CIAO DATE: 03/2015
Summer 2014
The 2014 Social Inclusion Index (PDF)
The third Social Inclusion Index tracks national progress in civil rights, political participation, and access to markets and education.
Immigrant Access to U.S. Higher Ed (PDF)
Kate Brick, Leani García
As the costs of higher education continue to reach new heights, access to in-state tuition for public universities and colleges is often the determining factor in whether students will be able to continue their education beyond high school. Despite having grown up and been residents of states often longer than the typical residency requirements, undocumented immigrant youth, also known as DREAMers--named after the Senate's DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act--have historically been excluded from this critical state benefit. But this is changing.
The Future of Latin American Studies (PDF)
Charles Hale
The field of Latin American studies has been a target for critics ever since it became a prominent feature of the U.S. academic landscape in the 1960s. Earlier critiques were quite severe, often permeated by the premise that studying Latin America from the North (and even the very concept of “Latin America” as an object of study) connoted the region’s racial and cultural inferiority. This was further aggravated by the inability to fully disentangle Latin American research from U.S. economic and geopolitical interests. Even the most apparently benign scholarship was considered to be a reinforcement of North–South hierarchies of knowledge and power.
Protest U. (PDF)
Indira Palacios-Valladares
Millions of students have taken to the streets across Latin America in recent years in protests that reflect an unprecedentedly broad mobilization of popular opinion.
Student Debt in the Americas (PDF)
Carolina Ramírez
The promise of upward mobility for Latin America’s new middle classes has led to swelling university enrollment rates, but also to growing debt.
Academic Brain Drain (PDF)
Jesus Velasco
A recurrent theme in the immigration debate is how the United States can keep and attract the world’s brightest minds. President Barack Obama and others favor maintaining and perhaps even expanding the number of visas for high-skilled immigrants. In his 2013 State of the Union address, Obama said the U.S. needed to “attract the highly skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will help create jobs and grow our economy.” A few days later, on January 29, 2013, at El Sol High School in Las Vegas, Nevada, Obama underlined the point: “Right now, there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in classrooms at our top universities[…]but once they earn that diploma, there’s a good chance they’ll have to leave the country[.…]That’s why we need comprehensive immigration reform.”
Indigenous Enrollment (PDF)
Álvaro José Mejía Arias
Since its formation in February 1971, the Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca—CRIC) has made the education of young Indigenous Colombians one of its most important goals.
Bridge Institutions in Higher Education (PDF)
Carol Stax Brown
The United States and Latin America are both struggling to find ways to improve participation in quality education in the face of a labor-market skills gap. But all too often, policymakers, businesses and educators have looked to elite universities as a way of meeting those gaps. While important for high-end jobs, labor market and social demands also require us to look elsewhere.
Higher Ed: Private Investors Get Into the Game (PDF)
Gabriel Sánchez Zinny
The combination of sustained economic growth in Latin America, a region-wide expansion of the middle class, and a newly competitive business environment has boosted demand for quality education, and stoked desires for alternatives.
The Pull and Example of Science Education in the United States (PDF)
Timothy DeVoogd
I expected high school biology students. Instead, I was facing 120 middle school students who were on an outing to Maloka, an innovative science museum in Bogotá.
MOOCs in Development: Fad or Future? (PDF)
Juan Cristóbal Bonnefoy
Those following tech and continuing education news have been surprised by the rising popularity of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).1 The basic promise for professionals in Latin America and the Caribbean is quite alluring: free online access to a world-class knowledge base. But questions remain. Will this new learning methodology last, or fade quickly once the novelty is gone?
The Dominican Republic and Haiti: A Shared View from the Diaspora (PDF)
Richard André
In a landmark ruling, the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court last September stripped an estimated 210,000 individuals—most of whom are Dominicans born to Haitian sugar cane workers—of their citizenship, effectively leaving them stateless. The ensuing outcry from the international community has included Junot Díaz and Edwidge Danticat—two of the best-known contemporary authors from the island of Hispaniola. Friends for over 20 years, Danticat (from Haiti) and Díaz (from the D.R.) have been relentless in their condemnation of the ruling. In a written exchange moderated by Americas Quarterly production editor and Haitian-American Richard André, Díaz and Danticat discuss the roots and legacies of racism and conflict in the neighboring nations, the impact of the court’s ruling, and the responsibility of the diaspora to build bridges between Dominicans and Haitians and defend human rights at home and abroad.
The Dominican Republic and Haiti: Shame (PDF)
Santiago A. Canton, Wade H. McMullen, Jr.
