The Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — The traditional bowler hats, bright blouses and long, plaited “pollera” skirts of the young women contrast with the skateboards under their feet as they swoop back and forth on the skate ramp in Bolivia’s largest city.

CORINTO, Honduras (AP) — About 2,000 Honduran migrants hoping to reach the United States entered Guatemala on foot Thursday morning, testing the newly reopened frontier that had been shut by the coronavirus pandemic.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A federal control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances announced Wednesday that it has contacted federal and local law enforcement agencies after discovering the island’s Department of Education paid more than $84 million to people who no longer work there.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Joaquín Salvador Lavado, an Argentine cartoonist better known as “Quino″ whose satirical comic strip about a socially conscious girl named Mafalda with a loathing for soup found fans across Latin America, Europe and beyond, died Wednesday. He was 88.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s top coronavirus official said Sunday that definitive data on the country’s death toll from COVID-19 won’t be available for “a couple of years.”

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — For years, attempts within El Salvador to investigate and prosecute the masterminds of a massacre of six Jesuit priests during that country’s civil war have been delayed and deflected by legal maneuvers.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A cloud of uncertainty that has hung over Rio de Janeiro throughout the coronavirus pandemic has been lifted, but gloom remains—the annual Carnival parade of flamboyant samba schools won’t be held in February.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro blasted United States sanctions in his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, while avoiding any mention of a report accusing his government of crimes against humanity.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky grand jury brought no charges against Louisville police for the killing of Breonna Taylor during a drug raid gone wrong, with prosecutors saying Wednesday two officers who fired their weapons at the Black woman were justified in using force to protect themselves.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans won’t be allowed to bring home cigars and rum from Cuba under measures President Donald Trump announced Wednesday to financially starve the island’s government, a move taken as he tries to boost his appeal among Cuban-Americans, a crucial voting bloc in the battleground state of Florida.

HOUSTON (AP) — Immigration authorities have stopped sending detained women to a rural Georgia gynecologist accused of performing surgeries without consent, a government spokesman said Tuesday.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Soraya Santiago, the first person from Puerto Rico to undergo gender reassignment surgery and a longtime icon for the U.S. territory’s LGBTQ community, has died. She was 73.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro defended his administration’s record protecting the Amazon rainforest, telling the United Nations’ virtual meeting of global leaders on Tuesday that his country has been wrongly portrayed as an environmental villain. Bolsonaro’s critics were quick to pick apart his claims.

MIAMI (AP) — A daughter of Cuban exiles who has had a swift rise as a lawyer and judge is on President Donald Trump’s short list to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced the release Friday of nearly $13 billion to Puerto Rico to help rebuild the electrical grid and repair schools from the devastation of Hurricane Maria three years ago, amid criticism that the aid was overdue and was being released now only for political purposes.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra’s job is on the line Friday as opposition lawmakers push through an impeachment hearing criticized as a hasty and poorly timed ouster attempt in one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday that Mexico will respond “softly, softly” and with “love and peace” to the finding by the U.S. government that his country needs to do more to stop drug trafficking.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — An official said Wednesday that Mexico City suffered 20,535 “excess deaths” attributable to COVID-19 between April and August, almost double the number reported in the official death toll of 11,318.

GENEVA (AP) — Independent experts for the U.N.’s top human rights body accused the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Wednesday of crimes against humanity, highlighting grisly cases of torture and killings allegedly carried out by security forces who used techniques like electric shocks, genital mutilation and asphyxiation.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said Tuesday he has proposed a legal reform to allow sentences of life in prison and threatened to use it against some government opponents, accusing them of committing “hate crimes.”

But just how organized the Underground Railroad to Mexico was and what happened to former slaves and those who helped them remains a mystery.