Speakers:

• Iván Duque, President of Colombia
• Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Contributor, CNBC (interviewer)

Colombian President Iván Duque said it wasn't hard to step up and denounce the embattled Nicolás Maduro, comparing watching the crisis in Venezuela to hearing a neighbor beat his wife every night. When you see the neighbor in the elevator the next day, said Duque, you can’t simply pretend things are normal. “It was my moral duty to denounce that dictator [Nicolás Maduro],” said Duque at an event in Washington, DC, adding that he hopes Maduro is eventually tried by the International Criminal Court. He said that, more than discuss what will happen to Maduro, the international community should be focused on doing everything it can to bring about the end of the dictatorship. He called on both the Chinese and the Venezuelan military to recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's interim commander-in-chief.

On domestic issues, Duque and Caruso-Cabrera covered everything from boosting Colombian GDP not through oil exports but the creative industries (aka the Orange Economy), treating the coca problem wholistically, involving Afro-Colombian communities in state projects, and the need for Colombia’s special transitional justice court system to adequately mete out proper justice for former FARC commanders found responsible for crimes. He also said he did not begrudge his original mentor, former President and now Senator Álvaro Uribe, for publicly disagreeing with him on his tax plan. Disagreements in democracy and even within a party are healthy, Duque said, adding that Uribe’s decision to return to serve in Congress after his presidency—as John Quincy Adams also did—was patriotic. Duque pushed back on the characterization of him as from the right politically. Security is a public good, he said, and a lack of it disproportionately affects the poor. Entrepreneurship simply makes common sense. He talked at length about how unregulated market access can open the doors to “voracious capitalism,” and said that one of the aims of his administration is to work on “closing the gap between rich and poor and talking about social justice. Whether that’s right or left, I don't know or I don’t care. I want to make Colombia a better place.”

Speakers:

• Alejandro Werner, Director, Western Hemisphere Department, International Monetary Fund
• Gerardo Rodriguez, Managing Director of Emerging Markets, BlackRock (interviewer)

The International Monetary Fund's Alejandro Werner returned to AS/COA for an annual outlook on the region's economic prospects. The fund's Western Hemisphere director covered the new administrations in Brazil and Mexico, as well as Argentina's economic reforms in an electoral year. Werner highlighted Bolsonaro's economic team opening up one of Latin America's most closed markets and noted that Mexico's attempts to curb fuel theft were sensible. He cautioned, however, that these government have been in office for few months and thus any conclusive assessment of their policies is premature. Werner also pointed out that if Argentina elects a new administration, the current IMF deal with the country would be reviewed.

As women push for equality and bring conversations about feminism to new levels around the world, female artists today are participating in the narrative as equals. In Latin America, art produced by women is expanding the boundaries of this conversation, and the exhibition Give Me What You Ask For at Americas Society showcases exactly that. “If you are a woman and you’re from Central America and you are working from there, it becomes in a way political,” says artist Priscilla Monge, the winner of Costa Rica’s 2018 Francisco Amighetti National Award for Visual Arts, who is exhibiting along with fellow Tica artist Victoria Cabezas.

“They think about tradition in critical terms, meaning patriarchy, aspects of conservatism, which include religion, morality, family, the state, society,” says Americas Society Chief Curator Gabriela Rangel of Monge and Cabezas. “They think about this panoply of aspects that make the world difficult for women.” In this video about the exhibition, Monge explains about her process producing pieces made of sanitary napkins. Cabezas describes what motivated her banana series, and curator Miguel A. López talks about why the work from the two Costa Rican artists from two different generations needed to be together in one room. 

• Learn more about Victoria Cabezas and Priscilla Monge: Give Me What You Ask For, on view at the Americas Society Visual Arts gallery through May 4, 2019.

Video by Luisa Leme.
Exhibition photography by Beatriz Meseguer.
Soundtrack by Megman Music (Manny Oquendo)/Arr. Edmundo Ramírez. Performed at Americas Society in New York.