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Five Biggest Stories in Latin America in 2015

By Alan Gomez

These anti-incumbent waves in Latin America don’t signal the end of leftist rule, per se, but rather that “current rulers are not getting the job done,” comments AS/COA’s Brian Winter.

MIAMI — If there was a common theme in Latin America in 2015, it was one of big changes.

Voters rebuked their leaders in Venezuela and Argentina. Prosecutors indicted a sitting president inGuatemala. Plummeting commodity prices slowed many economies. And peace drew near in theSouthern Hemisphere's longest-running armed conflict.

The biggest change: Cuba's new relationship with the United States took root with a flurry of political, economic and cultural activity not seen since before the two countries brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

"It was the most dramatic, positive change in the relationship between Washington and Latin America in a long time," said Brian Winter, vice president of policy at theAmericas Society and Council of the Americas, a New York think tank.

Winter and other Latin American experts pointed to the decision by President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro to re-establish diplomatic relations after five decades of enmity as the most transformative development of the year....

Read the full article here.

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