Latin America Daily Briefing

Sept. 20, 2024
Jordana Timerman

Outgoing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the U.S. “jointly responsible” for the wave of violence that has engulfed Sinaloa state in the past two weeks. (Animal Político) Over 50 people have died as factions of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel battle each other in the wake of the July arrests of leaders Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Joaquín Guzmán López in the United States. (See Wednesday’s post.)

Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum noted yesterday that the U.S. did not seek to coordinate with Mexican authorities with regards to the arrests. (Animal Político)

“An explanation is required, because if we are now facing a situation of instability and confrontation in Sinaloa, it is because they made that decision, and we do not agree that Mexico should be ignored because we have the problem here,” AMLO said. There “cannot be a cooperative relationship if they take unilateral decisions” like this, he added. (Associated Press)

“The latest controversy aside, the underlying question is whether both countries have the capacity to maintain a common agenda against organized crime,” according to El País.

More Mexico

• Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies approved a reform that will pass the civilian 130,000-troop National Guard security force to the aegis of the armed forces. The bill would also enable lawmakers to create a law permitting military participation in internal security, reports La Jornada. (See also El País and yesterday’s briefs.)
  
  
• Ten years after the 43 Ayotzinapa students disappeared in Iguala in one of Mexico’s most emblematic human rights atrocities, their families are still demanding answers about what happened. (Associated Press)
  
  

Migration

• “Internal government reports obtained by The New York Times, along with interviews with migrants and advocacy groups, have shed light on conditions migrants face at the U.S. Guantánamo base, “including allegations that migrants have been forced to wear blackout goggles during transport through the base; that their calls with lawyers are monitored; and that some areas are unfit for habitation, with rats and overflowing toilets.”
  
  

Brazil

• The Brazilian Amazon is facing a security crisis — indeed, it “may have among the densest concentrations of criminal organizations in Latin America, if not the world,” writes Robert Muggah in Americas Quarterly. “Against this backdrop, some local leaders are experimenting with promising new strategies to prevent and reduce crime and disrupt illicit financial flows.”
  
  

Fires

• Forests and farms in the Amazon and across Brazil “have been ablaze like seldom before thanks to a highly combustible cocktail of extreme drought affecting nearly 60% of the country, the climate crisis and a seemingly insatiable appetite to destroy the environment for immense financial gain,” reports the Guardian.
  
  
• Brazil’s government has responded tepidly to raging fires in Brazil, which are the worst of the past 14 years, according to Observatorio del Clima. (El País)
  
  
• Fires are raging out of control across Peru “razing crops, damaging archaeological treasures and leaving several regions in a state of disaster,” reports Reuters.

Colombia

• About 10,000 people heeded Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s call to march yesterday in defense of his administration’s pension reform, which has been challenged before the Constitutional Court. (El País)
  
  

Martinique

• Martinique’s government imposed a 9pm to 5am curfew in parts of the capital to quell escalating violent protests over the high cost of living, reports the Guardian.
  
  

Regional Relations

• Scott MacDonald analyzes how the U.S. presidential election could impact Latin America and the Caribbean. “Relations with Central America and the Caribbean represent a mosaic of overlapping initiatives uneasily pulled together around migration, the illicit trafficking of guns and drugs, mutual concerns over environmental challenges, and the need for financing of critical sustainability projects.” (Global Americans)
  
  
• Venezuela announced it would seek Argentine President Javier Milei’s arrest in response to a dispute over a cargo plane seized in 2022. Earlier this month, Argentina submitted a request to the ICC seeking the arrest of Maduro and several of his top officials, reports the Buenos Aires Times.
  
