Latin America Daily Briefing

Sept. 2, 2024
Jordana Timerman

Social media platform X was blocked in Brazil by the country’s supreme court after the company refused to comply with local legislation. Today a panel of five Supreme Court justices unanimously voted to support Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ Friday decision to ban the social platform. (Guardian, Associated Press)

Internet providers and mobile phone companies began to enforce the ban on Saturday, leaving the country with the fifth largest digital population, unable to access one of the world’s most popular social networks, reports the Guardian.

Some 40 million Brazilians, roughly one-fifth of the population, access X at least once per month, reports CNN. Half a million users migrated to rival microblogging site Bluesky, reports TechCrunch.

“The moment posed one of the biggest tests yet of the billionaire’s efforts to transform the site into a digital town square where just about anything goes,” reports the New York Times. It also raises significant questions about Brazil’s aggressive approach — lauded in many corners — to combating “the scourge of internet falsehoods,” reports the New York Times.

The ban is the latest in a months long feud between Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who is investigating misinformation online and hate speech aimed at undermining the country’s democracy, and X owner Elon Musk, who says efforts to limit misinformation are tantamount to censorship. (See Friday’s post.)

The ban responds specifically Musk’s refusal to name a legal representative for X in Brazil — as required by law — in order to circumvent requirements in April to close down several accounts which a judicial investigation determined had spread misinformation and disinformation about former president Jair Bolsonaro’s 2022 defeat. X had previously complied with such orders, last year, notes Tariq Choucair in the Conversation.

In a controversial move, de Moraes also froze the finances SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet service in Brazil, also partly owned by Musk, to try to collect $3 million in fines he has levied against X. Starlink said that it planned to fight the order and would make its service free in Brazil if necessary.

Yesterday Starlink informed Brazil’s telecom agency that it would not block X until Brazilian officials released Starlink’s frozen assets, reports the New York Times.

De Moraes has threatened to fine people in Brazil who access X via VPN, a move some commentators say is illegal. However the decision was upheld by the rest of the Supreme Court justices today. (Guardian)

More Brazil

• The federal police chief leading the investigation into the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips in Brazil was unexpectedly removed from the case.

Indigenous activists and lawyers in Brazil have voiced shock and dismay, reports the Guardian.

The September Window in Mexico

Mexico’s new Congress assumed yesterday, and outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador gave his final state of the union speech. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum swears in on Oct. 1, and AMLO is pushing to leverage his coalition’s strong majority in Congress to push through a raft of reforms.

In his speech yesterday AMLO touted his administration’s accomplishments on crime reduction, immigration, energy and infrastructure projects and poverty reduction, reports Bloomberg. “I am leaving with a clear conscience and very happy,” he told the packed Zócalo square. (Animal Político)

Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies is set to debate AMLO’s judicial reform plan tomorrow, is expected to pass the legislation later in the week, ruling Morena party chamber leader Ricardo Monreal said yesterday. (Reuters)

But critics say the country’s catastrophic impunity rates are the fault of prosecutors and state-level attorney general’s offices, and so won’t be improved by the reform. The proposed judicial reform “would undermine judicial independence, government accountability, and the right to privacy,” according to Human Rights Watch, and “could also lead to an increase in military abuses and arbitrary detentions.”

Mexico’s ruling Morena party super majority in Congress “amounts to a serious threat to Mexico’s already fragile checks and balances,” argues Solange Márquez Espinoza in Americas Quarterly. “Decades of hard-fought reforms aimed at ensuring fair representation, transparency, and checks on executive power are at risk.”

AMLO has painted his reforms as a way to battle corruption with elections. Critics say Morena is angling to create a PRI-style one party rule, reports Foreign Policy.

Outrage over the reforms belies AMLO’s popularity, and tragic state of the country’s current judiciary. General impunity is over 95% and the judicial power is among the least trusted in the country. López Obrador says the reforms, which include making all federal judges chosen by popular election, are necessary because the judicial system is “not at the service of the people” and instead “responds to the interests of organized crime.”

