Recent announcements from President Bush on prioritising the biofuels agenda have fuelled the debate on the possible implications for developing countries and one of the main concerns is the impact it will have on food security. This issue is of special concern for Mexico, which experienced its first shock in the rise of food prices in January, when the price of tortillas more than doubled. Facing popular discontent, the government’s immediate solution was to authorize the import of 650,000 tons of corn free of tariffs from the US and intervene in the regulation of prices until May, when the new harvests in the North of Mexico are    more »

The volume of remittances hit the headlines last week on the BBC and One World websites.  The BBC reported that remittances to Latin America are now $62bn, more than aid and foreign direct investment combined. 

This figure has attracted the interest of development policymakers. How, they ask, can remittances be harnessed as an effective development tool? The answer is as yet unknown. What we do know is that the majority of migrants send home small amounts, around $100 to $150 a month.  Charges are incurred per transaction meaning remittances are big business.  One current line of inquiry is what governments ...   more »

To date, the Juntos programme has been the most ambitious and innovative government attempt at tackling childhood poverty in Peru, a country where two out of three children live below the poverty line and many lack access to basic services. Strange then, that the programme has received so little attention; in fact, debates on child protection in Peru have been more preoccupied with how to punish child molesters and kidnappers and fathers who evade child support than with the state’s responsibility for child well-being. However, according to a recent report to which ODI researchers contributed, Juntos has made ...   more »

The Overseas Development Institute invites you to contribute to our Latin America and Caribbean Blog!  This blog is written by ODI researchers and provides a forum for discussion and debate on politics and development in Latin America and the Caribbean from contributors all over the world. We also provide information about events, publications or web resources on Latin America. We are particularly keen to encourage the participation of those of you in the region, and welcome your comments, which can be in English or Spanish, as well as your posts. So if you have a specific issue or news story you’d like ...   more »

To those who, like myself, had assumed that Telesur was merely an outlet for pro-Chavez propaganda, this talk by James Painter of the BBC World Service revealed some surprising and some not-so-surprising facts about this Caracas-based pan-Latin American TV network. In fact, Telesur is not owned exclusively by Venezuela, but a joint project in which a number of Latin American governments are stakeholders - although it is all paid for by Venezuela’s oil wealth. Claiming to provide an alternative to CNN and other Western media, it follows the example of other ‘counter-hegemonic’ news channels like Al-Jazeera, which ...   more »

In this conference organised by LSE’s Peruvian Society, speakers reflected on how the new political map of Latin America is influencing Peru’s integration into transnational markets and what this tells us about the opportunities and challenges facing developing countries when interacting in the global economy. Speakers were Dr. Ricardo Luna (Peruvian Ambassador in the UK), Dr. John Crabtree (Centre for Latin American Studies, Oxford University) and Mr. Richard Ralph  (former British Ambassador in Peru (2003-2006) and current chairman of a UK mining company working in Peru). The conference was chaired by LSE’s Dr Evan Killick....   more »