  

Argentina

• Pope Francis questioned the Milei administration’s protest repression policy — saying the government has slashed spending and “instead of paying for social justice it payed for pepper spray.” The remarks come after footage last week showed security forces using pepper spray on a ten-year-old girl who was with her parents at the protest. (Página 12 and Buenos Aires Times)
  
  
• Today is the 40th anniversary of the “Nunca Más” report that documented dictatorship atrocities in Argentina – Página 12 and El País
  
  

Ecuador

• President Daniel Noboa is leading in the polls ahead of February’s presidential election in Ecuador. Leftist efforts to create a unity opposition coalition failed days before the registration deadline, reports El País.
  
  
• “The IDB and Ecuador are in the process of finalizing a $150 million loan for a violence prevention program that will include social service centers in at-risk areas as well as anti-money laundering, data analysis, and investigative training for law enforcement,” writes Catherine Osborn at the Latin America Brief.
  
  

Regional

• IDB President “Ilan Goldfajn is trying to navigate Latin America’s deep polarization, while also pushing a “change of culture” at the region’s multilateral lender,” reports Americas Quarterly.
  
  

González Urrutia said recognition of Maduro’s victory was under duress

Sept. 19, 2024
Jordana Timerman

Former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia said he was forced to sign a letter recognizing President Nicolás Maduro as the victor in July’s elections.

González, who is now in exile in Spain, said in a video posted yesterday on social media that he was required to sign the letter before being permitted to leave the country. Gonzalez said he was met at the Spanish embassy in Caracas, where he was sheltering, by Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez and her brother Jorge Rodriguez, president of the National Assembly, who gave him the letter to sign.

Spain denied involvement in negotiations between González and the Venezuelan government regarding the letter.

(Efecto Cocuyo, Associated Press, Reuters, Reuters, Guardian)

Opposition leader María Corina Machado believes that Maduro’s government subjected 75-year-old González to a psychological terror that pushed him into exile, reports El País.

Electronic tally sheets obtained by González’s political coalition and verified by independent audits appear to prove he won the July 28 election by a landslide.

The European Parliament recognized González as Venezuela’s democratically elected president, in a non-binding resolution today. (Efecto Cocuyo)

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Colombia suspends ELN talks

Colombia’s government suspended peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) armed group, after an attack on a military base killed two soldiers and injured 25 more. (See yesterday’s post.)

“During these months the government has sent the ELN multiple proposals. Today the dialogue process is suspended. Its viability is severely damaged, and its continuity can only be recovered with an unequivocal manifestation of the ELN’s will for peace,” said the government’s peace delegation in a statement that did not completely close the door to the process, notes EFE.

The ELN, ended a cease-fire with the Colombian government in August, but was still involved in peace talks aimed at ending more than five decades of conflict, reports the Associated Press. The talks had been in crisis for months after the government decided to begin separate negotiations with a unit in the southwest of the country that had split from the rest of the ELN, reports Reuters.

“The collapse of negotiations with the ELN suggests that Petro’s Total Peace plan may be taking its last breath, as the ELN continues to consolidate power along the Colombian-Venezuelan border,” according to InSight Crime. The ELN is protected in Venezuela, where it maintains a relationship with President Nicolás Maduro and is involved in various criminal economies, including drug trafficking, mining, and extortion.

Brazil

• The X social network suddenly went live again for many across Brazil, yesterday, after three weeks of being blocked under orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court. The reestablishment of service responds to a technical change in how X routes its internet traffic, enabling the site to evade internet provides’ digital roadblocks, reports the New York Times.
  
  
• X said the change was inadvertent, but Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes – who ordered the original ban as part of an attempt to crack down on anti-democratic, far-right voices – described the move as a deliberate attempt “to circumvent the court’s blocking order,” reports the Guardian.
  
  
• Brazil’s Supreme Court will impose a fine of about $1 million per day on X and satellite internet provider Starlink after service to the social media platform was temporarily restored, reports the Financial Times.