AMLO’s popularity is at about 70%, and he gave his state of the union speech before a packed Zocalo square, notes Ioan Grillo in Crashout. “Put your hands up if you think it’s better that the people elect the judges,” AMLO said, and the crowd raised their arms and cheered.

While few believe the reform will solve the country’s judicial problems, it is notable that protests have mainly come from the judicial sector itself, which has failed to make its own proposals for reform. The reforms at least open up the debate over how to address the judicial sector’s entrenched corruption, CIDE investigator Carlos Pérez Ricart told me. (Cenital)

More Mexico

• AMLO ignored the families of disappeared people in his final state of the union, reports Animal Político.

Venezuela

• Nicolás Maduro is holding onto power by terror-creating repression — detaining critics, children, journalists, and opposition figures — which has citizens watching what they say online and off, writes Luz Mely Reyes in El País. “But a government cannot be sustained by terror alone. Funding is needed to resort to another old tactic: surgical repression, while distributing resources and improving management.”

• Authorities of the Arturo Michelena University infiltrated student WhatsApp groups and detected critics of the government and the rector’s support for it, reports Armando Info.

• Venezuela’s exodus in recent years has been striking — a quarter of the population has fled economic misery and political repression. The case of the once thriving oil city of Maracaibo is particularly striking, reports the New York Times. The country’s second-largest city “has been hollowed out by the loss of about half a million of its 2.2 million inhabitants — many of them adults in their late teens to middle age.”

Bahamas

• Five years after Hurricane Dorian ravaged the Bahamas the survivors of Mudd — a destroyed shantytown where thousands lived — are still struggling to rebuild their lives. “In the age of global climate crisis… the story of the Mudd offers a troubling vision of the future – one where those with the fewest resources to start again must contend with increasingly destructive weather, largely on their own,” reports the Guardian.

Migration

• “It has been a month since a group of nearly 300 Mexican nationals were displaced by violence in the south of the country, seeking shelter across the border in Guatemala. The Guatemalan government is looking to extend the temporary humanitarian status they have provided to the displaced, with 21 of those individuals reportedly in the process of seeking refugee status,” reports the Americas Migration Brief.

• At least 291 migrants have disappeared or died at sea in the Caribbean this year, already surpassing 2023’s full-year total of 247, reports EFE. (Via Americas Migration Brief.)

Haiti

• “Unrelenting gang warfare in Port-au-Prince is fueling an exodus of people from Haiti’s capital, overwhelming already impoverished cities and towns and sparking fears that the gangs will follow,” reports the Washington Post.

Culture Corner

• “Despite being illegal, Jogo do Bicho – or animal lottery – in which players bet on combinations of creatures and numbers, can be played in every Brazilian state,” reports the Guardian. “Since its inception, the lottery has established profound connections with perhaps two of the most significant Brazilian cultural expressions – football and carnival – and has deeply affected urban violence, especially in Rio, where it was created.”

• “The biggest musical hits of recent months in Haiti have been marked by themes of reconciliation and heartbreak. Festive music has been almost eclipsed. While stories of passionate love and lasting friendships continue to inspire, the country’s difficulties weigh heavily on the collective psyche.” — Haiti Weekly

Arrest warrant issued for González Urrutia

Sept. 3, 2024
Jordana Timerman

A Venezuelan judge issued an arrest warrant for former opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia. President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory in the election, but has not provided proof and faces a skeptical international community.

González claims to have won the July 28 election by a landslide, and has been in hiding since then, as Nicolás Maduro’s government implements a ruthless crackdown on dissent that includes the arrest of several opposition leaders by secret police. On Sunday, human rights groups said at least 86 teenagers who were arrested during the government crackdown had been released but hundreds of prisoners have reportedly been taken to high security prisons where they are facing terrorism charges.

Now the government seeks to paint González, and opposition leader María Corina Machado, as coup-mongering criminals. The arrest warrant for González, signed Monday, was sent to a court that specializes in terrorism charges.

González is accused of various crimes including conspiracy, falsifying documents and usurpation of powers. The warrant follows González’s refusal to answer to summons by the government loyal supreme court regarding the opposition’s publication of vote counts that appear to prove González’s electoral victory. González rejected the interview summons arguing, among other issues, that they did not specify the condition under which he was expected to appear.

