Costa Rica, the country that abolished its army in 1948 and long sold itself as Central America's peaceful exception, is about to open a prison built to El Salvador's design.
Latin America and the Caribbean will grow 2.2% this year, slightly below the 2.4% recorded in 2025, the World Bank said on October 6.
Five countries generated all their grid electricity from renewables in the latest year on record and 64 got at least half, according to new data from Stanford University's Mark Jacobson.
An extreme El Niño event could wipe at least 2% off Latin America and the Caribbean's gross domestic product over three years and push as many as 4.8mn more people into poverty by the end of the decade, ECLAC said in a new report.
The United States has removed Venezuela from its list of countries deemed to have "failed demonstrably" to combat drug trafficking, the first time Caracas has come off that designation since 2005.
Latin America and the Caribbean's economy will grow 2.2% in 2026, unchanged from ECLAC's earlier forecast, before picking up to 2.5% in 2027, as high informality and weak investment continue to cripple the region's growth potential, the UN body says.
Latin America's insurtech sector attracted $90mn in investment during the first half of 2026, while the number of active companies climbed to 576, a 14% increase from a year earlier and the highest level since 2023, according to a new report.
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Latin American economies face renewed inflationary pressure and possible delays to interest rate cuts if a strong El Niño weather pattern disrupts food production, electricity generation and infrastructure this year, Swiss bank UBS said in a note.
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The war between the US, Israel and Iran will continue to weigh on Latin American and Caribbean economies for the rest of 2026, even if last month's fragile ceasefire holds, the UN's regional economic body has warned.
The International Monetary Fund has cut its forecast for global economic growth in 2026 to 3%, citing the fallout from the war in the Middle East, while projecting that Latin America and the Caribbean would grow 2.4% this year and 2.7% in 2027.
The World Bank has trimmed its growth forecasts for Latin America and the Caribbean for both 2026 and 2027, blaming the inflationary and monetary fallout from the Middle East conflict.
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El Salvador's Nayib Bukele remains the most popular president in Latin America, with a 69.1% approval rating, according to the June ranking published last week by pollster CB Global Data, which surveyed between 1,988 and 2,674 people in each country.
Latin America and the Caribbean's political systems are experiencing a gradual institutional decay that rarely manifests as outright democratic collapse but instead hollows out governance from within, the UNDP has warned in a new report.
Argentina remains by far the largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund, underscoring the depth of its long-running financial crisis and its dependence on multilateral support.
Israel arrived in Panama championing open waterways, just 67 days after co-initiating the strikes that closed Hormuz. Behind the diplomacy: five strategic objectives, one canal, and a Latin American alliance in construction.
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ECLAC trims Latin America's 2026 growth forecast to 2.2%, warning that soaring oil prices, tighter credit and slowing global trade are locking the region into a fourth consecutive year of sluggish expansion.
The Middle East conflict has landed on Latin America at an awkward moment. After two years of gradual progress bringing inflation under control, the region's central banks now face the prospect of that effort being undone by an external conflict.
The IMF raised its 2026 growth forecast for Latin America and the Caribbean by a tenth of a percentage point to 2.3%, while cautioning that the economic consequences of the war in the Middle East will most impact the region's smaller economies.
The World Bank has cut its 2026 growth forecast for Latin America and the Caribbean to 2.1%, down from 2.4% recorded last year, warning that the region faces a toxic combination of weak investment, tight fiscal space, and productivity deficits.
Trump launched the “Shield of the Americas” with 12 Latin American leaders in Miami, proposing military action against drug cartels while signalling a broader effort to reassert US influence in the region and counter China.