Latin America Daily Briefing

Aug 23, 2024

Jordana Timerman

Ten Latin American governments and the U.S. rejected the Venezuelan Supreme Court’s confirmation of Nicolás Maduro’s widely disputed claim to have won reelection in July. (See yesterday’s briefs.)

Chilean President Gabriel Boric declared: “I have no doubt this election has been stolen.” Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo tweeted: “The Maduro regime is not democratic and we do not recognise its fraud.”

In a joint statement published today, the governments of Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and the U.S. called for an “impartial and independent audit” of the vote, reports the Guardian.

The U.S. said the ruling lacked “all credibility, given the overwhelming evidence that [Maduro’s rival Edmundo] González received the most votes” in the 28 July election.

The joint statement also voiced “profound concern” about human rights violations committed by the government since the disputed elections.

Boric was categorical: “The Venezuelan dictatorship is not the left. A continental left that is deeply democratic and respects human rights regardless of the color of those who violate them is possible and necessary.”

Brazil and Colombia, which have sought to mediate negotiations between Maduro and the opposition did not comment on yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling. (Infobae)

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said did not recognize the court’s ruling and called on Venezuela’s government to publish the full voting tallies. (Silla Vacía, La Jornada)

Yesterday’s ruling means that negotiation will be more important than ever, writes Luz Mely Reyes in El País.

More Venezuela

• The U.S. has drafted a list of about 60 Venezuelan government officials and family members who could be sanctioned in the first punitive measures since the disputed July presidential election, reports Reuters.

Guatemala

• Guatemalan prosecutors filed a request to strip President Bernardo Arévalo of the criminal immunity granted to his post so he can face charges for alleged abuse of authority. The prosecutor accusing the president, Rafael Curruchiche, is on the U.S. State Department’s Engel List of Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors and has been sanctioned by more than 40 countries. (Reuters)

Mexico

• Mexico said it is sending a diplomatic note protesting supposed U.S. interference after the U.S. ambassador openly criticized a proposed Mexican judicial overhaul, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Judicial workers and judges have maintained an ongoing strike, in protest of the proposed reform. They have taken their protest to the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, reports Animal Político.
  
  
• Mexico City’s legislature approved the most ambitious rent control law since the 1940s yesterday, reports the Associated Press. The move limits rent increases to the rate of inflation in the previous year.

Nicaragua

• Nicaragua’s Ortega government closed another 151 non-governmental organizations, yesterday, continuing a spate of closures from earlier this week. Yesterday’s move affected some of Nicaragua’s most important trade organizations, including the American Chamber of Commerce, reports the Associated Press. (See Monday’s briefs.)
  
  
• The Central American Bank for Economic Integration, an international development bank largely funded by democratic governments, provided hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to the Nicaraguan government, even as the United Nations and human rights groups documented widespread killing, torture and forced exile of government opponents, according to a new Washington Post investigation.

Haiti

• An average of five children have been killed or injured in Haiti for every week of the first six months of 2024. Most of the 131 children have been killed or injured so far this year were hit by crossfire between warring gangs and security forces, according to analysis of UN Data by Save the Children. It’s a 47% increase over the final six months of 2023 when 89 cases were documented. (Guardian)
  
  
• U.S. sanctions against former Haitian President Michel Martelly “underscore the United States’ continued influence on Haitian politics,” writes Catherine Osborn in the Latin America Brief. The sanctions appear to be a message of support to the current prime minister, Garry Conille, who leads the transitional government and has apparently had a difficult relationship with Martelly, dating back to efforts to investigate international aid contracts between Haiti and Venezuela. “As Martelly weighed a comeback, tensions between the two politicians appear to have resurfaced: Last month, Conille ordered an investigation into a firm run by Martelly allies.” (See Wednesday’s briefs.)
  
  
• Haitian police arrested a suspect in the May killing of a U.S. missionary couple and a Haitian man who headed a nonprofit in an attack by gunmen, reports the Associated Press.

