AS/COA hosted their 12th annual Bogotá Conference, “Colombia in the Eyes of Wall Street, Global Slowdown: Impact on Latin America” on June 18. The conference examined Colombia’s growth prospects in today’s challenging global environment. Read a summary of the event.

Speaking at AS/COA’s annual Bogotá conference, Colombian Trade Minister Luis Guillermo Plata outlined his country’s progress in economic growth since President Álvaro Uribe came into office. Plata outlined strategies to boost economic liberalization.

With tensions running high between some Andean countries, AS/COA convened a roundtable on economic, political, and security issues affecting the region. The discussion included a keynote speech by Ecuador's Minister of the Government and Police Fernando Bustamante.

After more than four decades of civil strife in Colombia, the death of the FARC’s founder and commander Manuel Marulanda's serves as the latest setback for an already weakened rebel group. 

Leaders from the European Union and Latin America gathered in Lima for a biennial summit, focusing on trade, inequality, and climate change as rising food prices threaten to exacerbate poverty. 

In an AS/COA Online interview, OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza describes the role of the agency in negotiating recent border tensions between Ecuador and Colombia, autonomy and recall votes in Bolivia, and U.S.-Cuba relations. "[T]he OAS has to prove itself as the main forum for political dialogue in the Americas," said Insulza.

“Trade agreements are not gifts of the United States [to another country] but gifts that we give ourselves,” said U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab. In a period of economic uncertainty, trade is an important driver of re-energizing economic growth, she emphasized at the 2008 Washington Conference on the Americas.