AP PHOTOS: Editor selections from Latin America, Caribbean

By The Associated Press - Associated Press - Friday, May 12, 2017

This photo gallery highlights some of the top news images made by Associated Press photographers in Latin America and the Caribbean that were published in the last week.

An errant firecracker landed on a cache of fireworks and touched off a powerful explosion at a home in the Mexican state of Puebla, killing 11 children and three adults.

In Chile, therapy dogs helped calm autistic children during dental visits. And in Argentina, smoke from street vendors cooking chorizo rose over people protesting a Supreme Court ruling that benefited a man serving time for crimes against humanity.

Clowns from across Colombia marched in the capital to protest the government’s economic policies, demand better job opportunities and better access to health care.

In Venezuela, anti-government protesters threw glass jars filled with fecal matter at security forces blocking them from marching to the Supreme Court. Another demonstrator held up a shotgun taken from security forces, while yet another played a violin as security forces blocked a student march from reaching the Education Ministry.

China’s Shanshan Feng played at the Lorena Ochoa Invitational in Mexico City. And in Chile, Universidad de Chile played Brazil’s Corinthians in a Copa Sudamericana soccer match.

City board members in Paraguay honored a soccer club as “friends of nature” for designing a new seating area to preserve a long-lived Lapacho tree.

The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Stratton cheered after a Coast Guardsman won a lawn chair in a rock-paper-scissors competition while it was patrolling the eastern Pacific Ocean.

In Argentina, a Roman Catholic nun was escorted in handcuffs out of a police station, after she was charged on suspicion of helping priests sexually abuse children. And in Buenos Aires, Italian journalists walked alongside a wall with the names of people who disappeared during Argentina’s last dictatorship.