Haiti

• Haiti’s government created a provisional electoral council yesterday – albeit with only 7 of the legally required 9 members. Haiti has not had elections since 2016, and the interim government that took power in April has been tasked with organizing elections next year, in order for a new government to assume office in February 2026. (Associated Press)
  
  
• The council already has representatives for seven seats that represent religious groups, journalists, farmers and unions, the prime minister’s office said, yesterday. The two remaining seats, one for human rights organizations and another for women’s rights organizations, still lack a delegate, reports Reuters.
  
  
• Haitian Prime Minister Garry Conille and Edgard Leblanc Fils, the head of the nine-member Transitional Presidential Council, will be in New York next week for the United Nations General Assembly, as the United Nations Security Council analyzes the next steps for the multinational security support mission in Haiti. (Miami Herald)
  
  
• United Nations Secretary General António Guterres lamented the lack of financing for the multinational security support mission led by Kenya, which suffers from underfunding, understaffing and lack of equipment. (Miami Herald)
  
  

Mexico

• Mexican lawmakers are discussing a reform that would put the civilian National Guard under military auspices. The government attempted a similar shift last year, but was rebuffed by the Supreme Court, reports El País.
  
  
• The reform flies in the face of the spirit of the National Guard’s creation as a civilian security force in 2019, reports Animal Político.
  
  
• The militarization of internal security is severely problematic in terms of human rights, warns the Centro ProDH. (Animal Político)
  
  
• Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador called on former Secretary of Public Security Genaro García Luna, who was convicted on drug trafficking charges in the United States last year, present evidence to support his accusations that AMLO has links to drug trafficking. (Associated Press)

Peru

• Peruvian President Dina Boluarte declared a state of emergency in three regions affected by devastating forest fires that have burned through swathes of the nation’s Andean and Amazonian crop lands and left 16 dead.
  
  

Cuba

• Upwards of 600,000 people in Cuba – more than 1 in 20 of the population – are suffering from water supply issues, adding to the misery provoked by food and medicine shortages, reports Reuters.
  
  

Regional

• A former CIA officer who drugged and sexually assaulted dozens of women was sentenced to 30 years in prison, yesterday. The assaults date back to 2006 and took place in multiple countries, including Mexico and Peru, reports the Guardian.
  
  

Migration

• “Guatemala’s circular migration offers legal, safer pathways for workers to make a living in the US and support their home communities – surely a better alternative to the migration crisis in the Americas,” reports the Guardian.

Sinaloa Cartel War

Sept. 18, 2024
Jordana Timerman

At least 30 people have been killed in clashes between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, over the past two weeks and another 30 have been disappeared in the same context. Mexican Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said that two military troops were among those killed in the fighting that started Sept. 9, despite the presence of 2,200 security personnel, reports the Associated Press.

The war is between factions of the Sinaloa Cartel loyal to Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and “Los Chapitos,” the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, after a sudden increase in tensions in the wake of Zambada’s apparent abduction and handover to U.S. authorities by one of Guzmán’s sons. (El País)

Ioan Grillo reports from the frontlines of the Sinaloa Cartel war, that has paralyzed Culiacán to an unprecedented level, reminiscent of Covid-19 lockdowns. “This seems worse than the last Sinaloa war. There is a darker atmosphere and I’m more pumped with adrenaline. Contagious fear surges through the city, which the local Culichis call ‘social psychosis.’” (CrashOut)

On Monday, the regional army commander, Jesús Leana Ojeda, said the military is not responsible for ending the fighting. “It depends on the antagonistic groups to stop confronting each other,” he said at a news briefing.

More Mexico

• Outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador won’t have much influence on incoming president Claudia Sheinbaum’s security policy, according to James Bosworth. “Conversations I’ve had in recent weeks with analysts in Mexico portray a president who is prepared to take on the security challenge with more than happy rhetoric and press conferences. She is data-driven and wants police to lead security policy rather than the military,” he writes in the Latin America Risk Report.
  