Chile’s government protested the arrest warrant for González and reiterated its “condemnation of any form of repression against opponents of the dictatorial regime in Venezuela.”

The warrant request came just hours after the U.S. said an aircraft used by Maduro had been confiscated in the Dominican Republic, a move the Venezuelan government slammed as an act of “piracy.” The seizure marks a ratcheting up in tensions between the two countries as the dispute over the election results drags on.

(Reuters, Associated Press, Guardian, El País, Washington Post, Washington Post, New York Times, CNN)

The U.S. is close to announcing 15 individual sanctions on Maduro-affiliated officials who it claims “obstructed the holding of free and fair presidential elections,” according to Bloomberg.

More Venezuela

• Maduro announced yesterday that this year’s Christmas holidays will begin early: “It is September and it already smells like Christmas. And that is why this year, in homage to you, in gratitude to you, I am going to decree the advancement of Christmas to October 1,” Maduro said on television. (El País)
  
  
• “The seizure of a three-ton cocaine shipment at Venezuela’s main airport highlights the role of airport infrastructure in international drug trafficking and exposes an unusual drug trafficking route,” reports InSight Crime.

Brazil

• “Brazil’s Finance Ministry will submit proposals to Congress this year to tax big tech companies and implement a global minimum tax of 15% on multinational corporations to secure the 2025 fiscal goal if there is a revenue shortfall,” reports Reuters.

• “The clash between Brazil and X — and the arrest of Durov in France — are both signals that the age of social media impunity is coming to an end in the democratic world. (It never existed in the authoritarian world.) Social media companies are increasingly likely to be regulated more like legacy media companies and that has costly implications,” writes Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. (See yesterday’s post.)
  
  
• The number of fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest region for the month of August surged to the highest level since 2010, pushed by a record drought affecting the biome, reports Reuters.

• Indigenous film-maker Priscila Tapajowara uses her work to tell the stories she first heard from her elders about the spirits that inhabit the trees and rivers, and forest-dwelling people’s relationship to them, reports the Guardian.

Regional Relations

• Former U.S. State Department official Roberta Jacobson discusses what a Harris presidency might mean for Latin America, in the Americas Quarterly Podcast.

Honduras

• Honduran President Xiomara Castro’s brother-in-law admitted that he had met with a leader of the drug trafficking organization “Los Cachiros” in 2013, just days Honduras announced it would end its longstanding extradition treaty with the U.S. The timing “is feeding fears among Hondurans that the country’s legacy of corruption is continuing,” reports the Associated Press.

Migration

• Mexico’s government said it will offer escorted bus rides from southern Mexico to the U.S. border for non-Mexican migrants who have received a United States asylum appointment, reports the Associated Press.

• “This U.S. asylum policy and its geographic limits are a driving force behind the emergence of migrant encampments throughout the Mexican capital where thousands of migrants wait weeks — even months — in limbo, living in crowded, makeshift camps with poor sanitation and grim living conditions,” reports the Associated Press.

• Arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico during August are expected to rise slightly from July, reports the Associated Press.

Guatemala

• Guatemala’s Supreme Court rejected a request by President Bernardo Arévalo to begin proceedings to strip attorney general Consuelo Porras of her immunity. Arévalo said she seeks to undermine his government. (AFP)

Argentina

• President Javier Milei vetoed a pension increase approved by Congress in mid-August, his first use of the presidential power since taking office in December, reports the Buenos Aires Herald. The bill passed by Congress established a hike and guarantees aimed at maintaining retirees’ purchasing power in relation to inflation.

• The wide vote margins on the original bill mean lawmakers will likely overturn the presidential veto in coming weeks, reports Bloomberg.

Colombia

• “Violence in Cauca is skyrocketing, and residents, many of whom supported leftist president Gustavo Petro in elections in 2022, feel they have been abandoned by a government that only seems to care about them when election season rolls around,” writes Joshua Collins at Pirate Wire Services. Despite adverse material and social conditions, Cauca residents “are a model of “resistencia” and peace-building in effectively stateless and conflict-torn regions of the biggest drug transportation corridor in South America, and perhaps the world.”

