Dear friend, All eyes were on Honduras this week as Xiomara Castro decisively defeated the ruling party candidate and put an end to a dozen years of corrupt rule. The election was a direct repudiation of a succession of U.S. governments that had not only accepted the results of the 2009 coup that toppled Manuel Zelaya but also relied on the right-wing autocrats who took over as key allies in the region. As I write in my World Beat column this week, Castro’s victory is yet another sign that Latin America is breaking with the right-wing populists that have ruled the region so disastrously over the last decade. “The victory of Xiomara Castro in Honduras, Pedro Castillo’s earlier win in Peru, and the increased power of Pachakutik in Ecuador point to a different kind of future for Latin America, one that is less corrupt, more responsive to economic needs and environmental imperatives, and more attune to the realities of indigenous communities,” I write. Not everything is so rosy, however. In the first round of presidential elections in Chile, a new Trump look-alike by the name of José Antonio Kast won the most votes. As Kevin Funk writes this week in Foreign Policy In Focus, Kast’s left-wing challenger Gabriel Boric still has a good shot at winning when Chileans go to the polls again later this month. Also at FPIF this week, I take a close look at the U.S. policy of sanctioning North Korea and conclude that this economic strategy has demonstrably failed. And Basav Sen untangles the complicated politics of fossil fuels at the recent COP26 climate summit. John Feffer
Director, FPIF | 
