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Bolivia’s ‘Capitalism for All’ Project Sparks Backlash for Selling-out on Natural Resources
By Enrique Castanon Ballivian, on 9 February 2026
In this post, first published in The Conversation, Enrique Castañón Ballivián, Lecturer in International Development at the UCL Institute of the Americas, discusses the natural resources policies of the newly elected administration of Rodrigo Paz Pereira in Bolivia.
Bolivia’s ‘Capitalism for All’ Project Sparks Backlash for Selling-out on Natural Resources
Bolivia’s political landscape has changed dramatically since August 2025, when a general election ended the Movement for Socialism (Mas) party’s rule after nearly two decades. Its presence in Congress has all but vanished, with rightwing parties now commanding an overwhelming majority.
The new president, Rodrigo Paz Pereira, campaigned with the rightwing populist slogan: fé, familia y patria (faith, family and homeland). He swept to victory in large part due to the widespread popularity of his running mate and now vice-president, Edmand Lara.
As the son of former Bolivian president Jaime Paz Zamora, who led Bolivia from 1989 to 1993, Paz Pereira represents a new generation of the country’s traditional political elite. But Lara, a former police captain who has become prominent on social media since 2023, comes from the popular classes.
The unlikely pair benefited from a strong desire among the Bolivian people for change amid a severe economic crisis marked by a shortage of US dollars and annual inflation of nearly 20%. They also took advantage of widespread distrust of reticence towards politicians from previous governments. Read the rest of this entry »
Peasants, Bureaucrats, Archivists? The Living Archive of the Rondas Campesinas of Chota, Cajamarca
By Sandra Rodríguez Castañeda, on 2 February 2026
In this post, Sandra Rodríguez Castañeda, a PhD student at the UCL Institute of the Americas discusses a project of archival recovery in northern Peru.
Peasants, Bureaucrats, Archivists? The Living Archive of the Rondas Campesinas of Chota, Cajamarca
“Te buscas tu muerte” (You are looking for your own death), reads a carved inscription on the fleshly leaf of a penca (Agave cordillerensis). Widely used as fencing material in the Peruvian Andes, this plant also serves as a surface for anonymous handwritten messages scratched with its pointed thorn – usually love notes, but sometimes threats –like this one. It is common to find such messages along communal paths where pencas double as fences and public boards. A photocopy of this leaf appears as bio-evidence (see image above) within an acta de constatación (minute of findings), produced after a “visual inspection” carefully carried out on Eufemio B.’s property. The minute confirms the destruction of a pajuro tree and incorporates photographs of additional death threats: one written on the accuser’s door, and a medium-size cross drawn in oil on the entryway floor. In 2003, Eufemio B accused Demóstenes T. of taking possession of a piece of land he claimed as his own. Despite its formal language and legal tone, this file was not produced for a court of law. It belongs instead to a folk-legal system devised and administered by peasants in the northern Peruvian Andes over nearly five decades: the justice system of the rondas campesinas.
Cuba’s Past, Present, and Many Possible Futures
By William A. Booth, on 26 January 2026
In this post, William A. Booth, Lecturer in Latin American Studies at the UCL Institute of the Americas, reflects on Cuba after a recent visit to the island, where he attended a conference marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Tricontinental Conference.
Cuba’s Past, Present, and Many Possible Futures
I have just returned from Havana, Cuba where I was taking part in a conference examining the ‘context, impact, legacy and future’ of the Tricontinental Conference on its sixtieth anniversary. This was hosted by the University of Havana and co-organised by the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Research on Cuba, and attended by almost two hundred scholars from all over the world. It was covered by local and regional television stations.