  
• Sheinbaum is working on constitutional reform proposals to strengthen prosecutors and public defenders, according to her advisor, former Supreme Court justice Arturo Zaldívar. (Animal Político)
  
  
• Mexico’s recently approved judicial reform is causing rifts among the country’s elite, “with group chats and social feeds erupting into heated exchanges rarely seen among the country’s genteel upper class,” reports Bloomberg.
  
  
• A landslide caused by heavy rains has killed six people near Mexico City, reports the Associated Press.
  
  

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ELN attack on military base

Two soldiers were killed and 25 injured in an attack on a military base in eastern Colombia. Colombia’s government blamed the National Liberation Army (ELN) for the attack. (La Silla Vacía)

President Gustavo Petro hinted that the attack will lead to a suspension or a cancellation of peace talks with one of the country’s largest remaining rebel groups, reports the Associated Press.

“This is an attack that practically closes a peace process, with blood,” he said during a ceremony in Bogota. (Al Jazeera)

More Colombia

• Petro called for a demonstration tomorrow in defense of his government’s pension reform, a key legislative victory which is before the Constitutional Court. (El País, La Silla Vacía)
  
  

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Morales and Arce supporters clash in Bolivia

Thousands of demonstrators marching in support of former Bolivian President Evo Morales clashed with counterprotesters yesterday on a highway headed to La Paz, a sign of an escalating power struggle between Morales and his former protégé, President Luis Arce.

Hundreds counterprotesters, armed with tear gas bombs, stones and firecrackers, waited to confront the approximately 10,000 people who heeded Morales’ call to march from the small village of Caracollo. “The Morales supporters, raising multi-colored Indigenous flags and chanting against Bolivia’s economic crisis, surged toward them, using slingshots to pelt their adversaries with rocks as police in pickup trucks and on motorbikes looked on,” reports the Associated Press.

Arce accused Morales of attempting to orchestrate a coup against his government, on Sunday, while Morales is demanding the opportunity to participate in presidential elections and rejects a referendum on fuel subsidies. (El País)

Ecuador

• There are a record-breaking 17 presidential tickets announced for Ecuador’s February elections. Luisa González, who lost in the second round of the last elections in 2023, will again be the presidential nominee for the progressive Revolución Ciudadana (RC) party, but seconded by Diego Borja, a former minister in Rafael Correa’s administration who later opposed him but has since returned to support the RC, reports CEPR’s Ecuador News Roundup.
  
  
• Leaked private messages said to be sent by Ecuador’s Attorney General Diana Salazar, allege that Fernando Villavicencio, the Ecuadorean presidential candidate assassinated at a campaign event last year, was a US. government informant, according to a report by Drop Site News and Intercept Brasil. Correistas accuse Salazar of engaging “in a pattern of politically motivated actions, including aggressively pursuing cases against left-wing politicians while simultaneously delaying cases against more pro-U.S. right-wingers.”
  
  

Regional Relations

• Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva insisted that his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy should seek a peace negotiation with Moscow. Lula made those remarks after Zelenskyy dubbed a peace roadmap submitted jointly by Brasilia and Beijing as “destructive.” (Mercopress)

Migration

• WOLA highlights “the use of excessive force by Texas police and national guardsmen against civilians at the borderline. Actions committed along the Rio Grande, which range from firing projectiles at unarmed migrants to physically pushing them back across the border, violate nearly any democratic law enforcement agency’s standards and set a dangerous precedent for civil-military relations on U.S. soil.” (Via Americas Migration Report)
  

Venezuela

• Venezuela’s government announced the arrest of a fourth U.S. citizen in connection with an alleged plot to kill President Nicolás Maduro — which Venezuelan officials say involves the CIA, Spain’s intelligence agency, organized crime groups, sex workers and members of the opposition. (Associated Press, Washington Post, see Monday’s post.)
  
  
• U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed to keep pushing for “democratic freedoms” in Venezuela, in conversation with leaders of Venezuela’s opposition, reports AFP.

