As the country prepares to elect a new president, a fierce debate is raging on how to end the decades-long armed conflict for good

The landmark 2016 peace deal between the Colombian government and the largest insurgent army in Latin America succeeded in some ways: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) agreed to lay down their weapons, and the violence that had racked the country was substantially reduced.

But the deal alone could not end the decades-long armed conflict for good. Subsequent administrations slow-walked the implementation of the settlement, which was rejected by Farc dissidents and other rebel factions.

People across Latin America and the Caribbean find themselves without care as countries bow to US pressure

Novlyn Ebanks, 73, had been due to receive the eye surgery she needed free of charge at St Joseph’s hospital in Kingston.

But after Jamaica’s unilateral decision in March to end the nearly 30-year agreement with Cuba to provide doctors, she was no longer able to schedule the procedure. The hospital’s ophthalmology centre was mainly staffed by Cuban doctors, many of whom had already left Jamaica.

Demand for martial arts classes grows as women face increase in gender-based attacks

In a martial arts studio at the entrance to one of Rio de Janeiro’s beachside favelas, a muay thai instructor teaches a group of young women how to avoid blows, protect their head while falling and break free from an arm grab. “Women are vulnerable,” Ana Paula Lima tells them, “but we don’t have to be helpless.”

Sabrina Fortunato, a law student, is one of the 30 women who turned up for this free self-defence class on a Saturday, organised by the civil rights organisation Instituto de Defesa da População Negra and Rio city hall after a flood of gender-based violence grabbed headlines in Brazil.

Scammer arrested after manipulating payment terminal to overcharge 1,000-fold in latest in spate of seaside cons

A scammer has been arrested in Rio de Janeiro for selling a kebab to an unsuspecting British tourist for nearly £1,500 – the latest in a spate of brazen beachside swindles.

The man was detained on Tuesday on Copacabana beach, just over the road from two of the region’s top hotels. He and an accomplice allegedly manipulated a payment terminal to dramatically overcharge the foreigner for their meat skewer. The victim reportedly paid 10,000 reais (£1,480) for the meal rather than 10 (£1.50).

Alexandre Ramagem fled country after he was sentenced to 16 years for his role in plotting military coup in Brazil

When Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for an attempted coup, six other members of his cabinet were also found guilty and all began serving their sentences – except for one.

Days before the verdict, Alexandre Ramagem, Bolsonaro’s former spy chief, fled by car to Guyana and boarded a flight to the United States, where he has remained ever since.

President contrasts his health with challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, who fainted during a TV debate

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is seeking to lunge and leg press his way to a historic fourth term, as the octogenarian politician uses a flurry of workout videos to convince voters he is fighting fit ahead of October’s crunch election.

Lula looks set to face off against a senator almost half his age in what will be the leftist’s seventh presidential campaign since he first sought Brazil’s top job in 1989, when he was 44.

An ambitious ‘refaunation’ project is bringing the much-loved birds and other lost species back to the city’s national park

Images of the iconic blue-and-yellow macaw can be spotted all over Rio de Janeiro. Yet the real thing has been seen so rarely in the Brazilian city that some wondered if it ever really existed there at all.

The French explorer Jean de Léry first described an abundance of the giant, colourful parrots around Indigenous tribes in the 16th century, and the Austrian naturalist Johann Natterer sighted the Ara ararauna in the city in 1818.

Many Brazilians believe there is a ploy to free the younger Bolsonaro from baggage of his father’s name to return the family to power

He possesses one of the most famous family names in Latin American politics. But when the Brazilian senator took to the stage at a conservative conference in Grapevine, Texas, last weekend it was only his forename that was on people’s lips.

“Flávio! Flávio! Flávio!” the audience shouted as the 44-year-old politician announced he would run for president in order to fight the “radical environmental and woke” agendas he claims have made Brazil awful again.

Everything Korean – from K-pop and skincare to food and clothing – is booming in popularity in Chile, Mexico and Brazil

On the polished flagstones of a Santiago cultural centre’s forecourt, four Chilean girls dance in energetic union, counting their steps aloud in Korean.

In front of them, a YouTube video with 1.3bn views plays atop a speaker throbbing to the beat of How You Like That, by the K-pop megastars Blackpink.

Britons learn about the country’s involvement ‘almost as a self-congratulatory narrative’, says historian Joseph Mulhern

In 1845 British citizens and companies were already legally prohibited from owning or buying enslaved people overseas, yet that year 385 captives were “transferred” to a British mining company in Brazil named St John d’El Rey.

Despite a global campaign waged by the UK against slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, the move was not technically illegal because the enslaved people were not sold but “rented” – a practice permitted overseas under the 1843 Slave Trade Act.