Juliana Deguis Pierre was born in 1984 in Los Jovillos, Dominican Republic, 72 miles (116 kilometers) west of Santo Domingo. Under the country’s constitutional recognition of birthright citizenship, Deguis—the daughter of two undocumented Haitian immigrants working in the sugar cane fields—was issued a birth certificate recognizing her Dominican nationality. Now 29 years old, she has never traveled outside her native country. She speaks fluent Spanish and hardly any Creole.
Venezuela: How Long Can This Go On? (PDF)
Boris Muñoz
On April 10, Venezuelans stayed up past midnight to watch an event on TV that just a few weeks prior would have seemed incredible, almost miraculous: after three months of intense protests, headed by students in alliance with the most combative sectors of the opposition calling for President Nicolás Maduro’s departure, the government and the opposition, thanks to mediation from the Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (Union of South American Nations—UNASUR), sat down to negotiate.
Behind the Numbers: Women's Rights (PDF)
Joan Caivano, Jane Marcus-Delgado
The gender-based data on social inclusion clearly indicate the opportunities and obstacles facing women in Latin America—as well as numerous contradictions and complexities. An examination of new trends, laws and policies brings to mind the Spanish expression, “Del dicho al hecho, hay mucho trecho.” In other words, even in many areas where there appears to have been significant progress, intervening barriers frequently preclude its consistent application.
Behind the Numbers: Insecurity and Marginalization in Central America (PDF)
Matthew Budd, Marcela Donadio
With 11 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012, Nicaragua stands out as a relatively fortunate exception in a region whose homicide rates rank among the world’s highest. Its northern neighbors all recorded rates at least three times greater: with Guatemala at 34.3 murders per 100,000 citizens; El Salvador at 41.5; and—at the top of this grim list—Honduras at 85.5. To the south of Nicaragua, only traditionally stable and more developed Costa Rica recorded a lower rate (8.8). Panama registered 17.6 murders per 100,000 in 2012.
Ask the Experts: Higher Education (PDF)
Francisco Suarez Hernandez, Amgad Shehata, Arturo Cherbowski Lask, Salvador Alva Gómez Salvador
It’s important to keep in mind that a region consists of different countries, each with its own needs and strengths, and bound to its particular culture and history—although tied firmly to a common, shared history and culture. In this mosaic, universities try to respond to their regional, national and local demands. Thus, the fields of knowledge and particular disciplines that each university develops answer to specific needs.
Dispatches from the Field: Return Migration in Mexico (PDF)
Nathaniel Parish Flannery
José Antonio Pérez remembers as a child seeing migrants climbing onto La Bestia (“The Beast”), the train that carries Central American migrants north to the state of Oaxaca, and wondering where they were going. An uncle told him the migrants were “traveling to El Norte,” the United States.
Will warming Cuba-EU ties open up U.S.-Cuba relations? (PDF)
Sarah Stephens, Joel Brito
The EU has recognized that its Common Position has failed to improve human rights in Cuba. It's time for the U.S. to do the same with its embargo.
Some of our hemisphere's emerging leaders in politics, business, civil society, and the arts (PDF)
Mari Hayman
Business Innovator: Lisa Besserman, Arts Innovator: X Alfonso, Political Innovator: Claudia López, Civic Innovator: Oriol Gutierrez
A snapshot of policy trends and successes in the region (PDF)
Jaana Remes, Cynthia J. Arnson, Patricia Ellen, Raúl Rodríguez-Barocio
Peace: Elections and Peace in Colombia, Brazil and Trade: Brazil's Ambivalent Welcome to the World, Policy Advocacy: NAFTA and the New Regionalism
Rebecca Bintrim, Leani García, Mercedes Laxague
Competitive Eating; La Jaula de Oro; Global Citizen Festival; 10 Things to Do: Patagonia, Argentina; Latin America at the Winter Olympics; From the Think Tanks
Johanna Mendelson Forman, Anthony Spanakos, Roger-Mark De Souza
Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse by Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez; Oil Sparks in the Amazon: Local Conflicts, Indigenous Populations, and Natural Resources by Patricia I. Vásquez; Security in South America: The Role of States and Regional Organizations by Rodrigo Tavares
Traffic death rates across the Americas (PDF)
The statistics are shocking. Latin America and the Caribbean have the countries with the number one (Dominican Republic) and number three (Venezuela) highest number of traffic deaths per capita in the world. Only Thailand comes close, with 38.1 traffic deaths in 2010 for every 100,000 citizens, placing it second in these grim rankings.