LADAMA is the kind of band that people tend to make assumptions about. [...] LADAMA will be performing at World Music/CRASHarts' second annual CRASHfest at the House of Blues in Boston on Saturday, Jan. 28. The quartet plays propulsive original music rooted in the folk traditions of their home countries, a kind of cross-continental musical exchange. But theirs is something of a feminist undertaking, too.

President Tsai Ing-wen and her Guatemalan counterpart, Jimmy Morales, reaffirmed their commitment to relations and cooperation between the two countries Wednesday, with Tsai saying that Taiwan will continue to support a Guatemalan highway expansion project, a proposal put forward by Morales. Tsai received a military salute hosted by Morales at the National Palace of Culture. 

In the past decade, trade exchange between China and Latin America grew 20-fold to reach 236.5 billion US dollars in 2015, according to the Chinese government, which has free-trade agreements with several regional countries, such as Chile, Peru and Costa Rica. 

[S]everal factors have contributed to China’s presence in Latin America. First, even though Latin America is not as strategically important to China as East Asia and South Asia, its outreach has resulted in increased social and economic cooperation. In the words of Former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping; “lie low and bide your time.” Second, the balance of power has changed in the region, where U.S. influence is dwindling and China has proven to be a reliable economic partner for developing countries. [...] Third, China has commercial and geopolitical interests in Latin America.

The Peruvian Embassy in the United States and the U.S. Congressional Caucus on Peru organized a gastronomic festival at U.S. Parliament headquarters. The meeting was attended by legislators, officials from both chambers and members of the Executive, plus other civil society organizations based in D.C.

Officials in Qatar and Spain are reportedly mulling the creation of a $1 billion joint investment fund – and a meeting is being scheduled for next year to progress the plans. Spanish ambassador to Qatar, Ignacio Escobar, told Gulf Times in an interview that a bilateral visit by Spanish officials to the Gulf state is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2017, and that the visit could include the signing of an agreement to establish the fund.

The financial world treats Argentina as an emerging market — risky, nascent, unsophisticated — and so does the art world: it has few prominent artists, curators or institutions. But just as the country seduced global investors with a smash-hit bond sale earlier this year, so one Argentine collector is hoping to draw international attention to Buenos Aires with his new foundation.

The Chinese leader hailed the progress in bilateral cultural exchange that he said shortens the distance between the peoples who share similar experiences of suffering foreign aggression and social turmoil. The president said he believed the progressive cultural exchange between China and Latin America will also play a role in the development of the world civilization.