Argentina

• Argentina’s Congress handed President Javier Milei a stinging defeat on pension payments, just a day after blocking a presidential decree on discretional funding for the national spy agency. “All but one of the lawmakers who voted against the bill were from Milei’s party, a sign that the president’s allies had failed to negotiate with more moderate right-wing parties,” reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Milei said he will veto the increase in pensions and accused senators of being “fiscal degenerates.” Lawmakers could override his veto by passing the law with a two-thirds majority again. (Al Jazeera, Buenos Aires Times)
  
  
• Milei’s efforts to increase military spending even as he slashes basic social services are “fraught,” according to the Economist. “Milei has suggested using the armed forces against internal threats, such as gangs. Yet the idea is unpopular in a country which was ruled by a bloody military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983.”
  
  
• Indeed, Argentine politics remains roiled by the visit of several ruling party lawmakers to human rights violators in jail. It is part of the Milei government’s efforts to undermine the significance of the last dictatorship’s crimes. Gabriela Vulcano reconstructs the uncomfortable field trip for Crisis.

Migration

• The U.S. expanded access an app to request border control appointments to southern Mexico, part of an effort to relieve migrant pressure in Mexico’s north, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Panama’s government announced additional deportation flights for migrants apprehended, in a bid to reduce of flow of mostly U.S.-bound migration, reports Reuters.

Colombia

• Colombia’s emerald trade “has suffered another blow to its reputation with the professional assassination of a top dealer. The killing has sparked speculation over which criminal powers beyond the jewel business could be at work, and what they may gain from the hit,” reports InSight Crime.

Regional

• “After decades of failed repressive anti-drug policies in Latin America, armed groups have expanded their grip far beyond narcotrafficking and now have their hands on vast amounts of land, agriculture, oil and politics in the region. They increasingly operate in a gray zone between legal and illegal business, making it harder to track the source of dirty money,” reports Americas Quarterly.
  
  
• A new report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development, Surya Deva, outlines four pillars and twelve human rights principles that are critical to a climate justice framework – Just Caribbean Updates

Regional Relations

• “Ecuador’s Coca Codo Sinclair (CCS) hydroelectric plant has become an infamous symbol of the controversies associated with Chinese development finance in Latin America,” writes Julie Radomski at the Aula Blog. “As such, the project’s performance has outsized implications for China-Latin America relations.”

Suriname

• Suriname announced its first offering of sovereign carbon credits, and effort to secure payment for protecting its forest cover, reports the Financial Times.

Uruguay

• New York Times’ Jack Nicas met with José Mugica and had a delightfully aphorism-filled conversation: “What a complicated animal man is. He’s both smart and stupid.”
  
  
• Nicas also writes about the love story between two rebels who led Uruguay: Mugica and Lucía Topolansky.

Pushback against Mexico’s judicial reform con’t

Aug 22, 2024

Jordana Timerman

Mexico’s electoral authority must determine the final composition of the country’s incoming national congress, today. The council is likely to maintain it’s longstanding criteria of distributing seats by party rather than coalition, which would give the ruling coalition a comfortable supermajority (permitting unilateral constitutional reform) in the lower chamber, and leave it just three votes shy of two-thirds in the Senate. (El País)

The ruling comes as all eyes are on the advance of a reform plan that includes judicial overhaul making judgeships elected. Judges and magistrates yesterday joined a strike begun early this week by federal court employees to oppose the proposal, reports the Associated Press. (See Tuesday’s post.)

Yesterday Morgan Stanley issued an “underweight” warning on Mexican shares due to concerns about planned changes to the judiciary and electoral system, reports Reuters. Markets reacted to the strike and the warning, the peso fell by 2%. (Reuters)

Leading American business associations including the American Petroleum Institute and National Mining Association warned that the reform and others proposed by Mexico’s outgoing president risked harming bilateral trade and investment, reports the Financial Times.

