Latin America Daily Briefing

A small delegation of Kenyan officials, including the force commander for an upcoming international security mission to support Haiti’s police, arrived in Port-au-Prince yesterday. They are part of an assessment team to inspect the construction of the base and airport. Though there is little information over how the mission will proceed, several sources report it could deploy this week.

Sources have told the Miami Herald that the first contingent from Kenya is expected to be a few hundred police officers and support staff. A contingent in Jamaica is also on standby awaiting deployment orders.

So far, six countries have formally told the U.N. Security Council they will provide personnel to the Multinational Security Support mission, according to the Miami Herald. The U.N. also confirmed, yesterday, that a trust fund set up to finance the mission is at $21 million.

“The 2,500 police officers will confront a better equipped, funded, trained and unified gang force than any mission previously deployed to the Caribbean nation,” reports the New York Times. “Once largely reliant on Haiti’s political and business elite for money, some gangs have found independent financial lifelines since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021 and the collapse of the state that ensued.”

Kenyan President William Ruto arrived in the U.S. yesterday, and will meet with U.S. President Joe Biden tomorrow in Washington.

More Haiti

• Haiti’s main international airport reopened yesterday, nearly three months after it was forced to shut due to deadly gang-related violence. (BBC)
  
  
• The reopening of the Toussaint-Louverture airport in Port-au-Prince is expected to help ease a critical shortage of medications and other basic supplies, reports the Associated Press. The country’s main seaport remains paralyzed and gangs control 80% of the capital.
  
  
• The New York Times analyzes how one Haitian gang, 5 Segonn, is shifting to become a paramilitary force, with uniforms and more powerful weapons.
  
  
• As deaths surge in Haiti, relatives of victims of violence are struggling to bury their dead: corpses “are increasingly left to decay on the street, prey to pigs and dogs, because a growing number of areas are too dangerous for people to go out and retrieve the bodies,” reports the Associated Press.

Ecuador

• Since the militarization of Ecuador’s prisons last January, in the midst of a surge of organized crime violence, “inmates no longer kill each other; instead, a wide range of testimonies and investigations have revealed abuse and even torture is taking place inside,” reports El País.

Regional Relations

• Spain has “definitively” recalled its ambassador to Buenos Aires, part of a rapidly escalating diplomatic spat after Argentina’s President Javier Milei described the wife of Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez as “corrupt,” at a rally in Madrid on Sunday, reports the BBC. (See yesterday’s briefs.)
  
  
• Milei responded angrily to the move, saying the withdrawal was “nonsense typical of an arrogant socialist,” reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• “The global elites don’t understand how destructive implementing socialist ideas can be because they’re too far away from it all,” Milei said at Sunday’s Vox party-organized rally. “They don’t know what kind of society and country socialism can produce, what kind of people cling to power and what levels of abuse it can bring. Even with a corrupt wife, he debases himself and takes five days to think about it.” (Guardian)
  
  
• Milei’s tiff with Spain’s leftist government is just the latest in a series of fights he has picked with left-wing leaders, including the presidents of Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil, reports AFP.

Brazil

• Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has experienced its largest blazes on record in the first four months of the year, reports Reuters. The environmental workers union placed partial blame on lower government spending on firefighting, yesterday. They complained that this year’s budget for environmental agency Ibama to fight fires is 24% lower than 2023.

Regional

• “More than a third of the Amazon rainforest is struggling to recover from drought, according to a new study that warns of a “critical slowing down” of this globally important ecosystem,” reports the Guardian.
  
  
• “Latin America is leading the world in a movement to print nutritional warning labels on the fronts of food packages,” reports the Guardian.
  
  
• Mexico, Chile and Brazil have significantly increased duties on steel products from China in recent weeks, and Colombia may be about to follow suit — part of a regional trend of “imposing prohibitive tariffs on Chinese imports — a strain in what’s been an otherwise cozy relationship,” reports Bloomberg.

Dominican Republic

• Communities around the Dominican Republic’s Pueblo Viejo mine complain of serious health problems and a diminished environment and have spent years campaigning to be relocated — Guardian

Colombia

• Colombia’s government and the ELN guerrilla force restarted peace talks in Caracas, reports EFE. But Colombia’s government said it will not sign agreements if the ELN maintains its decision to resume kidnapping as a financing tool. (EFE)
  
  
• Colombian President Gustavo Petro replaced army chief General Luis Ospina, who had come under fire for deteriorating security and a scandal in which he allegedly put his wife’s English teacher under surveillance out of jealousy, reports AFP.

Mexico

• 487 Mexican political candidates have been granted security measures in what is the most violent electoral campaign in the country’s democratic history, reports EFE.

Migration

• Routine collection of immigrants’ DNA by federal authorities has increased exponentially since 2020, with a 50-fold spike in the number of samples held in a national database of the sensitive genetic information, according to a report by the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology. (Los Angeles Times)

Critter Corner

• “Five rescue dogs have been honored by Ecuador’s Fire Department at a ceremony formally retiring them after seven years of service and turning them over to new adoptive owners,” reports the Associated Press.

Jordana Timerman / Latin America Daily Briefing
latinamericadailybriefing.blogspot 05 21 2024