In April, President Obama and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos reinitiated discussions on establishing a free trade agreement. The agreement is now scheduled to be implemented by the end of the year, and the Colombian port city of Buenaventura will likely be one of the most directly affected places, at a high cost to the local community. This article was originally published in the July/August 2011 issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas.

Beto, a 16-year-old hit man for La Familia Michoacana, one of the most notoriously violent Mexican drug gangs, tells his story. This article was originally published in the May/June 2011 issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas.

This Sunday marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. But it is also the 38th anniversary of Augusto Pinochet's bloody coup d’état against the democratically-elected Chilean president Salvador Allende. In commemoration of September 11, we have pulled from the NACLA archives. The following is the introduction to the October 1973 NACLA Report, written only days after the Pinochet coup and entitled, “Chile: The Story Behind the Coup.”

With the recent revelation that President Hugo Chávez underwent emergency surgery to remove a cancerous tumor during a visit to Cuba in mid June, an explosion in political speculation has been swirling through the streets of Venezuela and catching fire around the world.