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Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his efforts to end a 52-year-old war with Marxist guerrillas, a surprise choice and a show of support days after voters rejected a peace deal he signed with the rebels.

Santos has promised to revive the plan even though Colombians narrowly rejected it in a referendum on Sunday.

The fact that a majority of the voters said ‘No’ to the peace accord does not necessarily mean that the peace process is dead.”

A recent issue of the bimonthly Estudos Avançados, a journal associated with the University of São Paulo, sheds light upon the assumptions Brazil brings to the FTAA negotiating table and highlights the lively debate among Brazil's business community, government, and civil society over the merits of the regional trade pact.

the Catholic Church and organized labor groups in Brazil have been the most vocal in their opposition to the agreement; they cite loss of sovereignty and fear that Latin American countries will become subordinate to the interests of the United States. Moreover, some industries in Brazil -- such as the chemicals, electronics, and capital-goods sectors -- also worry that the FTAA could be a losing proposition.

most of the Brazilian business community prefers to forge ahead with the agreement rather than risk losing out on increased commerce in the Americas. Oliveira warns that if Brazil backs out of the negotiations, the United States will simply negotiate bilateral treaties throughout the region, which could pare Brazilian exports and divert foreign investment to other markets. While the far-left wing of the Lula government continues to fight the treaty, Oliveira believes that Lula and the moderates in his party understand that Brazil would pay a high price for isolation.

former USTR and deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick wrote an essay proposing that the United States consolidate our trade diplomacy in the region: This year President Bush and the Democratic-led Congress should launch a new Association of American Free Trade Agreements (AAFTA). The AAFTA could shape the future of the Western Hemisphere, while offering a new foreign and economic policy design that combines trade, open societies, development and democracy.

U.S. global strategy must have a hemispheric foundation. Successful and sustainable international strategies must be constructed across administrations. Ronald Reagan called for free trade throughout the Americas, opened U.S. markets to our Caribbean neighbors, and completed an FTA with Canada. George H.W. Bush completed negotiations for a North American FTA, offered trade preferences to the Andean countries, negotiated peace in Central America, and freed Panama. Bill Clinton secured the passage of Nafta, launched work on a Free Trade Area of the Americas, and backed Plan Colombia. George W. Bush enacted FTAs with Chile, the five states of Central America and the Dominican Republic. He also completed FTAs with Colombia, Peru and Panama. If Congress passes these agreements, the U.S. will finally have an unbroken line of free trade partners stretching from Alaska to the tip of South America. Not counting the U.S., this free trade assembly would comprise two-thirds of both the population and GDP of the Americas. The AAFTA would draw together these 13 partners to build on the gains of free trade. It could also include the island states of the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act. Starting with a small secretariat, perhaps in Miami, the AAFTA should advance hemispheric economic integration; link development and democracy with trade and aid; improve working and environmental conditions; and continue to pursue the goal of free trade throughout the hemisphere. It might even foster cooperation in the WTO's global trade negotiations. The AAFTA might be connected to an academic center, which could combine research and practice through an association among universities in the Americas.... The U.S. cannot afford to lose interest in its own neighborhood.

in many ways, Zoellick is simply proposing a political trade with our FTA partners -- deeper economic integration in return for adding on stringent labor and environmental standards.

On Jan. 10, 1978, my father was assassinated by hit men of the Somoza regime. His death meant the end of whatever remained of Nicaragua’s political arena. But it also unleashed an enormous wave of protests nationwide, because the country now saw rebellion as the only way left to end the dictatorship.Four decades later, we have gone through a tortuous cycle of revolution and counterrevolution, civil war and foreign aggression, democratic transition and, now, a return to authoritarianism. History is repeating itself as farce under the regime of Daniel Ortega, the former guerrilla leader who was the elected president from 1985 to 1990 and who returned to power in 2007.

Ironically, when the Sandinista revolution’s leaders were voted out of power in 1990 (allowing my mother, Violeta Chamorro, to become Nicaragua’s president for seven years), it was Mr. Ortega himself who contributed to the establishment of an electoral democracy by conceding defeat, thereby setting the country on course to transfer power peacefully among political parties. However, Mr. Ortega and the next president, Arnoldo Alemán, who later was accused of corruption, arrived at a political compact in 1999 that weakened the trend toward pluralistic democracy by setting up bipartisan control of the electoral system. In 2007, that, too, collapsed when Mr. Ortega, now back in office, took sole control.