Sheinbaum insisted yesterday that the reform should not scare investors, as it targets the corruption they know firsthand and aims to strengthen Mexico’s rule of law. (Animal Político)

More Mexico

• Mexican feminists are optimistic about Sheinbaum’s presidency, particularly promises to extend public healthcare to informal workers and Monday’s announcement that there will be a cabinet level Women’s Secretariat, reports El País.
  
  
• Mexico’s federal attorney general’s office said Joaquín Guzmán López is the main suspect in the kidnapping Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and announced an arrest warrant for the son of Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán for the crimes of kidnapping and treason. Both Guzmán López and Zambada are currently detained in the U.S. (El País)
  
  
• The move gives credibility to Zambada’s version of how he came to be arrested in the U.S., and accusations linking the episode to the murder of Héctor Cuén, a Sinaloa politician for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) while dismissing the version of events provided by state authorities regarding the homicide, reports El País.
  
  
• The federal prosecutors’ statement also included an unusually harsh and revealing description about evidence presented by prosecutors in the northern state of Sinaloa that has since proved to be false, apparently aimed distancing Governer Rubén Rocha from the killing of Cuén, a local political rival, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• In the meantime, a Cold War is raging within the Sinaloa Cartel after Zambada’s detention, reports InSight Crime.

• “What are the security risks of running a business in Mexico, and are those risks worsening? How much of an effect is extortion by drug traffickers having on Mexico’s business community? How are corporations responding to the threats, and how much are their profits being affected?” – Latin America Advisor
  
  
• Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional leader Subcomandante Marcos write a missive lambasting Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose development projects “are just the commercial corridors that are open for organized crime to have new markets.” (El País)
  
  
• Mexico could boost its annual economic activity by more than 25%, or $390.5 billion, if women participated in the labor force at the same rate as men, according to a report by the Milken Institute. (Reuters)

Venezuela

• Venezuela’s government-loyal Supreme Court declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of the disputed July 28 election. In its ruling read by presiding judge Caryslia Rodríguez, the court said it had “indisputably certified election materials and validates the results of the July 28, 2024 presidential election issued by the National Electoral Council (CNE),” naming Maduro as the winner, reports AFP.
  
  
• The opposition objects to the Supreme Court ruling on the issue, saying it doesn’t have the mandate to carry out electoral functions, reports Reuters.
  
  
• “The high court’s ruling certifying the results contradicts the findings of experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center who were invited to observe the election and which both determined the results announced by authorities lacked credibility,” notes the Associated Press. “Specifically, the outside experts noted that authorities didn’t release a breakdown of results by each of the 30,000 voting booths nationwide, as they have in almost every previous election.”
  
  
• After a long time operating in the shadows, Venezuela’s colectivos — criminal groups with a symbiotic relationship to the state, with which they systematically collaborate and cooperate — have returned to the limelight in one of the most crucial moments for the government, reports InSight Crime. Since Venezuela’s contested presidential vote, they’ve been mobilized by Maduro’s government, “confirming once again that they are a strategic tool for dispersing protests.”

El Salvador

• Several nongovernmental organizations launched a registry of disappeared persons in El Salvador, a tool meant to help families with relatives detained under the country’s extended state of emergency and better measure the number of people disappeared, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Idalia Zepeda, a member of the NGO association, said the 366 missing people reported in the last year would mark an almost 10% increase compared to United Nations and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) estimates for the previous year, reports Reuters.

Ecuador

• Ecuador’s government said that a request by Vice President Veronica Abad that the country’s electoral court remove President Daniel Noboa from his post is an attempt at a “coup,” reports Reuters.
  
  
• “This ugly fight between the country’s president and vice president is going to last for months to come and will shape Ecuador’s presidential election to be held next February,” wrote James Bosworth earlier this week in World Politics Review.

Regional Relations

• Some experts say the unprecedented diplomatic efforts led by Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to negotiate a solution to Venezuela’s electoral crisis are fizzling, reports the Associated Press.