• Rodolfo Hernández, a controversial real estate magnate and anti-corruption crusader who came close to winning Colombia’s presidential election two years ago, has died from colon cancer. (Associated Press)

Haiti

• Delays in payment, equipment shortages and lack of manpower have sapped morale among Kenyan police officers deployed to Haiti and hampered their ability to confront heavily armed gangs, reports Reuters.

Mexico

• Climate change and youth exodus are threatening Mexico’s ancient and prized cocoa farmers, reports the Guardian.

• Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, one of Mexico’s most-feared drug lords, was been released from a U.S. prison last week after serving most of a 25-year prison sentence, reports the Associated Press.

Regional

• In an increasingly urban region, with serious traffic and pollution problems, cycling is growing as an agile, economical and clean transport alternative in Latin America, writes Sinar Alvarado in Boom.

Critter Corner

• Whale-watching in Colombia – New York Times

• Sea turtles in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay are getting healthier after after authorities made an effort to clean up the water they live in, reports Reuters

Castro relative met with drug traffickers

Sept. 4, 2024
Jordana Timerman

Investigative reporters obtained a 2013 video in which some of Honduras’ top drug traffickers met with Carlos Zelaya, President Xiomara Castro’s brother-in-law, and offered to give over half a million dollars to his party’s presidential campaign that year.

The footage was taken from a spy camera embedded in a watch worn by one of the traffickers in the meeting, but “the pictures and audio are clear enough to show the drug traffickers reminisce about previous contributions allegedly paid to former President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, the husband of Castro, brother to Carlos, and founder of the ruling Libre Party,” reports InSight Crime, which broke the story yesterday, together with Univisión.

“The video is another startling piece of evidence that reveals the depth of drug traffickers’ infiltration of the political class in Honduras,” reports InSight Crime.

Carlos Zelaya admitted to journalists during an impromptu press conference on August 31 that he went to San Pedro Sula at the invitation of several “businessmen” and spoke to the drug traffickers. He stepped down from his lawmaker post, but claimed he did not previously know who would be at the meeting.

But in the video he openly explains the distribution of the promised donations, reports Univisión.

“These reports add damning evidence to drug traffickers’ multiple courtroom testimonies accusing Manuel and Carlos Zelaya of having past campaign ties to drug traffickers,” according to El Faro.

The revelations add a new perspective to Castro’s abrupt announcement last week that she would seek to end Honduras’ U.S. extradition treaty. According to InSight Crime, the Castro administration made the announcement after the reporters had spoken with one of the participants in the 2013 meeting.

“The cancelation of extradition by the Castro government could be aimed at protecting key government officials from prosecution in the United States and will certainly frustrate the ability of both countries to hold transnational organized crime groups to account,” reported InSight Crime yesterday.

Castro yesterday accused the U.S. Embassy of orchestrating a coup d’état. “The plan to destroy my democratic socialist government and the upcoming electoral process is underway,” she said.

More Honduras

• InSight Crime profiles Los Cachiros.

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Mexico’s lower chamber passed judicial reform

Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies approved President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s judicial reform bill yesterday, after a marathon session. The vote passes the bill in general terms, and will now pass to a debate on particulars, reports Animal Político. (See Monday’s post.)

The lower house will now have to iron out more than 600 details of the bill before it moves to the Senate. The ruling Morena coalition is just one seat short of a supermajority, and the measure is widely expected to pass, reports the New York Times.

Critics say the overhaul, which would make all federal judges elected, would stack the courts in favor of López Obrador’s party, politicize the judicial system and pose a threat to foreign investment, reports the Associated Press.

Eight of the 11 Supreme Court justices voted to suspend sessions for the rest of the week, yesterday, in support of striking judicial employees at the high court. Judicial workers, who have been on strike for over three weeks, protested outside the Chamber of Deputies building, yesterday. They blocked entry to the building, hoping to delay the vote, and pushing lawmakers to relocate to an alternate venue. (El País, New York Times, El País)

Under the new rules, lawyers who want to run for judgeships must meet requirements of minimum grades in school, a law degree and five years of relevant experience. Candidates will be assigned TV and radio advertising slots and would not be allowed public or private funding, reports the Financial Times.

