South China Morning Post - Americas

At 18, Martin Taborda began studying law at Argentina’s prestigious University of Buenos Aires, hoping to become the first in his family to graduate. Just two years later, that dream has slipped out of reach. Unemployed and US$1,300 in debt, he can no longer afford the bus fare from his suburb or the books he needs to keep studying – even at a tuition-free university that has he...

Nicaragua has granted a Chinese-owned company linked to one sanctioned by Washington the right to prospect and dig for gold across 262 sq km (101 sq miles) of rainforest, about a quarter the size of Hong Kong. The 25-year concession over the block, named Jade, went to Linze Excelente Mineria, a company that appeared in Nicaragua’s mining registry only last year. The block is in ...

When US President Donald Trump announced on August 28 that the United States had secured majority control over some 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil through a private company, the North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), he called it “the biggest oil deal in history”. The White House fact sheet provided the details: NABEP’s 100-year concessions on 17 oilfields with 65 bi...

For one grandmother, it was when bullets began hitting ⁠the rooftops of her neighbourhood that she decided she would have to leave the housing development ⁠where she had lived for nearly 20 years. A sharp rise in fighting between gang factions in Ecuador has prompted thousands of families to flee and abandon their homes to the gangs, who strip the houses for drug money or use th...

Nicaragua on Tuesday accused Germany of “multiple violations of international law” at the United Nations top court, as it pressed its case that Berlin was complicit in what it described as genocide in Gaza. The Central American country has dragged Germany to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, accusing Berlin of breaching the 1948 UN Genocide Convention with i...