Peru

• A pilot universal basic income project in Peru’s Amazon explores how alleviating Indigenous poverty could help protect the rainforest, reports the Guardian.

Migration

• Guatemalan police arrested seven people accused of having smuggled 53 migrants from Mexico and Central America who died of asphyxiation in 2022 in Texas after being abandoned in a tractor trailer in the scorching summer heat, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Brazil will tighten up entry rules in response to migrants’ increasingly using the South American nation as a stop-over on the way to the United States and Canada, reports Reuters. (See also Associated Press.)

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

• Six weeks after Hurricane Beryl, devastated islands that form part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines remain in need of help, reports the Guardian.

Bolivia

• Journalist José Aramayo discusses how radio plays a central role in the political and social life of Bolivia and its campesino movements – Nacla

Argentina

• Argentine President Javier Milei suffered a stinging defeat in Congress yesterday as deputies in the lower house from a broad spectrum of parties repealed a controversial presidential decree that dramatically boosted discretional funding for the country’s spy agency. (Buenos Aires Times)
  
  
• The vote shows cracks in Milei’s alliance with the center right parties led by former President Mauricio Macri, notes El País.
  
  
• “Argentina’s economy unexpectedly contracted in June, shrinking for the fourth time in six months as a deep recession weighs down early signs of recovery,” reports Bloomberg.

Culture Corner

• X-men has a new character: Buenos Aires native Valentín Correa, otherwise known as “Ransom,” wears an Argentina futbol jersey and has a “black hole for a heart.” – Buenos Aires Times
  
  
• A new documentary reintroduces Frida Kahlo to a younger generation. “The documentary’s ace in the hole is that the birth-to-grave narrative is told by the painter herself. It’s an ingenious way to carve out a person from a pile of merch,” writes Luiza Franco in Americas Quarterly.

US sanctions former Haitian president Martelly

Jordana Timerman

Aug 21, 2024

The United States has imposed sanctions on former Haitian president Michel Martelly, “for his role in the global illicit drug trade,” the State Department said yesterday. Martelly lives in Miami but maintains a prominent political profile in Haiti, reports the Miami Herald. He served from 2011 to 2016, a period of time characterized by post-earthquake reconstruction, in which gang violence and drug trafficking flourished in Haiti. He also governed over the alleged embezzlement of nearly $2 billion in aid from the Venezuelan oil program known as PetroCaribe, a major scandal that fomented mass protests.

In a statement, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said Martelly “abused his influence to facilitate drug trafficking and has sponsored multiple Haiti-based gangs.” (Associated Press)

The United States in recent years has imposed sanctions on Haitian gang leaders and the politicians and business leaders who support them. “But the sanctions on Martelly, a popular singer nicknamed “Sweet Micky” who splits his time between Haiti and Miami, are viewed as particularly significant,” reports the Washington Post.

It was unclear how the sanctions would affect Martelly, who is a U.S. resident and lives in Miami, reports the New York Times. The sanctions will freeze Martelly’s US assets and bar US citizens from doing business with him. Canada similarly sanctioned Martelly and two former prime ministers in 2022, reports Deutsche Welle.

More Haiti

• A group of former Caricom leaders who seek to support Haiti’s transitional government said there must be a “speedy resolution” to allegations of corruption against members of the presidential council, if Haitians are to preserve the integrity of the ongoing political transition forged in Jamaica in March. (Miami Herald)

Colombia

• Dozens of former FARC guerrilla fighters and their families were forced to abandon a village built for their demobilization, yesterday, after receiving death threats by a still-active rebel group, reports the Associated Press.

El Salvador

• El Faro interviews businessman Fidel Zavala, who spent 13 months in multiple prisons, and silently observed how inmates around him died. In the Mariona Prison, Zavala was named to a trusted post where, due to mass overcrowding, he assisted guards with headcounts of the number of total inmates in each cell. “No one died a natural death,” Zavala told Carlos Martínez. “I had to write down the names of those who left in black bags.”
  