Three judges have so far given separate orders blocking debate on the bill, though this has not affected proceedings, reports Animal Político.

Business leaders are concerned that a politicized justice system will complicate their investments, reports the Financial Times.

AMLO’s judicial reform proposal would be catastrophic for Mexico’s democratic institutions and its place in the USMCA, argues Ryan Berg at CSIS. “It is not hyperbole to say that Mexico’s ability to continue playing a starring role as a strategic partner in economic security initiatives and nearshoring could evaporate in the wake of Plan C’s passage.”

Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum maintains that the reform will only democratize an elite, opaque government power. “If judges, magistrates and ministers are elected by the people, where is the authoritarianism?” (La Jornada)

Bolivia

• Bolivia is one of the few countries in the region with elected judges, a reform that has been conflicted and conflictive, reports El País.

Venezuela

• “Venezuelan authorities are committing widespread human rights violations against protesters, bystanders, opposition leaders, and critics following the July 28” presidential election, Human Rights Watch said in a new report. The group said it has documented that “Venezuelan authorities and pro-government armed groups known as “colectivos” have committed widespread abuses, including killings, arbitrary detention and prosecution, and harassment of critics.”

• Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia has not sought asylum, his lawyer said yesterday, after a judge issued an arrests warrant for him. (AFP, see yesterday’s post)

• Brazil’s top foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, said the arrest warrant for González was “very concerning” and said there was a clear “authoritarian escalation” in the country, reports Reuters. (See yesterday’s post.)

• The post-electoral repression was to be expected, InterAmerican Dialogue’s Tamara Taraciuk told El País. She believes the Maduro government moved foward with elections in order to obtain international recognition and “miscalculated the margin of success of the opposition and its organizational capacity. Then, when election day ended with so much clarity in the streets and with the evidence of the minutes that the opposition published a couple of days later, the regime did what it does best: entrench itself in power, repress and attack.”

Brazil

• Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he hopes the crisis surrounding the social network X in Brazil might teach the world that “it isn’t obliged to put up with [Elon] Musk’s far-right free-for-all just because he is rich”. (Guardian)

• The narrative of a clash of titans in Brazil between Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes and billionaire Elon Musk misses the real point, that the judge is upholding Brazilian legislation, writes Eliane Brum in El País. In the midst of the battle, isolated Amazon communities that depend on Musk’s satellite internet company for connection risk being cut off.

• “It is an opportunity to think about internet connectivity for what it is: a public policy that cannot be held hostage by an individual. Right now, in the largest rainforest on the planet, we are held hostage by Elon Musk’s Starlink. How the state has allowed this to happen is the most urgent question to address,” she writes. (El País)

• Starlink backtracked yesterday and said it will comply with the judicial order to block X, reports the Associated Press. It “was the first sign of any backing down by Mr. Musk in Brazil since he began battling with the authorities there last month,” reports the New York Times.

• The record-setting fires in Brazil are a sign of climate change, yet the issue remains off the political radar ahead of next month’s municipal elections, notes Sumauma in an editorial.

• A group of former Brazilian drug gang criminals have launched a new podcast series aimed at dissuading youths from following the same path, reports the Guardian.

Nicaragua

• A new United Nations report released yesterday detailed alleged crimes committed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s government, including an intensifying crackdown on dissent enforced with a new wave of arbitrary arrests and torture, reports Reuters.

• Nicaragua’s Ortega-controlled National Assembly approved criminal code changes that allow the government to try opponents in absentia and seize the assets of the condemned, giving a legal foundation to a practise that is already carried out by the government, reports the Associated Press.

Chile

• Chile’s Boric administration withdrew articles referring to gender and human rights from a proposal to create a Security Ministry, in response to opposition from right-wing parties to their inclusion. (La Tercera)

Colombia

• Truckers in major Colombian cities blocked highways to protest a recent increase in the price of diesel fuel, reports the Associated Press.

• “In the rugged Micay Canyon of southwestern Colombia, rebel groups have beefed up their presence over the past two years despite efforts by Colombian President Gustavo Petro to negotiate peace deals with these irregular armies under a strategy known as total peace,” reports the Associated Press.