In 2008, well-documented fraud marred municipal elections. And in 2011, Mr. Ortega, defying term limits law, was “re-elected” in balloting that was denounced as unconstitutional. He has used the time since to consolidate an institutional dictatorship that concentrates absolute power and that derives political support from an alliance with private business interests and from citizens who benefit from government policies that aid the poor.

Nicaragua’s Indigenous Peoples Protect their Forests Even Without Government Support

Nicaragua is the second-poorest economy in Latin America after Haiti, and has already lost much of its forest cover to agricultural development. About 21 percent of the country’s forests disappeared between 1990 and 2005.

Established in 1991, the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve in Nicaragua in north-central Nicaragua, together with the Rio Platano Reserve in Honduras and adjacent protected areas, is one of the largest areas of protected tropical forest in Central America. The core area and buffer zone of Bosawas covers 854,000 hectares, or about 7 percent of Nicaragua.

If a final accord is signed within six months, as the negotiators have pledged, Colombia would offer an example of hard-won peacemaking at a time when so many other conflicts, which are spawning the largest wave of refugees since World War II, seem intractable.

As of last year, the three-way fight among guerrilla factions, government forces and right-wing paramilitary bands that often acted as proxies for the state, had killed more than 220,000 people and displaced an estimated 5.7 million. At the peak of the conflict, in 2000, kidnappings for ransom surpassed 3,000 a year.

The talks have forced Colombians to take stock of a painful past and face uncomfortable truths. Dozens of victims traveled to Havana to speak about abuses they endured at the hands of guerrilla leaders. Some implicated government forces in brutal acts. When I met some young FARC members in Havana last year during a reporting trip, I came to see them in a new light as they described taking up arms as a desperate choice they were forced to make to survive.

After a half century of war, and after four years of grinding negotiations, the Colombian government and leaders of the country's insurgency reached an accord in August to end a conflict in which more than 220,000 people were killed and six million displaced

Polls had the yes vote comfortably ahead by a 2-to-1 ratio.

The OAS has vast experience and expertise in conflict resolution and peace efforts. Since its inception, the Organization has been continuously called upon by its member states in times of crisis and has deployed dozens of peace missions of a different nature, ranging from short-term ad hoc and good offices assignments to longer term demobilization, disarmament and peace building missions.

Capitalizing on the demobilization and reintegration experience gained in the CIAV-OAS peace mission in Nicaragua (1990-1997), the OAS led an extremely successful reinsertion project

The OAS has continuously supported Haiti in its efforts to achieve a full-fledged and stable democracy, and durable peace.

NECOCLI, Colombia — As the Colombian government nears a deal to end its 50-year conflict with FARC guerrillas, it is intensifying another war in the jungles here along the Caribbean coast, the stronghold of a shadowy drug organization known as Clan Úsuga.

Both the government and the traffickers know that a big share of Colombia’s billion-dollar cocaine trade will be up for grabs if FARC — whose rebellion runs on drug profits — goes out of business. Some of its 7,000 battle-hardened fighters may be looking for new jobs. Clan Úsuga will be hiring.

That $10 billion program, funded by Congress, is considered by many Republicans and Democrats to be one of the most successful U.S. foreign policy achievements of the past generation, forcing FARC to the negotiating table after a half-century of violence that has left more than 220,000 dead.

The changes to the agreement with the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, were announced in Havana and addressed a range of topics — such as where rebels would be confined after disarming and how courts might address drug trafficking offenses — that negotiators said had troubled voters.

The agreement also appeared to withdraw a promise of guaranteed seats for rebels in Congress — one key demand of those who said the rebels would be unfairly rewarded with political positions.

Indigenous groups pressured to give up lands for doubtful Nicaragua Canal

The meetings, which the Nicaraguan government sprang on surprised community leaders several times over the past few months, are aimed at securing consent to use indigenous territory

Community leaders say that the government has not allowed them legal council in the meetings, violating international regulations.