AP PHOTOS: 2023 images show violence and vibrance in Latin America

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Haitian migrants wade through a river as they cross the Darien Gap from Colombia to Panama in hopes of reaching the United States, May 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

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Police stand on the other side of a window shattered by supporters of outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro, who stormed the at the Planalto presidential palace in an alleged bid to forcefully restore him to office, in Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

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Indigenous leader Cacique Raoni and incoming President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stand side by side at the Planalto Palace after Lula’s swearing-in ceremony, in Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

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Fisherwomen and men pull in a net of fish off the coast of Chuao, Venezuela, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

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Brazilian soccer great Pele lies in state at the Vila Belmiro stadium in Santos, Brazil, Jan. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

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Supporters of opposition leader, Santa Cruz Gov. Luis Fernando Camacho who faces terrorism charges, protest his arrest, blocking a road in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Jan. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

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An anti-government protester, who traveled to the capital from across the country to march against Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, is detained during clashes in Lima, Peru, Jan. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

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Music fans attend the “Here we are” festival, in celebration of Women’s History Month, in Montevideo, Uruguay, March 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)

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Protesters seeking immediate elections, the resignation of President Dina Boluarte and the dissolution of Congress, block a road in Laramani, Peru, Jan. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

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Residents attend a vigil for people who died during the social unrest caused by the ouster of President Pedro Castillo, in Juliaca, Peru, Jan. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Sotomayor)

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People swim in the Renaico River under a smoked-filled sky caused by wildfires, in Renaico, Chile, Feb. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

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Neighbors and relatives of Máximo Jerez, an 11-year-old boy who was killed when at least one gunmen attacked a birthday party, destroy the house of the alleged shooter, in the Los Pumitas neighborhood of Rosario, Argentina, March 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

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A soldier carries a dog rescued from the rubble of buildings destroyed by a deadly landslide that buried dozens of homes, in Alausi, Ecuador, March 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)

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A grocery seller waits for customers at the “Feria de Ramos,” or Palm Fair, in El Alto, Bolivia, April 2, 2023. The Palm Fair, which began as a way to recreate the livestock markets of biblical times, is currently dominated by all sorts of informal trade. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

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Athletes compete in a soccer match during the Indigenous Games, in the Tapirema community of Peruibe, Brazil, April 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

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Mexican Lucha Libre wrestler Cinta De Oro or Golden Ribbon, looks at Claude Monet’s “Water Lillies” painting during the inauguration of the “Monet: Lights of Impressionism exhibit, at the National Arts Museum, in Mexico City, April 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

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Lithium processes in a pool of brine at the SQM mine under the sun in Chile’s Atacama desert, April 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

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Migrants cross the Rio Grande into the United States with a baby in a suitcase, as seen from Matamoros, Mexico, May 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

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A migrant appeals to Texas National Guardsmen standing behind razor wire on a river bank of the Rio Grande, as seen from Matamoros, Mexico, May 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

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Handler Adriana Ayala poses for a selfie with her police dog during an exhibition celebrating Paraguay’s 212th Independence Day anniversary from Spain, in Asuncion, May 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz)

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The Popocatepetl volcano spews ash and steam, as seen from Santiago Xalitzintla, Mexico, May 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

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Girls dance during the Wyra’whaw coming-of-age festival in the Ramada ritual center, in Tenetehar Wa Tembe village, located in the Alto Rio Guama Indigenous territory in Para state, Brazil, June 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

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A contestant waits to be introduced while standing in the wings, during the Miss Cholita Pacena 2023 beauty pageant, in Valle de La Luna, on the outskirts of La Paz, Bolivia, June 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

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Students wait in their classroom for their teacher to arrive at the Institution Mixte Wesleyenne Regard Divin school, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, June 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

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An anti-government protester, dressed as Barbie holding a fake gun, takes part in a demonstration demanding that Peruvian President Dina Boluarte call for immediate presidential elections as well as justice for those who were killed during protests earlier this year after the ouster of her predecessor, in Lima, Peru, July 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