People from across the world queue for hours to get a video taken on the famous ‘Gateway to Heaven’ rooftop in the heart of Brazil’s most iconic city

It was day three of the British family’s holiday in Brazil and, as the sun rose over Rio’s undulating mountains, they set off for the city’s most talked about tourist haunt.

“It’s our first time in Brazil. We’re really looking forward to it,” said Paul Boswell, a 58-year-old builder from Basildon, Essex, before clambering on to the motorbike that would carry him there.

Experts say US influence over South American neighbour will be hard to replicate in country with deep and long-standing antipathy to the west

First, the CIA tracks the head of an oil-rich, US-baiting nation to a heavily guarded compound at the heart of his country’s mountain-flanked capital.

Then, that leader is removed from power with a deadly and irresistible show of US military force.

Puerto Rican singer sells out concerts in Portuguese-speaking Brazil with breakthrough ‘anti-American agenda of emancipation’

There is a saying in Brazil that Brazilians realise they are Latin only when they travel to the US or Europe.

Among the many reasons for this is that the largest country in Latin America is also the only one in the region where Portuguese is spoken rather than Spanish.

A bill banning the sale and use of plastic and metallic glitter has yet to go through in Brazil as the capital’s sandy shores bear cost of carnival’s shine

Whether it is embellishing elaborate costumes, delicately applied as eye makeup, or smeared across bare skin, glitter is everywhere at Rio de Janeiro’s carnival in Brazil. The world’s largest party, which ended on Wednesday, leaves a trail of sparkles in its wake.

At one bloco last weekend, a huge sound truck and dancers in leopard print led thousands of revellers down the promenade at Flamengo beach. Among them was Bruno Fernandes, who had jazzed up an otherwise minimalist outfit of navy swimming briefs by smearing silver glitter over his body.

Brazil president to receive unprecedented honour at opening night of procession with a giant effigy of him

He is a giant of Brazilian politics and soon he will become a giant of Brazilian carnival too: a 22-metre metal figurine, to be precise.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who rose from rural poverty to become his country’s first working class president, is to receive an unprecedented tribute at the opening night of Rio’s annual carnival procession on Sunday.

The Bob Coveiro (the Gravedigger) Law ‘recognises the emotional bond between guardians and their pets’

A dog that remained beside his former owner’s grave for 10 years has now given his name to a new state law allowing pets to be buried alongside their loved ones in São Paulo.

The new law – already being informally referred to as the Bob Coveiro (the Gravedigger) Law, in tribute to its inspiration – was signed this week by the governor of Brazil’s most populous state, the conservative Tarcísio de Freitas.

Protesters are enjoying greater freedom of expression since Nicolás Maduro’s downfall despite lack of regime change

Protesters have taken to the streets of cities across Venezuela in the latest sign of an embryonic political shift after Nicolás Maduro’s recent downfall.

Student demonstrators gathered on the campus of the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas on Thursday to demand the release of all of the country’s political prisoners, the return of exiled activists and a full transition to democracy. “Who are we? Venezuela! What do we want? Freedom!” they shouted.

In interviews with community leaders, lawyers, security specialists and bereaved relatives, the Guardian pieces together how an operation targeting a criminal gang left 122 people dead last October

• Warning: contains graphic images

• Visual investigation: how Rio’s deadliest police raid unfolded

• The Long Wave newsletter: ‘It doesn’t shock that it’s Black people getting killed’

Juliana Conceição startled awake as the first shots of an infamous day were fired in the Complexo da Penha, the labyrinthine Rio favela where she was born and raised.

It was 4.30am on 28 October. Thousands of police had surrounded the community’s barricaded entrances and were preparing to swarm up its streets on foot and in black armoured personnel carriers with firing ports and bullet-cracked ballistic windows.

Trump supporter Júnior Pena falsely claimed migrants being rounded up, including Brazilians, were ‘all crooks’

A rightwing Brazilian influencer who claimed Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown targeted only “crooks” has been arrested by ICE agents in New Jersey.

Júnior Pena, whose full name is Eustáquio da Silva Pena Júnior, declared his support for the US president in a recent video message to his hundreds of thousands of social media followers.

Even Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has received one, after Wagner Moura wore it in The Secret Agent

It is glimpsed in just a few scenes in The Secret Agent, the Brazilian film nominated for four Oscars and two Baftas, but that has been enough exposure for a vintage yellow T-shirt to become the latest object of desire among Brazilian progressives.

The garment, worn on screen by Wagner Moura, was first produced in 1978 by Pitombeira dos Quatro Cantos, a carnival group in the coastal city of Olinda, which until recently would sell just a few dozen a month.