Argentina

• Argentine President Javier Milei significantly reduced the scope of the country’s access to public information law, by presidential decree, on Monday. (El País)
  
  
• The visit by ruling-party lawmakers to jailed human rights violators “was one more step forward in the Milei administration’s strategy to erase the memory of the repression committed against the Argentine people,” writes Daniel Cholakian in Nacla.

Peru

• Peruvian President Dina Boluarte shuffled her cabinet, but maintained some of the most controversial officials, according to El País.
• “At least two loggers have been shot dead with arrows, one has been injured and two more are missing after a confrontation with members of the “uncontacted” Mashco Piro people in the Peruvian Amazon,” reports the Guardian. Indigenous activists have criticized the government for failing to recognize and protect the isolated people’s territory.

Culture Corner

• Read your way through Buenos Aires – New York

• Mexican singer Jaramar Soto has dedicated a three-decade career to antique baroque music, part of Sephardic tradition, and it’s mixture with Mexican culture. (El País)

Blinken in Haiti

Sept. 5, 2024
Jordana Timerman

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Haiti today in a show of support for a beleaguered international security mission aimed at supporting the country’s police to battle criminal gangs. The Kenya-led mission is under-staffed and under-equipped, and has failed to make headway at wresting back large chunks of territory under criminal control.

“There’s a perception that they’re not doing anything,” said James Beltis, an activist and one of the founders of an anti-corruption group, “Nou pap dòmi,” or “We aren’t sleeping,” told the Washington Post.

The U.S. is not providing personnel to the security mission, but is giving equipment and financial support, with a commitment so far of $309 million. Officials said about $200 million of that has already been delivered to Haiti by the Defense Department in the form of equipment such as armored personnel carriers. The State Department is supplying the rest, including radios, night-vision capabilities and police gear.

State Department officials called for more international support, yesterday. It is unclear what will happen when the U.N. authorization for the support mission expires on Oct. 2. Re-authorization is scheduled to be discussed by the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 30. “Supporters face questions about the force’s long-term sustainability and its effectiveness in helping Haiti’s beleaguered police take down gangs, who earlier this year united to lead a broad assault on key government infrastructure. The Biden administration, aware of the challenges, now wants to transform the force into a more formal U.N. peacekeeping operation or some hybrid that would allow for funding and staffing to be stabilized,” according to the Miami Herald.

Blinken’s visit comes as the transitional presidential council, charged with advancing towards elections and a new government by 2026 has been plagued by delays and infighting, reports the New York Times. “Three members of the council are under investigation by the country’s anti-corruption agency over the handing out of government jobs to members of its coalition of political and economic groups.”

More Haiti

• Haiti’s anti-corruption agency is accusing high-ranking government officials of crimes ranging from illicit enrichment to abuse of office, reports the Associated Press. The newest cases involve food meant for public school students being diverted for other purposes to government fuel being used for personal benefit.

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U.S. secures release of Nicaraguan prisoners

The U.S. Biden administration said today it had secured the release of 135 “unjustly detained political prisoners” in Nicaragua on humanitarian grounds, reports the Miami Herald.

The released prisoners were sent to Guatemala. The release follows “months of negotiations between the U.S. and Nicaragua,” the U.S. and Guatemala said in a joint statement. (Reuters)

The prisoners are all Nicaraguan, and include 13 members of a Texas evangelical church accused by Nicaragua’s government of using its nonprofit status as a cover to purchase luxury goods, property and land, reports the New York Times.

The group also included Catholic laypeople, students, and others whom President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and the first lady and vice president, Rosario Murillo, considered a threat to their authoritarian rule, Jake Sullivan, the National Security adviser, said in a statement.

Colombia

• Colombian President Gustavo Petro has ordered an investigation into the purchase of Pegasus spy software by the country’s police force — paid for in cash during the government of his predecessor, Iván Duque, reports the BBC.

Honduras

• Honduras handed an ally of imprisoned former president Juan Orlando Hernandez over to the United States yesterday to face drug trafficking charges, reports AFP. The move comes in the midst of a diplomatic dispute between the two countries regarding a long-standing extradition treaty. (See yesterday’s post.)

