Ceasefire with FARC-EP ends in Colombia
April 18, 2025
The Colombian government did not renew a ceasefire with a dissident guerrilla group, the FARC-EP, yesterday, though President Gustavo Petro said the decision did not imply the end of peace talks with the group.
The ceasefire had been in effect since December 2023 and was extended several times. In 2024, Petro suspended ceasefires with parts of the dissident group, after their fighters attacked an Indigenous community.
Leonardo Gonzalez, director of a non-governmental peace organization, Indepaz, posted to X that the government's decision "represents a serious setback for the communities that inhabit territories historically affected by the armed conflict."
Last night the FARC-EP threatened the Cauca region civilian population against communicating with public security officers. Three attacks in Santander de Quilichao killed two people this week.
(Deutsche Welle, Reuters, La Silla Vacía, La Silla Vacía, Infobae)
Deportations
A group of lawyers filed suit against Costa Rica in the United Nations, claiming the Central American country has violated the rights of dozens of minors deported from the United States by detaining them for nearly two months and by holding them in conditions “that could cause irreparable harm.” It is the latest legal challenge against countries collaborating with the Trump administration’s policies to deport migrants to third-countries, reports the New York Times.
“The National Intelligence Council, drawing on the acumen of the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies, determined in a secret assessment early this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the United States by the prison gang Tren de Aragua,” undermining the Trump administration’s rationale for invoking the Enemy Alien Act to summarily deport alleged gang members, reports the Washington Post.
U.S. immigration agents smashed the car window of a family in Massachusetts with a large hammer and detained a man who had applied for asylum. A lawyer for the family also claims agents were not looking for the man in the car, Juan Francisco Mendez, when they grabbed him while he was driving to a dental appointment. He is now believed to have been taken into ICE detention, reports the Associated Press.
U.S. senator Chris Van Hollen met in El Salvador with Kilmar Abrego García. It was not clear how the meeting was arranged, where they met or what will happen to Abrego García, who was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration, reports the Guardian.
Van Hollen was not permitted to visit the maximum security CECOT prison where Abrego García has been detained in El Salvador, along with the other nearly 300 men deported by the U.S. to the country. “The refusal to allow entry to a U.S. senator — days after several Republican members of Congress were given tours of the prison — was a remarkable escalation in the showdown over President Trump’s hard-line immigration policy,” reports the New York Times.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Bukele plans to double the size of the CECOT, which can currently house 40,000 people — a proposal he reportedly discussed with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during her recent visit to El Salvador.
At the CECOT, deportees are held incommunicado, not allowed even contact with lawyers. "What they are trying to create here is a Guantanamo on steroids... a black hole where there is no legal protection for the people there," Juan Pappier, HRW's America's deputy director, told AFP.
El Salvador
In the Guardian, Julie Wong inscribes Trump’s meeting with Bukele in the ultra gilded West Wing office in the context of El Salvador’s now repealed metal mining ban. “While Bukele claims that future gold mining will be mercury-free and “sustainable”, environmental activists are getting ready to fight to save El Salvador’s waterways.”
Brazil
The Economist profiles Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, sworn enemy of far right former president Jair Bolsonaro. “One might expect a judge in the MAGA cross-hairs to be left-wing. But Mr Moraes calls himself a “classical liberal” and defends republican government and a limited role for the state in the economy. He has only ever worked for centre-right politicians. ‘Virtue,’ he says, ‘is in the middle.’”
Ecuador
Daniel Noboa bucked Latin America’s anti-incumbent trend in last weekend’s elections. He was helped by lingering anger at former President Rafael Correa, and the ongoing security crisis, which he has responded to with iron fist policies — as well as his friendly ties with Trump, reports Foreign Policy.
“Still, foreign policy alone did not decide Ecuador’s election—and nearly a week after Sunday’s vote, analysts are still puzzling over the results. That’s because González appeared to gain almost no votes between the first-round election, which included more than 10 candidates, and the runoff. Opinion surveys, including exit polls, missed the apparent late wave of support for Noboa,” reports the Latin America Brief.
Noboa’s reelection in Ecuador “represents an opportunity for stability for a right wing that, until now, has failed to consolidate its position. … Noboa is courting Washington’s support by offering two strategically located military bases: in Manta and the Galápagos Islands,” writes Ociel Alí López in Nacla.
Mexico
Mexico’s ruling Morena party’s success stems from building a left-wing movement focused on social justice, but also from pragmatic nods to the right and a strong grounding in local contexts, writes Thomas Graham in the Guardian.
The murder of a police commander in Teocaltiche, in Mexico’s Jalisco state, seems to have struck a particular chord with the local population, coming after months of murders of officers, activists, and civilians at the hands of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, reports El País.
A study by the Colegio de México reveals that the CJNG is the most active in using social media to recruit adolescents, reports El País.
Haiti
More than half of Haiti’s population is expected to experience severe hunger through June, and another 8,400 people living in makeshift shelters are projected to starve, according to a new report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a multi-partner U.N. initiative. It noted that the number of those facing severe hunger increased by more than 300,000 people to some 5.7 million since last year. (Associated Press)
More than one million children in Haiti are suffering "critical" food shortages as a result of chronic violence, displacement and restricted access to humanitarian aid, according to UNICEF. (AFP)
French President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday that historic injustice was imposed on Haiti when it was forced to pay a colossal ransom to France in exchange for its independence 200 years ago, reports the Associated Press. But But he made no mention of Haitians’ long-standing demands for reparations from the country that enslaved their ancestors and then trapped them in a vicious debt cycle, report AFP. (See yesterday’s briefs.)
Regional
Latin America’s “failed experiment with import substitution industrialization (ISI) offers a stark warning: embracing it may breed inefficiency, corruption, and stagnation,” write Juan Carlos Hallak and Eduardo Levy Yeyati in Americas Quarterly.
China’s embassy in Chile said the United States is increasingly interfering in China's relations with Chile, seeking to restrict Beijing's access to resources in the minerals-rich Latin American nation and pressuring it to curtail space cooperation with China, reports Newsweek.
Chile
“In the second Latin American AI Index, issued last year, Chile ranked first among 19 countries in the region in advancing its AI ecosystem, just ahead of Brazil. And in certain fields, Chile has a world-class edge in gathering the data streams needed to train AI models,” writes Patricia Garip in Americas Quarterly.
Culture Corner
Artisans in Guatemala hand-stitch velvet cloaks for Holy Week processions - Associated Press.