Tag

Latin America

Cuba, Communism, and the Embargo Problem

This week, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in protest, demanding government action to address severe economic want and the COVID-19 pandemic, while also calling for the resignation of President Miguel Díaz-Canel and the end of sixty years of Communist rule. In response, the Cuban government has arrested over one hundred protesters and called...

Letters to the Editors—Legal Tender: El Salvador Bets on Bitcoin

As the Dispatch recognizes, much of the discussion of cryptocurrencies is obscured by the fact that people do not understand what they are. Monetary theory tells us that currency – fiat, crypto, or otherwise – must perform as three functions: medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account. As speculative assets, cryptocurrencies fall...

Legal Tender: El Salvador Bets on Bitcoin

In San Salvador on Tuesday evening, after a proposal and hard-sell by populist President Nayib Bukele, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador passed a slim three-page bill enshrining Bitcoin as a legal tender currency within the country – a designation previously held solely by the U.S. dollar. In the West, Bitcoin has been generating a...

Challenges Facing Biden’s Latin America Policy

On issues from competition with China to the place of tariffs in trade policy, notable affinities exist between the Biden and Trump administration’s foreign policies. In Latin American relations, however, President Biden has sought to distinguish himself from his predecessor, vowing to center his policy on democracy and human rights, with diplomacy as its key...