Colombian senate rejects labor referendum
May 15, 2025
Colombian lawmakers narrowly rejected a referendum proposed by President Gustavo Petro which would have asked voters to weigh in on specific labor reforms, like whether workdays should be limited to eight hours and whether workers should receive double pay if they work during holidays. After an intense debate Wednesday, 49 senators voted against the measure and 47 in favor. (Associated Press)
Petro proposed the 12-question referendum earlier this month, after Congress twice rejected his labor reform plans. However, yesterday a group of lawmakers reopened discussion of the labor reform bill that was previously rejected.
Yesterday Petro characterized the senate vote as fraudulent, and called for town meetings, cabildos, to decide a popular response to the legislative decision. Cabildos are a constitutionally recognized mechanism for citizen participation, a space to deliberate and expresse collective political positions. Though they are not politically binding, they carry significant symbolic weight, according to La Silla Vacía.
In response to Wednesday’s Senate vote, labor unions and indigenous rights groups that organized massive uprisings in 2019 and 2021 said they have already begun mobilizing their bases. Petro floated the idea of a national strike. (Pirate Wire Services)
James Bosworth argues that handled well, the Senate move could be an opportunity for Petro to gain political momentum, as voters generally want some form of labor reform.
The failure to get the measure through Congress is just the latest stumble related to Interior Minister Armando Benedetti, a close ally of Petro’s who is causing rifts within the governing coalition. “Just this morning, Justice Minister Ángela María Buitrago resigned, and her resignation now appears to be linked to illegal attempts to influence cases by Benedetti,” explains Bosworth. (Latin America Risk Report)
Deportations
A two-year-old Venezuelan girl who had been held in U.S. custody since late 2024 and remained in the U.S. after her parents were deported separately has been reunited with her mother in Venezuela. After the toddler’s parents were deported from the United States, the toddler was placed with a foster family by U.S. authorities, reports the Miami Herald.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro thanked his United States counterpart, Donald Trump, and Special Presidential Envoy Richard Grenell for the return of the girl. (EFE)
The U.S. government’s efforts to deport migrants to “third countries” could be understood as an attempt to “create an outsourced global detention system where rights to due process effectively do not exist, one run by mostly authoritarian governments that are trying to curry favor with President Trump,” according to the New York Times.
Regional Relations
“Trump administration’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and his family have had extensive business interests linked to El Salvador, whose authoritarian leader Nayib Bukele has grown close to the White House and who has courted controversy by imprisoning people deported from the US in an immigration crackdown,” reports the Guardian.
Ronald D Johnson, a former special forces and CIA officer, will start today as Washington’s ambassador to Mexico. Drug cartels are expected to top his priority list, at a time when US leaders have openly floated the possibility of the first unilateral military intervention in more than a century, reports the Financial Times.
China will extend its visa-free policy to nationals of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, putting some of Latin America's largest economies on equal footing with many European and Asian countries as it sought stronger ties with the region, reports Reuters.
Brazil
“A billion-dollar pension scandal has rocked Brazil’s government ahead of elections next year, forcing a minister to resign and recalling memories of past corruption cases under the party of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,” according to the Financial Times.
Haiti
Germine Joly, the Haitian gang leader who ran a gunrunning conspiracy and kidnapping racket from the inside of a Haitian jail, denied any gang affiliation or role in the kidnapping of 16 U.S. missionaries, speaking in his own defense in a U.S. federal court yesterday. (Miami Herald)
Mexico
A 23-year-old influencer was shot and killed at a beauty salon in Jalisco, Mexico, while she was livestreaming on TikTok, reports the New York Times.
Ecuador
Ecuador's national assembly elected Niels Olsen, a close ally of President Daniel Noboa, as its new body president — this means Noboa, who was recently reelected, has a majority as he pushes anti-crime and economic reforms, reports Reuters.
Bolivia
Bolivia's constitutional court upheld a lower ruling banning more than two terms as president, in effect blocking former President Evo Morales from running in elections later this year, reports Reuters.
Uruguay
Crowds poured into the streets of Montevideo yesterday to bid farewell to former President José Mujica, a former guerrilla who became a pioneering leader and icon of the Latin American left, remembered most for his humility, simple lifestyle and ideological earnestness, reports the Associated Press.
Mujica’s “presidency failed to accomplish all of its economic goals. But his austere lifestyle made him revered by many Uruguayans for living like them, while giving him a platform in the international press to warn that greed was eroding society. He insisted it was truly how he wanted to live, but he also recognized that it served to illustrate that politicians had long had it too good,” writes Jack Nicas in the New York Times. (See yesterday’s post.)