• Leading anti-corruption activist Gabriela Castellanos called on Honduran President Xiomara Castro “to resign after a video surfaced that appeared to show her brother-in-law negotiating campaign donations with drug traffickers over a decade ago,” reports Reuters. (See yesterday’s post.)

El Salvador

• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights urged El Salvador to end a two-year state of emergency, which has suspended fundamental civil rights while the government cracked down on the country’s powerful street gangs, reports the Associated Press.
  
  

Venezuela

• Venezuelan law enforcement authorities detained a U.S. Navy sailor last week while the service member was on personal travel, reports the Washington Post. The service member is reportedly being held by the Venezuelan intelligence agency SEBIN, reports CNN.
• Oil giant Chevron has pushed the U.S. government to let it stay in Venezuela regardless of whether Maduro illegally retains his grip on power, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Brazil

• “New legislation in Brazil is set to support farmers by pushing additional demand toward biofuels — and away from the fossil fuels produced by state-controlled oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA,” reports Bloomberg.
  
  
• Brazil’s banning of X has had little impact on a population that had already largely abandoned the social media platform, reports the Washington Post.
  
  
• Twitter’s travails in Brazil provide valuable lessons for would be investors, writes James Bosworth in Latin America Risk Report.

Mexico

• Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s judicial reform project would eliminate the current disciplinary council for judges, and replace it with an elected tribunal. While the move has raised significant concerns about judicial independence, Quinto Elemento Lab found in a report that the current council has not been at all good at meting out justice to judges accused of wrongdoing.
  
  
• “The nearshoring boom seems to be winding down before it even started,” writes Alex González Ormerod in the Mexican Political Economist. “Mexico has been unable to do is make a good enough case to draw nearshoring to itself. This is less to do with specific political hiccups and more to do with longstanding familiar roadblocks.”

Blinken pushes Haiti to advance on elections

Sept. 6, 2024
Jordana Timerman

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Port-au-Prince yesterday, and announced an additional $45 million in humanitarian aid for Haiti. He also reiterated the need for the country’s transitional government to swiftly advance towards elections. (See yesterday’s post.)

The transitional presidential council coordinator, Edgard Leblanc Fils, said he hoped to move toward the electoral council next week with a goal of elections in November 2025 and a transfer of power in February 2026. (AFP)

But the security situation in Haiti makes any such plan difficult: this week Prime Minister Garry Conille expanded a state of emergency to cover the entire nation, reports Reuters.

“Gangs currently control more than 85% of metropolitan Port-au-Prince and large swaths of the neighboring Artibonite region. The Artibonite and the West region, where the capital is located, represented an estimated 57% to 60% of the country’s electorate the last time— 2016 — Haitians went to the polls to elect a president,” notes the Miami Herald.

About 578,000 people, roughly 5 percent of the population, have been displaced by violence, according to the United Nations. In the first half of the year, at least 3,884 Haitians were killed or injured in the fighting, the United Nations said. (Washington Post)

“At this critical moment, we do need more funding, we do need more personnel to sustain and carry out the objectives of this mission,” Blinken told reporters. He added that the U.S. is working to renew the so-far lackluster international support mission led by Kenya, whose mandate ends in a month. “But we also want to make sure that we have something that’s reliable, that’s sustainable. We’ll look at every option to do that. A peacekeeping operation would be one such option.”(Associated Press)

Given the upcoming U.S. election, “the trip is a gamble for Blinken, who … risks calling attention to an unresolved international challenge that, if mismanaged, could lead to a flood of migration,” according to the Washington Post.

Regional Relations

• Despite Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s hopelessly tarnished reputation following the disputed July presidential election, “the US can’t afford to hit him where it hurts most,” reports Bloomberg. “Rescinding licenses on energy companies operating in Venezuela would only risk worsening the country’s precarious economic situation and could contribute to an exodus in a US election year where migration is front and center.”
  
  
• Venezuela’s August oil exports hit their highest in more than four years, according to shipping data, fueled by expanded shipments to China, the U.S. and Europe, reports Reuters.
  
