The week at a glance...Americas

Sinaloa, Mexico

Drug lord’s American kids: The leader of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel has American children, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. Emma Coronel, the 22-year-old wife of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, gave birth to twins in a Los Angeles hospital in August, making the two little girls American citizens. She and the children returned to Mexico a few weeks later. Guzmán, 54, married the former beauty queen the day she turned 18; she is his third or fourth wife, depending on reports, and a niece of Guzmán’s former partner, who was killed last year in a shoot-out with the Mexican army. The U.S. and Mexico say Guzmán controls most of the cocaine and marijuana traffic into the U.S. from Mexico and Colombia.

La Paz, Bolivia

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Showdown in the Amazon: A government attempt to break up a demonstration against a planned highway through the Amazon rain forest has backfired. Government forces arrested hundreds of indigenous activists who were protesting the construction in a nature preserve. But when they tried to transport the detainees, mobs of locals blocked roads and an airport runway. In the capital, Defense Minister Cecilia Chacón resigned in protest, saying she had not approved the decision to use tear gas and truncheons against the demonstrators. Faced with revolts among his Indian support base and his own Cabinet, President Evo Morales backed down, saying he would suspend construction of the highway pending a national referendum.

Santiago, Chile

Lights out: Massive power blackouts have plunged more than half of Chile into darkness, prompting calls for a complete overhaul of the electricity grid. The worst blackout hit Santiago and surrounding regions last weekend on a Saturday night, stranding thousands of people in elevators and subway cars. At least 9 million of Chile’s 17 million people were without power for hours. Energy Minister Rodrigo Álvarez said the cause of that blackout was not yet definitively known but probably involved a computer failure. Two smaller blackouts struck in the following days. Chile’s electricity grid is still unstable because of damage from the massive 2010 earthquake as well as years of underinvestment.