Pirate Wire Radio

Ahoy! It’s been a labor intensive week for the PWS crew as presidential elections near in Colombia, which is what we’re talking about in this week's podcast! Amy and Paulo are well on the road to recovery after  involuntary Covid vacations. Daniela and Joshua meanwhile are hunkered down in Bogotá hoping that a tense election weekend passes without incident. This week in the headlines in Latam! In...

Avast ye! It’s Friday. This week, Amy and Paulo are shivering their timbers with scurvid, the most briny of omicron subvariants. Josh is setting sail for Bogotá and Dani is writing a lot and crying in a fetal position. Don’t forget to fill in our reader survey and check us out on Spotify ! For this week’s podcast, Josh is telling a story of reconciliation. Since FARC, the Colombian insurgent group...

Ahoy there! We hope you’ve all weighed anchor for the weekend by now, because we’re sending this super late. Soz. The podcaster responsible *ahem* will be duly keelhauled once we can find a vessel bound for Buenos Aires. In this week’s podcast, Amy is looking at whether the US will ease its sanctions on Venezuela - and whether that would be enough for the country to recover from its drawn-out cris...

Ahoy Piratas! We hope this May Day week found you well. It’s been a chaotic news week for the Americas in general with an uncommon number of major stories! We’ve written up the bits important to the regions we report on below as always.  Our audience survey is still going - it only takes five minutes and your feedback immeasurably helpful for us, so do fill it in if you can. The link is here . Thi...

Ahoy there! We hope this week has been more plain sailing than stormy seas wherever you are. Amy is confined to hard labour in the galley after trying to pick up a pan and finding it stuck to the stovetop. Dani is fending off the dastardly cannon of the Colombian police. Josh is meddling in Medellín. And Paulo is in Córdoba, probably marauding. Before we get started with the news roundup, we would...

Avast, me hearties!  We hope your week has been more rum punch than rum deal. In this week’s podcast, Josh looks at how the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has responded to a spate of murders with a brutal authoritarian crackdown, arresting well over 13,000 people and chucking them into prisons probably best described as dungeons. Many of those arrested appear to have nothing to do with ga...

** Deslízate hacia abajo para leer en castellano *** Ahoy!  It’s Holy Week (Semana Santa) and we hope you’ve all weighed anchor somewhere nice for Easter: irrespective of our faith, most of us have a long weekend. Colombia’s presidential elections are coming up on 29 May, and violence has been growing in conflict zones. Last month’s parliamentary elections saw fraud allegations on both sides after...

Ahoy! Welcome to this week’s Pirate Wire Services, we hope you’ve successfully navigated the seas of April so far. In this podcast episode, Paulo Rosas is looking at a wave of protests in Peru this week. These were initially triggered by rising fuel prices, but spread and became more violent when beleaguered president Pedro Castillo responded by declaring a curfew in Lima. Stories we’re watching *...

*Update: On April 1st, just after this podcast was published, the CDC announced an end to Title 42 beginning the end of May. You can find details on the process here .* ***Castellano más abajo*** Ahoy there! We hope you’ve safely navigated your way to the weekend.  Today, we’re interrupting normal transmission to tell you about some changes. Pirate Wire Services has just turned six months old, and...

Buenas tardes! When we started Pirate Wire Services, we were always hoping to turn it into a podcast one day. So instead of the usual Friday newsletter, this week we’ve recorded a podcast episode. The war in Ukraine has underscored the powerful impact of reporting on violence for both everyday folk who consume news and the journalists who produce it. It’s a really thorny topic that’s often fraught...

Is Bitcoin a good move for El Salvador? The country is courting a boom with BTC set to become legal tender this week. We speak with an activist/journalist John Dennehy and skeptic Mat Youkee, journalist for the Guardian, on what the future may hold Get full access to Pirate Wire Services at www.piratewireservices.com/subscribe