Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to boost China's footprint in Latin America and the Caribbean with a new $9 billion credit line and fresh infrastructure investment, reports Reuters. He also pledged support for Panama against U.S. pressure over ownership of its ports and promised greater co-operation with countries across Latin America, including law enforcement training and equipment alongside other measures such as visa-free travel, reports the Financial Times.
The world's second-largest economy will disburse $9.18 billion in credit to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States' (CELAC) members, Xi told delegates from around 30 nations gathered in Beijing for the three-yearly China-CELAC Forum Ministerial Meeting. (See yesterday’s post.)
Despite breakthroughs in Chinese-U.S. tariff negotiations, Xi reiterated Beijing’s stance that nobody wins a trade war and that “bullying or hegemonism only leads to self-isolation.” (Associated Press)
China “supports Latin America in safeguarding its national sovereignty and independence and opposing external interference”, Xi told the China-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States gathering.
The presence of three major leftist Latin American presidents in China this week — Brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Colombian Gustavo Petro and Chilean Gabriel Boric — underscores China’s growing footprint in South America, but also “global jitters over Trump’s volatile presidency and Latin American anxiety and suspicion over the US president’s plans for a region where he has threatened to “take back” the Panama canal – by force if necessary,” reports the Guardian.
Speaking in Beijing, where he is carrying out a state visit, Lula hit out at Trump’s tariffs, saying he could not accept the measures “that the president of the US tried to impose on planet Earth, from one day to the next.” He celebrated Chinese investments in the region, saying: “China has often been treated as though it were an enemy of global trade when actually China is behaving like an example of a country that is trying to do business with countries which, over the past 30 years, were forgotten by many other countries.”
Regional Relations
Chinese efforts to diversify from U.S. food imports have lent new urgency to ongoing investments aimed at ensuring access to South American agricultural exports, reports the Wall Street Journal. “Chinese companies are laying hundreds of miles of railroad across Brazil’s agricultural heartland and finishing work on a $3.5 billion deep-water port on Peru’s Pacific coast.”
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, speaking from the Great Wall of China, confirmed that Colombia will join China's Belt and Road initiative, reports Reuters. (See yesterday’s post.)
“Traders have rebranded more than $1 billion of Venezuelan oil shipments to China as Brazilian crude over the past year, according to two tanker tracking firms, company documents and four traders, helping buyers to cut logistics costs and circumvent U.S. sanctions.” - Reuters
Haiti
Haiti is sliding into the abyss, but anarchy is not inevitable, argues Robert Muggah in Americas Quarterly. Action on weapons trafficking and illicit finances will be critical over the coming months.
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen called on Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prioritize U.S. efforts to deal with the crisis of gang violence in Haiti, saying he should reconsider restoring funding cuts, push for money for the ongoing international armed mission to fight gangs and engage with Russia and China in high-level conversations to lay the groundwork for a formal United Nations peacekeeping mission, reports the Miami Herald.
Mexico
Mexico’s closely watched judicial elections will be held on June 1 — what was “intended as a radical exercise in democracy, has increasingly been overshadowed by concerns about penetration by drug-trafficking groups,” reports the Washington Post, though President Claudia Sheinbaum has pointed out that only a handful of candidates have been seized on as problematic.
Mexican authorities were seeking suspects in the weekend assassination of Yesenia Lara Gutíerrez, a mayoral candidate who was shot dead during a campaign rally in Veracruz state. She was at least the second mayoral candidate killed this year in Veracruz, which is having mayoral elections in more than 200 municipalities on June 1, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Regional
Latin America is moving past it’s anti-incumbent trend, and is shifting rightward in recent elections, argues Michael Reid in Americas Quarterly.
Argentina
Argentina’s newest IMF deal is part of the country’s long-term vicious cycle with the international lender, writes Jacob Sugarman in The Nation. “That the IMF is extending an economic lifeline to an outspoken Trump ally at the United States’ behest seems indisputable. More devastating for Argentina and liberal democracies more broadly is that few within a politically exhausted opposition can articulate any plausible alternative to this rigged game—one whose rules are being bent in real time to the cruelty and caprice of a fractious but empowered far-right international.”
“While Argentina took in thousands of Nazis and Nazi war criminals after World War II,” new material found in the country’s Supreme Court basement actually “reflects the country’s efforts to discourage the spread of Nazi ideology and membership before and during the war,” reports the New York Times.
Jamaica
Jamaica has one of the regions highest homicide rates — though officials celebrate a sharp drop in murders this year, rights campaigners said that tackling crime should not come at the expense of accountability amid an “alarming” rise in fatal police shootings, reports the Guardian.
Bolivia
Bolivian prosecutors have charged former army chief Juan Jose Zuniga with terrorism over an alleged coup attempt last year that he claimed had been staged to bolster President Luis Arce, reports AFP.
Brazil
“Porto Alegre’s Boca de Rua is sold and written by some of the city’s most vulnerable people, giving them a voice and a sense of purpose,” reports the Guardian.
Regional
Almost two-thirds of banana growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean may be rendered unsuitable for growing the fruit by climate change in the next 50 years, according to new research — Guardian