  
• “Upon his release, Zavala did something highly unusual —even unprecedented— in today’s El Salvador: He personally sued Osiris Luna, the director-general of the Bureau of Prisons, and the wardens of the two facilities where he was held, for crimes including torture,” reports El Faro English.

Venezuela

• The opposition to Venezuela’s Chavistas have a history of rejecting electoral losses and coup mongering — but this should not blind leftists to the blatant fraud that Nicolás Maduro’s administration has attempted with the latest presidential elections, writes Gabriel Hetland in Sidecar. If the left is to “defend the real gains of Chavismo during the 2000s and 2010s, it must give up on consoling fantasies and take a clear-eyed look at the country’s degeneration.”
  
  
• Alberto Barrera Tyszka writes in El País about Maduro’s political history: “The most radical sector of the right has always maintained that Maduro was elected by the Cubans, that he was merely an instrument of Castro-communism. Obviously, the presence and power of Cubans in Venezuela is undeniable, but it is not the only element that explains our reality. Chavismo has transformed itself into a complex corporation, with different groups that Maduro has managed to control, administering and distributing the different spheres of command and wealth.”
  
  
• Venezuela’s government-loyal National Assembly delayed debate on a law against “fascism” that critics say would facilitate a crackdown on political opponents. (AFP)
  
  
• Over a hundred employees at Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, plus others in the oil ministry and parts of the public sector, have been forced to resign over their political views since last month’s disputed election, according to workers and unions. (Reuters)
  
  
• “An oil spill has dumped black sludge on beaches along Venezuela’s northwestern coast and affected fishing in the area,” reports AFP.

Ecuador

• A year after Ecuadorean citizens voted to halt all future oil drilling in Yasuní National Park, the government is nowhere near close to meeting its deadline, reports Mongabay.

Brazil

• Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met on Monday with lower house Speaker Arthur Lira at the presidential palace amid the crisis between the three branches of government, after the Supreme Court suspended lawmakers’ budget amendments, reports Bloomberg based on Folha de S. Paulo.
  
  
• Kite fighting has caused horrific injuries and even deaths in Brazil — a bill moving through Brazil’s Congress is seeking to prohibit the manufacture, sale and use of the razor-sharp lines nationwide, reports the Associated Press.

Argentina

• Argentina’s far-right Milei administration has actively sought to rollback feminist advances — facing a hostile onslaught, activists are focusing on how poverty disproportionately impacts women, and how this could become the movement’s next rallying point, I write in Boom.
  
  
• Argentine authorities said they quarantined a cargo ship in the Paraná River over a suspected case of mpox onboard, reports Reuters.

Mexican judiciary on strike

Jordana Timerman

Aug 20, 2024

Mexican judicial workers launched an indefinite nationwide strike yesterday, in response to a judicial reform advancing through Congress. They will be joined, starting tomorrow, by more than 1,200 federal judges and magistrates, reports Animal Político.

Outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador considers the reform, dubbed Plan C, a key legacy. He hopes to pass it next month, using the Morena party’s new dominance in Congress, and his last month in office. It would make judges elected rather than appointed, and critics say it would endanger the judicial power’s position as a counterweight in a country where the ruling Morena party dominates overwhelmingly in the legislative and executive powers.

The judicial unions who called the strike, which represent many of Mexico’s 55,000 judicial workers, said they believed the reform would end merit-based career paths, reports Reuters. “Critics say the change could result in people with minimal legal experience being elected to judgeships,” reports the New York Times.

Unionized court employees put chains and locks on the gates at several courthouses, yesterday, and said they plan to continue the strike until López Obrador drops his proposals, reports the Associated Press.

AMLO proposed the reform in response to what he says is judicial corruption, but experts say the overhaul will not respond to systemic problems like slow-moving cases and inept investigations that allow many crimes to go unpunished, reports the New York Times. Indeed, the system of political evaluation committees could create new opportunities for corruption, experts told Animal Político.

