The Economist Latin America October 26, 2019

Politics Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, won a second term in office but his Liberal Party lost its majority. The Conservative Party won the popular vote and wiped out the Liberals in the oil-producing western provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. To enact his programme, Mr Trudeau will depend on support from smaller parties, especially the left-leaning New Democrats. Protests against a fare increase on the metro in Santiago, Chile’s capital, became violent, prompting the government to impose its first curfew since the end of a military dictatorship in 1990. The unrest spread to other cities. At least 18 people died in rioting. Bolivia’s opposition accused the government of Evo Morales, the country’s leftist president, of attempting electoral fraud. In the early count in the presidential election his centrist rival, Carlos Mesa, appeared to…

ELIZABETH WARREN is remarkable. Born into a struggling family in Oklahoma, she worked her way up to become a star law professor at Harvard. As a single mother in the 1970s, she broke with convention by pursuing a full-time career. In an era of rule-by-tweet, she is an unashamed policy wonk who is now a frontrunner to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020. Polls suggest that, in a head-to-head contest, more Americans would vote for her than for Donald Trump. But as remarkable as Ms Warren’s story is the sheer scope of her ambition to remake American capitalism. She has an admirably detailed plan to transform a system she believes is corrupt and fails ordinary people (see Briefing). Plenty of her ideas are good. She is right to try…

Politics Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, won a second term in office but his Liberal Party lost its majority. The Conservative Party won the popular vote and wiped out the Liberals in the oil-producing western provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. To enact his programme, Mr Trudeau will depend on support from smaller parties, especially the left-leaning New Democrats. Protests against a fare increase on the metro in Santiago, Chile’s capital, became violent, prompting the government to impose its first curfew since the end of a military dictatorship in 1990. The unrest spread to other cities. At least 18 people died in rioting. Bolivia’s opposition accused the government of Evo Morales, the country’s leftist president, of attempting electoral fraud. In the early count in the presidential election his centrist rival, Carlos…

STORIES OF THE clampdown in Jammu & Kashmir and the threat to strip millions of poor and mostly Muslim people in Assam of citizenship, a form of ethnic cleansing by bureaucracy, have seeped into the world’s consciousness, but many Western businesspeople are still inclined to defend the Indian prime minister. Even if Narendra Modi is bad for democracy, they say, his pro-business philosophy is good for the economy. But, as our special report this week argues, that argument no longer washes. India’s economy is incompetently managed and doing badly. Growth fell from 8% in the middle of last year to 5% year-on-year in the most recent quarter. That might not sound too bad, and other emerging economies are also suffering, but India needs to grow fast just to keep its vast…

WHEN VLADIMIR PUTIN arrived in Brisbane for the G20 meeting five years ago, he cut an isolated figure, frozen out of the civilised world by the annexation of Crimea, the invasion of eastern Ukraine and the shooting down of a passenger airliner with Dutch and Australian families on board. Western leaders kicked Russia out of the G7 and imposed sanctions. Some refused to greet Mr Putin. He left early, snubbed and humiliated. Five years later he has swaggered back onto the world stage, presiding over the conflict in the Middle East, building a strategic alliance with China and driving a wedge between NATO allies. It was his residence in Sochi, not President Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago estate in Florida, that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, visited on October…

ELIZABETH WARREN is remarkable. Born into a struggling family in Oklahoma, she worked her way up to become a star law professor at Harvard. As a single mother in the 1970s, she broke with convention by pursuing a full-time career. In an era of rule-by-tweet, she is an unashamed policy wonk who is now a frontrunner to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020. Polls suggest that, in a head-to-head contest, more Americans would vote for her than for Donald Trump. But as remarkable as Ms Warren’s story is the sheer scope of her ambition to remake American capitalism. She has an admirably detailed plan to transform a system she believes is corrupt and fails ordinary people (see Briefing). Plenty of her ideas are good. She is right to…