by the conquistadors that continues to divide Latin American societies today. To hammer the point home, Pedro Castillo promised not to use the presidential residence, known as the “House of Pizarro” after its founder, Francisco Pizarro, who led the subjugation of Read more
Indigenous leaders get a choice: Join the narcos or run for your lives
August 27, 2022
YAMINO, Peru — For Herlin Odicio, the stranger’s offer was life-changing. The man, who had shown up unannounced in this remote Indigenous village speaking Spanish with a Colombian accent and calling himself “Fernando,” was proposing to pay Odicio $127,000 for each planeload of cocaine paste that took off from his community’s land. In return, Odicio, the elected leader of the Read more