The Carter Center will send observers to Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election, reports Bloomberg. The group’s technical mission is expected to arrive this week to observe the process, which includes assessing the candidates’ campaigns and the organizing of voting centers.
But the center warned that the extent of its work will be limited. “Given its limited size and scope, the Center’s mission will not conduct a comprehensive assessment of the voting, counting, and tabulation processes.”
The Carter Center last oversaw regional Venezuela elections in 2021 — in that instance the organization found evidence of political interference at the electoral council and concluded the vote didn’t meet basic international standards for democratic elections, reports Bloomberg.
The decision was made public last week, weeks after Venezuela’s decision to exclude European Union observers increased concerns that lack of independent monitors will undermine the legitimacy of results in a tremendously fraught vote, reports the Miami Herald. The UN still has not said if it will send observers.
“In what is sure to be a tense and highly uncertain post-election scenario, independent observers’ critical reporting will be essential for the international community to assess the election’s legitimacy,” wrote Tamara Taraciuk Broner in Americas Quarterly last week.
More Venezuela
Only “monumental fraud” could keep Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in power in the upcoming elections, according to opposition leader María Corina Machado. (Financial Times)
If Maduro loses the presidential election scheduled within one month, he will be thrust into uncertain footing for a six-month transition period that the government would likely embark upon with ill-will, argues Boris Muñoz in El País. At the same time the opposition — namely Machado and hypothetical president-elect Edmundo González — will have to navigate significant political tensions within a coalition temporarily unified against the government. “A Venezuela in transition from dictatorship to democracy will be a minefield. The margin of error to operate in it is minimal. Every move of the new government should be aimed at creating greater governability.”
Costa Rica
Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves said his country was governed for 70 years by a perfect dictatorship, a controversial statement in what is widely considered to be one of the region’s most stable democracies. (El País, Tico Times)
Chaves’ criticisms to the country’s constitution comes as he has proposed a referendum that would reform the national comptroller, the independent office that supervises public administration. (Latin America Post)
Peru
Over 500 students in the Peruvian Amazon were sexually abused by teachers. In the midst of the scandal caused by the revelations, Peru’s national minister of education poured kerosene on the flames, arguing that rapes in the region are “a cultural practice to exercise a form of familial construction.” (El País)
Regional
Latin America has has the ideal mix of rare earth elements, vital inputs for green technology, but low prices and permitting lags stand in the way of a mining boom, according to Americas Quarterly.
Mexico
Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum promised to maintain the National Guard militarized force that has been a cornerstone of the López Obrador security policy, reports EFE.
Regional Relations
Sheinbaum lived in the U.S. for four years, an experience as an immigrant academic that may offer clues to her relationship with the next U.S. government, reports the New York Times.
U.S. government inspections of avocados and mangoes in the Mexican state of Michoacán will gradually resume, a week after they were suspended over an assault on inspectors, reports the Associated Press.
At least 60 Brazilians condemned or accused in relation to the 2023 riots in Brasilia have fled to Argentina — the Milei administration must decide whether it will grant them asylum or return them to face legal consequences in Brazil, writes Dacil Lanza in Cenital.
Migration
More than 200,000 migrants have passed through El Paso in Texas, dubbed “the other Ellis Island.” Though the U.S. city “has strained under the weight of receiving hundreds of thousands of migrants in recent years, it has also modeled compassion and resilience, rooted in a tradition of caring for those who flee north,” reports the Guardian.
Argentina
Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich named an official reportedly experienced in the “Bukele Model” to second her. (La Nación)
Magical Realism
Among other things, One Hundred Years of Solitude narrates the impact of an U.S. banana company in a fictional Colombian town that symbolizes Latin America. After the emblematic massacre of striking workers, the entire population succumbs to a plague of amnesia, the atrocity is forgotten. A U.S. court ruling earlier this month against the company’s real life counterpart — Chiquita Brands, formerly United Fruit — shows that troublesome corporate activity in Latin America is ongoing, and strikes against amnesiac impunity for corporate human rights violations, I argue in Cenital.