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Residents and environmentalists watch a Cardon sea turtle hatchling head to the ocean after being released by conservationists, on the beach in La Sabana, Venezuela, July 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

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Police stand in the rain guarding the perimeters of the Electoral Court building as demonstrators march to support the electoral process, in Guatemala City, July 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

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Residents grieve near the body of a man, killed in unknown circumstances, on a street in Duran, Ecuador, July 21, 2023, amid a serious outbreak of violence that authorities attribute to disputes among organized crime groups. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)

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Boys dressed as soldiers wait for the start of the Independence Day military parade in Bogota, Colombia, July 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

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Taylor Swift performs at the Monumental stadium during her Eras Tour concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Nov. 9, 2023. Thousands of “Swifties” attended the superstar’s first-ever concert in Argentina. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

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Members of the Disappeared Detainees Relatives Group of Chile hold cardboard cutouts depicting their disappeared relatives in a march commemorating the so-called “Operation Colombo” in which over a hundred dissidents were executed by security forces of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, in Santiago, Chile, July 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

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A devotee dressed in a feathered costume and playing an accordion pays tribute to Saint Francisco Solano for a request fulfilled, during a procession in the saint’s honor in Emboscada, Paraguay, July 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Jorge Saenz)

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A pig, coated with a thick greenish film that grows on Lake Maracaibo, sniffs the ground while foraging near the lake’s shore in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Aug. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

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Catia Lattouf poses for a photo with hummingbirds in her care at her apartment that she has turned into a makeshift clinic for the tiny birds, in Mexico City, Aug. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

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Caimans gather on the banks of the almost dried-up Bento Gomes River in the Pantanal wetlands near Pocone, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, Nov. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

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Aymara Indigenous guides known as “cholitas escaladoras”, Suibel Gonzales, left, and her mother Lidia Hauyllas, hike the Huayna Potosi mountain, on the outskirts of El Alto, Bolivia, Nov. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

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A police officer holds onto a man wounded during violent gang clashes, as they are driven away on the back of a moto-taxi, in the Carrefour-Feuilles district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Aug. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph)

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Presidential hopeful Javier Milei brandishes a chainsaw during a campaign rally in La Plata, Argentina, Sept. 12, 2023. Milei went on to win the presidency in a Nov. 19th runoff election. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

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Police guard stand in a snowstorm guarding a supermarket, after reports that people tried to break into the store, in Bariloche, Argentina, Aug. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

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A Venezuelan migrant laughs as she jokes with her husband, who gave her flowers he picked from a nearby field, as they wait along the rail lines in hopes of boarding a freight train heading north, in Huehuetoca, Mexico, Sept. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

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Migrants hoping to get into the United States sit atop a northbound freight train, in Irapuato, Mexico, Sept. 23, 2023. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

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Police ride in the scoop of a bulldozer as they work to clear street barricades during a security operation against organized crime in the Mare Complex favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Oct. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

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Docked yachts damaged by Hurricane Otis are scattered along the port in Acapulco, Mexico, Nov. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

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Haitians detained for deportation look out from the inside of a paddy wagon on a border bridge between Dajabon, Dominican Republic, and Haiti, Oct. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Ricardo Hernandez)

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A ferry boat travels through a section of the Amazon River affected by a severe drought, near Manacapuru, Brazil, Sept. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)

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The bodies of slain police officers are slumped against a wall in El Papayo, Guerrero state, Mexico, Oct. 23, 2023, where a local police chief and 12 officers were shot dead in a brutal ambush the day before. (AP Photo/Bernardino Hernandez)

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A tourist arrives in a classic American car for a cabaret show at the Tropicana performance hall in Havana, Cuba, Nov. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

