Laurence Blair

Selected work

Updated intermittently.

2024

• Financial Times: Beyond Machu Picchu — exploring the real last city of the Incas
  Though barely visited, Espíritu Pampa remains a powerful reminder of a lost empire

• The Guardian: Alarm over new law giving Paraguay powers to crack down on NGOs
  Activists liken it to civil society crackdowns in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Russia

• The New York Times: An Alarming Glimpse Into a Future of Historic Droughts

  Additional reporting.

• The Guardian: As fires decimate South America, smoke shrouds its skies
  Additional reporting.

• The New York Times: Paraguay Loves Mickey, Its Cartoon Mouse. Disney Doesn’t
  Mickey, a food-packaging company, is famous for facing down Disney in Paraguay’s Supreme Court

• Delayed Gratification #55: A coup is mounted in Bolivia
  But was it real?

• The New York Times: Uruguay’s 2024 Election: What to Know
  Crime, child poverty and an aging population are top issues

• Americas Quarterly: Under Peña, Paraguay Grows But Its Politics Look Uncertain
  Critics worry about rule of law and the influence of a powerful former leader

• The Economist: Crypto cowboys have found paradise in Paraguay
  Cheap electricity, lax laws and low taxes: what’s not to like?

• The New York Times: 36 Hours in Asunción, Paraguay
  How best to spend a weekend in the mother of cities

• The New York Times 52 Places: Montevideo, Uruguay
  South America’s most laid-back capital turns 300

2023

• The Economist: Latin America’s armed forces have increasing clout
  After 30 years of quiet, they are back in parts of the region

• The Economist: Over a million Paraguayans disappear in the latest census
  The country’s population is a fifth smaller than thought. Why?

• The New York Times: Uruguay Saw Opportunity in China. It Got Schooled in the Hazards of Trade
  Producing, translating and additional reporting

• The New York Times: Welcome Aboard the Aquidaban, the Floating Jungle Supermarket
  Producing, translating and additional reporting

• The New York Times: One Secret to a Latin American Party’s Dominance: Buying Votes
  Producing, translating and additional reporting

• The New York Times: Paraguay Voters Elect Conservative Economist as President
  The right-wing Colorado Party has run Paraguay for all but five of the past 76 years

• The New York Times: Paraguay Picks a New President: What You Need to Know
  An anti-corruption crusader and a far-right firebrand take on an entrenched conservative party

• The Economist: Uruguay is losing its reputation as Latin America’s success story
  Crime and corruption scandals have hurt the conservative president

• The Economist: The U.S. Says Corruption in Paraguay Starts at the Top
  The Colorado Party will shrug off fresh sanctions

2022

• The Architectural Review: Reclaiming Asunción

  Paraguay's dictatorship stole a dozen public parks. Now, people want them back

• The Economist: Rafting with Rebels
  Some ex-FARC guerrillas have become tourist guides in Colombia. Plus, a feature on The Intelligence podcast

• The Guardian: ‘The PCC are after me’: the drug cartel with Paraguay in its clutches

  A Brazilian former prison gang threatens to turn its neighbour into a narcostate

• BBC World Service: Mateo the memory keeper
  Mateo Sobode Chiqueno’s tapes are a fragile link to a culture at risk of disappearing – along with the forest the Ayoreo call home

• Jacobin: A Decade After Lugo Was Ousted, Paraguay’s Left Has a Chance to Regain Power
  The 2012 coup against Fernando Lugo cut short the only period of left-wing rule in Paraguay’s modern history

• The Economist: A new motorway in Paraguay could eventually rival the Panama Canal

  That is, if governments in Brazil and Argentina build their connecting roads, too

• The Guardian: Migrants brave Darién Gap in pursuit of the American dream
  Last year a record 133,000 people risked their lives on a perilous trek through a lawless jungle – and the numbers keep rising

• The Guardian: Chile’s archaeologists fight to save the world’s oldest mummies from climate change
  The desert graveyard where the ancient Chinchorro decorated and buried their dead is now a Unesco World Heritage site

• Delayed Gratification: can Chile’s new president and constitution solve the Mapuche conflict?
  Gabriel Boric promises dialogue with the country’s largest indigenous nation. Will it be enough?

