Our weekly Inside Latin America newsletter, providing our readers with an inside look into two of the most underreported stories of the week.
The War Of The Triple Alliance: How One Line From Lula Reopened One Of South America’s Deepest Historical Wounds
PARAGUAY — Paraguay’s Congress formally repudiates Lula after he cited the War of the Triple Alliance — the deadliest conflict in South American history, one that killed 50-60% of Paraguay’s population — to justify Brazilian defense spending, saying “one good day, Paraguay decided to invade Brazil.”
Both chambers passed declarations accusing him of distorting a war whose origins remain genuinely contested among historians, and demanded the return of the historic “Cañón Cristiano” war trophy still held in Rio de Janeiro, while advancing a bill naming August 12 a national day of genocide commemoration — reopening one of the region’s deepest historical wounds over a line meant simply to justify buying more weapons.
Reflections On The Petro Government as He Marks His Final Official Visit as President To Havana
HAVANA, CUBA — Gustavo Petro closed out his four-year presidency with a farewell solidarity visit to Havana rather than Washington, meeting with Miguel Díaz-Canel just days before his successor, Abelardo de la Espriella, formally severs Colombia’s diplomatic relations with Cuba.
The trip — Petro’s third to the island as president — capped a foreign policy consistently aligned with the region’s left-leaning and internationally isolated governments, with Cuban state media framing his choice of Havana over Washington as a deliberate statement in itself, even as the practical goodwill it built will have little time to matter before Bogotá's posture reverses entirely.