It was an interesting and rather tense time to be in Havana – the morning after I arrived, two days of national mourning began for the thirty-two Cuban soldiers killed in Trump’s raid on Venezuela; the day after I left, their bodies were repatriated and Havana saw huge marches marked by sorrow, anger and defiance. The conference served as a timely reminder of the solidarity, co-operation and sacrifice associated with the Tricontinental; we heard excellent papers on education, health, construction and military training. One of the keynotes was given by Comandante Victor Dreke, veteran of anti-colonial struggles in Africa and former comrade of Amílcar Cabral. Now almost ninety years old, his incandescence over ongoing US intervention in Latin America was palpable. Read the rest of this entry »
Walking towards Democratic Backsliding? Chile at a Crossroads
By Javiera Arce Riffo, on 19 January 2026
In this post, Javiera Arce Riffo, a PhD Student at the UCL Institute of the Americas, discusses the recent Chilean elections.
Walking towards Democratic Backsliding? Chile at a Crossroads
On Sunday, 14 December 2025, the far-right candidate José Antonio Kast won the Chilean presidential election. The result was not a surprise to the Chilean public, as most opinion polls had predicted it. Still, this pendular swing in Chilean politics caused alarm in some external observers. As I discuss below, the results of the recent elections are a reflection of broader external factors and internal dynamics.
Firstly, it is no novelty that we are living through a global wave of democratic backsliding. In recent years, democracies from across the Americas, such as Argentina, Brazil and the United States, have elected presidents who have put to the test the stability of democratic institutions. Such leaders often achieve power through electoral competition: they respect the formal rules of the game to gain office only to then begin a gradual process of institutional weakening—ultimately leading to democratic erosion. Read the rest of this entry »
A Cure for Private Sector Corruption? Corporate Governance Codes in Peru
By John Lawrence, on 14 January 2026
In this post, Dr John Lawrence, a former PhD student of the UCL Institute of the Americas, writes about his recently published book, based on his doctoral dissertation, Take-Up, Resistance and Transformation of Corporate Governance Codes, (Palgrave, 2025).
A Cure for Private Sector Corruption? Corporate Governance Codes in Peru
John Lawrence
Two events occurred in 2014 that affected corporate life in Peru in two very different ways.
The first, the Odebrecht scandal, came to light in late 2014, when Brazilian authorities uncovered a massive public sector bribery scheme involving $788 million in bribes across 12 countries in Latin America. Odebrecht was the largest construction company in the region and had created a new department to pay bribes to government officials responsible for contracting with infrastructure firms to build new projects. The scandal is often referred to as Lava Jato or “car wash” because investigations into money laundering through car washes led, through Petrobras, the state oil company, to Odebrecht. The story broke in Peru in 2017. It turned out that Odebrecht had chosen Peru as its staging post outside Brazil because of the high level of tolerance to corruption – Peruvians were believed to be generally tolerant of bribery if it meant that they had new roads and bridges! Pointing to this supposed tolerant attitude to corruption, in their defence, Odebrecht claimed merely to have ‘industrialized a widespread cottage industry’. Read the rest of this entry »
Policing in the Post-Colonial State: The Politics of Militarised Policing in Jamaica, 1962-1976
By Jacob Bright, on 22 December 2025
In this post, Jacob Bright, a student in the MA in Latin American Studies programme, writes about the research for his dissertation, which was awarded the Elsa Goveia prize for the best dissertation on the Caribbean.
Policing in the Post-Colonial State: The Politics of Militarised Policing in Jamaica, 1962-1976
Jacob Bright
Policing in Jamaica during the 1960s and 1970s was militarised and violent. This is usually attributed to political pressures, colonial legacies, and social failures: insecure leaders facing partisan competition, growing societal unrest, and threats to their authority turned to repression to maintain control. As revealed through my research in the National Archives, this history is, however, incomplete.
Empire remained deeply entangled with Jamaica’s security long after independence in 1962. This was not colonial influence fading away, but an intentional policy that enabled convergence with British interests through training programmes, personnel exchanges, and the grooming of leadership.
