The international Bogotá Summit on Venezuela, organized by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, concluded yesterday with few concrete results, though the 20 participant countries agreed to meet again. (Reuters)

Petro gathered participants, including representatives from the United States and the European Union, as well as Brazil, Argentina and the United Kingdom, to help restart stalled talks between Venezuela’s Maduro government and the political opposition. Negotiations between the two sides foundered last year, but have sought to reach a deal for free and fair elections in 2024.

“The history of Latin America is in our hands,” Petro, told the diplomats gathered. He depicted Latin America at a crossroads: Either the attendees could “mark a path that leads toward war and the deconstruction of democracy, or we can rebuild the path of peace and democracy”. (Al Jazeera)

Following the five-hour-long meeting, Colombian foreign affairs minister Alvaro Leyva read a brief statement in which he said the participating nations agreed it is necessary for Venezuela’s government and opposition parties to set an electoral calendar that ensures free and fair conditions for all involved. Levya also said there was consensus around lifting sanctions if there’s progress in negotiations over Venezuela’s political future. (Associated Press)

Indeed, U.S. National Security Council senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs Juan González, who attended the summit, said the U.S. is willing to ease more sanctions if concrete steps toward free and fair elections are taken in the Venezuela talks.

The goal of elections next year, however, appears increasingly distant. The two sides had agreed in November to create a UN administered fund for humanitarian aid, using Venezuelan funds frozen abroad by international sanctions. But there were no announcements in this regard yesterday, dashing opposition party hopes, according to El País.

Nonetheless, Atlantic Council’s Geoff Ramseys said the conference reflected an “impressive” and necessary international display of unity around the Mexico negotiations. “The fact that the United States was willing to send such a high level delegation to the conference shows there is real political will to put sanctions relief on the table” he told the Associated Press.

More Venezuela

• Opposition politician Juan Guaidó’s surprise appearance in Colombia this week, and rapid ejection to Miami, is “a sort of sad coda to his so-called presidency,” Chatham House’s Christopher Sabatini told the Guardian. While Guaidó had hoped to engage with foreign government’s attending the Bogotá Summit, most no longer recognize him, and are instead engaging with Maduro. (See yesterday’s post.)
  
  
• Armed criminal groups who repress opponent’s of Nicolás Maduro’s government, known as “colectivos,” control public services in Venezuela’s Lara state, reports InSight Crime. “As Venezuela’s economic crisis continues, colectivos are consolidating their control of these essential services. And in Lara, a vital electoral campaign ground, controlling these areas means controlling votes.

Mexico

• Mexico’s military ignored nearly a dozen complaints about cartel activity in the Guerrero state region where 43 students were disappeared in 2014, according to e-mails hacked from the country’s defense ministry. “The e-mails capture the fear and frustration experienced by the region’s citizens due to the presence of violent criminal groups, as well as the apparent collusion between organized crime and local authorities,” reports the Guardian.

Regional Relations

• Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s “high profile makes him a natural leader on issues like climate, although recent controversies, and domestic challenges in Brazil, may limit his regional ambitions,” according to the lead editorial in a new Americas Quarterly issue focused on Lula and Latin America.
  
  
• “There are numerous reasons that suggest Brazil’s new president may be uniquely well-placed to take the reins and exercise regional leadership and have a tangible impact on Latin American affairs,” writes Oliver Stuenkel in Americas Quarterly. Among others, “Brazil remains one of the few countries in the world that seems, at least in principle, capable of walking the talk of non-alignment: No other country is both a BRICS and a G20 member, while also taking significant steps towards joining the OECD.”
  
  
• Americas Quarterly tracks Latin American countries’ foreign policies at a time when many “are increasingly following a path that Chilean scholars Carlos Fortin, Jorge Heine and Carlos Ominami titled the ‘active non-alignment option.’”
  
  
• Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has said his country should apologize and take responsibility for its role in the transatlantic slave trade. It is the first time a Portuguese leader has suggested such an apology, according to the Guardian. From the 15th to the 19th century, six million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels and sold into slavery, primarily to Brazil.
  
  
• Brazilian government officials are using Lula’s first visit to Europe in office to raise awareness and fight against the racial discrimination faced by the Brazilian community in Portugal and elsewhere, reports Reuters.

Brazil

• Narratives in Brazil about the Jan. 8 attacks on Brasília reflect the country’s ultra-polarized politics: The Brazilian left says the rioters committed the gravest assault on Brazilian democracy since the 1964 military coup. But supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro now back a counternarrative that blames Lula and the left for the unrest, reports the Washington Post. (See last Thursday’s post.)

More Colombia

• Colombian President Gustavo Petro has asked his cabinet ministers to resign ahead of a reshuffle, reports Reuters. Petro’s decision followed upset in Colombia’s House of Representatives after a debate on the president’s controversial health reform was abandoned due to lack of consensus among the ruling coalition. (See March 24’s post.)

Chile

• Chilean President Gabriel Boric has pivoted to a tough-on-crime stance, in the midst of an adverse political context and public anger over rising insecurity, reports Americas Quarterly. (See this month’s Chile Updates.)

Haiti

• Ben Dupuy, a political activist and Haiti ambassador-at-large who became the voice of the radical opposition, has died at age 91, reports the Miami Herald.

Critter Corner

• Birding in Ecuador — New York Times

Jordana Timerman/Latin America Daily Briefing