The trove of secret U.S. intelligence reports leaked online this week “appears to confirm what many Latin America and Caribbean watchers have warned about in recent years: Russia and China are trying to gain a foothold amid waning U.S. leadership,” reports the Miami Herald.

Evidence in the leaked documents includes a proposal by Russian mercenary Wagner Group to provide security in Haiti. Haiti’s Henry administration told the Miami Herald that the government has not had discussions with the Wagner Group, nor the Russian government with regards to the country’s security crisis.

Another report said that Russian foreign affairs officials favored a Ukraine mediation proposal presented by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, believing his plan “to establish a club of supposedly impartial mediators to settle the war in Ukraine … would reject the West’s ‘aggressor-victim’ paradigm.”

A third document reveals secret negotiations between China and Nicaragua to build a deep-water port in Bluefields on the country’s Caribbean coast.

(See also Reuters and New York Times.)

More Regional Relations

• Lula will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing this week. The Ukraine conflict mediation proposal is on the agenda, reports AFP.

Security dominates Chile’s political agenda

Chileans are increasingly concerned about public security, forcing the issue to the center of the Boric administration’s agenda. After police officer Daniel Palma was killed last week, the third member of Chilean security forces killed in a month, citizens gathered around the country to support the Carabineros and demand security policies from the government.

In a show of unity, President Gabriel Boric and former presidents Sebastián Piñera, Michelle Bachelet and Ricardo Lagos attended Palma’s funeral together.

Subsequently, Boric allocated $1.5 billion to fight crime and signed off on four new laws that the government says will help fight organized crime, drug trafficking and crime. But human rights organizations and the United Nations have been critical of the reforms, particularly one that broadens the standards for police self defense, which they warn will reduce accountability and make access to justice difficult for victims of possible abuses, as well as favor impunity.

(See today’s Chile Update.)

Mexico

• Mexican prosecutors formally presented homicide charges against four soldiers implicated in the Feb. 26 shooting deaths of five men in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, reports the Associated Press. (See yesterday’s briefs.)

Colombia

• A Colombian small business owner was convicted of discrimination and harassment for making racist comments about Vice President Francia Márquez during an antigovernment protest last year. (Associated Press)

Guatemala

• El Faro speaks with exiled Guatemalan Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez, who led the historic “Death Squad Dossier” enforced disappearance case, sent former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to trial for genocide, and imprisoned ex-President Otto Pérez Molina on charges of corruption.
  
  
• Recent meetings with U.S. officials made clear that the United States has no interest in taking tougher actions against the Guatemalan officials who are turning the country into a kingdom of impunity and corruption, according to Gálvez. (El Faro)

Haiti

• U.S. federal agents questioned several four Colombian suspects Haiti this week, part of the ongoing investigation into the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. The Colombian mercenaries were removed from their cells at Haiti’s National Penitentiary and met with Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, reports the Miami Herald.
  
  
• Cassava, also known as yuca, is enjoying a renaissance in Haiti, where the traditional staple was long considered food of last resort. (Miami Herald)

Cuba

• Cuba’s government announced a surprise lifting of its ban on US dollar deposits in banks, reversing a policy which had been in place since 2021. (AFP)

Bolivia

• Bolivia has all but exhausted its Special Drawing Rights from the International Monetary Fund, deepening a currency crisis, reports Bloomberg.

Peru

• Peru’s mainstream media is particularly concentrated within a few private conglomerates — social media has permitted citizens to challenge hegemonic narratives, with mixed results, writes Brunella Tipismana in Nacla. “By allowing for a multiplicity of perspectives, technology has both opened up space for underrepresented voices and, simultaneously, deepened the nation’s epistemic crisis.”

Paraguay

• Authorities have destroyed mammoth amounts of cannabis on the border of Paraguay and Brazil, but eradication efforts in Amambay have been undermined by “poverty, unsuccessful crop substitution programs, inadequate state presence, and police corruption,” reports InSight Crime.

More Chile

• “Chile’s lithium industry is at a crossroads. At stake is Chile’s future as one of the world’s leading lithium producers, and whether the Andean nation will continue to play a central role in the planet’s transition from fossil fuels to electrification,” writes Patricia I. Vásquez for the Wilson Center.

Jordana Timerman/Latin America Daily Briefing