British officials worked to ensure Jamaican policing developed “along British lines”, maintaining regional influence and alignment on security priorities. Foreign powers, particularly Britain, wielded considerable influence over Jamaica’s security infrastructure through the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and Jamaica Defence Force (JDF). The JCF was formed in 1867 after the Morant Bay Rebellion and underwent little change over the following century. The JDF, created in 1962, was commanded by British officers until 1965, inheriting the structure, tactics, and repressive mentality of its imperial predecessor. Both remained institutional legacies of colonial control. Read the rest of this entry »
Lessons Learned from Fifty Years of Operation Cóndor
By Tom Hindley, on 15 December 2025
In this blog, Tom Hindley, a final-year undergraduate at the UCL Institute of the Americas, writes on the recent Institute of the Americas’ public seminar about Operation Cóndor.
Lessons Learned from Fifty Years of Operation Cóndor
Tom Hindley
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the latest instalment in the Institute of the Americas’ public seminar series. As a student at the Institute, I regularly attend these seminars, which offer an opportunity to connect with my academic interests (and grab some of the best empanadas available in London). However, this particular seminar really stood out as both a cutting remembrance of an important historical process, the coordinated policy of repression across several South American countries by military regimes in the 1970s that came to be known as Plan Cóndor or Operation Cóndor, and a reminder of a poignantly current political trend towards authoritarianism.
Fifty years after Operation Cóndor, to some, may sound like a conventional retelling of a conventional Latin American Cold War history that elicits the usual senses of shock and disbelief which accompany a raw account of violence and human rights abuse. However, through the broad perspectives of speakers Karinna Fernández Neira, Philippe Sands and Sebastián Smart, the idea of a concluded history – or of anything conventional at all – could not be further from the truth. Read the rest of this entry »
Slavery in the British Empire and Its Legacy in the Modern World
By Steve Cushion, on 9 December 2025
In this post, Steve Cushion, Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of the Americas, and a former PhD student of the department, reflects on his most recent book.
Slavery in the British Empire and Its Legacy in the Modern World
My original motivation for writing this book was to bypass the apparently interminable discussion about whether “Britain” had, or had not, profited from slavery and the trafficking in enslaved Africans. Basing the discussion on macroeconomic statistics seemed to me to miss the point that Britain is divided into social classes and interest groups. This book has sought to address that gap by examining those who gained so much from the business of slavery, using examples of major businessmen, bankers, and commodity traders, as well as landowners and enslavers, all of whom placed profit before people. Their fabulous wealth contrasted starkly with the overwhelming majority of the population of Britain, who lived in abject poverty. Trickle-down economics was no more a reality in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than it is today. Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working-Class in England describes most workers and poor farmers earning only enough to survive – a subsistence income that barely allowed them to maintain their ability to work.
Profit and loss take place at the level of individual enterprises. A single businessman making an exceptional profit can be significant in promoting economic development, but his role is obscured if we only look at average figures and global statistics. The fact that many of the early developers of industrialisation, as well as their financiers, made their initial capital through slavery and trafficking is therefore more important than the generalisations. Read the rest of this entry »
US aggression against Venezuela: a war foretold?
By Pablo Uchoa, on 2 December 2025
US aggression against Venezuela: a war foretold?
Save for a total change of heart in Donald Trump, it is hard to see a reversal of the US military buildup off Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.
Though Trump insists that this military muscle flexing is aimed at combating narcotrafficking, the approach taken indicates that the ultimate goal is regime change. Even with Venezuela representing a fraction of US-bound drug flow, the US administration effectively branded Nicolás Maduro a terrorist and a threat to US national security on 24 November, after designating the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” a foreign terrorist organisation with Maduro as its head. This gives US forces ample mandate to target the Venezuelan president. In October, Trump authorised the CIA to conduct lethal operations inside Venezuela, and added that his administration had been considering operations on land.
UCL Americas Blog
By Rachel Cronkshaw, on 24 November 2025
Welcome to the official blog of the UCL Institute of the Americas!
Here you’ll find contributions from our staff, students, alumni, and visiting scholars, exploring a wide range of topics that deepen understanding of the Western Hemisphere.
Our aim is to showcase the diversity of scholarship and learning fostered at the Institute, while also contributing to broader public conversations on issues that matter across the region.
We invite you to read, reflect, and share our posts within your networks—and we hope this blog becomes a valuable space for dialogue and discovery.