“The overwhelming majority of cases of impunity in Mexico are not attributable to judicial authorities,” according to a new WOLA commentary. “Impunity for crimes reported by the population occurs mainly at the stage of investigation by prosecutors’ offices … In this context, the proposed judicial reform would lead to the continuation and deepening of patterns of impunity and abuse against the population.”

And “critics fear the potential consequences of local and state authorities following the federal system in electing their judges, which they allege could open the way for organized crime to infiltrate the judiciary,” reports Americas Quarterly.

More Mexico

• Mexico City mayor-elect Clara Brugada appointed a gender-parity cabinet heavy on technocrats. She promised a “feminist perspective” and work on the ground, not from behind a desk, reports El País. (See also Animal Político.)
  
  
• The emerging story of Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada’s arrest “includes strong indications that Sinaloa’s governor, an ally of AMLO, was being paid off by the Sinaloa Cartel,” a story that “will turn out poorly for MORENA and will harm AMLO’s legacy on security issues, which is likely why the president has reacted so viscerally to the events,” according to the Latin America Risk Report.
  
  
• Mexico’s government deployed 600 additional military troops to Sinaloa’s state capital Culiacán, yesterday, reports Animal Político.

Migration

• Today Panama deported 29 Colombian nationals with criminal records who had entered the country through the Darién Gap. It is the first U.S.-funded flight repatriating migrants who crossed into Panama irregularly, part of an accord signed between Panama’s Mulino administration and the U.S. government last month, reports Reuters. (See also Reuters.)
  
  
• Registration opened yesterday for an estimated 500,000 spouses of U.S. citizens to gain legal status without having to first leave the country, reports the Associated Press.

Regional Relations

• Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro signed a decree banning coal exports to Israel, an effort to pressure Israel’s government to end the conflict in Gaza, reports Bloomberg.

Colombia

• ELN commander Antonio García accused the Colombian government of delaying negotiations with the country’s largest remaining guerrilla group in order to “militarily dismember the ELN.” (Silla Vacía)

Haiti

• Haitian police tear gassed hundreds of peaceful protesters in Port-au-Prince yesterday. The demonstrators asked law enforcement to help them stop the gangs that have been violently seizing control of their neighborhoods, reports the Associated Press.

Nicaragua

• The Nicaraguan government’s decision to eliminate 1,500 civil society organizations in one fell swoop yesterday was notable because it included hundreds of Evangelical churches, a sign that the Ortega administration is expanding its effort to silence religious leaders and close off any independent space not affiliated with the government, reports the New York Times. (See yesterday’s briefs.)

Regional

• Latin American countries agreed to form a regional alliance against organized crime, under the aegis of the Inter-American Development Bank. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay will join the alliance and Ecuador has committed itself to assume the first presidency. (El País)

Venezuela

• Venezuelan attorney general Tarek William Saab said opposition leaders, including María Corina Machado, could face legal charges for the deaths that happened in protests following the July 28 presidential election. “Human rights organizations as well as international groups have accused Saab of being one of the key people in the regime’s efforts to use the Venezuelan justice system as an instrument of political persecution,” notes the Miami Herald.
  
  
• WOLA President Carolina Jimenez Sandoval and Laura Cristina Dib, WOLA’s director for Venezuela, said the July “elections and the ensuing resistance and repression, although familiar, are without precedent in Venezuela. They discuss new forms of civic resistance, including engagement from the Venezuelan diaspora, and activity among youth and among popular social media influencers.”
  
  
• Venezuela’s new “‘anti-NGO law’ blatantly violates freedom of association and the right to participate in public affairs, among other rights. It marks yet another crackdown by Nicolás Maduro’s government against those fighting for human rights in Venezuela,” according to Amnesty International.
  
