News Briefs
Summit of the Americas
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden today — while reports indicate Bolsonaro sought assurances that Biden refrain from confronting him on electoral and environmental issues, the White House has indicated that they are on the agenda. (Associated Press, Reuters, see yesterday’s post.)
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, speaking to reporters on the way to Los Angeles aboard Air Force One, said Biden will discuss climate and "open, transparent and democratic elections" in Brazil with Bolsonaro. (Reuters)
Bolsonaro will likely seek U.S. funding for programs to protect the Amazon rainforest, reports Bloomberg. Last year environmental and human rights groups pushed against financing such programs through the Bolsonaro administration, which they say is untrustworthy.
Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela were not invited to participate in the summit. Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, who is recognized by the U.S. as the country’s legitimate interim leader, was also excluded, reports the Associated Press. Biden spoke with Guaidó by phone yesterday, the first time the two have talked. Biden reiterated his support for Guaidó, whose claim to the presidency stems from his role as head of the National Assembly elected in 2015.
Activists from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela denounced the suppression of individual freedoms and the circumstances of hundreds of political prisoners in their home countries at the sidelines of the ongoing Summit, reports the Miami Herald.
In a meeting with Caribbean leaders today, at the Summit, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will announce a series of new initiatives to help Caribbean nations better tackle climate change and make the move to alternative energy sources, reports the Miami Herald.
Americas Quarterly has a compilation of highlights and top initiatives coming out of the summit so far.
Brazil
Brazilian Indigneous leader Sonia Guajajara is on TIME’s “100 Most Influential People” list this year. She travelled to Washington this week, where she is committed to denouncing “genocide of indigenous peoples” under Bolsonaro’s government. (Globo)
On Tuesday she met with U.S. Special Climate Envoy John Kerry, and pressed him for support on the disappearances of Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips Brazil’s Amazon. “The search is so slow, and it is pitiful that we continue to live in a situation where there is no security,” she said. (Revista Forum, see yesterday’s post.)
The official response has been woefully inadequate. Indigenous groups that have been searching on the ground since Sunday released a statement saying they had repeatedly called on multiple federal agencies for help. Yet with the exception of six military police officers and a team from Funai, federal agencies and armed forces have been “absent from the effort”, they said. (Guardian)
Authorities in the Amazon investigating the disappearance said yesterday they have yet to find any evidence of a crime, reports the Guardian.
The Javari valley, where Phillips and Araújo disappeared on Sunday, is the largest refuge for Indigenous tribes living in isolation. It is also a hotspot for poachers and illegal loggers and a major smuggling route for cocaine traffickers, prompting violent conflicts between the Indigenous inhabitants and the riverside communities which fiercely opposed the reservation’s creation in 2001, reports the Guardian. (See yesterday’s post.)
Recently, local Indigenous people have started formally patrolling the Javari valley forest and rivers themselves, and the people who exploit the land for a living have responded with increasingly dire threats, reports the New York Times.
Brazilian presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is holding a strong lead against incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro for the October election, according to the latest Genial/Quaest poll, which gives the former president 46% voter support in a first-round vote, a 16-percentage-point lead over his far-right rival. In an expected run-off between them, Lula has widened his advantage to 22 percentage points and would win the election by 54% versus 32% for Bolsonaro. (Reuters)
Lula would scrap Brazil’s constitutionally mandated spending cap, overhaul taxation and boost government spending “to put the poor and the workers back into the budget” if he wins October’s election, according to a draft manifesto circulated by his campaign. (Financial Times)
Peru
Peru is known for political turmoil, but the country’s current chaos — a merry-go-round of cabinet shuffles and a congress almost exclusively focused on ousting the president less than a year into office — raises the possibility that the country is ungovernable, reports the Financial Times.
El Salvador
At least 38,000 people have been arrested under El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s draconic state of exemption started in late March. The unprecedented crackdown is politically popular, but could backfire as families are devastated by the detentions, many of which have been denounced as arbitrary by rights groups. (Guardian)
Mexico
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to transform Mexico’s health care system and provide long-promised universal coverage, but three years into his mandate, the plans have fizzled, reports NACLA.
Migration
Venezuelans make up a large proportion of a migrant caravan making its way across Mexico. A factor appears to be a policy change implemented by Mexico in January requiring Venezuelans to acquire a visa to enter the country, reports the Associated Press.
Argentina
The International Monetary Fund said it had reached a staff-level agreement on an updated macroeconomic framework with Argentine authorities, allowing the country access to about $4.03 billion. (Reuters)
Honduras
Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of child death in Honduras – and experts fear the threat is growing. Child deaths caused by the disease are strongly linked to malnutrition, lack of safe water and sanitation, and inadequate access to healthcare, reports the Guardian.
Caribbean
A region-wide stony coral tissue loss disease outbreak in the Caribbean is killing off up to 94 percent of some coral species. The outbreak is probably is made worse by coastal development and climate change, according to researchers. (Washington Post)
British Virgin Islands
The UK foreign secretary decided to give the British Virgin Islands’ emergency administration two years to implement reforms to tackle endemic corruption, avoiding direct rule in the meantime, reports the Guardian.
Dominican Republic
Dominican Republic environment minister Orlando Jorge Mera was fatally shot in his office, allegedly by a childhood friend, over denied environmental permits, reports Al Jazeera.
Histories
Two shipwrecks thought to be centuries old have been discovered near the ruins of the famous San José galleon, sunk off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia, more than 300 years ago — Washington Post. Maritime experts consider the San José to be the "holy grail" of Spanish colonial shipwrecks.