Latin America Daily Briefing

December 19, 2024
Jordana Timerman

Colombia has offered to take custody of Argentina’s Embassy in Caracas, where six of opposition leader María Corina Machado’s aides have been sheltered since March, reports the Buenos Aires Times.

Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said Venezuela’s government has demanded Argentina release a person close to the Maduro administration, and that Ecuador release former vice president Jorge Glas, who was detained earlier this year while sheltered in the Mexican embassy in Quito, reports El País.

The diplomatic negotiations have been ongoing, but have taken on new urgency as the Venezuelan government increased harassment against the people sheltered in the embassy residence.

The harassment includes constant surveillance by heavily armed security agents, the interruption of water and electric services, and the arrest of a longtime local employee of the Argentine embassy. (See Monday’s briefs.)

A group of international organizations, including Human Rights Watch and WOLA, urged the international community should urgently call on Venezuelan authorities to ensure their rights and grant safe-conducts to the six asylees allowing them to leave the country safely, and to unconditionally release the detained employee.

January opens a period of uncertainty for Venezuela-U.S. relations. A new presidential mandate begins in Venezuela on Jan. 10, and, ten days later, Donald Trump will again assume the presidency of the U.S.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro claims reelection, a result widely considered as fraudulent. Maduro is all but certain to remain in office after Jan. 10 — saying this is not “normalizing the dictatorship,” but recognizing a hard reality, writes International Crisis Group’s Phil Gunson in El País.

While Trump has named a hawkish State Department team, the negative experience of recognizing a parallel government in Venezuela five years ago hoping it would overthrow Maduro complicates a maximum pressure approach, reports El País.

“Regardless of the state of relations between Washington and Caracas, no external power is going to resolve Venezuela’s political crisis. The solution will have to come from within, and the first urgent step is to preserve, and if possible expand, the little political and civic space that remains, so that Venezuela does not end up becoming another Nicaragua,” argues Gunson.

Regional Relations

• Argentine President Javier Milei is betting that “carnal relations” diplomacy with the U.S. will payoff with new financing from the IMF and a free-trade agreement with the Trump administration, despite the incoming president’s promises to slap tariffs on major trade partners. (Wall Street Journal)
  
  
• Despite U.S. President Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to restore the historic detente with Cuba announced a decade ago by Barack Obama, “Biden’s legacy on Cuba appears destined to be one of frustrating and infuriating inaction—leaving in place the previous Trump administration’s hostile and punitive policies, and enabling the next Trump administration to quickly escalate its regime-change posture toward Cuba after January 20, 2025,” writes Peter Kornbluh in The Nation.
  
  
• Paraguay reversed its decision to halt cooperation between its antidrug agency and the United States. Critics said the move would have jeopardized critical U.S. investigations in a major cocaine transit country, reports the Washington Post.
  
  
• Mexico’s government has asked the U.S. to extradite a Dámaso López Serrano, a former high-ranking member of the Sinaloa drug cartel suspected in the murder of journalist Javier Valdez in 2017. (BBC)

Mexico

• Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has a 76% approval rating, two and a half months into the job – El País

Migration

• A thousand-person migrant caravan set out yesterday from Tapachula in southern Mexico — but Mexican authorities have moved swiftly to disperse such groups, more so since Trump won the U.S. election last month. Thousands of people have been transported far from their initial route, part of the Mexican government’s efforts to thwart migrants before they reach the U.S. border, reports El País. (See Monday’s briefs.)
  
  
• This week, the human rights group Doctors Without Borders wrote in a report that “hundreds of thousands of migrants, the majority of whom are crossing to reach the United States, fall into limbo in Mexico, hemmed in by violence.” (Associated Press)

Honduras

• Larger criminal groups have retreated from Honduras’ extortion market, shifting instead to more lucrative criminal economies. Yet extortion has increased in the country as smaller gangs fill the gap, reports InSight Crime. “At the same time, arrests for extortion are falling, indicating growing impunity for this predatory criminal activity.”

El Salvador

• El Faro reports on how El Salvador’s Court of Accounts sought to exonerate a close ally of President Nayib Bukele for multimillion dollar looting that occurred under his watch as Minister of Agriculture and Livestock.

Guatemala

• Guatemala’s attorney general is carrying out politically motivated prosecutions against members of President Bernardo Arévalo’s administration, according to Human Rights Watch.

Nicaragua

• Amnesty International designated Brooklyn Rivera, a leader of the Miskito Indigenous people, as a prisoner of conscience and called on the Nicaraguan authorities to order his immediate and unconditional release.

Chile

• Chilean authorities have been cracking down on the Tren de Aragua, but the transnational criminal organization’s modus operandi means its small cells form again quickly — a police operative this week detected a group operating just blocks from the presidential palace in Santiago. (El País)

Brazil

• Brazil’s real fell to its weakest level against the dollar since the currency was introduced in 1994 — the drop is fueled by what investors believe are the government’s insufficient efforts to reduce government spending, reports the Associated Press.

Culture Corner

• Legendary public intellectual and literary critic Beatriz Sarlo died at 84 in Buenos Aires – El País. (See also Buenos Aires Times.)

EnergiesNet.com 12 20 2024