Alidad Vassigh

Chilean-born, Buenos Aires-based writer Cristian Alarcón says it took 30 years of therapy to get over his parents' bid to "cure" him of being gay as a child, but insists it's too late to be angry with them.

Although the last Salvadorian woman imprisoned on charges linked to abortion was released in December, 11 similar cases are currently pending in the country. Human rights activists acknowledge the progress made, and the work that remains to be done to overturn strict anti-abortion laws.

Uncertain economic conditions and divisive posturing in favor of the Global South may send Brazilian President Lula da Silva's middle class voters back to the Right, where his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro is maneuvering between criminal charges and a return to the presidency.

Latin American governments have barely denounced the Russian attack on Ukraine, partly for lingering distrust of the United States. But there is also a regional misperception of Russia as a new Soviet Union and friend of "lesser nations" struggling for betterment.

The late Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author's sons have published his draft novel See You in August against his will. Yet no work of art is ever really finished. And excerpts and fragments are suited to our anxious times.

A recent spike in gang violence in Rosario in central Argentina is prompting comparisons to the old breeding ground of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. But where would organized crime be, without the quiet connivance of a host of social and political actors?

As Colombia debates banning the abusive practice of "conversion therapy," a Colombian teacher recalls the four years of therapy he undertook as teenager and his path to self-acceptance.

Recent Cuban protests over fuel and food swiftly turned against the communist system but unlike the past, the state, which is asking the UN for food aid, refrained from giving a crushing response. Venezuela is no better off, and the age of symbiosis for Latin America's leftist regimes is long gone.

The UN and the international criminal justice system are failing to prevent and punish brazen aggressions and killings around the world. When this period of turmoil ends, states must find new rules and tools to prevent the return of totalitarian violence.

Ecuador's forced entry into Mexico's embassy has been roundly condemned, but its worst effect in Latin America may be to undermine a regional tradition of dissidents seeking protection in an embassy in their country.