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Groom Isaac Medina, center, and bride Jazmin Gonzalez, watch an annular solar eclipse, better known as a ring of fire, before the start of their wedding ceremony, in Merida, Mexico, Oct. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Martin Zetina)

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A demonstrator dressed as Batman villain the Joker, holds a Panamanian national flag during a protest against an approved mining contract between the government and Canadian mining company First Quantum, in Panama City, Oct. 31, 2023. Weeks later Panama’s Supreme Court declared the contract unconstitutional. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)

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Argentine Boca Juniors fans gather on Copacabana beach the day before their team faces Fluminense in a Copa Libertadores soccer championship match, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Nov. 3, 2023. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

By DAVID BILLER

A little girl perches on the shoulder of her mom, whose eyes fill with trepidation as she wades through waist-deep water in the jungle of the Darien Gap.

Another woman sits beside railroad tracks as she and her husband head north through central Mexico. Covering her eyes with her fingers, the woman could be weeping. But the photograph shows her holding bright yellow flowers that her husband just picked.

She’s laughing.

Associated Press photographers documented violence and vibrance throughout Latin America in 2023, creating vivid portraits of ability to keep moving forward despite suffering.

Gangs expanded their control of Haiti, terrorizing civilians. One image shows a police officer on the back of a motorcycle holding a man slumped after being shot in the head.

Brazil’s newly sworn-in President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stands atop the ramp of the presidential palace alongside an Amazonian leader wearing a feather headdress. Days later, the shattered windows of that palace frame a cluster of riot police on that same ramp; they had arrived too late to prevent an unprecedented uprising that sought to oust Lula from power.

Not PARSE.LY: Hurricanes and typhoons

Typhoon Man-yi leaves 7 dead in Philippines and worsens crisis from back-to-back storms

A third November storm, Sara, serves notice that a busy hurricane season isn’t over yet

Latest typhoon lashes the Philippines, causing tidal surges and displacing massive numbers of people

In Peru, protests continued demanding the resignation of Dina Boluarte after President Pedro Castillo’s ousting and arrest, and police killed dozens of demonstrators. A photograph shows their coffins lined up, displayed on the street for hundreds of mourners.

Seen from the sky with an AP drone, a whirlpool of fish swirls in a net in clear blue waters. Increasingly, fisherwomen have taken up the profession to carve out a living in Venezuela’s hobbling economy. On the coast a few dozen miles west, conservationists watch as a hatchling of the world’s largest species of sea turtle scrapes its way to the water.

Tiny hummingbirds, too, have found their chance to survive and thrive in — of all places — a Mexico City apartment. About 60 of the sick, injured or infant birds feed from eyedroppers and flit around the makeshift clinic until they are fit for release into the wild.

Across town in the National Arts Museum, a hulking lucha libre wrestler observes a painting of Claude Monet’s water lilies. He is the embodiment of forceful aggression yielding to delicate grace, and the blurred blue and yellow-green of his mask perfectly reflect the painting’s water and reeds.

Such serenity contrasted with the climate chaos elsewhere in the region.

Hurricane Otis thrashed the resort city of Acapulco on Mexico’s Pacific coast, killing at least 51 people and launching yachts onto the beach in piles. Defying usually reliable computer models that forecast a tropical storm, it rapidly transformed into a Category 5 monster that, with 165 mph (266 kph) winds, had the strongest landfall of any East Pacific hurricane. Over a month later, residents are still clearing debris and picking up the pieces.

In Bolivia, indigenous women in multilayered skirts guiding a climb up Bolivia’s 6,000-meter Huayna Potosí mountain had to traverse fresh whitewater from a peak once covered in snow, now melted. The Aymara women fear climate change could sweep away their jobs.

With so many struggles at home, many set off in search of a better life, even when that’s a gamble.

A baby swaddled snugly inside a small suitcase is held aloft by a man negotiating a steep descent to the Rio Grande’s southern bank. He hasn’t yet entered the water.

A fragile tranquility — for now — endures.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america