Sublime

As Brazil prepared for the 2010 election, Lula was ebullient. The success of the country’s bids to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games were seen as markers of Brazil’s status as a global power. Brazilian diplomats were at the helm of the World Trade Organization and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. The Brazilian army had led a

The hot-potato game over the presidency finally ended with the selection by Congress of Senator Eduardo Duhalde, the Peronists' candidate in the 1999 presidential election. Then came the long-expected but nonetheless seismic shift: At Duhalde's behest, Congress approved legislation on January 6, 2002, ending the convertibility system and fixing the

For Latin America, this has been an era of democratic consolidation in many countries (including Mexico) that had long been run by a single party. It has also been a time in which a number of civil conflicts have been brought to an end, most notably in Colombia. But democracy and populism remain in tension in both Brazil and Argentina. Elsewhere, a

There was torrential rain in Brasília when Dilma Rousseff was inaugurated as president on 1 January 2011. But the mood in Brazil’s capital was upbeat, as the country’s first ever woman president arrived at the National Congress building in a 1952 Rolls Royce Silver Wraith with her daughter Paula next to her and an all-female security detail jogging

"I am a legend," he told a group of foreign investors at a dinner speech in March 2001 shortly before his appointment to head the Economy Ministry. The power of his intellect, his incorruptibility, and the sincerity of his desire for his country's well-being were undeniable; the only question was whether he had a sense of proportion about himself.