  
• Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she wants the United States to do “much more” to press President Nicolás Maduro regarding the dispute over July’s presidential election results, reports Reuters.
  
  
• She called for a global movement, similar to the international campaign against apartheid in South Africa, to help rescue her country from “criminal tyranny,” reports the Guardian.
  
  
• “The UN can take decisive steps to address Venezuela’s crisis,” argues Beatriz Borges in Americas Quarterly. A Security Council statement “urging an immediate cease to repression, as well as transparency and respect for democratic principles, is feasible and would be in order,” and another option could be “a resolution agreeing to deploy an independent electoral verification mission with a broad mandate to monitor human rights and the political transition, supported by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.”
  
  
• Incoming Mexican cabinet officials, Juan Ramón de la Fuente and Marcelo Ebrard, responded to the Washington Post’s argument that the country’s judicial reform is an issue of hemispheric concern, saying U.S. diplomatic statements on the subject infringe on Mexico’s sovereignty. “And the specific nature of the argument made by The Post and Mr. Salazar suggests a double standard: What is virtue in the United States is vice in Mexico.”
  
  
• That being said, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ruled out the risk of a rupture in trade relations with the United States in relation to the judicial reform. (AFP)
  
  
• “If Donald Trump wins in November, Latin America should be prepared for yet another resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine—with a real-world impact on everything from investment and technology to the region’s ties with China,” argues Juan Gabriel Tokatlian in Americas Quarterly.
  
  
• China’s military will take part in joint military exercises in Brazil, a rare move for China in the region. The exercise comes as China and Brazil enjoy improved relations in recent years, including Brasilia’s intent to join the Belt and Road Initiative, reports the South China Morning Post.
  
  

Regional

• Policies to fight graft have lost momentum in Latin America — this is particularly true in the cases of Mexico and Brazil, which “have struggled with entrenched corruption and limited political will to tackle related issues,” write Marina Pera and Valeria Vásquez in Americas Quarterly.

Brazil

• Brazilians are split over Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes’ order for social media giant X to be taken down in the country, according to a new AtlasIntel poll. (Reuters)

El Salvador

• Barra de Santiago in El Salvador serves as a crucial carbon sink in a region battling deforestation, and a natural shield for a country exposed to climate crisis-induced tropical storms and escalating sea levels. But its mangrove forest is in danger due to the effects of the climate crisis, rapid urbanization, cattle grazing, extensive deforestation from the sugarcane industry, and increasing demand for timber in the country, reports the Guardian.

Ecuador

• Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. are setting up a debt-for-nature swap that will help Ecuador manage its debt financing costs in exchange for a pledge to protect part of the Amazon rainforest, reports Bloomberg. The Nature Conservancy will be an adviser on the deal, they said.
  

Colombia

• Colombia’s government reached a deal with truckers to suspend a protest over a rise in diesel prices after road blockades threatened to cause food and fuel shortages in the country’s biggest cities, reports Reuters.
  

Barbados

• “An Anglican church group is to launch a £7m reconciliation project in Barbados to atone for the atrocities of transatlantic slavery and compensate descendants of enslaved people,” reports the Guardian.
  

Paraguay

• Paraguay’s Ministry of Education endorsed a national sex ed curriculum for the first time. It “promotes abstinence, explains sex as “God’s invention for married people,” warns about the inefficacy of condoms and says nothing of sexual orientation or identity,” reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Former Paraguayan president Horacio Cartes “is no longer useful to Washington, which can now act virtuous and punitive with sanctions,” argues Brian Saady in Responsible Statecraft.
  

Mexico

• The Mexican AI ecosystem has invested in digital infrastructure and talent, but it still lacks a national vision and strategy for AI. As a result, other countries are leapfrogging Mexico, according to the Wilson Center’s Weekly Asado.
  

Critter Corner

• A group of experts is creating a unique catalog in record time of all the living beings that inhabit Mexico City’s iconic Chapultepec park. They hope to register some 500 species to ensure their conservation, reports El País.

Jordana Timerman / Latin America Daily Briefing
latinamericadailybriefing.blogspot

EnergiesNet.com 09 09 2024