El Salvador

• El Salvador’s sovereign debt jumped “after President Nayib Bukele said the 2025 budget wouldn’t involve issuing new debt, signaling his plans for fiscal austerity, a key step in unlocking a long-awaited program with the International Monetary Fund,” reports Bloomberg.
  
  

Costa Rica

• Pesticides that are banned in Europe continue to be produced and exported to countries such as Costa Rica, where they help to meet market demands for the kind of aesthetically perfect bananas sold worldwide, reports the Guardian.

Honduras

• The revelation that Honduran president Xiomara Castro’s brother-in-law negotiated with drug traffickers has shaken the government, “but the administration’s response to the crisis signals little appetite to address the vulnerability of state institutions to infiltration by organized criminal groups,” reports InSight Crime.
  
  
• The U.S. State Department and other global leaders denounced the assassination of Juan López, an Honduran environmental leader, reports the Associated Press. (See Monday’s briefs.)

Brazil

• Brazilian appeal judges upheld charges against only two of the three men accused of murdering Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, in a decision “received with indignation” by Indigenous activists, reports the Guardian.
  
  
• Meta agreed to buy up to 3.9 million carbon offset credits from Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual’s forestry arm through 2038, reports Reuters.
  
  

Chile

• Google said it would halt plans to develop a major $200 million data center in Chile to address environmental worries, months after a Chilean court partially reversed the center’s authorization over water usage concerns, reports the Associated Press.

Critter Corner

• Water anoles are a sought after treat in the Costa Rican rainforest, but slippery skin and an ability to carry an air bubble underwater help the lizards scuba dive for survival, reports the New York Times

Noboa calls for foreign military bases

Sept. 17, 2024
Jordana Timerman

Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa promised to seek changes to the constitution to allow foreign military bases to be established in the country. Ecuador’s constitution has prohibited the presence of foreign military bases or installations for military purposes on Ecuadorean territory since 2008, reports Reuters.

“In a transnational conflict we need a national and international response,” Noboa said n a video recorded at a Manta military base formerly operated by the U.S. In January, in the midst of a surge in criminal violence, Noboa declared Ecuador was fighting an internal war against drug trafficking gangs.

Noboa is running for reelection in February (he won a truncated term last year following snap elections) and yesterday’s announcement is seen as an attempt to be seen as a decisive and active leader, despite the ongoing gang violence in Ecuador, according to the BBC.

Noboa submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to the Constitutional Court, which must approve the change before it can be voted on by the National Assembly, reports Infobae.

More Ecuador

• Ecuador’s government announced a series of eight-hour nightly power cuts, citing a severe drought which has caused water levels to plunge, affecting hydroelectric plants. (Reuters)
  
  

Venezuela

• A fact-finding mission on Venezuela, commissioned by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council, flagged an unprecedented wave of repression in Venezuela following the disputed July presidential election. The response of the authorities has thrown the country into one of its most “acute human rights crises in recent history” warned the report released yesterday. (Al Jazeera, Associated Press)
  
  
• Press watchdog groups describe an unprecedented government crackdown on the Venezuelan media, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists.
  
  
• Maduro has retained his grip on power — if he succeeds in starting a new mandate in January, “the result will be a radicalized government with a smaller, tighter-knit core that seeks consolidation as a new hegemonic authoritarianism in the region. … The scenario poses a dilemma to Venezuela’s opposition: Persist in the electoral struggle or consider new ways of confronting the regime,” writes Benigno Alarcón Deza in Americas Quarterly.
  
  
• Venezuela’s main opposition coalition called on the U.S. to cancel the licenses that allow Chevron and other energy companies to operate in Venezuela — hoping to pressure President Nicolás Maduro to negotiate a transition from power, reports the Associated Press.
  

Brazil

• A mayoral candidate for São Paulo, José Luiz Datena, attacked his opponent, Pablo Marçal, with a metal chair during a televised debate, reports the Washington Post.
  
