A cherished soap opera star and her British ex-husband were slain in a carjacking that spared their 5-year-old daughter.
A longtime correspondent for Newsweek, Mac Margolis has traveled extensively in Brazil and Latin America. He has contributed to The Economist, The Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor, and is the author of The Last New World: The Conquest of the Amazon Frontier.
Latin America
The real losers in Honduras’s hotly-contested presidential election are ousted president Manuel Zelaya and the ghost of Hugo Chavez.
Plus Ça Change
From an attack on an El Salvador group tracking down disappeared children to Daniel Ortega’s recent power grab, are Central America’s old, bloody faultlines reemerging?
Censorship
Thanks to an arcane law, the country’s rich and famous are able to block publication of books on their lives—but the Supreme Court may be set to loosen the publishing stranglehold.
Que Bella
At least one thing works in Venezuela: the Bolivarian republic is world-class at churning out beauty queens. Maybe President Maduro should be taking notes.
Citizen Eike
Eike Bastista was the world’s eighth-richest man, and the poster-boy for the new Brazil, flashy and flush with wealth—until his oil and gas bubble burst.
Que?
Embattled president Nicolas Maduro called an early Feliz Navidad in his latest bid to win hearts and minds at the ballot box.
Newspeak
Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, just unveiled the country’s euphemistically named Deputy Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness—to mockery in Latin America.
Here S/He Comes
Brazil crowned a winner in its second annual Miss T competition, which is winning fans and challenging definitions of femininity and beauty in tradition-bound Latin America. Mac Margolis reports.
Bolivarian Alliance
Venezuela’s embattled president is trying to convince the National Assembly to hand him extraordinary executive powers—but his opponents aren’t buying his naked power grab, says Mac Margolis.