Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said he will attend the upcoming U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas, after publicly touting a possible absence. He said the U.S. has offered a bilateral meeting with President Joe Biden, which would be the first time the two leaders would talk privately since Biden took office, reports Bloomberg.

Bolsonaro’s attendance would be a relevant boost for the U.S., as several regional leaders have threatened to boycott the meeting over the likely exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua due to democratic concerns. (Bolsonaro’s potential absence was unrelated to the invite list.)

Yesterday a senior U.S. State Department official confirmed that representatives of Venezuela’s Maduro administration and Nicaragua’s Ortega government have not been invited. Testifying to a Senate subcommittee, Kevin O’Reilly, the U.S. summit coordinator, said it would be up to the White House to decide whether to invite Cuba, reports Reuters.

Cuba’s president said on Twitter late on Wednesday that “under no circumstances” would he go to the summit.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is among the most prominent leaders promising to skip next month’s meeting. Yesterday he said that the possibility of the trip was still under discussion. (Associated Press)

News Briefs

More Brazil

• Bolsonaro celebrated a military police operative that left at least 25 dead in Rio de Janeiro favela Vila Cruzeiro on Monday, reports UOL. He congratulated officers who “neutralized at least 20 criminals linked to drug trafficking in confrontation, after being shot at during an operation against criminal faction leaders.” (See yesterday’s post.)
  
• The raid is one of the deadliest police operatives in recent history, and has raised perennial questions over police brutality and abuses in Rio de Janeiro favelas. One of the victims was a 41-year-old woman in her home, while another was a young woman searching for her brother in a wooded area near the community. (UOL)
  
• The Mano a Mano podcast discusses society, racism, about the beginnings of rap in Brazil — and the connection with black movements of the time, and visions of the future for the Brazilian people — with Sueli Carneiro, one of the greatest intellectuals and historical reference of the black movement in Brazil.

El Salvador

• Lawmakers in El Salvador have extended, for a third month, a state of emergency backed by President Nayib Bukele to crack down on criminal street gangs. The Bukele dominated National Assembly voted for a 30-day extension of emergency powers yesterday. Rights groups have denounced arbitrary detentions and human rights abuses under the guise of the crackdown. (Al Jazeera)

Migration

• 842 Haitians apparently trying to reach the U.S. by ship landed on the central Cuban coast instead, pushed off track by several days of stormy weather and thunderstorms. It’s thought to be the largest group yet in a swelling exodus of people from Haiti, reports the Guardian.

Cuba

• Cuba’s emblematic sugar harvest reached just half o the government target this year — yet another blow to the country’s crisis-racked economy, reports Reuters.

Colombia

• Miguel Botache Santillana, better known as Gentil Duarte, the leader of a former FARC faction that remained armed after the 2016 peace deal, is presumed killed in Venezuela, according to Colombian military officials. (Reuters)

Ecuador

• A group of schoolgirls won a lawsuit against Ecuador’s government last year, arguing that the use of flares by oil companies in the Amazon violated their constitutional right to a healthy environment. A year later, they’re still fighting to protect their community, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

Regional

• The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted the seventh straight above-normal Atlantic hurricane season, with 14 to 21 named storms — compared with 14 in an average year — and three to six major hurricanes, rated Category 3 or higher. (Washington Post)
• Nearly two-thirds of the world’s most dangerous cities are in Latin America, according to a study by a risk analysis firm. (Guardian)

Peru

• A magnitude 7.2 earthquake shook a remote region of southern Peru, yesterday, though there were no immediate reports of damage or injury. (Associated Press)

Flora

• A Patagonian cypress in Chile with a four-meter-thick trunk known as the Great Grandfather could be the world’s oldest living tree, according to Chilean scientists. (Guardian)

Jordana Timerman/ Latin America Daily Briefing

http://latinamericadailybriefing.blogspot.com