  
• Marçal, a right-wing influencer, had referred to allegations of sexual misconduct against Datena, a former TV presenter, saying was “not even man enough” to follow through on a supposed threat to slap Marçal, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Marçal is locked in a three-way tie for first place in the polls to lead São Paulo. The first round of voting is scheduled for Oct. 6, reports the New York Times.
  
  
• Brazil is going through a wave of “climate terrorism,” which capitalizes on the high temperatures and low humidity to set large areas on fire damaging people’s health, biodiversity and destroying forests, according to Climate Change Minister Marina Silva. (Mercopress)
  
  

Fires

• Brazilian firefighters battled flames spreading through Brasilia National Park, yesterday. The blazes have enveloped the Brazilian capital in flames, the latest wildfire in a country experiencing an historic drought, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• At least fifteen people have been killed by wildfires in Peru since July and more than 3,000 hectares of cultivated land and natural areas have been scorched, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Peruvian Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen called on farming communities to stop burning grasslands in Andean and Amazonian areas that have sparked deadly wildfires, reports Reuters.
  
  

Cuba

• Cuba’s government slashed by a quarter the weight of its subsidized ration of daily bread. It’s the latest scarcity the midst of extreme shortages of food, fuel and medicine, shortfalls that have pushed a record-breaking exodus of Cuba’s citizens, reports Reuters.
  
  

Regional

• The International Monetary Fund is aiming to make a decision on whether to change its policy of charging big borrowers extra fees — called surcharges — by next month, reports Bloomberg. The burden, which has topped about $6 billion, is being carried mainly by a handful of countries including Argentina, Egypt and Ukraine, according to IMF data compiled by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
  
  

Argentina

• In the midst of growing clashes with airline unions, Argentine President Javier Milei decreed the aviation sector an “essential service” and ordered that airlines maintain at least 50 percent of flights in the event of work stoppages, reports AFP.
• Currency woes are hindering Argentine scientists’ efforts to develop key isotope Lithium-6, which could have nuclear applications, reports the Buenos Aires Times.
  
  

Migration

• Mexico has ramped up a policy of bussing migrants to the south of the country, temporarily thwarting their path north. This year officials have bused around 10,000 migrants a month to the south, roughly double the figure last year, reports the Washington Post.
  
  

El Salvador

• A journalistic investigation published by Prensa Comunitaria details a plan by El Salvadoran government officials to mount an espionage operation against journalists, news outlets, and political opponents. Journalist Héctor Silva Ávalos said he obtained access to eight hours of recorded conversations between Alejandro Muyshondt, a former national security advisor to President Nayib Bukele, in meetings with senior administration officials, reports El Faro.
  
  

Coca

• An Indigenous business in Colombia, acting, it says, “in defense of the coca leaf,” is asking the country’s government to revoke Coca-Cola’s century-old trademark on the word “coca.” The mechanism has been used “abusively” by the Coca-Cola Co., it said in a statement, and should be rescinded. (Washington Post)
  
  
• A WOLA podcast features Kendra McSweeney and Fritz Pinnow, part of a team investigating a new trend: the emergence of coca cultivation in Central America. They discuss the environmental and market conditions driving coca cultivation in Honduras and Guatemala and find that the region competitive advantages over Colombian coca growers, such as more favorable growing conditions.
  
  

Bolivia

• Former Bolivian president Evo Morales called on supporters to take to the streets in protest against his political rival and former ally, current President Luis Arce, who hours earlier accused Morales on national TV of trying to overthrow him. (Associated Press)

Six foreigners arrested in Venezuela

Sept. 16, 2024
Jordana Timerman

Six foreigners — three U.S. citizens, two Spaniards and a Czech citizen — were arrested in Venezuela, Saturday. Officials accused them of plotting to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro.

The arrests were announced on state television by interior minister Diosdado Cabello, who said the foreign citizens were part of a CIA-led plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government and kill several members of its leadership, reports the Associated Press.

