Haiti
Haitian officials extended a state of emergency and nighttime curfew for a month, in an effort curb violent gang attacks that have paralyzed Port-au-Prince over the past week, as criminal groups seek to overthrow the embattled government. Officials ordered the Haitian national police “to take appropriate measures to regain control of the situation throughout this territory.” (Miami Herald, Associated Press.
In eight days, criminals have torched half a dozens police stations, and the “police are on their knees,” according to the head of the country’s police union. (AyiboPost)
On Wednesday night criminal gangs breached Port-au-Prince’s main port, cutting Haiti’s capital city off from one of its last remaining lifelines for food and supplies, reports the Washington Post.
“Experts estimate that up to 200 gangs operate in Haiti, about 20 of them in Port-au-Prince. They range from small groups of a few dozen young men who share pistols to crews of roughly 1,500 men with weekly salaries and automatic weapons who belong to hierarchal organizations with bosses,” reports the New York Times. (See this week’s posts.)
Regional
Russia’s propaganda news outlets “boast robust social media followings in a region with a history of distrust for traditional media outlets and a tendency to focus on local rather than international affairs,” reports World Politics Review.
El Salvador
Following the nearly total electoral rout of El Salvador’s opposition parties in presidential, general and municipal elections this year, in “an election season where legislative and municipal gerrymandering proved far more effective for the president than his overwhelming popularity, opposition representatives are again preaching unity and, above all, the need to recover their contact with Salvadoran society,” reports El Faro English.
Mexico
“As Mexico prepares for the largest elections in its history, organized crime is once again preying on local candidates across swaths of the country where cartels dominate, raising concerns among experts that these could be Mexico’s bloodiest elections ever,” reports the Associated Press.
Nine years after the Ayotzinapa students were disappeared, “their absence could easily have been forgotten: there is a low-range official estimate that more than eighty thousand people have disappeared in Mexico since 2006, with virtually no official attempt to find them,” writes Alma Guillermoprieto in the New Yorker. “But, thanks to their parents and relatives, the missing students—who became known as los cuarenta y tres, or the Forty-three—became a cause.”
This week, group of protesters demanding justice for the 43 students battered down the door to Mexico’s presidential palace, using a pick up truck. Police used tear gas to disperse the group, reports Al Jazeera.
Venezuela
With just three weeks until the deadline to register candidates for the July presidential election Venezuela’s opposition is split on who to field. María Corina Machado, who won last year’s opposition primary by a landslide, wants to push forward, despite the government’s ban on her candidacy. More moderate groups want to nominate an alternative candidate, reports Bloomberg.
Machado is the first real political threat Maduro has faced in years, but if she is out of the running, Maduro remains the strongest candidate thanks to the powerful political machinery of his authoritarian government, reports the Associated Press.
The leader of one of Venezuela’s most notorious criminal gangs, Carlos Capa, was killed by security forces after years of evading government attempts to capture him. He “has joined the list of criminal leaders who have been hunted down and killed for not submitting to the rules that the Maduro government has imposed on Venezuela’s criminal underworld,” reports InSight Crime.
Colombia
“The Wayúu people of La Guajira have always faced water scarcity. But now severe drought has brought disease and a shortage of food,” reports the Guardian.
Brazil
“Although the murder of a PCC member in São Paulo sparked rumors of a rift within the group, it is unlikely to destabilize the structure of Brazil’s largest criminal gang,” reports InSight Crime.
“In an era of surprisingly persistent poverty and hunger,” some of Brazil’s most troubled communities “are making progress,” writes Brian Winter in Americas Quarterly.
Regional Relations
The Biden administration’s intervention in favor of the winner of Guatemala’s presidential election Bernardo Arévalo prevented a coup against democracy in that country, countering a long history of anti-democratic interventions, writes Stephen Schlesinger in The Nation.
Argentina
The Argentine Milei administration’s radical austerity measures are “a fairly traditional approach to stabilization,” the Wilson Center’s Benjamin Gedan told Foreign Policy. “That doesn’t mean it’s not dramatic and high stakes. … It’s an act of either political courage or political suicide.”
Chile
In the Oscar-nominated satire El Conde, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet “lives on as a vampire. But it doesn’t take magical thinking to see his continuing influence on politics,” writes Ena Alvarado in a review for Americas Quarterly.
Critter Corner
Researchers discovered new “dwarf” gecko in Venezuela. (Miami Herald)
Wormlike Brazilian “amphibians called caecilians add cloacal secretions of a nutritious material similar to milk to their numerous quirks,” reports the New York Times.