  
• Maduro is hoping to settle the contested presidential election in Venezuela’s top court, “yet, for decades, Venezuela’s judiciary has turned into a branch of the executive and of the ruling party PSUV,” notes the Caracas Chronicles.
  
  
• “Amid the polarized conflict between the government and opposition, critical leftist voices struggle to advance their own political demands,” writes Yoletty Bracho in Nacla.
  
  
• The New York Times reports on the five top Machado aides who have been living in an Argentine diplomatic residence for five months, after seeking protection from arrest.

Brazil

• “Police in São Paulo have frozen bank accounts holding over a billion dollars in an anti-money laundering operation that highlights the growing use of cryptocurrency by Brazil’s most powerful prison gang, the First Capital Command,” reports InSight Crime.
  
  
• Oil exploration in Brazil’s Cabo Orange national park is nearly a certainty given political pressure from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, reports Folha de S. Paulo, but a spill on the border with French Guiana would be environmentally disastrous.

Regional

• As the climate crisis advances across Latin America, women are on the front lines, defending their communities’ access to water, reports Nacla.

Chile

• Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet insists she will not seek the presidency again, but her name keeps coming up in polls, evidence that generational turnover has been lacking in politics, according to El País. (La Tercera)

Paraguay

• A Paraguayan lawmaker with the governing Colorado party was killed in pre-dawn police raid targeting his home, “a grim reminder of the web of collusion between politicians’ families and organized crime in Paraguay,” reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• A year into Paraguayan “President Santiago Peña’s term, the economy is doing well. However, critics worry about rule of law and the influence of a powerful former leader,” writes Lawrence Blair in Americas Quarterly.

Venezuela opposition rally

Jordana Timerman

Aug 19, 2024

Thousands of people marched in Carcas yesterday in an anti-government protest that was smaller than others since the contested July 28 presidential elections. The opposition rally was overseen by a massive police deployment, thousands of officers, in a context of increased repression against government critics, reports El País.

The head of the National Bolivarian Police posted on social media that there would be “free transportation to Tocorón” a jail where political prisoners are being held, “but it’s one-way.”

More than 1,400 people have been detained since the election, and authorities are canceling passports of human rights activists and others, trapping them in the country, reports the New York Times. “On Saturday, members of the National Guard dragged away a priest in the state of Zulia as his congregation watched.”

Opposition leader María Corina Machado has been in hiding due to risk of arrest, but participated in Saturday’s rally, reports the Washington Post.

Venezuelans around the world rallied to the opposition’s protest call, with demonstrations in Tokyo, Sydney, Mexico City and several other cities, reports the Associated Press. There were at least 300 demonstrations outside of Venezuela, a reflection of the country’s large diaspora.

More Venezuela

• Venezuela’s Maduro regime is not a classic dictatorships — in his new book, José Natanson argues that it could be understood as “chaotic authoritarianism,” a system that “assumes that there is no perfect chain of command that applies a consistent plan, a central authority capable of vertically controlling what happens. Therefore, chaos is not an accident or an undesirable result, but the paradoxical condition of possibility of political stability and the validity of the authoritarian model.” (Nueva Sociedad)
  
  
• Boris Muñoz spotlights Maduro’s “banality,” writing that Venezuela’s president “has never had and will never have a dream of his own, like all great leaders. He came to power almost by chance, burdened by a basic political ideology and thanks to his ability to follow the dictates of his boss. He is the epigone, without brilliance or delirium, of Hugo Chávez. However, he has shown himself to be a skilled negotiator with a “killer instinct,” which has undoubtedly helped him maintain power for 11 years.” (El País)
  
  
• Maduro’s efforts to stay in power make use of “autocratic legalism,” writes José Ignacio Hernández in Americas Quarterly, “an expression coined by Amherst College’s Professor Javier Corrales to describe how democratic backsliding in Venezuela was driven by the use, abuse, and disuse of the law.”
  
  
• In El País presidential candidate Edmundo González wrote: “We reaffirm our commitment to talk and negotiate with whoever is necessary to move towards a new democracy where we all fit in.”
  
