Constitutional Court Orders Removal of Guatemalan Education Minister

February 26, 2010

On February 25, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ordered the removal of Education Minister Bienvenido Argueta for failing to provide the court with complete information regarding the beneficiaries of President Álvaro Colóm’s flagship social program, Mi Familia Progresa.  This latest development in a months-old political drama augurs poorly for Guatemala’s fragile education system and President Colóm’s claims to be supporting transparency measures in this notoriously corrupt nation.

Mi Familia Progresa (MFP) is Guatemala’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, which provides cash payments to poor mothers, conditional upon them sending their children to school and for health check-ups.  CCT programs have become increasingly popular in Latin America, as they have shown demonstrably positive results on school enrolment and child health. 

President Colóm has hailed MFP as the cornerstone of his anti-poverty platform in Guatemala, but critics have argued that Colóm has used the program to reward voters who supported him in the 2007 elections.  Colóm’s critics also worry that the president has been transferring funds from other ministries to the program to use it as a campaign tool for his wife, Sandra Torres de Colóm, the coordinator and face of the Council of Social Cohesion that oversees MFP.

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Weekly News Roundup from Across the Americas

October 21, 2009

From the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. AS/COA Online's news brief examines the major—as well as some of the overlooked—events and stories occurring across the Americas. Check back every Wednesday for the weekly roundup.

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Honduran Talks Stall over Decision on Zelaya’s Future

Negotiations aimed at resolving the ongoing Honduran political impasse came to a standstill again this week. The main point of contention continues to be whether deposed leader Manuel Zelaya should be allowed to return to office. “Last week, Honduras’s World Cup qualification left the country glowing with optimism. Now, irrepressible hope and joy have again given way to a grimmer reality: political negotiations have hit a wall,” blogs Tegucigalpa-based Daniel Altschuler for Americas Quarterly, who writes about the proposals being passed back and forth between Zelaya and the interim government.

Read an AS/COA analysis on the halting steps made in the Honduran negotiations.

Protest and Media Restrictions Eased in Honduras

The Honduran interim government officially eased restrictions on protests and the opposition media earlier this week. A decree was passed after a pro-Zelaya protest in September to suspend five articles of the Honduran constitution, authorizing the closing of any media outlet deemed to disturb the peace. De facto leader Roberto Micheletti took action to repeal the decree earlier this month, but the measure did not take effect until yesterday. Coincidentally, the decree was lifted the day after the United Nations sent an OAS delegation to Honduras to begin a three-week human rights investigation.

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Education is a Key to Reducing Poverty in Colombia

May 7, 2009

Earlier this year, a state-of-the art school founded by the Colombian singer and Grammy winner, Shakira, opened amid much fanfare in her hometown of Barranquilla. Both Colombia’s President Álavro Uribe and Bill Clinton visited the model $6 million school.

The children, many from poor and displaced families, attending the Barefoot Foundation School are the privileged ones. Boasting nutritionists and psychologists on site, sports fields and well-equipped classrooms, the school is the exception, not the norm in Colombia.

The opening of the school should have prompted a much-needed debate about the lack of investment in education and the overall dire state of education in Colombia.  But it didn’t.

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Sugar: Looking Beyond Baseball

April 24, 2009

For many aspiring baseball players in the Dominican Republic, the sport is often seen as the ticket out of poverty. Young men live and breathe the successes of players such as Pedro Martínez and Sammy Sosa, seeing them as testaments to the promise that baseball holds—the chance to shape a life different from the one they’ve known.

The baseball industry is important culturally, socially and economically to the island of the Dominican Republic. As of 2005, there were 30 baseball academies in the Dominican Republic sponsored by major league organizations. Most were located in predominantly poor communities. Their existence is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it provides the young men of the area with an opportunity to do something. Many of these young men, however, choose to drop out of school to be able to train seriously.

With so much at stake, the chances for exploitation of the players are high. Common in the game are buscones, “agents” who promise to oversee the player’s career in exchange for a steep commission if the player is signed. In 2001, a buscón based in Santo Domingo charged a reported $150,000 of Yankee prospect Melky Cabrera's $175,000 signing bonus.

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