• The Guardian: The man recording the lives of Paraguay’s vanishing forest people

  A lifelong project recording the Ayoreo people’s struggle is now the subject of an award-winning film

• The Guardian: Paraguay capital choked by colossal smog cloud from Argentina wildfires
  Smoke blown from fires in drought-stricken Argentina shrouds Asunción in dangerous haze

• The Guardian: Paraguay’s new Chaco highway threatens rare forest and last of the Ayoreo people
  The Bioceanic Corridor cuts through the fastest-vanishing forest on Earth, refuge of some of the Americas’ last hunter-gatherers

• Rest of World: How one of South America’s biggest dams became a Bitcoin battleground
  Crypto miners are organizing to keep the cheapest electricity in the Americas flowing to Paraguay

2021

• The Guardian: Gabriel Boric’s triumph puts wind in the sails of Latin America’s resurgent left
  The decisive victory reflects Chileans’ revolt against a threadbare welfare system and rampant inequality

• The Guardian: Albion absolved: Britain was not secret instigator of Paraguay war, book claims
  Notion that South American neighbours had a ‘fourth ally’ in War of the Triple Alliance is a myth, author says

• The Guardian: Land clashes over agribusiness rock Paraguay
  Police tear down homes and rip up crops, highlighting the country’s highly unequal land ownership

• The Guardian: Newly translated letters offer indigenous take on Brazil’s bloody birth
  Dutch-Portuguese war split the Potiguara people but their correspondence across battle lines has finally been translated

• The Intercept: Bolivian Ex-Minister of Defense Plotted a Second Coup Using U.S. Mercenaries
  Investigation: a top official was prepared to use foreign troops to block Bolivia’s left-wing MAS party from returning to power

2020

• Foreign Policy: Why Fishing Could Sink Britain’s Brexit Deal With Europe
  Battles over fish stocks—and struggling coastal communities—could drag U.K.-EU ties onto the rocks

• Rest of World: When Worlds Collide
  5G conspiracy theories combine with an Andean community’s long-standing mistrust of outsiders

• The Economist: Crossing the pond
  Charco Press is bringing new Latin American fiction to British readers

• The Guardian: Is Bolivia's 'interim' president using the pandemic to outstay her welcome?
  Jeanine Áñez has postponed elections and persecuted political opponents

• The Economist: Burning down the house
  In “Ema”, Pablo Larraín aims a flamethrower at conservative Chile

• History Today: The Inca’s Last Stand
  An Indigenous rebellion in colonial Argentina resonates to this day (cover story)

2019

• New Statesman: Latin Americans in the UK fight for recognition
  Fast-growing community makes its mark in the arts but remains politically invisible

• V&A Museum: Water Wars and the Miracle Mineral
  Resisting mining in South America’s lithium triangle

• The Guardian: Archaeologists fear Bolsonaro agenda will kill Amazon civilisation research
  Cuts to science funding, legal changes, and drive to “develop” rainforest risks priceless evidence

• The Guardian: The gradual rise and sudden fall of Evo Morales
  Cocalero-turned-president transformed Bolivia during 14 years before dramatic ouster

• The Guardian: Conquistadors tumble as indigenous Chileans tear down statues
  Mapuche protesters launch attacks on symbols of Spanish colonial rule

• The Guardian: History of free African strongholds fires Brazilian resistance to Bolsonaro
  Quilombo dos Palmares becomes a touchstone for a new generation

• Americas Quarterly: Why Has Energy Spawned a Political Crisis in Paraguay?
  A scandal involving the Itaipú dam unfolds

• Financial Times: Infrastructure shortfall blunts Asunción’s modernity drive
  Growing pains affect Paraguay’s capital

• Roads and Kingdoms: Asunción City Guide
  How to eat soup with a fork

• New Statesman: Latin America’s right launches a war on memory
  As the pink tide turns, history becomes a battleground

• BBC Radio 4: Operation Mercury
  Inside the illegal gold mines poisoning Peru’s Amazon [from 16.45 mins]

2018

• Explore Parts Unknown: The Perfect Day in Asunción
  How to spend 24 hours in the mother of cities

• The Guardian: Cartel murder shocks Paraguay
  “They’re killing us like dogs”

• The Guardian: Paraguay’s bitcoin boom
  Rival visions for Itaipu

• The Guardian: Bolivia hopes for a path to the Pacific
  Bolivia awaits a key ruling by the ICJ

• The Guardian: Peru’s last Inca city reveals its secrets
  ”It’s genuinely a marvel”

• The Guardian: How an army of volunteers defeated malaria in Paraguay
  The first country in South America to eliminate the disease shares its story

• The Guardian: The toll of pregnancy on Paraguay’s children
  “It destroyed the girl she was”

• The Economist: The blossom and the passion flower
  Paraguay’s long relationship with Taiwan continues to pay off
  

• The Guardian: Identifying Chile’s Stonehenge
  ”We’re writing and recovering our own history”

• BBC Radio 4: Simulating the sea
  Setting sail with Bolivia's landlocked finest [from 18.20 mins]

• The Economist: Sighting the sun god
  Archaeologists and astronomers discover Inca calendars in the Atacama

• BBC World Histories: the African Army of the Andes
  In the footsteps of a revolutionary 1817 campaign

• National Geographic: The New Andean Architecture
  Freddy Mamani’s colorful designs are transforming El Alto, Bolivia