  
• The OAS permanent council approved a resolution calling on Venezuelan authorities to publish the full tally sheets for the July 28 presidential elections, on Friday. (Ámbito)
  
  
• An oil spill, which appeared to originate from Venezuela’s El Palito refinery several days ago, has contaminated a bay off the country’s north-central coast in the Caribbean Sea, reports Reuters.

Nicaragua

• Nicaragua’s government dissolved 1,500 organizations of civil society in a massive decree that accuses them of failing to report their financial status. The move mostly affects religious organizations, and transfers their assets to the government. The Ortega government has dissolved 5,163 organizations of civil society since 2018, reports Confidencial.

Brazil

• Elon Musk announced on Saturday that the social media platform X would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” from the Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes. (Reuters)
  
  
• Earlier this year, the company clashed with de Moraes over free speech, far-right accounts and misinformation on X, notes the Associated Press. (See last Thursday’s post.)
  
  
• However X remains accessible in Brazil, the company said. It was unclear how many staff it had in the region, reports the Financial Times.

Mexico

• Mexican Supreme Court Justice Norma Piña is a leading critic of the government’s judicial reform. But “amid accusations that Piña has played too political a role in opposing the reform,” she has failed to get the government to modify a plan to make all Mexico’s judges chosen by election, reports Americas Quarterly.
  
  
• The judicial reform bill passed by a Congressional commission last week seeks to fire all the Supreme Court judges next year, and maintains the electoral tribunal justices until 2027, by which point all the national judges will have been renewed by election, reports Animal Político.
  
  
• The killing of two Venezuelan women outside of Mexico City has cast a spotlight on sex trafficking, one of Mexican organized crime’s most lucrative activities, reports El País.
  
  
• Two fentanyl traffickers associated with Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada were found assassinated this weekend, fanning fears that Zambada’s detention could unleash cartel violence, reports El País. (La Jornada)

Regional Relations

• Zambada’s arrest in the U.S. “has left Mexico — which has borne the brunt of the violence unleashed by drug cartels — reeling at the possibility it will complicate relations with the US, expose corruption and unleash more brutality,” reports the Financial Times.

Peru

• A string of Mennonite settlements “have taken root throughout the Amazon, turning forest into thriving farms but also raising concerns among environmentalists about deforestation of a jungle already under threat from industries like cattle ranching and illegal gold mining,” reports the New York Times.

Haiti

• Haiti’s security crisis is in a stalemate, and the international community’s support reiterates many of the same strategies that have failed in the past. I spoke with Haitian-based journalist Etienne Côté-Paluck and CEPR expert Jake Johnston about the situation for Cenital.
  
  
• While experts say the international security mission to Haiti will require time, they also say it is underfunded and under equipped — and as the security crisis extends in time, the transitional government risks losing its legitimacy, reports The Hill.

Regional

• Caribbean leaders are concerned about an epidemic of violence in the region. “As governments and organisations work to identify and address the root causes of escalating crime levels, academics in the region have examined the legacy of colonisation and the culture of violence embedded by transatlantic slavery,” reports the Guardian.

Colombia

• British Prince Harry and his wife Meghan wrapped up their visit to Colombia yesterday by participating in a forum on the challenges facing women of African descent as they participate in politics, reports the Associated Press.

Argentina

• “Beef consumption in Argentina dropped 14.1 percent in the first seven months of 2024 year-on-year and is at its lowest level in the last 26 years,” reports the Buenos Aires Times.
  
  
• Argentine authorities said “police have arrested seven people with alleged links to a “radical Islamic terrorist group” plotting anti-Christian and anti-Jewish attacks,” reports AFP.

Cuba

• The mosquito-transmitted Oropuche virus is spreading in Cuba, according to government authorities. (El País)

Jordana Timerman / Latin America Daily Briefing
latinamericadailybriefing.blogspot

EnergiesNet.com 08 23 2024