PRI - APM

Most of the new diseases we humans have faced in the past several decades have come from animals.

HIV. Avian flu. Ebola. SARS. And now the new coronavirus, which scientists say likely came from an animal, possibly a bat, at a market where live animals are butchered in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The more we come into contact with wild animals, the more we risk a so-called disease “spillover” from animals to humans.

Twenty-one years ago this month, Hugo Chávez, a newcomer politician, took office in a country that stood out in the region due to its unusually long uninterrupted democratic tradition. He promised to change the country forever. He definitely succeeded, but not for the better.

Sgt. Pedro Elias Ruiz crossed into Colombia in the middle of the night carrying a small backpack and wearing civilian clothes.  

In February 2019, Ruiz hoped to join hundreds of his comrades who had defected from the Venezuelan military to join opposition leader Juan Guaidó in his mission to oust socialist President Nicolás Maduro and “bring democracy back” to Venezuela. 

Zhang Yuan Yuan, a 29-year-old doctor from Beijing, wanted to hit all the top spots on her trip to Russia. She and her husband would spend three days in Moscow, three days in Saint Petersburg and then — like thousands of other Chinese tourists this year — travel to Teriberka, a tiny settlement in the Russian Arctic, that until recently was a dying fishing village.

A year after the United States attempted to deliver truckloads of aid to relieve the humanitarian situation in Venezuela, prompting warnings of the politicization of aid, Washington is renewing its support to the country’s embattled opposition.

Angela, an American who lives in Wuhan, China, with her family, and who asked not to use her full name for privacy reasons, is trying to keep the coronavirus outbreak in perspective. 

“You know, overall, me being locked in my house for however long — it’s not a crisis,” Angela said. 

Angela’s Chinese husband runs his business from their home in Wuhan, and she homeschools their son. 

Early on Sunday morning, two police officers stood by the side of the road and motioned Sonia Bermúdez to pull over her pick-up truck and hand them her documents. It’s the kind of routine identity check that police carry out in this border region of La Guajira, Colombia, but Bermúdez was surprised.

“Don’t you know me? I’m the crazy one that buries the dead."

Sonia Bermúdez

Cuban migrants have become one of the largest groups seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border in recent years. But for decades, Cubans in the US have been seen as the exception to the rule of Latinx immigrants.