Spain, which last week recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the official winner of the July presidential election Maduro claims to have won, formed part of the conspiracy, according to Cabello. (Efecto Cocuyo)

The US rejected the claims, which come after Washington placed 16 senior Venezuelan government officials under sanctions, as “categorically false,” reports the BBC.

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AMLO’s judicial reform becomes law

Mexico’s judicial reform became law yesterday. It is “the most far-reaching overhaul of a country’s court system ever carried out by a major democracy,” according to the New York Times. One of the most controversial changes makes all federal judges elected by popular vote.

Outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed the decree in a video posted on social media, calling it a “historic day.” He was accompanied by president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, reports AFP. (See also El País.)

Mexico’s judicial reform will present significant technical challenges for officials and citizens tasked with electing hundreds of federal judges starting next year. They will have to select among thousands of candidates in a modality that requires them to write in their preferred candidate, reports Animal Político.

“In the capital Mexico City, voters will have to choose judges for more than 150 positions, including on the Supreme Court, from a list of 1,000 candidates that most people have never heard of,” details the Financial Times.

AMLO has said the reform will democratize the judiciary — it’s relatively novel and tricky in terms of democratic institutions, explains Facundo Cruz in Cenital.

Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo called the reform an “atrocity.” (La Jornada)

More Mexico

• Mexican President Andrés Manuel López called on warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel to act “responsibly”, after a week of escalating violence nearly paralyzed the Sinaloa state capital, Culiacán. (Associated Press)
  
  
• “Sinaloa has been plagued by violence and insecurity since Monday, September 9, when an internal war broke out between the two most powerful factions of the notorious cartel: the followers of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, versus Los Chapitos, the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán…. Caught in the crossfire, the population has sunk into fear and uncertainty, despite the government’s insistence that “everything is calm” and under control,” reports El País.
  
  

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Brazilian court seizes Starlink assets to pay X’s fines

Brazil’s Supreme Court said two banks in Brazil had complied with its orders to deduct $3.3 million in fines from the Brazilian accounts of X and Starlink, two companies controlled by Elon Musk. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered seizure of the assets equivalent to the amount that X owes to the country in fines, in the midst of a standoff with the social media platform company.

The bank accounts of the two companies have since been unfrozen, but X remains blocked.

X has been blocked in Brazil for more than two weeks, after the social media platform failed to comply with orders to block some accounts accused of spreading “fake news” and hate messages that the judge said were a threat to democracy. De Moraes said the accounts remain unaddressed and the social media company still doesn’t have a legal representative in the country, as required by Brazilian law.

De Moraes determined that Starlink could be responsible for X’s fines because they were from the same “de facto economic group,” though Musk questioned the logic. (Associated Press, New York Times, Reuters)

Brazil’s shutdown of X is unprecedented in a democracy, is it leading the way on controlling corporate power? asks John Naughton in the Observer.

More Brazil

• Hundreds people from more than a dozen religious faiths participated in March for the Defense of Religious Freedom in Rio de Janeiro, yesterday, to support religious freedom in Brazil, where cases of intolerance have doubled over the past six years. Human rights minister Macaé Evaristo joined the participants, many of whom were practitioners of Afro-Brazilian religions that have recently faced attacks from members of Christian groups, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Brazilian officials say they have nearly reversed the illegal gold rush that led thousands of wildcat miners into the Yanomami reservation in the Amazon rainforest and caused a humanitarian crisis of disease and malnutrition, reports Reuters.
  
  
• Brazil wants to be a climate champion and an oil giant. Can it be both? asks the Financial Times.
  
  
• Nearly 60% of of Brazil has been affected by the worst drought in the country in more than seven decades, with a series of arson-fueled fires that have spiraled out of control, devastating protected areas and generating smoke that affects air quality in cities, reports El País.
  
  
• Severe droughts across Brazil’s Amazon rainforest region are drastically altering residents’ lives, reports Reuters.
  
