Brennan Albrecht

This past summer, Nicaragua has experienced one of the worst political crises it has faced in the 21st century. President Daniel Ortega headed legislation in the spring of 2018 that saw vast reforms to Nicaragua’s social security program. The reforms involved increasing taxes while lowering the pension rate by five percent, a move which has proved to be extremely controversial given President Ortega’s history of authoritarianism. The protests have escalated since April and it is estimated that over 300 people have been killed, with thousands more arrested and injured [1].

The recent presidential elections in Mexico marked a new wave in Mexican politics, and a turn of administration not unlike that seen in the United States in 2016. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador won a landslide election, being the first president from the leftist National Regeneration Movement Party (Morena) in Mexico’s history. Since Mexico’s last major constitutional reform in 1926, the right-leaning Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) held overwhelming power for the duration of the 20th century, losing in 2000 for two terms of six years, but regained power in 2012 under Enrique Pena Nieto. Mexico’s rampant economic problems, coupled by troubling bouts of violence and corruption (as evidenced by the disappearance and cover-up of the 43 students in Guerrero in 2014), increased the Mexican people’s distrust of government and desire for major institutional change (Noriega, 2018).