When thousands of Cubans took to the streets in July, the Cuban government responded with a brutal strategy of repression designed to instill fear and suppress dissent, peaceful protesters and other critics have been systematically detained, held incommunicado and abused in horrendous conditions, and subjected to sham trials following patterns that indicate these human rights violations are not the actions of rogue agents.

Juan Pappier

We found that prosecutors were constantly charging Cubans for exercising their basic rights such as the right to protest peacefully, the right to insult their president or the right to insult police officers, exercising the right of freedom of expression.

Members of the Venezuelan forces are not just being tolerant to ELN abuses, they are participating in joint military operations where the guerrillas do the' dirty work'.

This is a level of massive, systematic criminalization of demonstrators that we have very rarely seen in Latin America in recent decades, it's very clear the message the Cuban government is trying to convey is that what happened in July is absolutely forbidden and can not happen again.

Adopting a law that legalizes abortion in a Catholic country as big as Argentina will energize the struggle to ensure women’s rights in Latin America, although there will certainly be resistance, I think it’s fair to predict that, as it occurred when Argentina legalized same sex marriage in 2010, this new law could have a domino effect in the region.