• The Guardian: Paraguay moves Israel embassy to Jerusalem
  "It’s unclear what Paraguay gets from the move”

• The Economist: The son of an ex-dictator’s secretary is elected Paraguay's president
  New man, old party

• Americas Quarterly: Five takeaways from Paraguay's elections
  The Colorado party clinches another victory

• The Guardian: Mario Abdo Benitez wins election
  Peace and Progress, v.2.0

• The Guardian: Haunted by ghosts of dictatorship, Paraguay pivots right
  “You have to be afraid of those who are alive, not the dead”

• Disegno Journal: Ciudad Rebelde
  El Alto, "cholets," Aymara hip-hop, and Bolivia's space agency

• BBC Radio 4: Stroessner's shadow
  Searching for the victims of South America's longest-serving dictator. [from 18:10 mins]

• BBC Radio 4: Evo's museum of me
  A visit to the Museum of the Democratic and Cultural Revolution [from 11:25 mins]

• BBC World Service: a Chile welcome
  Migrants from across the continent adjust to a cooler climate [from 11:20 mins}

• The Economist: Coming unstuck
  Latin America needs an infrastructure upgrade

• The Guardian: The ecological catastrophe that turned a vast Bolivian lake into a salt desert
  Lake Poopó is fast disappearing, and taking an ancient culture's way of of life with it

2017

• Delayed Gratification: The return of the Golden Indian
  One of Paraguay's all-time boxing greats returns to the ring for a shot at redemption

• The Guardian: More than 350 million Latin American voters to elect new leaders in 2018
  Is a continent-wide backlash against corruption brewing?

• The Guardian: Bolivia's African king leads a long-neglected group out of the shadows
  Meet Julio I - farmer, grocer, and South America's last monarch

• The Guardian: Evo forever? Bolivia scraps term limits, critics slam "coup" by Morales
  School shoes, football shirts, and a missed chance to become a new Mandela

• The Guardian: Che Guevara's legacy still contentious 50 years after his death in Bolivia
  Tracing the final steps of the Argentine guerrilla

• Americas Quarterly: Argentina's Milagro Sala - criminal, or political prisoner?
  Tupac Amaru, crumbling dinosaurs, yawning national divides

• The Economist: Where is Santiago Maldonado?
  A missing-person case looms over Argentina's mid-terms

• Americas Quarterly: What happened at Curuguaty?
  Remembering a massacre, five years on

• BBC Radio 4: Narcopolitics
  Life is cheap on the Paraguay-Brazil border. [From 06.20mins]

• World Politics Review: The land war (+ trendlines podcast)
  Indigenous Ayoreo and campesino communities are on the frontline in Paraguay

• The Guardian: Paraguay's constitutional crisis
  Several on-the-ground reports from Paraguay's pseudo-coup of March-April 2017

• The Economist: Congress in flames
  A row over re-election in Paraguay

• Americas Quarterly: South America's "Silver River" promises new riches
  A ten-day voyage from Montevideo to Asunción reveals a region divided

• Avaunt Magazine: The Navy without a Sea [£]
  A look at daily life for Bolivia's (landlocked) finest. With photos by Nick Ballon

2016

• The Economist: A year in the life
  A look at some of the momentous (and obscure) anniversaries of 2017

• The Economist: A newly-connected continent
  The Nicaragua Canal won't happen, but other projects are forging links within Latin America

• The Economist: Of Eire and exile
  "Further Beyond" breaks the biopic mould

• The Economist: Gibraltar and Brexit: Rock out
  A territory is dragged from the European Union. Spain looms

• The Economist: Returning the hatchet
  Latin American governments are starting to return looted treasures to their neighbours
  

• FT Life & Arts: Dreams of the Sea
  Bolivia's battle to reclaim its lost coastline. Winner of the 2015 Bodley Head/FT essay prize

2015

• The Guardian: In Paraguay's remote north guerillas are still at large, armed and dangerous
  A shadowy insurgency runs rings around the authorities. Some wonder if the government really wants to capture them

• The Guardian: Paraguayan 11-year-old gives birth after pregnancy sparked abortion debate
  In a deeply conservative society, Mainumby is one of the hundreds of children subjected to abuse every year

• The Guardian: Historic papal meeting can help change minds in Paraguay, says LGBT activist
  Simon Cazal was left for dead after a homophobic attack. Things are changing, slowly

• The Guardian: Nueva Londres: where Paraguay, Australia, and Great Britain converge
  A short look at a utopian tee-totalling experiment in the heart of South America, and its modern inheritors

• The Guardian: Paraguay deploys anti-narco top guns to combat economic need for weed
  Crime pays in South America's number-one marijuana-producer. Is the local chapter in the war on drugs working?

• The Guardian: Paraguay activists ensure government’s oil ambitions will be no walk in the park
  The prospect of oil exploration at a historic battlefield in the Chaco is provoking fresh conflict