Ivan Briscoe

Ivan Briscoe is Program Director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the International Crisis Group, the international conflict-prevention organisation. Twitter: @itbriscoe

Ivan Briscoe es director del programa de América Latina y el Caribe del International Crisis Group, organización internacional para la prevención de conflictos.Twitter: @itbriscoe

Chávez to eternity

This indeed is the authentic measure of the late president’s achievements: there is now no simple switch in Venezuelan public ideology – no going back. The turn in the post-colonial history of the region is unequivocal.

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 10 Mar 2013

Will UK and Argentina ever reach reconciliation over the Falklands / Malvinas

Interstate conflict used to be the norm. Now, as old battles are being put behind us, Ivan Briscoe asks if the UK and Argentina can reconcile their differences over the Falklands/Malvinas.

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 7 Jul 2012

Deals with the devil

Talk of a pact with criminals is beyond the pale in Mexico’s presidential election campaign. But the tentative success of a deal with gang leaders in one of Central America’s most violent countries suggests the time may have come to explore a new style of negotiations aimed at reducing appalling l

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 1 Jun 2012

YPF in the world

The sudden expropriation of Argentina’s YPF’s oil firm has stirred alarm across Spain, the EU and international business. But the galloping radicalization of economic policy led by a group of young officials in Buenos Aires is grounded in lessons drawn from the global crisis and the errors of Euro

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 20 Apr 2012

Shots across the ocean: joining the dots of modern violence

Two bouts of gunfire on either side of the Atlantic gave the inspiration to this week’s series of articles. But if the statistics show that war is declining and criminal violence in most regions is flatlining, how should we read the redoubts of extreme insecurity? Are they holdovers from the past,

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 14 Oct 2011

Unsentimental partners: Obama goes south of the border

Obama’s trip to the stable democracies of Brazil, Chile and El Salvador beginning on March 19 is a sign of maturing relations between the US and Latin America. Nevertheless, a toughening approach towards security issues and the hard-headed calculation of US national interests will be a dominant th

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 17 Mar 2011

A soundbite for the poor

How should civil society convey the countless loopholes, miseries and quiet victories of development in this digital era of time-compressed argument and ideological insinuation?

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 12 Oct 2010

Tomás Eloy Martínez and the Argentine dream

The work of the Argentinean writer Tomás Eloy Martínez is intimately bound with the country’s modern history of political delusion and personal liberation. Ivan Briscoe reflects on a fiction-reality fusion that made a unique contribution to “inventing Perón”.

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 9 Jun 2010

Saving Chávez

The political projects of Latin America’s radical leaders have democratic rhetoric at their core. But their dynamics, as in Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, often seem to pull in another direction. The tensions will come to a point of decision in this decade, says Ivan Briscoe.

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 13 Jan 2010

The writing on the wall: media wars in Latin America

Latin America is cleaving into two, with an abyss opening up in its centre. Yet it still manages to share between its polarised political segments some practical techniques in bullying

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 12 Oct 2009

The Americas and Washington: moving on

Fidel Castro, reincarnated by some imaginative deity as a bedridden blogger, has recently annotated with the detail of a station-master the movements across Europe of the new United States president.

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 17 Apr 2009

Lockdown in Vienna: the UN’s drug summit

Only a very brave or simply suicidal person drives past the military barracks on the outskirts of Zacapa in a tinted-glass four-wheel drive. To do so would be to invite

By Ivan Briscoe

/ 23 Mar 2009