A full day and half after losing his reelection bid on Sunday, Brazilian President Jair remained cryptically silent. His refusal to concede, after years of baselessly questioning the integrity of Brazil’s electoral system, fanned concerns that he would seek to challenge former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory. The election was the closest in modern Brazilian democracy, with a difference of only 2.1 million votes — 1.8 percentage points — and many Bolsonaro supporters believe in conspiracy theories that the vote was rigged.

Brazil’s supreme court has ordered police to remove scores of roadblocks set up Bolsonaro supporters protesting the results around the country. The federal highway police said truckers were blocking highways at 271 points, partially or fully, as part of protests that have spread to 23 of Brazil’s 26 states. The police said another 192 roadblocks had been cleared. (Reuters)

While Bolsonaro remained silent, supporters failed to coalesce in to broader protests against the results. And key right-wing politicians immediately spoke out recognizing the loss and expression of the sovereign will of citizens, albeit, a misguided one in their opinion. (New York Times)

There are reports that Bolsonaro has been drafting a concession speech, though the exact contents are unclear. He was expected to claim he was a victim of injustice, but would not challenge the results, reports the Washington Post.

More Brazil

• A day after his victory, Lula started negotiations with centrist parties — in an attempt to guarantee his ability to pass a legislative agenda in a Congress dominated by President Jair Bolsonaro’s allies, reports Folha de S. Paulo.
  
  
• Lula’s administrations slashed Amazon deforestation rates, while Bolsonaro has governed over a vast increase in environmental destruction. The president-elect has promised to revert the trend with green development policies, reports the New York Times.

Regional Relations

• Lula’s election in Brazil could herald warmer relations with Colombia’s Petro administration — particularly collaboration with environmental policies for the two countries’ contiguous Amazon area, reports La Silla Vacía.
  
  
• Twitter should undo the “damage” done to former U.S. President Donald Trump by the cancellation of his account, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said yesterday. (Reuters)

Mexico

• International experts questioned the sudden withdrawal of arrest warrants in the long-stalled 2014 case of 43 disappeared students in Mexico, just as investigators were moving forward with detentions in one of the country’s most notorious human rights scandals, reports the Guardian. (See Friday’s post.)
  
  
• The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, found inconsistencies in a government commission investigation into the case, but said the evidence behind the arrest warrants was solid. (Animal Político)
  
  
• The experts warned, in a press conference yesterday, that an attempt by the government to reach answers quickly has created a “crisis” for the investigation and risks diminishing confidence in the outcome. (Associated Press)
  
  
• Mexico could implement direct agreements with farmers in the United States, Argentina and Brazil to secure non-genetically modified yellow corn imports, ahead of a 2024 ban on GM corn, reports Reuters.

Migration

• U.S. Federal agents shot pepper balls at Venezuelan and Honduran migrants who were protesting asylum policies along the country’s border with Mexico. (Animal Político, CNN.

El Salvador

• Rodolfo Antonio Delgado Montes, the current attorney general of El Salvador, worked for over two years as defense attorney for two important allies to the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13), the country’s most powerful gang, according to a joint El Faro and InSight Crime investigation.

Costa Rica

• Costa Rican Vice President Stephan Brunner said he had been charged for his alleged role in illicit financing during the electoral campaign of President Rodrigo Chaves, reports Reuters. Prosecutors said Brunner was under criminal investigation for illegally receiving private campaign contributions.

Haiti

• The Haitian ambassador to Washington has appealed to the international community to accelerate talks on deploying an armed intervention, warning that gang warfare is deepening the country’s humanitarian crisis, reports the Guardian. (See last Wednesday’s post.)
  
  
• Canada sent a fact-finding team to Haiti last week to assess the humanitarian and security needs, but remains non-committal. (Global News)
  
  
• The rise of the Ti Makak gang in the well-to-do Thomassin suburb of Port-au-Prince is is “a sign of how Haitian gangs can quickly evolve from a ragtag band of thieves into powerful warlords who can subvert the rule of law even in the country’s stablest regions,” reports Reuters.

Colombia

• A sudden and unexplained halt in coca paste sales presents a window of opportunity for crop substitution efforts in Colombia’s Tibú, reports El País English.
  
  
• Colombia’s government may change its position on prohibiting new contracts for oil exploration, a policy U-turn for the Petro administration which promised to move Colombia away from hydrocarbons, reports Reuters.

Ecuador

• Ecuador’s energy minister Xavier Vera resigned on Friday amid an investigation into accusations he arranged jobs at state oil company Petroecuador in exchange for bribes, reports Reuters.

Jordana Timerman / Latin America Daily Briefing
http://latinamericadailybriefing.blogspot