  
• The Ashaninka Indigenous people live in a largely preserved area of Brazil’s western Amazon rainforest: “Over the past three decades, they have taken back their territory from cattle farmers and loggers, replacing pasture with fruit and timber trees, the sacred Ayahuasca vine, acai palm trees and medicinal plants.With their autonomy secured, the Ashaninka are now working to share their experience with neighbors to protect the whole region from deforestation and overexploitation of its natural resources,” reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Pacaraima in Brazil’s Roraima state, has reported a significant increase in Venezuelan migration since the July presidential election, according to El País.
  
  

Honduras

• Anti-mining activist Juan López was shot and killed in Honduras. President Xiomara Castro vowed justice for the latest such murder in one of the world’s most dangerous countries for environmentalists, reports AFP.
  
  

Ecuador

• As Ecuador heads to a presidential election, one question will be whether President Daniel Noboa pays a political cost for slow-rolling the Yasuni oil drilling ban that a majority of Ecuadorans support, writes James Bosworth in World Politics Review.
  
  

Haiti

• At least 26 people have died after a tanker truck carrying gasoline exploded in southern Haiti on Saturday. At least 40 people were injured. The tanker had crashed and was leaking fuel, which people were rushing to collect when the vehicle exploded. (Associated Press, BBC)
  
  

Migration

• U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump promised conduct mass deportations of Haitian immigrants from the Ohio city of Springfield — though the majority of them are in the United States legally, and there are no indications that they have eaten anybody’s household pets. (France 24)
  
  

Costa Rica

• Costa Rica’s jungle is increasingly being infiltrated by drug cartels seeking new trafficking routes to evade the authorities, reports the New York Times. And with the rising drug trafficking, a surge of violence has hit the nation.
  
  

Argentina

• Argentine President Javier Milei has announced that he intends to eliminate the budget deficit entirely next year. He presented an optimistic budget in Congress yesterday, that forecasts growth of 5 per cent next year, after an expected 3.8 per cent contraction this year. It also forecasts prices rising just 18.3 per cent in the 2025 calendar year after expected inflation of 122.9 per cent this year, reports the Financial Times.

Peru

• Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was buried on Saturday, and leaves a country grappling with his complex legacy of economic reform, counterinsurgency operations, and human rights violations, report Reuters.
  
  
• Thousands of supporters lined up in Lima in three days of national mourning, to pay respects to Fujimori’s casket. Peruvian President Dina Boluarte saluted the former president before his burial, reports the Associated Press.
  
  
• Fujimori’s “rule killed people and their illusions, imposing death and fear as a weapon of social discipline. Amid rumors of a 2026 “family presidential ticket” with Alberto as the presidential candidate, his death leaves Keiko as the sole inheritor and wielder of a gruesome legacy of state terror, human rights violations, and the dismantling of democracy,” writes Javier Puente in Nacla.
  
  “The judgment of Alberto’s lost decade now belongs to history and to the collective memory of all Peruvians. Other battles, political and cultural, lie ahead. So does restoring the illusions and collective hope of having a country and a nation despite Fujimori.”
  
  

Chile

• Chilean President Gabriel Boric “has been unable to accomplish any of his promised structural reforms … But he might be forging a more durable legacy: from the 2019 protests that propelled his meteoric rise to back-to-back attempts at rewriting the Constitution and the missteps of an administration in search of identity, Boric is unwittingly steering Chile back to the successful moderate politics that preceded him,” writes Patricia Garip in Americas Quarterly.
  
  
• I spoke with Peter Kornbluh, of the National Security Archive on the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Times story that revealed CIA covert operations in Chile, and of the documents that show how Henry Kissinger misled President Gerald Ford about clandestine U.S. efforts to undermine the elected government of Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende. (Cenital)

Jordana Timerman / Latin America Daily Briefing
latinamericadailybriefing.blogspot

EnergiesNet.com 09 21 2024