Americas view

ON A recent flight from Buenos Aires to New York, I was seated in the dreaded middle seat in the final row. At check-in I pleaded to change, but despite my offers to help the flight attendants serve mushy ravioli in exchange for a window, I was rebuffed. “Sorry, miss. The flight’s totally full,” the airline agent told me.

I was shocked. Since her re-election in 2011, President Cristina Fernández has made it far more difficult for Argentines to travel abroad. She has restricted access to foreign currency, tightened import and export constraints and introduced financial restrictions on travel, in a bid to prevent capital flight and shore up the central bank’s dollar reserves.

GENERAL JOSÉ EFRAÍN RÍOS MONTT, a former Guatemalan dictator, became the first person ever to be convicted of genocide in a court of his own country on May 10th. In a historic verdict in downtown Guatemala City, the 86-year-old was given the maximum sentence of 50 years for genocide and a consecutive 30 years for crimes against humanity.

He was sentenced by a judge who laid out in horrific detail how under his leadership the army had massacred, mutilated, raped, bombed and persecuted members of the Ixil Mayan community, including many children and elderly, during counter-insurgency operations 30 years ago.

PUNTERS betting on accepted wisdom took a bath on May 2nd when Canada’s Conservative government named Stephen Poloz as the successor to Mark Carney as governor of the central bank. That accepted wisdom had long ago handed the job to Tiff Macklem, the Bank of Canada’s senior deputy-governor, whose international focus most closely paralleled that of Mr Carney, who will become governor of the Bank of England on July 1st.

Mr Poloz, 57, is currently the president of Export Development Canada (EDC), the country’s export credit agency. He was always considered a candidate for governor, but most saw him as little more than a name to pad out a shortlist. They should have looked more closely.

AS CHILE’S mining minister in 2010, Laurence Golborne presided over the remarkable rescue of 33 miners trapped underground in the Atacama Desert, in an operation that lasted 69 days. Mr Golborne’s campaign for the Chilean presidency lasted slightly longer—but not much. On April 29th, less than four months after his presidential run officially began, he stepped down, victim of not one but two financial scandals.

His week to forget began on April 25th when the Supreme Court fined Cencosud, the country’s biggest retailer, $70m for abusive practices dating from 2006, when Mr Golborne was its chief executive.

WORDS such as exciting, inspiring and intriguing are not often used to describe free-trade agreements, but they are being tossed around liberally in Latin America in a growing number of countries with Pacific coastlines.

The buzz is about the Pacific Alliance, formed last June, which links Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Trade between the four countries already flows smoothly, thanks to bilateral agreements that were in place before the new tie-up. Now finance ministers who met on April 25th in Lima, Peru’s capital, want much more, as do a growing number of countries knocking on the door to join.

AN ENORMOUS national flag flies alongside the unattractive road from Trinidad’s airport to the capital, Port of Spain. It marks the João Havelange Centre of Excellence, an untidy 16-acre sprawl containing a football stadium, conference centre, hotel and swimming pool, once believed to be the proud possession of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF).

A report published by CONCACAF on April 19th concluded that the complex was the subject of a fraud perpetrated by Trinidad and Tobago’s security minister and former CONCACAF president, Jack Warner.

OUR sister magazine, Intelligent Life, has published a blog on Rio de Janeiro's new museums. Read it here